Since the first issue of this work in 1903, but especially within the past few years, its main positions have been brought into extensive discussion by other writers, notably in Germany, where the Christusmythe of Professor Arthur Drews has been the theme of many platform debates. The hypothesis of the Pre-Christian Jesus-God, first indicated in Christianity and Mythology, and further propounded in the first edition of this book, has received highly important and independent development at the hands of Professor W. Benjamin Smith in his Der Vorchristliche Jesus (1906), and in the later exposition of Professor Drews.