Posted: May 08, 2012 8:07 pm
The gods of irony have no end of fun, 'cause probably the best historical case against Christian orthodoxy is Allison's 1999 book Millenarian Prophet, where Allison constructs an exhaustively-researched framework of an archetypal apocalyptic preacher, and fits Jesus of Nazareth into it with perfection. Everything claimed as a unique proof of Jesus' divine status -- his charismatic preaching, his self-claims, his movement surviving his own death, his disciples passing from despair to hope and evangelizing -- is shown to be downright common in the millenarian framework. Tremble, ye apologists, and despair.
Interestingly, Allison seems uncomfortable with his own conclusions. (Usually a mark of good scholarship.) Millenarian Prophet finished up with a brief, bleak epilogue subtitled "sometimes dreaming is wiser than waking," in which Allison undergoes full-on existential despair. A few years later in The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus he suggested that Millenarian Prophet may have been colored by Allison going through a bad patch, and then we got a historical case for an empty tomb -- cause unanswered -- in '05's Resurrecting Jesus. Alongside an essay establishing beyond any reasonable doubt that the historic Jesus was a hellfire preacher. Allison gets a touch divided over this stuff.
All that done within the academic hegemony, by a believing Christian, no less. It's almost as if, why, it's almost as if there is no Christian hegemony.