Barbara Thiering

Barbara Elizabeth Thiering (15 November 1930 – 16 November 2015) was an Australian historian, theologian, and Biblical exegete specialising in the origins of the early Christian Church. In books and journal articles, she challenged Christian orthodoxy, espousing the view that new findings present alternative answers to its supernatural beliefs. Her analysis has been rejected by both New Testament scholars and scholars in Judaism.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Thiering graduated in 1952 from the University of Sydney with First Class Honours in Modern Languages, was a high school teacher of languages for several years, and then, while caring for her three young children, continued study and research privately. She obtained an external B.D. degree from the University of London, a M.Th. degree from Melbourne College of Divinity, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Sydney in 1973.

From her specialty studying the Dead Sea Scrolls, their semiotics, and their hermeneutics, she propounded a theory arguing that the miracles, including turning water into wine, the virgin birth, healing a man at a distance, the man who had been thirty-eight years at the pool, and the resurrection, among others, did not actually occur (as miracles), as Christians believe, nor were they legends, as some skeptics hold, but were "deliberately constructed myths" concealing (yet, to certain initiates, relating) esoteric historic events. She alleges that they never actually happened (that is, that the events they chronicle were not at all miraculous), as the authors of the Gospels knew. According to her interpretation of the methods of pesher, which she discovers in the scrolls, the authors of the Gospels wrote on two levels. For the "babes in Christ," there were apparent miracles, but the knowledge of exact meanings held by the highly educated members of Gnostic schools gave a real history of what Jesus actually did.

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