This paper will explore the accumulation during antiquity and the Middle Ages of modes of thinking about religion that contributed to Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment critiques of traditional understandings of Jesus. Ambivalence about established religious beliefs had a long history in western culture. Pagan critiques of Christianity, Christian attacks on heresies and sectarians, Jewish polemics against Jesus, Reformation and Catholic attacks and counterattacks, the continued tradition of skepticism, all created a reservoir of thinking that could be deployed against traditional images of Jesus. The Three Impostors as well as later scholarly critiques of religion all drew upon these accumulated challenges to belief and tradition.