As I finished off chapter 8, I drew attention to a view that Maurice Casey had presented about other mythicists: “They have had a conversion experience away from Christianity, and they are no more sympathetic to critical scholarship now than they were before.”
In chapter 1, Britt and Wingo tell us that yes, they had this conversion experience. They write that “we were both well-entrenched in the mainstream position.” Wingo gives us a bit more information, that he became an atheist at the age of 21.
Going to their website, we see that Wingo states that he has a Christian Missionary background. As I was preparing my response to their work, I also watched a number of interviews they did with various YouTube creators. In a video with the Godless Engineer, John Gleason, they mention how they grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, that they were Evangelical Christians.
Establishing this background, I believe that Casey’s words will ring true, and that we will even see hints of that within this first chapter.
Before the chapter really kicked off though, Britt and Wingo presented their theory, which is worth quoting in whole:
“Evidence shows that Jesus, as presented by the gospels and New Testament books, never existed. Despite Christianity’s claim of Jesus living during the first three decades of the first century CE, the character was actually a second-century construction.
“Christianity, being defined as the belief in Jesus as both the Jewish god Yahweh and a historical human who was crucified and resurrected, did not emerge until the second century. It evolved from earlier Jewish and Greco-Roman cults, and developed the narratives for its books from previous works. The stories of a first-century Jesus movement, his disciples, and Paul are all part of a “creation myth” from the second century when the religion began to come together.
“While small portions of the New Testament books may have been written late in the first century, evidence shows that these writings were not explicitly Christian, and in some cases, co-opted from other religious communities. The remaining majority of the New Testament books were written well into the second century, with the canonical Gospels, for example, not being written until the 140s at the earliest.”
They go on to state that their “take on the second-century composition of the New Testament might be one of the first of its kind.” It may have been worth doing some more research here, as this isn’t the case.
Just in 2023, two peer-reviewed studies positing this same idea came out. David Trobisch’s book, “On the Origin of Christian Scripture,” and Markus Vinzent’s book, “Resetting the Origins of Christianity,” both put forth the idea that all of the New Testament, or just about all of it, was forged in the second century.
We can also look at the blogger Neil Godfrey, who runs vridar.org. For years he’s been arguing that the New Testament is a second-century product. In fact, many of the arguments found throughout “Christ Before Jesus” can be found on Godfrey’s blog.
There are also a number of scholars who have dated most of the New Testament to the second century, such as J.V.M. Sturdy. While Sturdy passed before he could finish his work, what he did finish was posthumously published as “Redrawing the Boundaries,” in 2014. What Sturdy was attempting to defend is what is referred to as the higher or late chronology.
This higher chronology wasn’t new with Sturdy, but in fact predated him by nearly two centuries, largely going back to Ferdinand Christian Baur and his Tubingen School. While Baur and the Tubingen School didn’t date all of the New Testament to the second century, they did date the majority of it rather late.
That Britt and Wingo don’t seem to be aware of this background information is a bit concerning. One, they cite Trobisch’s book, and recommend it. Two, they mention Baur a number of times, as well as Vinzent. That Britt and Wingo know of these authors, yet aren’t aware of their similar conclusions is questionable.