One of the Jesus Mythicists that is not as well know is that of Edwin Johnson. Johnson lived 1842–1901 was known for his radical ideas about Christian historiography.
Not surprisingly, Johnson rejected the historicity of Jesus. He used the same methods as other contemporary mythicists: supposed lack of evidence and similarity to pagan myths.
But whereas most mythicists stopped at Jesus and possibly the twelve apostles, Johnson went on to doubt the existence of Paul and other early Christian writers.
You can find one of his writings online and you will see how radical he was.
- The Paul figure was a literary invention from the 1500’s
- The purportedly early Church Father writings were literary inventions of the 1500’s
- Eusebius’ Church History was written in the 1500’s.
- The Gospels were written in the 1500’s.
- No Cathedrals are ancient; they are from the early part of the modern period, such as 1400.
You can find his book The Pauline Epistles – Re-Studied and Explained online for free here.
His thesis is basically that we have no reliable evidence for what happened before the printing press. He argues the Benedictine monks invented Jesus, the New Testament, the Church Fathers, Christianity, all in the 1500s. He even suggests that some of the centuries before the 1500s didn’t exist either, meaning we are actually closer to the Roman Empire than we realize. Everything before the printing press must be doubted!
To most people, including most Jesus Mythicists, this is all ridiculous. In fact, historians often give more weight to archaeology of artifacts than to just texts. I doubt there are many followers of Johnson even by Jesus Mythicists.
But this got me thinking. Is Edwin Johnson an extremely radical Jesus Mythicist or is he actually just a consistent Jesus Mythicist?
What I mean by this is that mythicists use a hermeneutics of skepticism when looking at the evidence of Jesus. There are always reasons why evidence put forward by historians can be discounted.
But why limit that to Jesus? Do we really know that Augustine of Hippo or Thomas Aquinas really existed? Can we not imagine a history in which these and many other things were simply invented?
Obviously I do not believe that. But I do see that Edwin Johnson takes Jesus Mythicism to its logical conclusion.
