Harold Leidner

Who was Harold Leidner?

Harold Leidner was an American patent attorney and amateur scholar of early Christianity.

He was born in New York City of Polish-Jewish parentage. He completed his law studies at the College of the City of New York and the New York University School of Law during the 1930s and was admitted in November, 1940. He was registered as a patent attorney in 1956. According to his own statement, he did not practice law as he was attracted to other fields: "[This] legal background has been of great value in evaluating the testimony and credibility of New Testament documents; especially patent law, which deals largely with questions of dating, priority, originality of material, infringement and copying." He regarded Hyman E. Goldin, who in 1948 had published The Case of the Nazarene Reopened, as his principal model. Among other things, Leidner argued for a version of the Christ myth theory, the view that Jesus never existed.