Joseph McCabe (1867–1955),[9] who started life as a Roman Catholic priest, produced a translation of Christ Myth II as The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (1912), published both in London and Chicago.

"Not without certain assumptions", he admits, "do we set about the inquiry..." [emphasis added]Drews, like Schweitzer in his Quest, focuses mostly on German liberal theologians, while mentioning Ernest Renan (1823–1892) only en passant.

Their lost text was reconstituted by Adolf von Harnack in Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, 1921][23][24] The leader of the Tübingen School of theology, Ferdinand Christian (F.C.)

This fear didn't stop from doubts the likes of: Drews says it loud and clear: There's a vicious circle of methodology in historical theologians, and if they find Jesus, it's because they assume in advance he's already in the stories.

That is precisely the Gnostic idea of the death of the Redeemer, and it is here put forward by Paul; from that we may infer that he did not conceive the life of Jesus as an historical event, but a general metaphysical drama, in which heaven and earth struggle for the mastery.

The book emphasized the role played in the formation of the figure of Jesus by the Old Testament character of The Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, Jeremiah, Job, Zechariah, Ezechiel, etc.

[emphasis added]In Chapter 13, Drews emphasizes the mystery cult character of early Christian ecstatic reverence: Isaiah's suffering servant of God, offering himself for the sins of men, the just of Wisdom in combination with the mythic ideas of a suffering, dying, and rising god-saviour of the nearer Asiatic religions — it was about these alone, as about a solid nucleus, that the contents of the new religion crystallised.

The New York Times called it "one of the most remarkable theological discussions" since the days of Martin Luther, reporting that Drews's supporters caused a sensation by plastering the town's billboards with posters asking, Did Jesus Christ ever live?

According to the newspaper his arguments were so graphic that several women had to be carried from the hall screaming hysterically, while one woman stood on a chair and invited God to strike him down.

Case noted that within the last decade, doubts about Jesus existence had been advanced in several quarters, but nowhere so insistently as in Germany where the skeptical movement had become a regular propaganda, "Its foremost champion is Arthur Drews, professor of philosophy in Karlsruhe Technical High School.

Since the appearance of his Christusmythe in 1909 the subject has been kept before the public by means of debates held in various places, particularly at some important university centers such as Jena, Marburg, Giessen, Leipzig, Berlin.

He lists the general criticisms addressed by theologians, denouncing ...the pseudo-scientific vagaries... in a style redolent of the professorial chair of a German pedant...[ Jesus's] characteristics...are derived from Jewish ideals floating in the air at the time...This mythical personage was transformed into a demigod by St. Paul...virtually the creator of Christianity.

Passages of Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny are explained away as being late, or interpolated, or applying to the myth rather than to the person... Dr. Drews proceeds ruthlessly to remove even this kernel [of a gracious life, with its marked individuality left by liberal theologians] and leaves virtually nothing in its place except a mass of floating ideas and ideals...concentrated around a non-existent personality...

[Prof. Drews] denies the originality of the sayings attributed to Jesus, and considers them tainted with other-worldliness...[his book] is an argument in favor of...Monism...known as Pantheism...It is, however, just the sort of presentment which attracts the half-baked mind that cannot judge of historic evidence.

Lenin argued that it was imperative in the struggle against religious obscurantists to adopt revolutionary ideas like those of Drews, and demolish the icons of bourgeois society.

[63][64] Several editions of Drews's The Christ Myth were published in the Soviet Union from the early 1920s onwards, and his arguments were included in school and university textbooks.

In Christ Myth II (1912), Drews describes the cultural commotion: Now the whole Press is engaged against the disturber of the peace...Opposing lectures and Protestant meetings are organised, and J. Weiss publicly declares that the author of the book has no right to be taken seriously.

But among his fellows, within the four walls of the lecture-hall, and in the printed version of his lectures, Weiss assures his readers that he has taken the matter 'very seriously', and speaks of the fateful hour through which our [theological] science is passing.

[emphasis added] Most significant theologian scholars immediately felt the need to take up the challenge and entered the debate sparked off by Drews's Christ Myth about the Historicity of Jesus.

of Leuven (Belgium), in a comprehensive paper "On Rereading the Christ Myth Theological Debate" (c. 2004), cited and tabulated refutations from academic theologians in Germany, Britain, the United States, and France.

World War II put a stop to the public debate initially set off by Arthur Drews, until George Albert Wells (b.

A whole series of scholars have re-opened the debate by publishing major refutations of Drews's Christ Myth thesis, including Ian Wilson (1984), R.T. France (1986), Morton Smith (1986), Graham N. Stanton (1989), Robert Van Voorst (2000), James Beilby and Paul R. Eddy (2009), R. Joseph Hoffmann (1986 and 2010).

[73] Various conferences have been held in the US and Europe, notably by the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (2007), and the Center for Inquiry CFI (2010), with scholars from both sides, such as Robert M. Price making contributions.

Major committees have been formed for communal examinations of the topics of historicity versus non-historicity, including: With the spread of the Internet, the old theological controversy that was raging 100 years ago has percolated down to the public forum and known a recrudescence,[75] with a "upsurge" of the non-existence thesis.

Educated by Catholic nuns, he has remained a sentimental defender of the Church, a vocal advocate of Jesus' historicity, and a standard-bearer in the campaign against Arthur Drews's non-historicity thesis.

Hoffmann omits from that list many historically significant refutations such as Albert Schweitzer's critique of the Christ Myth in the added chapters 22 & 23 of the second edition of the Quest (1913, translated in 2001), or Robert Van Voorst's work.

The elimination of James as a "prop" for the historical Jesus has been a priority of the myth theorizers...[an] insupportable contention...[Drews is] [f]amous for his academic inexactness and sensationalism...with the glaring mistake...Despite the energy of the myth school...It remains a quaint, curious, interesting but finally unimpressive assessment of the evidence... an agenda-driven "waste of time"... a quicksand of denial and half-cooked conspiracy theories that take skepticism and suspicion to a new low.

Like all failed hypotheses, it arrives at its premise by intuition, cherry picks its evidence... defends its "conclusions" by force majeure... a dogma in search of footnotes... its most ardent supporters... have been amateurs or dabblers in New Testament studies... least equipped by training or inclination ...[The Christ Myth is] manically disorientated, [arguing] a kind of proto-Nazi paganism... Drews is significant largely because he created the flashpoints to which many mythicists return again and again...[Emphasis added][78]Hoffmann has declared that the non-historicity thesis should no longer be ignored, but must be confronted head-on: "I have often made the claim that it has been largely theological interests since Strauss’s time that ruled the historicity question out of court."

[79] Hoffmann has mentioned that Bart D. Ehrman's book, Did Jesus Exist?, is "exceptionally disappointing and not an adequate rejoinder to the routinely absurd ideas of the Jesus-deniers.

[80] Hoffmann has announced a major book, intended to become the master refutation of the Christ Myth thesis, in order to block the increase of its popularity, and to safeguard the integrity of New Testament studies (New Oxonian, May 22, 2012)