section_path: Historical views/Christ myth theory
section_name: Christ myth theory
paragraph_text: Christ myth theory
  
  The Christ myth theory is the hypothesis that Jesus of Nazareth never existed; or if he did, that he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels. Stories of Jesus's birth, along with other key events, have so many mythic elements that some scholars have suggested that Jesus himself was a myth.
  
  Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) taught that the first Gospel was a work of literature that produced history rather than described it. According to Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906), a social movement produced Jesus when it encountered Jewish messianic expectations. Arthur Drews (1865–1935) saw Jesus as the concrete form of a myth that predated Christianity.
  
  Despite arguments put forward by authors who have questioned the existence of a historical Jesus, virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure and consider Christ myth theory fringe.