Talk:George Albert Wells/Archive 1

Archive 1

Wells is not known as a New Testament scholar. He is a German language scholar

Wells is not known as a New Testament scholar. He is a scholar for the language of German. I altered this sentence: " George Albert Wells (born 1926) is an Emeritus Professor of German at Birkbeck, University of London, but he is more widely known as a New Testament scholar." It now reads: George Albert Wells (born 1926) is an Emeritus Professor of German at Birkbeck, University of London, but he is more widely known for his writings regarding the position that Jesus is a mythical rather than a historical figure. ken 11:42, 17 November 2006 (UTC)kdbuffalo

False statement

... though no established Western theologian or historian supports it.

Established Western theologian - Dr.Robert Price

Established Western historian - Richard Carrier —Preceding unsigned comment added by Deathmunkee (talk • contribs) 18:46, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

There's a problem with Ricahrd Carrier. He is not recognized on Wikipedia as an 'established Western historian'. He is noted as a history student. --Taiwan boi (talk) 07:54, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Richard Carrier is NOW an ancient historian, but at the time he made those comments, he was not, as he has only recently (in the year or so, iirc) earned his PhD, but was writing in support of Jesus Mythicism long before that (while being critical of some theorists in that area as well, such as Kersey Graves). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.53.59.87 (talk) 14 September 2009 (UTC)

The statement discussed above is no longer in the article, nor is any mention of Carrier, so the point is moot. --RL0919 (talk) 15:34, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Moved away from previous statements?

According to James Hannam, who reviewed Wells' presentation in 2003 said his views "are no longer quite so extreme as in the past and he can no longer be classified as a 'Jesus Mythologist'".[1]

I removed this claim because the source is a website set up for apologetics is not a WP:RS for a WP:BLP. A better source is needed for this to be added. NNtw22 05:34, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. The suggestion that Wells' views have changed needs to be backed up from his own writings, or from a reliable independent source. (And I'm not sure that "Jesus Mythologist" is a widely used term anyway.) EALacey 09:42, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

What does Wells really say in Jesus Myth?

Looking around I have seen reviews of Jesus Myth that put a different slant on the quote by Van Voorst: "Far from being a radical, Wells is simply mainline scholarship taken to its ultimate limit, engaged in dialogue with his critics, and with copious references to topical writings. He accepts much that is normative in NT historical scholarship, and but for his "radical" view that Jesus is a composite figure, could easily be mistaken for another conservative apologist drone, grinding out defenses of the position that Paul's companion Luke authored Acts, or that the Tomb was really empty. Wells is the last in a long line of men like Robinson, Loisy, and Drews, scholars who trod the mainstream paths to show where the mainstream had gone wrong." (Turton, Michael (May 16, 2003) The Jesus Myth and Deconstructing Jesus) "Clearly seeking to provoke controversy, Wells (The Jesus Legend: What's in a Name?) contends that the accounts of Jesus in the canonical Gospels contradict not only one another but also the earliest Christian documents, which never present Jesus as an itinerant preacher, a miracle worker, born of a virgin or executed under Pilate. [...] The author also examines the letters of Paul and contends that Paul bases his portrait of Jesus on the Jewish figure of Wisdom, who sought acceptance on earth but was rejected and returned to heaven. In a detailed and convincing fashion, Wells argues that the Gospel stories of Jesus are myths composed to satisfy the religious longings of the Gospel writers' audiences." (Publishers Weekly 1998) "Because Wells wishes us to think that Paul knew almost nothing about the historical Jesus, and to have imagined that he had lived, unknown, in a different century!" D. M. Ohara "Dan O'Hara" review at Amazon.com).

With all this one has to ask what is Wells really saying in Jesus Myth? If as Turton claims Wells portrays Jesus as a "composite figure" then Wells certainly has NOT done an "about-face" as is claimed in the Van Voorst quote. Furthermore the "Jewish figure of Wisdom" by Publishers Weekly and "in a different century" by Dan O'Hara make it sound more like Wells is leaning more toward Mead's position. Does anyone have some actual quotes from Wells so we don't have to rely hearsay?--BruceGrubb (talk) 07:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Bibliography

Since I substantially revamped the bibliography, I thought I should explain. It had some problems with wrong publication dates and ISBN numbers. For instance, the ISBN previously shown for Can We Trust the New Testament was actually for a 1988 printing of The Historical Evidence for Jesus, and the publication year was inaccurate. I've tried to clean it up, put it in chronological order, and add some missing details (subtitles, dividers for the ISBN numbers). There are still some oddities that I want to research, such as the fact that the aforementioned 1988 printing of HEJ has a 1988 copyright, even though multiple sources clearly indicate that the book was first published in 1982. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RL0919 (talk • contribs) 23:28, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Withdrawn comments

ROO BOOKAROO has withdrawn all his comments, as they have been found in violation of the commandments of Wikipedia (rules, Manual of style, principles, absence of POV, Talk Page Guidelines, etc.) They would only deserve, in times past, to be burned, or at least, in modern times, deleted.
This writer has barely learnt the rudiments of formatting, and can never hope to have the time to gain a working knowledge of this immensely complex writing system, which leans more towards a computerized or robotic style, at the exclusion of any individual preference or feelings — totally unlike the traditional style of research by living scholars. He completely concurs with the judgment of the Keeper of the Law who deems all his previous comments inappropriate, betraying a neophyte's ignorance and lack of communication with the Spirit of Wikipedia and worthy of anathema.--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 11:50, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I said I wasn't asking for you to revise your previous comments, but if that's the way you prefer it then it's your decision. I have removed my own earlier replies since they were floating in space with no context. Anyone who wants to read them can check the history. --RL0919 (talk) 13:22, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

This article is a farce

Friday Dec. 21. Practically all the information I provided from my reading the ten books by G.A. Wells I bought from Amazon has been deleted by hostile and cantankerous editors. The article has been reverted to the skeleton Cliffs note that existed when I thought it worthwhile to beef up a miserable article on an original biblical historian.

I had limited myself to a simple outline of Wells's research findings, saving the advanced points for a more complete article to publish somewhere else.

I have saved the seed article destroyed by the Wikipedia editors, as a few online sites are willing to publish and host it so that it can come up in Internet searches and become a resource for scholars seriously interested in Wells's research.

It is disheartening to find elementary misconceptions like calling Bruno Bauer a "philosopher", which betrays a deep lack of knowledge of the topic. Bauer never studied philosophy, never wrote any philosophy book. He was a theology adjunct professor in Berlin, then in Bonn, and after his expulsion, became a journalist, biblical historian and political analyst. Calling him a "philosopher" is using words in a very unprofessional manner.

Naively, I thought of correcting this elementary mislabeling, but it might be better to let the original erroneous wording stand. Any informed reader will immediately notice that the editors of this article are out of their depth and don't know what's what. After all, considering the rudimentary character of what is left, all those approximations and errors don't matter much. This is no more than a Cliffs note, and so it will remain. Any serious researcher will see immediately it's a job of amateurs, and just dismiss it out of hand as a resource.

There's no point in working with hostile and amateurish editors any longer. There are great in-depth articles on Wikipedia, and it is always astonishing that they have been allowed to develop and survive. But this lamentable Cliffs note certainly won't rank as one of them. The quality, scope and depth of an article depends on the quality, erudition and understanding of its editors. Some are tops, others are just middling, and some are downright below par. The bell curve works its statistical results in every field.

I am letting Wells (who is 86) know that the article I had begun to sketch has already been destroyed by the Wikipedia police. No point in providing any more material. Waste of time dealing with amateurs who don't even know the subject of the article they like to manipulate and control as a show of their power. Athena won't come to my rescue here. Her owl is leading me towards other sites more interested in authenticity. --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 00:11, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I will see what I can rescue from the material the IP editor reverted, but honestly much of what you wrote will not be useable. An essay favoring Wells' views is not the same thing as a neutral encyclopedia article. By the way, if Bauer was not a philosopher, you might want to write the authors of academic books such as The Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer. --RL0919 (talk) 01:21, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

NOTE TO ANY READER: My barebones article on G.A. Wells, destroyed by Wikipedia editors, is still available under "View History" for the date of Dec. 17, 2012

Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012.
First, to get this point out of the way.
Of course Bruno Bauer had "a philosophy". He was a thinker, and kept thinking all through his life. George W. Bush had a "philosophy", and so does Wayne LaPierre, the effective head of the National Rifle Association (NRA). But having a "philosophy" does not make you a "philosopher", especially when you want to use this word for a social activity, not a private act of thinking.
To summarize all of Bauer's thinking and social activity in one word for a lead paragraph as a "philosopher", and put it in the phrase "such philosophers as Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews" is a gross mistatement and an egregious lack of knowledge of the subject. This is written by amateurs who consult tertiary, even quaternary sources (3 or 4 times removed from primary sources, here mostly written in German).
Bruno Bauer never got a Ph.D. in philosophy. He never taught philosophy, his teaching license from the Prussian government was as a Privatdozent (assistant professor) in theology in Berlin and Bonn. He never wrote any book on philosophy as such or the history of philosophy. Philosophy as speculation never interested him. Only the objects of philosophizing (i.e., thinking), interested him. And above all they were in that order, Christianity, politics, literature. If he had a "philosophy" it would be hard to describe, except that he was a child of the Enlightenment, and a rationalist, exactly like G.A. Wells. He did start as a young disciple of Hegel, like all of Hegel's students, but soon turned against Hegel, also like many other Hegel's students.

Douglas Moddach is the top current American expert on Bruno Bauer. His thorough article in SEP (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) starts with "Bruno Bauer (1809–1882), philosopher, historian, and theologian". But if he had to characterize the essential of Bruno Bauer's contribution to the history of ideas and culture in ONE WORD, he would never pick "philosopher" as the naive editor of Wikipedia does.
As soon as Moddach starts describing Bauer's activity in the 5th line of his 7,300-word article, he continues with "Investigating the textual sources of Christianity, Bauer described religion as a form of alienation, which, because of the deficiencies of earthly life, projected irrational, transcendent powers over the self, while sanctioning particularistic sectarian and material interests".
In his list of 41 publications by Bauer, only one is focused on philosophy, and that is the Prussian first prize the young Bauer received as a freshman student at 20. He never went back to the subject of "pure" philosophy again. Next come 22 listings on critique and history of Christianity, (some listings cover books in 2 or 4 volumes, monumental treatises never translated into English), 18 on politics, society history, and literature. Of the five journals edited by Bauer, none is concerned with philosophy.
Douglas Moddach has written "The Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer" to show the influence of Hegel's ideas on Bruno Bauer's political thinking. But the accent is on politics and society, NOT on philosophy.

Albert Schweitzer devotes ch. XI of his "Quest of the Historical Jesus" (1906/1913) to Bruno Bauer. Schweitzer was much closer to Bruno Bauer's times than we are, and more competent to evaluate Bauer's effective impact on the German intellectual world than we are. Schweitzer lists 7 of the most significant works of Bauer, all on Christianity. The title of this ch. XI is "THE FIRST SCEPTICAL LIFE OF JESUS". Schweitzer acknowledges Bauer's start as a "Young Hegelian": "BRUNO BAUER WAS BORN IN 1809 AT EISENBERG, IN THE DUCHY OF Sachsen-Altenburg. In philosophy, he was at first associated entirely with the Hegelian 'right.' Like Strauss, he received a strong impulse from Vatke. At this stage of his development he reviewed, in 1835 and 1836, Strauss's Life of Jesus in the Jahrbucher fur wissenschaftliche Kritik, and wrote in 1838 a 'Criticism of the History of Revelation.' " So, as soon as Bauer started writing significant stuff, at age 26 and 29, it was immediately about the "Life of Jesus" and Christianity.

Nobody who is knowledgeable about this period of history would ever summarize the essence of Bruno Bauer's thinking and activity as being a "philosopher". I am absolutely sure that Douglas Moddach will agree, and I am happy to send him a copy of this talk page and get his answer.

Second, for the body of the article itself.
The body of the simplistic outline I had provided for the Wells article remains visible in the "Review History" of the ARTICLE page (NOT the "review history" of the TALK page) at the date of December 17, 2012. I had kept it simple, and uncluttered. Saving the meat of my review of Wells's books for a more detailed article to be posted on more learned online sites. This simple outline consisted essentially of biographical details on Wells's life and quotes by him that express his effective research far better than any paraphrasing. All this was destroyed and replaced by the POV of some naive editors.

I essentially made a tactical mistake. I should have left the Wikipedia article as it was initially, a lightweight piece, offering nothing substantial, and practically of no information value. Any reader seriously seeking solid info would have realized that this was an utterly dismissible article, and looked for more informative sources elsewhere on the Net, where, truly, there is still very little. That is why the Wikipedia article looked for a while as an attractive source in a desert of online info.
But, publishing my complete review of Wells on a more scholarly site would have been more effective. It would then have immediately popped up on any Google search results list, attracting the attention of readers turned off by the skeleton Wikipedia article, and eager to find something more tangible. That was the right tactical procedure to follow, maintaining the contrast between a skeleton Wikipedia article and a subtantial essay on some other site. I was naive to think I would be allowed to inject quality in the Wikipedia editors' output.

I only feel sorry for G.A. Wells, who is an authentic and honest scholar. He has always used a private secretary who has recently died, and he never learned how to use the Internet. He still uses old-fashioned letters for communication. He will be spared the reading of the lightweight article offered under his name by Wikipedia.

This is why Internet artists such as Dorothy Murdock and Earl Doherty were able in the late 1990s to pass themselves off as new voices in Jesus criticism, simply by raiding and compiling past research and popularizing it under their own names on the Internet to an ignorant public. A public which has never heard of G.A. Wells. Even his books are hard to find, and the most important one, "The Jesus of the Early Christians" is out of print and available as a used-book on Amazon only from a few dealers.
The Internet has permitted the flourishing of a new breed of unqualified "independent researchers", without any real scholarly degree or scholarly publication background, and who avoid any professional criticism by staying away from established journals, and self-publishing their compilations. These new books, promoted by the Internet, and nourished by it, are easily sold to a large public of hard-working but unlearned readers, who have no time nor access to the previous scholarship, and are happy to limit their reading to instant popularizers.
So a real scholar like G.A. Wells remains largely ignored because of his absence on the Internet, and the poor availability of his key books. Only a top professional biblical historian like R. Joseph Hoffmann understands the reasons of this paradoxical situation in which magpies come up dressed up with the feathers of the peacock.
Hoping that a solid, substantial Wikipedia article would, if not redress, but establish a good knowledge of G.A. Wells was my naive mistake. Mea culpa. --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 12:27, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

So in short, it's OK to call Bauer a philosopher and respected academics do so, but it isn't the best singular descriptor to use. (Note that I said that in one sentence; you really, really, really need to learn that the most verbose way of saying something isn't necessarily the best.) That is far from the "gross misrepresentation" you alleged in one of your edit summaries. As for the rest, I rarely say this, but I agree that it would be best if you didn't edit this article anymore. Your contributions are prolix and noticeably biased (to an extent that you do not seem to recognize or at least don't admit), and your tendencies towards drama and condescension on the talk page are not helpful. --RL0919 (talk) 22:43, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Are there any notable people who have criticism of Well's work ?

The only critic mentioned is by James Patrick Holding and he has (what really is more blog) web site. He has a Masters' Degree in Library Science which is fine but what he's published is self-published articles in a very narrow range of sites. He's not notable and reading the "reviews" you can see they are more ad hominem arguments than critique and I think it's inappropriate to use these given we're editing a WP:LIVING bio page in which the criteria for accepting edits is more tightly controlled. I move links to James Patrick Holding are removed. Ttiotsw 02:41, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this. Holding doesn't make a very good source here. If criticism of Wells' work is linked to, it should be from someone of the same scholarly status (ie., not someone's weblog).24.84.208.246 08:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Holding has no historical credentials (he worked in a prison) and his website is set up with appeals for donations. Hardly a serious source. NNtw22 05:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

On that criteria we should remove Wells from this site, as he also has 'no historical credentials'. I think the fact that no serious historians have engaged with Wells' output speaks volumes for the poverty of his arguments. As Holding was quoted by Amazon as, presumably, the only review they could find it seems to me that one amateur critiquing another is appropriate. Mercury543210 13:28, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Mercury543210, your logic is flawed. History is full of people whose theories are now accepted as correct that were largely ignored during their lifetime. Gregor Johann Mendel's "Experiments on Plant Hybridization" was cited only three times during his lifetime and his theory of genetics wasn't even looked seriously until nearly 20 years after he died. Alfred Wegener's continental drift theory went over like a lead balloon in 1912 and even more so when he expanded on the theory in 1915. His idea that the seven continents of the world as had been once one huge supercontinent called "Pangaea" was met with the same general non interest when it was not outright dismissed that the Jesus myth theory has gotten for the last 200 years. Some 30 years after Wegener died his theory of continental drift was shown to be correct even if the mechanic he had proposed in 1915 wasn't. The eyewitness testimony of peasants that meteorites were 'stones that fell from the sky' was dismissed for centuries and while James Burke makes light of it the video version of his Day the Universe Changed series it was not until after the French Revolution when the peasants were running things that meteorites became "vital astrological data". Similarly the establishment can hang on to ideas long after it is reasonable. Aristarchus' sun center solar system lay unused for 1700 years until a monk used it for calender reform but the demise of Aristotelian Cosmology did not finally happen until 1822 when the Roman Catholic finally removed Galileo's works from their list of prohibited books (a practice that they didn't get rid of until 1966) nearly 80 years after an abridged version of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematic which required an Aristarchus model of the universe was publicized...by two Catholic priests. Creationism is still being touted as scientifically valid despite having more holes than some of the worst versions of the Jesus Myth Theory. In short, there are many other reasons why few have engaged Wells' output--he may be very close to smashing a few sacred cows.--BruceGrubb (talk) 21:53, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

No Grubb, your logic is flawed as usual. Just because previous ideas have been ignored but were later discovered to be true doesn't mean Wells' ideas are true. Nor is it evidence against the premise that his views are ignored because they're not considered sufficiently notable or scholarly to rebut. --Taiwan boi (talk) 07:56, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes but on the other hand several Historians and Bible and New Testament scholars have refuted the ideas of people who make the same claims as Wells. The TRUTH is that the Jesus Myth Theory is an 'has been', like the ether theory, from the XIX century, early XX century and now for many decades refuted by all historiand and NT scholars, even radical agnostic/atheist ones. I think "Taiwan Boi" that there is more than sufficient reason to believe that Wells work is devoid of any interesting information. Moreover Wells himself has now forsaken the Jesus Myth Theory himself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.57.67.39 (talk) 03:35, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Reset indent As no further discussion on this I have reinstated Craig W. Beard's criticism of Well's book. Mercury543210 23:08, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Using quotes of G.A. Wells himself to describe his own argument

At the end of the section of "Work on Early Christianity", the final sentence that starts "Wells argues that Paul's Jesus was..." and claims to describe Wells's own argument, should use one quotation from Wells himself on what Jesus was, since Wells has written eight books on the subject and many related articles, and there are dozens of meaningful quotations to choose from.
Using a quotation by Doherty, as the current text does, "a heavenly, pre-existent figure who had come to earth at some uncertain point in the past and lived an obscure life, perhaps one or two centuries before his own time." (Doherty, Earl (1999). "Book and Article Reviews, The Case of the Jesus Myth: Jesus — One Hundred Years Before Christ by Alvar Ellegard". Retrieved Jan 15, 2009.) is unwarranted.

The quotation from the final chapter, "Conclusion" (p. 217- 218) of Wells's book The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Prometheus, 1982/1988) is a far more accurate expression of Wells's argument.

"I have argued here that, if we arrange extant early Christian documents into a chronological series, we find that only from about 90 did Christians regard Jesus as a teacher, miracle-worker and a near contemporary, crucified under Pilate. In the earliest documents (which do not include the gospels, which I give reason for dating from 90 to 110) Jesus figures simply as a supernatural personage whom God had sent in human form into the world to redeem it and who was crucified there in unspecified circumstances. These early writers are so vague in what they say about his life that they may well have believed only that he had been crucified in obscure circumstances long ago. I show that such a view is likely to have been suggested to them by the Jewish wisdom literature they knew well and by traditions they must have known concerning actual crucifixions of living men in Palestine one and two centuries before their time. And I argue that they were in fact probably wrong in believing this much of him."

--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 07:15, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

That is a 1982/1988 book as you said. He seems to have shifted to a somewhat different tone in the "Can we trust" book a few years later... So his older writings do not necessarily represent his later positions. I assume he is done writing now anyway, given his age... History2007 (talk) 07:25, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

The 2004 Can We Trust the NT? does not affect Wells's thesis concerning the Jesus of the Early Christians

Wells is now 87, and he's lost his lifelong secretary. And he does not use a computer, nor the Internet. So, yes, barring a last surge of motivation, we may assume he's done writing.

Certainly, Wells's series of eight books on the historical analysis of the figure of Jesus in the NT shows a constant improvement and refinement of his thinking, the desire to answer criticisms and to comment on new relevant research publications.
But the quotation by Doherty dates from 1999, and does not take into account the 2004 Can We Trust the NT?. In addition, the paragraph in Doherty's article just preceding the quote clearly says that "The distinction centers on the nature of the early Christian Christ...[One] who lived and operated in the supernatural world...or did Paul and his fellow believers envision him a man who had lived on earth...". The quote specifically refers to the nature of the Jesus of Paul and the Early Christians as described by Wells. It is clear that Wells is far better qualified to describe his own argument than Doherty.

Your remark about Can We Trust the NT? about a "shift" is certainly correct. But I find it is not so much a change in "tone" as a change in focus. The first chapter, "A Revolution in Christology" explains Wells's intention. to expand on his acceptance in his two previous books, The Jesus Legend (1996) and The Jesus Myth of the possibility of a roving Galilean cynic-like preacher to have been the source of the sayings attributed to the elusive and problematical Q document and put in the mouth of Jesus in Mark's gospel.
But, as Wells mentions immediately on p. 1 in the first section of Ch. 1, "The Earliest Evidence", this new addition to his theory does not affect his conclusions concerning the early Christian documents. On p. 3, he reiterates his basic argument already presented in The Jesus of the Early Christians (1971):

"If Paul alone had written as he did, one might just possibly be able to attribute this to some personal idiosyncrasy; but a consistent silence by numerous independent authors about matters which, had they known of them, they could not but have regarded as important and relevant, cannot be so explained. It is perverse when many scholars reduce the whole problem — if indeed they acknowledge it at all — to the discrepancy between Paul's writings and the gospels. There is a disparity between the earliest documents generally and later ones that should not be brushed aside." (Can We Trust the NT?, 2004, p. 3)

And on p. 17: "All this talk in these early Christian documents of cosmic salvation by a basically supernatural figure has very little, if anything at all, that links it with the recent career of a Palestinian preacher." And, further down, p. 37: "the relevant material in the NT epistles, instead of confirming anything in the gospels, is incompatible with them." What concerns Wells in his new book is "The Transition to the Gospels and to Later Writings" (Ch. I, section ii, p. 43). What has changed is accepting a new source for the gospel Jesus:

"In my first books on Jesus, I argued that the gospel Jesus is an entirely mythical expansion of the Jesus of the early epistles. The summary of the argument of the Jesus Legend (1996) and the Jesus Myth (1999) given in this section of the present work makes it clear that I no longer maintain this position." (Can We Trust the NT?, 2004, p. 50).

Wells's new approach is to replace "entirely mythical" with "partly mythical".

The bulk of the book is devoted to further discussion of aspects not sufficiently developed or even touched upon in previous books: In-depth analysis of the Acts of the Apostles (Ch. 2); "Peter at Rome? The Literary Evidence" (Ch. 3); and the views of critics from recent radical theology (Ch. 4, "Reinterpreting Early Christian Testimony"), which Wells denounces as a modern surge of dogma, incoherence and verbal anarchy (p. 171-177). In Ch. 5, "Poetry and Piety", Wells concludes that "The critical work of the past 200 years has meant that a moderately critical attitude to the Bible has become part of — by no means all of —modern Christianity, as also of modern Judaism." (p. 184). A short epilogue (Ch. 6) presents "Some Recent Testament Scholarship".
In conclusion, nothing in Can We Trust the NT? modifies Wells's basic view of the Jesus figure in the early, pre-Gospel, Christian documents. --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 00:17, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok, the long and short of it is that as you said as he received feedback he gradually modified his position. Was there a quantum leap anywhere? Probably just for the acceptance of the Q preacher. But the last 2-3 books are further and further from the first 3, of course. If you just want to touch it up like that yourself, that is fine. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 00:26, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

The quantum leap is in accepting two figures of Jesus, now fused into one

There is a quantum leap, but it is in accepting the hypothesis of the roving Galilean cynic-like preacher as a source of the common sayings in Matthew and Luke attributed to the problematic "Q" and assigned to the figure of Jesus in the Gospels. This does not affect the image of the older Jesus figure of the early Christians, but concedes that the Jesus of the Gospels is a new creation, fusing two distinctly different sources.
The first source, the Jesus of Paul and company (all the way to Revelation), has been amply studied in Wells's first four books (1971, 1975, 1982, 1989), and the impact of the admission of the Galilean preacher and his attributed sayings is reflected in the last four books (1996, 1999, 2004, 2009).
What happened is that now there are two figures of Jesus, totally different, which have been combined ("fused") first in Mark, and, after him, in the other gospels, to create a "composite" figure, a new Jesus.

"In the Gospels, the two Jesus figures — the human preacher of Q and the supernatural personage of the early epistles who sojourned briefly on Earth as a man and then, rejected, returned to heaven — have been fused into one. The Galilean preacher of Q has been given a salvific death and resurrection, and these have been set not in an unspecified past (as in the early epistles), but in a historical context consonant with the date of the Galilean preaching." (Can We Trust the NT?, 2004, p. 43)

That is the quantum leap.

More info is available in three additional books of rationalist commentary on language, belief, philosophy, culture, and the role of religion:

• Religious Postures - Essays on Modern Christian Apologists and Religious Problems (1988),
• Belief and Make-Believe - Critical Reflections on the Sources of Credulity (1991),
• What's in a Name? - Reflections on Language, Magic, and Religion (1993),

that offer valuable insights on many aspects of the texts of the eight books devoted to higher criticism of the NT. These reflections were not incorporated in the historical criticism books and instead published in separate books, because I suspect that Wells didn't want to mix his "speculative" reflections with the solid progress of his argument. No mention has been made of those rationalist "reflection" books in the article, though they are an integral part of his argument and are listed in Wells's works. --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 01:04, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Regarding his last surge, I wonder if he will do a Johnny and get the last rights.. You never know... History2007 (talk) 00:34, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Interesting story in the Wikipedia article about the last rites, which I didn't know. --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 01:15, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but there was a joke built into my use of "rights"... he was pretty much on the right side in his views, but another story... History2007 (talk) 07:14, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

How could I have missed the joke? No sign or warning, I suppose. When it's too subtle, it simply remains invisible. I like that other one about James, the brother of the Lord: "Hi, I'm James. My brother created the universe." I like also Alfred Loisy's famous remark: "Jesus was announcing the Kingdom of God — It's the Church that came." (It got him excommunicated.) --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 12:41, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Very good. I really like the "my brother created the universe" one. But in fairness, I should say that my joke was not totally original, but built on the existing joke that some of von Neuman's driving problems were due to the fact that he never did left turns at traffic lights but only did "270 degree right turns". History2007 (talk) 13:18, 9 May 2013 (UTC)