Acknowledgements

These essays could not have been written without the encouragement of a number of people.

I would not have become interested in the question of myth and the sources of the historical Jesus if it had not been for R. Joseph Hoffman. The essay on Jesus and healing would not have taken the form it did without the support of the late Maurice Casey and James Crossley. It is unlikely that it, and my essay on the psychology of Jesus, would ever have been published without Fraser Watts asking for them both to be considered for collections he was editing. The essay on the historical Jesus and anarchism would not have seen the light of day without Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, who organised both the conference on anarchism and religion at which it was initially delivered and the subsequent volume of essays on the subject. My work on madness and the historical Jesus was something that I only turned into article form because Dave Horrell said it sounded like something others would want to consider. The piece on the Christ-myth theory would not have reached its final state without the active interest of Francis Watson and Simon Gathercole. The final essay in the collection, on magic in the early Roman empire, was honed as a result of feedback from Peter Jackson Rova and his colleagues at Stockholm University (where I have been fortunate to be a visiting researcher since 2012). However, it had the longest gestation of all the pieces in this collection. The basic problem it seeks to address first struck me when I gave a series of lectures on magic with my friend, Jim Aitken, over twenty-five years ago (and his recent death has made me all the more aware of how valuable conversations with him always were). To all of these people, and all the anonymous reviewers who have, over the years, provided feedback on earlier versions of the essays in this volume, I am extremely grateful.

I should also thank several others, in Cambridge and elsewhere, who have been important in thinking through the ideas contained in these pages, even if they may not have realised it, and are unlikely to agree with the arguments I make and the conclusions I draw: Jenny Bavidge, Andrew Brown, Andrew Chester, Per Faxneld, Emmanouela Grypeou, David Herbert, Morna Hooker, Judy Lieu, Jane McLarty, Ashley Meggitt, Cariad Rees Morgan, Chris Rowland, Bill Telford, Jeremy Toner, Simon Watson, and Daniel Weiss.

However, above all, I need to acknowledge the consistent encouragement of James Carleton Paget. James has always believed that I have something useful to say about the historical Jesus, even when I have been less certain myself. Without his confidence in the value of the essays in this collection and his insightful critiques of earlier drafts of virtually all of them, I doubt much of what is here would ever have been written.

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Studies in the Historical Jesus Copyright © 2023 by Justin J. Meggitt. All Rights Reserved.

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