Barbara Thiering

Barbara Thiering died on 16 November 2015, the day after her 85th birthday.

James F. McGrath, an Associate Professor in the Religion and Philosophy department at Butler University in his 1996 review of the book states that Thiering's thesis lacks proof, and that she herself acknowledges that the pesher of the Revelation of St. John is her own composition.

In 1993, N. T. Wright, New Testament historian and former Bishop of Durham, wrote:

In 1990, a documentary film about her research, Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls, was shown by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Thiering's thesis attracted some controversy in the media when Jesus the Man was published in 1990, and her ideas have not received acceptance by many of her academic peers. In a response to a letter Thiering wrote to The New York Review of Books objecting to a review by Géza Vermes, Vermes outlined the academic reception of her work stating:

Born in Sydney, Australia, as Barbara Houlsby, she married Barry Thiering in the late 1940s. She 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.

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.