Liberating the Gospels) regards the Synoptic Gospels as midrashic fiction in virtually every detail, though he believes it was based on an historical man." - Meaning and context.">
QuotesCosmos
w:Earl Doherty (Fall 1997), "The Jesus Puzzle: Pieces in a Puzzle of Christian Origins", Journal of Higher Criticism 4 no: 2, pages: 68-102
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[In the Gospels] many elements of the Jesus story [depend] on passages and motifs from the Jewish scriptures. [...] John Shelby Spong (in his Liberating the Gospels) regards the Synoptic Gospels as midrashic fiction in virtually every detail, though he believes it was based on an historical man.

— Earl Doherty

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "[In the Gospels] many elements of the Jesus story [depend] on passages and motifs from the Jewish scriptures. [...] John Shelby Spong (in his Liberating the Gospels) regards the Synoptic Gospels as midrashic fiction in virtually every detail, though he believes it was based on an historical man." in the context of "w:Earl Doherty (Fall 1997), "The Jesus Puzzle: Pieces in a Puzzle of Christian Origins", Journal of Higher Criticism 4 no: 2, pages: 68-102" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Earl Doherty" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 19, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

Tags

#Earl Doherty#gospels#scriptures#liberating#historical#midrashic#virtually#elements#passages#synoptic#believes#regards

About Earl Doherty

Earl J. Doherty (born 1941) is a Canadian author of The Jesus Puzzle (1999), Challenging the Verdict (2001), and Jesus: Neither God Nor Man (2009). Doherty argues for a version of the Christ myth theory, the thesis that Jesus did not exist as a historical figure. Doherty says that Paul thought of Jesus as a spiritual being executed in a spiritual realm.