"The Messiah Myth" was criticized by New Testament scholars such as Bart Ehrman, who in 2012 published a criticism of Jesus ahistoricity theory proponents, "Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth", in which he stated that "A different sort of support for a mythicist position comes in the work of Thomas L. Thompson," and critiqued Thompson's arguments and criticized Thompson, as an Old Testament scholar, for lacking the sufficient background in New Testament studies to provide a useful analysis of the text. In 2012 Thompson responded with the online article, "Is This Not the Carpenter’s Son? A Response to Bart Ehrman", in which he rejects Ehrman's characterization of his views, stating that Erhman "has attributed to my book arguments and principles which I had never presented, certainly not that Jesus had never existed."