This book is a landmark: at long last we have a well-known and highly respected Christian theologian taking up for serious discussion the conclusions of several non-theological scholars about the non-historicity of the Jesus of the Gospels and Acts. Chief among these scholars has long been George A. Wells, whose first book on the subject was The Jesus of the Early Christians (1971). A half-dozen others have followed. In the last few years, Earl Doherty, a Canadian classical scholar, has pursued the subject with great energy on his very lively website, and this year in an impressive book, The Jesus Puzzle (2000). On the whole, the theological establishment has cold-shouldered, or more often, met such publications with silence rather than arguments. Hopefully Price's book will lead to a change of attitude. After all, theology, including the history of Christianity, is an essential ingredient in the history of civilization. Yet, unaccountably, Western historians have left the history of Christianity to their theological colleagues. It is significant that practically all Western general Encyclopedias have assigned the whole area of religion to theologians. The result is that the general public has got a rather biased picture of Christian origins. Price's book will shake them up. After a wide-ranging and always interesting argument he concludes as follows: "it seems to me that Jesus must be categorized with other legendary founder figures, including the Buddha, Krishna, and Lao-tzu. There may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way to being sure." Fair enough. But historians will not give up their search. After all, new manuscripts, providing new ways of looking at the field, may still turn up. Michael Wise's fascinating reinterpretation of the Qumran texts referring to the Teacher of Righteousness, in his recent book The First Messiah (1998), is a case in point.
