Rating: 
Summary: Do you care about the facts?
Review: If so.. please give this book a chance. My take is that only though unquestioning acceptance of traditional "Christian History" would anybody fail to see the truth contained here. Many questions are answered, and even though the authors do have a mystical bent, the true origin of Christianity really is revealed. I am an atheist (regarding the biblegod) and former fundementalist. However, discovering the true source of our western mythology makes me feel more connected to our ancestors. Christianity hasn't always been the confusing B.S. it is today, but was once the sincere, and human, quest for a higher reality. Today, a big part of that reality, for me, is in understanding my own spiritual quest is something that I share with the ancients. We are the Egyptians. We are the Greeks. Peace to men of goodwill.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious rehash of old chestnuts
Review: Here I was hoping to find a well-argued and thoroughly researched tracing of the paleo-pagan strands in Christianity. After all, one would expect true religion to include truths apprehended since the earliest times (for unlike ours, ancient pagan cultures were deeply religious -- just take a look at Mircea Eliades' scholarly works). Instead I found the repetition of tired old ex-parte accusations and diatribes against received Christianity, with no hint that the authors grasp their real import of their arguments. Indeed, it's not so much the authors' anti-Jesus and anti-Catholic polemic that I find objectionable. What disappoints is their ignorance of humanity and history, and the immense body of scholarship over centuries on precisely this topic. They clearly have an agenda (that's fine - who hasn't?), but in this book they unwittingly fall on their own sword. Ironically, for the thinking person, the authors' polemic actually works to support rather than undermine the veracity of traditional, especially Catholic, beliefs and ritual. How so? Because, despite a rather sophomoric sprinkling of historical 'evidence' (sadly, much of it out of context, or just plain wrong), they fail to understand the nature and history of religion. <Lecture on> From the earliest times humankind has been religious because we apprehend, however dimly, the cosmic truths behind the mundane. 'Pagan' is not a synonym for 'unreligious', or even 'untrue' -- ancient pagan cultures were profoundly religious and rightly saw every aspect of life as charged with the divine. However obscured and deformed, these intuitions of transcendancy all contain elements of truth about God and the cosmos. Now any religion which claims to banish all 'pagan accretions' must surely ignore many deep truths that have been grasped since the dawn of time. And insofar as the new religion disavows ancient and universal truths (in both belief and ritual) such a religion breaks not only with what is true in history, but also with what is true in eternity. It is, in the literal sense, idiotic, and cannot speak to the depths within. I see the incorporation of certain pagan elements in Christianity as evidence for, rather than evidence against. It's what you'd expect if a religion had any truth in it and speaks to what is authentic in man. Though they were not enlightened by revelation, our pagan ancestors knew better than their modern counterparts that divinity created and sustains the cosmos and that our lives should be charged with and transformed by this reality. In important respects they understood our relation ('religio') with God and creation better than us. That's why commentators wiser than Timothy Freke have observed that for modern Westerners to become good Christians requires that they first become good pagans, for our culture has discarded eternal truths and disciplines in sound thinking that were well known to ancient pagans. Did not pagan Plato and Aristotle teach that the service of God both publically and privately was the highest duty and most humanising act? An ancient pagan would regard our naked public square and privatised (ie marginalised) religion as a deep threat to society's future well-being. Not without struggle did the early Christians come to understand the universality (they called it catholicity) of The Way, and this freed them to distinguish between the substance and the form, the eternal and the changeable. This is the genius of Christianity -- it can take what is true in paganism and anywhere else and transform it, incorporate it, divinise it, just as the eternal God incorporates humankind, transforms it, divinises it. <Lecture off>
Rating:
Summary: Pure Satanism
Review: John 1:1 (among countless others passages from the Bible) teaches that Jesus IS God. May He have mercy on, and change the hearts of the authors. Yet another attack on the only One who is able to save mankind's souls. The only reason there is a single star in my review is because there has to be one on the amazon rating system!
Rating:
Summary: A Well-Documented Triumph
Review: This is an incredible reassessment of Christianity as the outgrowth of pagan Mystery Religions. Specifically, they connect the figure of Jesus to Dionysus and Osirus, depicting him as an amalgam of pagan godmen. The book demonstrates that most of the significant elements in the life of Jesus were already present in the myths of pagan gods. Beyond that, it suggests that Gnostic Christianity came before the Christian literalist tradition. It is very well documented and informative. It must have taken courage to question tradition, received history and the nature of Christian spirituality, but Freke and Gandy do it with balance, documentation and finesse. Their conclusions, while sensational, are quite logical and well argued.
Rating: 
Summary: a book with huge information about the 1. century CE.
Review: I took this book with me during holidays, travelling around Iceland and it was much fun to read it. This is a book, easy to read, with huge information about the 1.century CE and common beliefs in those days. The book has a good bibliography and notes to all pages, as also informations about who's who, for those who haven't learned a lot in church history. At the end of each chapters there are conclusions which makes it easier for the reader to grasp the chapters ideas. When reading this book it is obvious that the writers are very well educated and there is much to think about so I will definately be reading it again and again. What we are dealing with here is the idea that Jesus was originally a myth and never a historical figure. So I think this is more a book for skeptics and scholars, than for those who take the Bible seriously.
Rating: 
Summary: its all from the same ONE
Review: Is it possible the Pagan legends may have been passed down from generations as a prophecy of what was to come....
Jesus the Christ?Jesus was Jewish... Paganism is from Spirit and should not be bashed...niether should Jews or Christians. We all come from a Father and Mother Divine and Jesus is our Brother...I think Pagans and Christian are finding different peices of the same TRUTH...
The stories and histories, legends, and myths that we read of are all intertwined and have truth within.
Rating:
Summary: what i've been saying for centurieswritten!!!!
Review: George Orwell's Animal Farm is a classic of modern literature. Superficially, it is a story about talking farm animals. But if that were all it was, it would not be very interesting, and certainly would not be considered a classic. But it is both, because Orwell's animals engage in an allegorical struggle that not only echoes specific instances in Russian history but also encodes a deeper study of human drives for power and domination.
Now, if you will indulge me, imagine the rise of a cult that believes in the literal historicity of these talking pigs and demands that they be taken at face value. Not only does this hypothetical cult deny that the superficial elements of the story encode any deeper significance, but it considers anyone who seeks this significance a heretic and threatens them with eternal damnation. Now imagine this cult becoming the most powerful religion in the world. It would ruin lives, certainly, and it would also ruin a really good story.
As the authors of The Jesus Mysteries illustrate, this is exactly what has happened to the Christ myth. Now, before you come burn my house down, let me explain what I mean by "myth." Today this word is often used to mean something that is untrue, but this has not always been the case. A "myth" is a symbolic story that contains meaning that transcends the realm of history, language and rationality. In many ways, myth is truer than history, since it is concerned not just with the physical facts about objects, but their deeper metaphysical significance.
The Christ myth fits this description. On the surface, it is a story that contains supernatural elements. But if this were all it was, it wouldn't necessarily be any better than those talking pigs would be without their allegory. It IS good, however, because the story is packed with symbolic meaning. Christ is a "Son of God" incarnate in human form--a motif that embodies the ancient dichotomy of spirit and matter. But his suffering and death release him from his physical body so that he can be reborn as an entirely spiritual being. Furthermore, his Hebrew title "Son of Man" reveals that he is constructed as an Everyman figure. Early Christian mystics knew that by becoming an initiate to the Inner Mysteries, anyone could experience this spiritual rebirth. (The Kingdom of God is within YOU!)
Forcing this clearly symbolic story into a historical, rational context cheapens and trivializes its deeper spiritual implications.
Christ's story is so good, and so universally significant, that it has been a recurring theme throughout Mediterranean and Middle Eastern mythology for much longer than just twenty centuries. The death and resurrection of various earlier Sons of God (Osiris, Attis, Bacchus, Dionysus, and Mithra, just to name a few,) is echoed in the Christ story. This was obvious to Pagan scholars at the time, whose writings figure prominently in this book. It was also obvious to the first Christian literalists who went out of their way to claim that the Devil himself had created all those ancient myths in order to confuse people when the real dying/resurrecting Son of God came along centuries later. It's even alluded to in the Gospels, in the reference to the "Magi" from the east, who were followers of the dying and resurrecting Mithra of Persian mythology.
This book is well researched and follows a logical progression. However, I do feel that the "sensationalist polemic" format that the authors have chosen undercuts their own message slightly. (The parenthetical title "Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God?" is embarrassingly cheesy to religious scholars and needlessly alienating to Christians.) But in defense of the authors, most of the negative reviews here are from people who have obviously neither read this book nor researched the history of their faith. Many of them clearly feel threatened by the challenge this book presents to their superficial literalist understanding of Christ.
This book is not for everyone. If you are interested in the history of Christianity, it is a must. If you drive a Hummer or you voted for Bush, you are probably not ready to seek your inner Christ (no offense). But if you are truly interested in a deeper spiritual significance of allegory and myth, this book can only strengthen your faith.
Rating:
Summary: So-so
Review: The Jesus Mysteries has an intersting concept, but just gets too speculative at times, and does not provide enough solid information for a book of its length. If you want a book of religious investiagtion and criticism, check out Judaism, Christinaity and Islam are Wrong by Nosrep
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Summary: Finally the truth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I grew up Christian but I always wondered why we were taught this was "the one and only" religion and other religions were only myths. When I would ask them why, they could only say "because"! Now I know what they were afraid of.
I started to learn bits and pieces of the truth and this book filled in most, if not all, of the gaps. I have always been amazed how little my fellow Christians knew of their own faith. I have yet to have met a Christian that knows how the date for Easter is calculated each year. When I enlighten them that it is actually based on the full moon, and then prove it to them, they back away in utter horror!!! Don't be afraid of the truth!!! It is well known that Easter is saturated with Pagan roots. It is well known that Christmas day itself was invented by the Church to fall near the Pagan holiday of Yule.(even though most Christians don't even know that!). Why is this knowledge so scary to Christians? As a Christian I wanted to know. I haven't met a Christian yet that knows that the Christmas tree was once banned by the church - why? - because the concept was originally Pagan!!! So what? Don't be afraid!!!
One reviewer said this book was based on outdated text that is a couple hundred years old, therefore invalid....HELLO!!!! HOW OLD IS THE BIBLE!!!
This book clearly, and I mean clearly, shows direct roots of the Christ story in well-documented, well-known Pagan religions. What more do you want?
The evidence is so clear and so overwhelming that the only way someone could deny it is they have already made up their minds not to believe it. Just look - it's right in front of your face!!!!!!!!
Faith is great, but when it blinds you to the truth it ties you to a dangerous loop of ignorance. Jesus was a light and he wanted us to become enlightened - he wanted us to find truths and use our brains. A Christian friend of mine actually believes that the dinosaurs died out because Noah didn't let them on the boat!!!!! People.... open your eyes and use your brains!!!!! Don't let ignorance destroy your brain and your logic like this poor fellow!
Don't deny the truth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(and don't be afraid)
Rating:
Summary: Garbage!!
Review: It's sad to see how a once Christian author(s) can be so infouenced by secular writers and the so called search for 'knowledge', that they lose their faith, and cause others to doubt theirs. The authors are into Gnosticism, which is all about knowledge. If they knew anything, they would not have written such a book.
The authors say that Jesus, his miracles, resurrection, and many other details are based on myths from Egypt and other ancient cultures. But, let's go back even further, to the time before Egypt even existed. Let's go way back to the beginning. I choose to go back to Adam and Eve, although you can go back to any time you wish based on your beliefs. Now, let's ask the question, "How and Why did mythology come into existence in the first place?" It came into existence, as stated in the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, that a Savior would come for humankind. While the Bible does not give all the details, it is very likely that God told Adam and Eve some very specific things about Jesus. These are things that were carried through the generations, and eventually lost their original truth. Since people wanted the Savior to come, but had lost sight of the true story which had been told to Adam and Eve, many myths came about as result which contained many similarities to Jesus and the Gospels. It's as simple as that. There are so many evidences of God, Jesus' existence, His resurrection, and his miracles, that I will not list them here. However, a good place to begin studying this are the books, When Skeptics Ask, and When Critics Ask. Even if my explanation is not right, the difference between the historicity of the Gospels, their style, nature, etc. is tremendous, and the correlation between myths and Jesus would then be pure circumstance. It would, however be related to the human 'need', 'desire', etc. for a God. Even that would be related to historical events - not evolution.
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