The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present

Drews gives the most prominent place to David Strauss, who reduced all the supernatural events of the New Testament stories to the role of myths; and to Bruno Bauer, the first professional scholar who denied the historicity of Jesus, argued the priority of Mark as inventor of the Gospel story and the fiction of Jesus's existence, rejected all of Paul's epistles as non genuine, and emphasized the input of Greco-Roman ideas (especially the Stoicism of Seneca) in the New Testament documents. Both Strauss and Bauer were forced to abandon University life at a young age.

Among those Jesus deniers, Arthur Drews was especially influenced by the following thinkers:

• The German Bruno Bauer (1809–1882),^[2] the original pioneer of the denial of Jesus Historicity. See whole Ch. XI "The First Skeptical Life of Jesus" dedicated to Bruno Bauer, in Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906).
• The German Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906):

- Die Entstehung des Christentums – Neue Beiträge zum Christusproblem, (1904), transl. The Rise of Christianity (1907);

- Was wissen wir von Jesus? Eine Abrechnung mit Wilhelm Bousset (1904) [What do We Know of Jesus? A Settlement with Wilhelm Bousset];

- Modernes Christentum (1906) [Modern Christendom].

• The American William Benjamin Smith (1850–1934), fluent in English and German, and close to Kalthoff:

- The Pre-Christian Jesus, Studies of Origins of Primitive Christianity (1906/1911);

- Ecce Deus: Studies Of Primitive Christianity, Introd. Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel (1912).

• The Scot J. M. Robertson (1856–1933):

- Christianity and Mythology (1900–10);

- A Short History of Christianity (1902);

- Pagan Christs – Studies in Comparative Hierology (1903–1911).

• The Englishman Thomas Whittaker (1856–1935): The Origins of Christianity (1904), declaring Jesus a myth.

Space is dedicated to the major advocates of the School of (Comparative) History of Religions,^[3] flourishing in Germany (Die Religionsgeschichtliche Schule) and the United Kingdom. German orientalist Peter Jensen, an expert on Semitic Languages and Babylonian literature, in Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der Weltliteratur, (Part I, 1906 & Part II, 1928) [The Epic of Gilgamesh in World Literature],^[4] had analyzed the Epic of Gilgamesh, and found parallels in all later ANE myths, including the Hebrew Tanakh, Moses and Isaiah,^[5] thus impacting on the authenticity of the Christian Gospels and destroyed the unique character of the Jesus story. Alfred Jeremias (1864–1935), another expert in ANE languages and mythology, had published The Epic of Gilgamesh (1891) and advocated panbabylonism, the thesis that sees the Ancient Hebrew stories directly derived from Babylonian mythology. The English summary (by Klaus Schilling) of The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus describes Jeremias's views:

[Jeremias] only admitted Chaldean origin of early Judaism, but couldn't deny that there was some sort of impact from old Babylon in the New Testament. The Babylonian-Chaldean worldview is about the most astralmythical and astrological worldview found in history of cultures; the terms 'astrological' and 'Chaldean' were used synonymously by many authors since Hellenic times. In this sense Jeremias continued the works of Volney and Dupuis... The Christian calendar tells the story of the astral redeemer king, the 12 apostles are akin to the zodiac, and the 4 Gospels are akin to the cardinal points of the world.

Drews was closely connected to what was called the school of Dutch “Radical Criticism”,^[6] which not only denied the existence of Jesus Christ, the authenticity of Paul's epistles,^[7][8] and also the very historicity of Paul. Drews reviews the inputs from the key scholars:

• Allard Pierson (1831–1896): De Bergrede en andere synoptische Fragmenten (1878) [The Sermon on the Mount and other Synoptic Fragments], was epoch-making. It proved that the Sermon on the Mount is a post-70 product, a collection of aphorisms of Jewish wisdom placed into the mouth of the semi-god Jesus. Non-Christian witnesses are worthless, especially Tacitus. The Galatians epistle is not genuine (contrary to F.C. Baur and Tübingen School). Non-historicity of Jesus is affirmed. Pierson is recognized as the founder of the Dutch Radical School.
• Abraham Dirk Loman (1823–1897): Quaestiones Paulinae (1882–1886) [Questions on the Paulinae] contends that not only Galatians, but all of Paul's Epistles are 2nd-century forgeries (following Bruno Bauer). No evidence of the Paulinae before Marcion, the epistles are Gnostic treatises. Jesus is a 2nd-century fiction. "Some" Jesus may have existed, but buried and lost in the dark. The Jesus of Christianity is an ideal symbol, a non-historical construction.
• Samuel Adrianus Naber (1828–1913): Christianity mixed Jewish and Roman-Hellenic thoughts. Greek myths have been fused with Isaiah. Naber also supports the non-historicity of Jesus.
• Willem Christiaan van Manen (1842–1905): Paulus (1890–1896). Agrees with Loman and Rudolf Steck that none of the epistles is genuine. Acts are dependent on Flavius Josephus and date from c. 125–150. As an exception in the Dutch Radical School, does accept the historicity of Jesus.^{[9][10][11][12]}
• Rudolf Steck^[9] (1842–1924): a Swiss scholar, an ally of the Dutch. In Der Galaterbrief nach seiner Echtheit untersucht nebst kritischen Bemerkungen zu den Paulinischen Hauptbriefen (1888) [Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Galatians Epistle, and Critical Remarks on the Chief Paulines], he branded all the Pauline epistles as fakes,^[7][8] and supported Pierson and Naber.
• G.J.P.J. Bolland (1854–1922): De Evangelische Jozua (1907) [The Gospel of Joshua] continued Bauer's concepts about Philo and his Logos, the Caesars, and earlier Jewish Gnosticism. Christianity is the result of syncretism between Hellenized Jews and Judeophile Greeks in Alexandria after 70, with "Chrestos" (the good) becoming "Christus", i.e., Jesus. The original Jerusalem mother community is mere fiction. Bolland also maintains the non-historicity of Jesus.^[13]
• G. A. van den Bergh van Eysinga (1874–1957): the last of the line to hold a professorship. His important writings came after 1926. Van Eysinga endorses the view that the epistles of Clement and Ignatius of Antioch are not genuine. There is no evidence of the Paulinae before Marcion, all produced by the Marcion circle. Paul does not sound Jewish, (in opposition to Harnack). Paul's epistles are full of incongruities.^[14] There's no evidence of the existence of Jesus the Messiah.^[15][16]
  In 1930, van Eysinga dedicated an article to Arthur Drews, "Does Jesus Live, or Has He Only Lived? A Study of the Doctrine of Historicity", commenting on Drews's 1926 book The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present^[17]
  Van Eysinga expressed his conviction that the Jesus movement had started as a mystery cult in his article Das Christentum als MysterienReligion (1950, "Christianity as a Mystery Cult").^[18]

The attention to Drews and the Dutch School was revived by Hermann Detering and his Website, Radikalkritik^[19] in German and English.^[20]