George Albert Wells

George Albert Wells (born 1926) is an Emeritus Professor of German at Birkbeck, University of London, but he is more widely known as an advocate of the theory that Jesus is a largely mythical rather than a historical figure.

George Albert (usually "G.A.") Wells is a former Chairman of the Rationalist Press Association. He is married and lives in St. Albans, near London. He studied at the University of London and Bern, and holds degrees in German, philosophy, and natural science. He has taught German at London University since 1949, and has been Professor of German at Birkbeck College since 1968.

Work on early Christianity

Wells suggested that the earliest extant Christian documents from the first century, most notably Paul's epistles, show no familiarity with the Gospel tradition of Jesus as a preacher and miracle-worker who lived and died in the recent decades. Rather, they present him as a mysterious figure that lived an obscure life in some indeterminate past^{[citation needed]}. Wells believed that the Jesus of these earliest Christians is not based on a historical character, but a pure myth, derived from the mystical speculations based on the Jewish Wisdom tradition. According to Wells, the Gospel tradition was a later stage of the development of the Jesus myth, which was given a concrete historical setting and subsequently embellished with more and more details.

In his latest works, Wells has somewhat moderated his views, allowing for the possibility that certain elements of the Gospel traditions might be based on a historical figure from the first-century Palestine, '... that Paul speaks of Jesus in exclusively mythological terms. I have never -- in spite of what some of my critics have alleged -- subscribed to such a view.'^[1] However, Wells insists that this line of first-century traditions is separate from the sacrificial Christ myth of Paul's epistles and other early documents, and that these two traditions have different origins. Wells concludes that the reconstruction of this historical figure from the extant literature would be a hopeless task.

The one published review of his Who Was Jesus?: A Critique of the New Testament Record says "Wells contends that the existence of a historical Jesus is, at best, highly doubtful. He begins by questioning the general reliability of the gospels and then focuses on Jesus' virgin birth, public ministry, passion, and resurrection, considering current scholarship and presenting some challenging suggestions. However, his radical thesis negatively affects the selection and interpretation of data: Scholars cited in support of his thesis acknowledge problems in the New Testament but not the necessity or soundness of his conclusions. Wells's previous books have not significantly affected New Testament studies, and it is doubtful that this one will."^[2]

Wells' claim of a mythical Jesus has received support from Earl Doherty and some other writers^{[citation needed]}, though its support in scholarly circles is limited at best. ^[3] G.A. Wells has himself moved away from many of these views over time.[1]

Books

German

His major works in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German language thought and letters are

• Herder and After (1959)
• The Plays of Grillparzer (1969)
• Goethe and the Development of Science (1978).
• The Origin of Language (1987)

Early Christianity

• The Jesus of the Early Christians (1971)
• Did Jesus Exist? (Prometheus Books, 1975) ISBN 0-87975-395-1
• The Historical Evidence for Jesus (1982)
• The Jesus Legend (1996)
• The Jesus Myth (1998)
• Can We Trust the New Testament?: Thoughts on the Reliability of Early Christian Testimony Prometheus Books (1988) ISBN 087975429X
• Religious Postures
• What's in a Name?
• Belief and Make Believe
• Who Was Jesus? Open Court(1989) ISBN 0812690966

See also

• Jesus-myth hypothesis
• Historicity of Jesus
• Timothy Freke

External links

• Wells, GA, "Earliest Christianity", The New Humanist, Vol. 114, No.3., Sept 1999, pp. 13-18.
• G.A. Wells at the Secular Web
• G.A. Wells at Peter Kirby's page "Theories of the Historical Jesus" - contains links to Wells' books on Amazon
• An evening with G.A. Wells in Cambridge, England

Notes and References

1. ^ Wells, GA, "Earliest Christianity", The New Humanist, Vol. 114, No.3., Sept 1999, pp. 13-18.
2. ^ Craig W. Beard, Harding Univ. Lib., Searcy, Ark. writing in Library Journal see amazon citation
3. ^ The historian Michael Grant states, for example, that, "To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars.' In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." - Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (Scribner, 1995)

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