The Golden Bough
The work of social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer has had an influence on various myth theorists, although Frazer himself believed that Jesus existed. In 1890, Frazer published the first edition of "The Golden Bough" which attempted to define the shared elements of religious belief. This work became the basis of many later authors who argued that the story of Jesus was a fiction created by Christians. After a number of people claimed that he was a myth theorist, in the 1913 expanded edition of "The Golden Bough" he expressly stated that his theory assumed a historical Jesus.