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Summary: The second best book about the quest for the historical Jesu
Review: Consider ancient depictions of the Greek god Dionysus . . . hung on a cross! This, and other Christian-pagan parallels, is the starting point for a survey of the many dying and rising gods of the ancient world, followed by an important question: Was Jesus just another version of this mythic theme? The authors provide a host of compelling reasons to believe so. Read this book. You'll never look at Christianity the same way again. Then read "The Jesus Puzzle" by Earl Doherty - by far the best book on the quest for the historical Jesus.
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Summary: From Fundamentalist to Mythicist
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book and I believe it will form a fresh basis (along with many other books to come no doubt) to the gradual erosion of mainstream Christianity as we know it. I used to be a fundamentalist and I've read all the reviews on this book so far. It seems there are three schools of thought on the subject: the first is the "literalists" who take the Bible at face value and argue with this book. What I never understood about this approach is that can anyone, (now think about this) honestly take the Bible text literally if the names, places and time period of the stories were changed and dropped into a fresh context? If Christianity was not so much a part of our culture and taught to us by our parents, teachers, preachers and media would any objective reading of the Bible conclude that the events that it claims to occur were real? If the cult of Dionysus sprung up again and their adherents claimed that he was born of a virgin, his father was God, he died and was resurrected for the sins of his people, who wouldn't immediately see these things as myth? The fundamentalists, of course, would immediately argue that they were copying Christ when in reality the stories of Dionysus came first. The second school of thought is that Jesus did exist historically and even though the Gospels were embellished with pagan mythology later, his philosophy and spirit as a man are what counts. Freke and Gandy refute this also. Since the Bible contradicts itself it cannot be relied upon as a true historical record. Fair enough, except when you attempt to reconstruct exactly what Jesus' philosophy REALLY was. We unfortunately have to rely on third person accounts and the search for the "historical" Jesus is extremely tedious and time-consuming yielding very little in the way of a concrete philosophy that has not been said better and brighter by so many others both in the ancient world and in the modern. So why bother? The third group are the mythicists as Freke and Gandy appear to be. I personally would hate for Jesus to turn out to be a myth, but I have to honestly say that I have come accross nothing in my research that proves his literal existence as a man beyond any reasonable doubt. If the Bible clearly can't be trusted as accurate, what can? I can't imagine the point of being a Christian without the historical Christ. I would love for someone to show me proof that he literally existed in a book written by an objective non-theological scholar whose only motivation is uncovering history and revealing truth. Perhaps we will never know the ultimate indisputable answer, but as time goes on I have no doubt that Christianity will eventually be replaced by some other religion or philosophy much more suited to the future of the human race based on actual proof (perhaps even mystical) and not on blind faith in things that can never be proven. If one claims that faith in and of itself is a virtue, what is the point of having faith in a myth anyway? I recommend this book to everyone. I don't recommend that you read this book only if you are interested in serious scholarly research. Just remember to use your common sense and the facts will speak for themselves. Good luck.
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Summary: Very dissapointing
Review: This book pretends to be scholarly but fails on many points. The authors completely neglect all evidence to the contrary, and just present their side of the debate without putting over opposing views. Take their treatment of Josephus as a case in point, we are told that Testmonium Favianum is obviously a forgery, and that 'no serious scholar' argues for its authenticity. That anyone still thinking that it has some worth should consider Dr Eislers word on the subject, when he said that the Josephan texts as we have it have passed through christian hands. A few points are worthy of note1) There are two passages in Josephus that mention Jesus, along with the Testimonian Flavianum, there is also Ant 20:200, concerning the death of James 'the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ'. The authors never discuss this passage which most scholars think is authentic, for the only reason that it would shatter their proposals. 2) Concerning the passage about Jesus' career, the authors present the cases that there are only 2 views possible a) the text is entirely authentic or b) the text is entirely inauthentic. The authors know (as they quote books with this position in), but have not got to grips with, c) there are parts of the passage that are authentic, but some of the text has been inserted by a christian scribe. 3) They quote Dr Robert Eisler in evidence of their thesis, however Dr Eisler himself did not believe that the text was an entire forgery, he thought that some interpolations had been made by a christian scribe. Even their quotation does not support the idea that the whole text is inauthentic. 4) Why they've quoted Eisler is beyond me, apart from not supporting their thesis, his book was written in 1931. If I were to research a subject, I would want some up to date discussion on the subject, but none is quoted. Louis Feldman estimated that there were 84 books and articles on this subject alone between 1934 and 1980, why havent they looked at them?????? Can't they be bothered to do proper research? 5) 'No serious scholar' believes this is just a bad argument, no issues discussed here, just an ad hominem attack, and one they dont seem to believe themselves. Graham Stanton plonked for the interpolation hypothesis in his book, 'The Gospels and Jesus', so he would appear not to be a 'serious scholar', however Freke and Gandy seem to feel free to quote him extensively later on in their book. The book is full of similar offhand treatments of the sources, and should bnot be taken as a serious attempt to discuss the evidence.
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Summary: old wine in new bottles?
Review: Having read this book I was inspired to read "A Short History of the Ancient World" by Smith and Moorhead. It was on my pile.... On page 588 it states: "The dogmas of Christianity were free from startling novelty. Ideas such as incarnation, corporeal resurrection, and virgin birth were current in pagan mythology, as well as in the oriental cults. While a small minority of philosophically minded might be skeptical, the masses accepted such conceptions without question." The authors go on to state the reasons Christianity took hold: "The intolerance of the Christians was a distinct asset."... "...organization gave Christianity a tre- mendous advantage over its competitors..." Page 587: "Conditions in the [Roman] Empire were propitious for the rapid diffusion of a new religion. Communications were easy, [with a] system of Roman roads and... maritime commerce." ... "The doctrines of Christianity were of a nature to exert the maximum of appeal. There was sufficient mysticism to afford emotional satiety.... "Tremendous appeal was exerted among the lower classes" [by requiring poverty] "for the perfect Christian life." My question is this: Was Christianity the Wal-Mart of the ancient religious world? By the way, "A Short History of the Ancient World" was published by Appleton-Century-Crofts,Inc. in the year of our Lord 1939.
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Summary: Let him who seeks continue seeking
Review: The conclusions drawn by Freke and Gandy would be fascinating if I were able to have confidence in them as serious scholarship. Unfortunately, I find their presentation unnecessarily sensationalistic and some of the methods and data used in the book questionable. If I don't trust what the authors' arguments are built on, I can't trust their conclusions either. _The Jesus Mysteries_ is not a scholarly work on a level with modern historical Jesus scholarship. In fact, the authors barely acknowledge that such scholarship exists, let alone engage it in dialogue, as it were. (To be fair, this might have been difficult, as such works generally take it that Jesus did exist, even if they question everything else about him.) Instead, they take the entire gospel story as if it must all be intended as truth, either symbolically or literally. There is no consideration of the possibility of a historical core to which symbolic and mythological elements were later attached. I don't know enough about pagan philosophy to be sure, but I suspect the authors overgeneralize and, for all I know, quote things out of context, as they do with Schweitzer at the beginning of Chapter 7. (I notice that they didn't bother to go back to the original work but took the quote as they found it from a secondary source.) They certainly use dubious data in other areas. (If I were being uncharitable I would say they twist the data to get the results they want.) For example, the authors state, "The Greek name Iesous is an artificial and forced translation of the Hebrew name Joshua," which was "deliberately constructed by the gospel writers" to ensure that the letters in the name add up to 888. If this is so, why does the Hebrew Bible book of Joshua in the Greek Septuagint (translated before the time of Jesus) use the same spelling? The authors would also have us believe such statements as "the word 'charismata' [used by Paul] derives from the Mystery term makarismos," when a look at the etymology reveals that the word comes from charis, grace, rather than from makarios, blessed. The date the authors give for the writing of the Acts of the Apostles is very late and conflicts with what most, if not all, scholars now say: that Luke and Acts (or Luke-Acts) were written by the same person in the last few decades of the first century C.E. The passage from Josephus concerning Jesus is presented as completely a later interpolation. We are told that "no serious scholar now believes that these passages were actually written by Josephus." Actually, there *are* serious scholars who believe that parts of the passages were written by Josephus, just not the parts saying that Jesus was the Messiah. Documents such as the pastoral epistles, extracanonical gospels, and pseudo-Pauline letters are repeatedly referred to as "forged." This is hardly an example of dispassionate scholarship. In addition, it is downright misleading, since it implies that the authors of these works were deliberately setting out to deceive. A better understanding of the literary world at the time would have revealed that it was not uncommon to write letters and attribute them to well-known personages. This was not considered forgery in the modern sense. Many legends have their roots in historical fact. In the ninth century a mystic known as al-Hallaj lived in Baghdad. This man performed miracles, said he was the Truth, and was arrested and crucified. He had told his disciples that he would rise again after three (or some say forty) days, and there were reports of encounters with the resurrected Hallaj. Did all of this happen historically? Of course not. But some of it did, and just because there are elements of the story that are obviously mythological doesn't mean that there was never a historical Hallaj. The same applies to Jesus. Until and unless I am convincingly shown otherwise, I will continue to follow the simplest explanation in accordance with Occam's Razor and think that Jesus at least existed. A Gnostic apologetic does not convince me.
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Summary: Very Own Personal Jesus
Review: As I am currently working on a thesis that follows along the same lines of this book, I purchased The Jesus Mysteries to see how off base I am or am not. I have been working on my thesis/book for about two years, paralleling the similarities between Greco-Roman Mythology and Christianity. When I began my project, I had not been able to find any books that spoke my thoughts and skeptisms. In fact, during the last year I had began to think perhaps I was truly losing it and that maybe I was entirely off base with my ideas. This book has made me realize I am not the only one who thinks in this manner and that the idea of Christianity being a farse is entirely conceivable. My husband, who is a born-again Christian saw the book and began reading through it and actually started verifying the sources used by Mr. Freke and Mr. Gandy. He came to wake me up one morning after reading it for hours to inform me how he had came across even more falacies in the Bible. It has given us both a new drive to work on my project as well as questioning our faith. It is very motivating to question what has been handed down for centuries. It's like your very own personal search for the Holy Grail. We both still believe the ideals behind the teachings of the Bible, but hold no faith in it being Jesus who introduced these ideals.
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Summary: Easy to read theory on Christianity
Review: I doubt this book broke any new ground, but at least the writers spent more time telling you the facts than explaining how they procured them. I've read a couple of books on this topic before and they spent too much time explaining how they went about their research. I didn't find that horribly interesting. The constant use of exclamation points annoyed me and some of the prose was a bit too breathless, but those are minor quibbles. If you are interested in this topic but don't want to have to wade through pages that only academics would be interested in, this is for you.
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Summary: The answer is "yes"
Review: Excellent research into topic. Sometimes overbearing in the minuteness of detail; however, addresses the subject with dispassionate scholarship.
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Summary: A great place to start...
Review: I have been questioning my spirituality for a long time. Being raised a Christian, I began my journey there. I have been studying for awhile, and had a hard time finding a good place to start concerning the TRUE history of Christianity. Most writings are very biased one way or another. This book was a very very nice eye opener. It gives a great look into Gnosticism and the church's true roots in the ancient myths. I do not think that people that NEED to read books like this will, because of their prejudices. What is interesting is that the authors address this very issue in covering the Literalist Church's goals. Their thesis is well formed, and well approached. It gives me a great list of references to shoot off from here. I have made it a point to read only books that have 1/4 to 1/2 inch of total source references, to which this one has. Good research, good form. As Clement said, "There is one river of Truth which receives tributaries from every side." One needs to be open minded about their spirituality. I also recommend highly: Final Superstition by Joseph Daleidan. Good reading everyone!
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Summary: Two books in one
Review: The first half is intriguing, and make several good points, but the second half drops the topic entirely and becomes a harrangue about all the errors in the New Teastament. Watch the proliferation of exclamation points, always a sign that an author is on a soapbox.
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