Christianity Without Christ

Abstract

As a result of the poor historiographical research that has been done on mythicism (the position that there was no historical Jesus), a particular phenomenon has been somewhat overlooked, that of mythicist Christians. Mythicist Christians occupy a strange space as both being conceptualized as heretics to Christians, and oddities to non-Christians, and their space within mythicist research is, as a result, entirely understudied. This article seeks to provide a starting point for such research by discussing two case examples of mythicist Christians: Eliza Sharples and Thomas L. Brodie. The article then provides a list of other figures and potential starting places for further research on historical Christian mythicists and calls for further study of this phenomenon among contemporary Christian populations.