Rating: 
Summary: Illuminating
Review: This is an excellent work, but it does have a few problems that I will touch on briefly. First, many of the footnotes are simply unnecessary. Instead, the footnotes should be cut by 75% or so and a simple bibliography attached. However, some of the footnotes are quite interesting, some are small historical notes that are important but didn't quite fit into the narrative thread. Secondly, there is some justification to the statement that they repeatedly quoted Celsus. There was at least one occasion that they quoted the rabidly anti-Christian author when it wasn't really necessary, and they went a little extreme on quotes showing the lack of originality within Christianity. They aren't going to convince too many Christians, and simply repeating the argument is not going to work. On the other hand, though, they did make a convinced believer out of me. Their thoery makes sense in the way that all good theories do. It makes sense of many disparate things, such as why Constantine chose Christianity for the religion to unite Rome, why the Romans accepted it and converted from their Pagan faith so easily, and why the New Testament authors spoke so harshly of Gnosticism. Their theory ties together numerous things that didn't make sense in a nice package that leads from prehistory up through our present day in a logical course that makes sense. I am truly impressed. It has been some time since I have seen such a cogent AND innovative argument. There is one other problem, though. Arguing that Jesus never existed is futile and self-defeating. Many people will never accept that as being true, and it is simply unnecessary. It doesn't matter if Jesus existed or not, simply state your theory. Once, long ago, I am sure that there were humans that personified Attis, Mithras, Dionysus, Osiris, and the other Mystery men, if I may use the term so liberally. So, just accept his existence (as it really doesn't matter to the theory) and move on. A great read. Buy it, read it, share it.
Harkius
Rating:
Summary: Admirably clear argumentation
Review: I am currently reading quite a bit of academic writing about Christianity, much of which is unnecessarily dense. Frankly, it gets annoying sometimes; I wish they would just spit it out, using a straight-forward structure, clear logic, and simple language. In contrast, The Jesus Mysteries is simple to read yet has a great deal of meat and documentation to it. In many respects it's superior to some of the mainstream academic books written about the same subject. I'm not sure that the Booklist reviewer (see review above) is on target when he refers to "anti-Catholic" diatribes. If I'm not mistaken, the book is only anti-Catholic to the extent that one is using "Catholic" to refer to all Christianity in the early period--which is as much a part of current Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy as it is of current (post-Reformation) Catholicism. I do, however, think the authors make some fundamental errors concering Judaism, in that they don't always distinguish adequately between the God and Judaism of the Hebrew scriptures ("Old Testament") and the God and Judaism of the Talmud--which is the more literally relevant text of the period being discussed. As a result, their portrayal of Judaism is sometimes inaccurately critical, reflecting (ironically, given the author's totally non-traditional approach to Christianity) traditional Christian biases about Judaism being a "religion of law" (vs. a religion of love). But this is a minor criticism in the overall context.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: I was very shy about touching another "Christianity is lying" book. This book shines light on the truth. If you are a Christian who is unsure about church history, or want to know why some things in the Bible don't make sense...read this book. The current model of Jesus was created between Gnostic fictional tales, and Constantine's need for one God, one religion. Regardless if Jesus lived or not, after reading this book you will understand that what is presented in the Bible, and in church is a pile of lies built on Rome's need for one religion. God might not be dead, but modern Christianity is a lie. Jesus was a philosopher, not God. Each page will present you with endless scriptural refernces, and "doctrinal" concepts for you to analyze. Get out your Hebrew and Greek dictionary, and be prepared for the truth to set you free.
Rating: 
Summary: A Brave Book
Review: Abandon all hope ye who enter here! This is one of the most dangerous books I've come across in a while and I urge all open-minded Christians to steer well clear of this tome lest they uncover the truth behind Christianity and perhaps even discover the God of the Universe who exists beyond traditional religion in the process! Seriously, though, I found The Jesus Mysteries to be one of the bravest and most thought-provoking pieces of work I've come across in years. It is a lucid and exhaustively researched expose of the history of Christianity and its battles with Gnosticism put forth in laymen's terms that really gets the mind racing and the heart pumping. In it, Freke and Gandy make an excellent case for the idea that Christianity is actually a Jewish version of earlier Pagan Mystery Religions then in vogue in the Roman Empire with Jesus but a mythological character designed to reflect earlier Pagan mangod beliefs. They show--successfully, I think--that what started out as a mystical Gnostic Christianity was ultimately superceded by a Literalist Christianity (by which they mean Christians who intepret the Jesus stories as literal, historical events rather than mythological analogies and metaphors as did the Gnostics) that denied the very mystical, mythological underpinnings that created the movement in the first place. Their reports on some of the early church fathers and their complicity in destroying what they consider to have been the original "true faith" of Gnostic Christianity are brutal, especially in using these men's own writings and words against them, and their overview of the role of the Catholic Church in suppressing all belief systems that were at variance with their own is nothing short of savage. These men name names and take no prisoners, and have the references to back it up! That's not to say this book is perfect. Freke's and Gandy's attempts to demonstrate the modern gospels to be "full of contradictions" was weak at best in using examples that have been largely successfully refuted by modern apologists, though they did score a few good solid "hits." And their use of the Book of Hebrews to bolster their claim that Paul was a Gnostic entirely ignored the fact that almost no modern scholars consider Hebrews a genuine Pauline writing in any case, making any "pro gnostic" statements in it irrelevant to their argument. They also have little to support their contention that some of the Pauline letters are later forgeries while others are genuine other than an apparent bias against any supposed Pauline statements that do not support their original contention. Yet even then, I still had to admit that their case for a Gnostic Paul was not entirely without merit; I only question their methodology. Finally, to bolster their arguments that the literalists "doctored" the Bible to suit their needs, they date the main Gospels along with the Book of Acts (with the possible exception of Mark) to the mid second century, much later than even most liberal scholars are usually willing to accept. Yet despite these problems and a few lapses in logic, Freke and Gandy make a good solid case for Christianity being but another reflection of much earlier and widespread Pagan mythologies that should give many open-minded Christians much reason to pause. I also found it heartening at the end of the book when they demonstrated that their intention was not to destroy Christianity--which is where the book initially seems to be going--but to restore it to its original spiritual meaning and vitality. Like Bishop John Shelby Spong, their intent seems to be to save Christianity from itself. Only time will tell whether they have succeeded, but knowing the mindset of the average fundamentalist--and I was one myself once--I doubt if they have a Gnostic's chance in Hell of being successful.
Rating: 
Summary: It's not the thesis, it's the footnotes
Review: Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy's _The Jesus
Mysteries_ is either a tabloid expose written as
scholarship or scholarship written as tabloid expose,
and it is not immediately obvious which of the two it is. The problem is not with the authors' thesis; that
the character of Jesus is one of myth, not history.
Their sensationalist polemic, however, disguises that
this theory is neither new nor without convincing
counter-argument. This particular question, one that
the authors present as their shocking discovery, has
been examined since the writings of Celsus and Origen
roughly nineteen hundred years ago. Nor is the
massive amount of modern scholarship devoted to the
question well-represented in their book, and one could
easily finish the book unaware that more than one
conclusion is possible to draw from what evidence
exists. One of the more serious flaws in the work is their
treatment of Pagan religions. Freke and Gandy
approach them with the Frazerian category "god-man"
firmly in mind, and go to questionable lengths in
order to fit an abundance of myth into this container.
Myth is not a single story, and their attempt to
bolster their argument through this categorical approach
undermines what could have been a cogent argument for
any amalgamation process that may have taken place.
Osiris = Dionysos = Mithras = Jesus is too simple a
formula to base a mythological thesis upon. That said, the prose style is brisk and engaging. I
especially appreciated the passages which contrasted
gospel text with earlier philosophical works. The
breezy style may be the very thing which will allow
new readers to become interested in a fascinating
historical era, and then to do the further reading
necessary to appreciate the work more serious
historians have done.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling
Review: A couple of morons have written reviews which dissed this book. Mike Finn to the rescue! THis book is right on the money; there isn't a sentence in it which is not substantiated! As an example, one of the morons asks why, if Jesus was a pagan god, Matthew would spend so much time establishing his descent from the House of David. Well, duh! Matthew was merely trying to bolster his claim that Jesus was the Messiah, and in the process gave free rein to his imagination.
Rating:
Summary: The "Roswell Incident" of ancient times?
Review: Freethinkers familiar with the literature of the Mythical Jesus Christ Thesis will recognize in this book an argument first presented by our philosophical kindred in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, only updated with new information coming from the Nag Hammadi documents and archaeological discoveries. (Refer to the book, _An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism_, by Gordon Stein, for a sampling of this argument from a century ago.) Today the case against the Jesus story being historical is even stronger. The Gospels are internally contradictory and historically and geographically incoherent. How these feeble writings got turned into a "New Testament" inspires even less confidence, considering all of the equally (im)plausible writings that were rejected by the various Church councils during the canonization process. And with the growth of a scientific understanding of reality the case for "miracles" has totally collapsed. So the theory that Jesus started out as an esoteric mythological figure in a Greco-Jewish mystery religion makes a lot more sense than the received story of Christian origins. Too bad the authors didn't go all the way in their analysis of how an allegedly deep "spirituality" for an educated elite devolved into the degenerate mass "spirituality" of Orthodox Christianity. If I were writing such a book, I would go farther and point out that it's futile to seek some "supernatural" being as a solution to your problems. Indeed, the Greek philosopher Epicurus and his followers presented a powerful secular critique of, and alternative to, the whole ancient religious paradigm, but the authors failed to consider it in their discussion of pagan wisdom and religiosity. The mythological processes surrounding the crash of a Project Mogul scientific balloon near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, provides a recent model of how an event can be totally misconstrued and become the basis of a whole false belief system. Similarly, a misunderstanding of the Jesus Mysteries myth led ignorant, uncritical people to believe that Jesus was a recent historical figure who actually performed the supernatural stunts attributed to him in the myth. The Resurrection was the Roswell Incident of its time. I recommend this book for the essential value of its argument, but not for its soft treatment of whether there is any "god" out there to find.
Rating:
Summary: Not for Sheep
Review: As usual with books that show that religion--and Christianity in particular--is nothing more than superstition, the fundamentalists come rushing to the fore either to claim it's "pure Satanism" (which is laughable) or to deliver a long-winded lecture about "cosmic truths" and--I'm not making this up--the "genius of Christianity." Now how's that for an oxymoron? The review claiming this book is "pure Satanism" is not a review at all, but is simply the knee-jerk reflex cry of the believer to anyone who would dare question the existence of their god or Jesus as the son of God (or God himself--it's all very confusing). Those of us who do not require a belief in some supernatural being to give purpose to our lives also do not believe in Satan. Now, of course, the reaction will be that the authors were nevertheless affected by Satan (in the view of the fundamentalist), no matter how clearly the authors may state that the Judeo-Christian Satan is nonexistent. As for countering the "genius of Christianity," all anyone has to do is cite either the thousands of errors and--more importantly-- the contradictions in the Judeo-Christian bible, or the innumerable atrocities that have been committed throughout history in the name of a god, with Christianity taking the lead in the subjugation, persecution, and murder of countless in the last two thousand years. Power-hungry clerics in the first century CE collectively wrote and--with all the political maneuvering of the modern-day "smoke-filled rooms"--voted on which books would be in the Judeo-Christian bible. Furthermore, the early history of the Church shows a continual need to persecute and silence anyone who did not believe as the leaders did. Just as one of a myriad of possible examples: How many hundreds of years did it take for the Church to admit that Galileo was correct? THIS constitutes genius? If you are a freethinker, willing to examine facts for yourself, and not simply believe in all of this supernatural ridiculousness, you will find this book interesting and informative. Perfect? No. Worthwile? Most definitely. (And yes, to all the believers out there who have read this far, I know you think this is "satan-inspired" and blasphemous and all that, and nothing I can say will get you to change your minds. And unfortunately, for the fundamentalist believer, that's the problem: they never let empirical evidence, facts, or rational, logical discourse get in the way of blind, unquestioning faith.)
Rating: 
Summary: Boring and needless
Review: If you don't believe in Jesus, no big deal, just don't be complaining about him when he drops you in the lake of fire. These clowns cannot offer anything better than Christianity, paganism is a sure way to get your soul damned and damned good and proper. Jesus taught that God loves us and wants to help us, what's wrong with that? I enjoy indian food, a fine wine and pleasant conversation. Thanks.
Rating:
Summary: Poor, shoddy, and downright dishonest scholarship
Review: Freke and Gandy approach this project with no scholarly credentials and present a totally baseless thesis. For starters their assertion that Jesus of Nazareth was a fictional person modeled after the likes of Dionysus and Mithra predicated upon the legend of the Jewish Messiah is completely unsubstantiated and a worthless argument. Besides the New Testament accounts written a generation after Jesus' ministry, we also possess the writings of Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny which attest to Jesus' historicity and validate the fact that he did exist. Even the most liberal New Testament scholars associated with the Jesus Seminar(Crossan, Borg, etc.) believe Jesus existed and that there is enough historical documentation to validate this fact, they just believe the New Testament accounts are theological documents and not purely historical. If Freke and Gandy were to present their thesis in front of liberal and orthodox New Testament scholars they would be laughed out of the auditorium; Especially since they base their Jesus didn't exist assumption on outdated 19th century research. Now to handle the central argument of the book; The claim that Jesus was just a Jewish version of the dying/rising god myth. They first compare Jesus to Mithras an Iranian based deity who became popular in the Roman empire. Here's the problem, Freke and Gandy assume Iranian Mithraism and Roman Mithraism were the same religions. In fact, the latest scholarship has revealed they are not and are vastly different systems of religion that just share the name of the god in question. Freke and Gandy use Cumont and pre Cumont sources as their primary source material and it was Cumont who erroneously assumed that Iranian and Roman Mithraism were the same, when in fact they are not. The Iranian Mithras did predate Christ but he never slew the cosmic bull, he wasn't crucified, he never promised his followers eternal life, and he didn't do a host of other things that Jesus did. Mithras was just the offspring of one of the gods in the polytheistic pantheon and he wasn't particularly important. Here are some of the other facts Freke and Gandy conveniently ignore. Scenes depicting the birth of Mithras do not show him being born of a virgin but out of a rock, and he is a fully formed adult. The shepherds don't come to worship him they stumble upon his birth by chance and assist him in removing himself from the rock. His supposed 12 disciples represent the 12 phases of the procession of the zodiac. Mithras wasn't crucified to atone for sins, the Roman Mithras(the one which arose contemporaneously or after Christianity) killed the cosmic bull for world peace not for an atonement for sin. Mithras didn't die and there is absolutely no historical motif for his resurrection so wildly asserted by Freke and Gandy. And the grand claim that Mithras said his followers must eat his flesh and drink his blood comes not from some systematic treatise describing Mithraic belief but a medieval text in which Zarathustra speaks. Freke and Gandy are grasping at straws by trying to assert that the Iranian Mithras spoke these words when they have absolutely NO source material to substantiate this claim. Now for the great Dionysus connection. First, the Eleusis mysteries were not celebrated in honor of Dionysus, but Demeter and Dionysus. It was not Dionysus who promised initiates eternal life, but the goddess Demeter. The extant Greek sources indicate that this was a ceremony primarily in honor of Demeter and not for Dionysus. This is nothing more than misleading deception on the part of the authors to construct their amusing thesis. The rituals celebrated commemorated the arrival of Spring and the renewal of living things; Demeter as the goddess of grain restored the crops, while Dionysus as the god of wine restored the vine. The elements of bread and wine that comprised the entheogen in the ceremony signified both Demeter and Dionysus, not just Dionysus as the dying and resurrected god who grants eternal life as the authors claim. Moreover, Dionysus was not crucified to atone for sin he was a dying and rising god in that he represented the restoration of life each year. Looking at the statues of Dionysus one can see that he is depicted as an adolescent, adult and old man because he ages each year, dies, and then is reborn anew. The Dionysus myth has it's roots in the mother goddess and consort myth where the goddess gives birth to her consort each year, mates with him, consumes him, and then gives birth to him anew to renew life each year. Dionysus played the role of the consort while several other mythical figures represented the goddess(Demeter, Persephone, Ariadne, etc). This is totally different from the Christian claim that Christ died once, then rose again for all time to defeat death and sin. There are many myths surrounding the birth of Dionysus: One has him born of Semele and Zeus and no one knows for sure whether Semele was a virgin, but the other myth has Dionysus born of Zeus and Persephone(the goddess who was married to Hades, hardly virginal), and when the Olympians kill Dionysus, Zeus has him reborn by planting an embryo in his leg and carrying the child to term. These are just a few of the differences and inconsistencies present in this work. With more time and more effort I could provide much more, but this suffices to show how this work is poor and unscholarly. If anyone actually takes the time to research the latest scholarly material on Mithras and Dionysus one will find that the few similarities are outweighed by the vast amount of differences between these mythical gods and Jesus Christ.
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