This is the third and final installment of this three part
series. Please see earlier entries for part 1 and part 2. What
does the atheist do with Jesus of Nazareth? Some atheists, right
from the start, try to inject doubt into this topic by either
overtly claiming or subtly hinting that there actually was no
historical Jesus of Nazareth. For example, Bertrand Russell
wrote: “Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever
existed at all, and if he did we know nothing about him.”
Although some may argue for the participation of other, earlier
historical figures that began making these claims, most
historians peg the start of these allegations with a man named
Bruno Bauer (1809 – 1882). Bauer was a German theologian,
philosopher and historian who looked at the sources of the New
Testament and controversially concluded that early Christianity
owed more to Greek philosophy (Stoicism) than to Judaism.
Starting in 1840, he began a series of controversial works
arguing that Jesus was a myth, a second century