The Jesus Mysteries : Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God?

Rating:
Summary: Utter Nonsense!
Review: This book is nothing other than an attempt to re-write history and replace fact with fiction.

If you want to know who the 'historical' Jesus is, then pick up the New Testament and read it. In particular, I point to the three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) which are three different takes on the same story. Its obvious that they are speaking about real, historical events.

Another historical guide then would be the writings of the Fathers of the Church (Jerome, Augustine etc). Contrary to what this book would tell you, there was no attempt to white wash the story of Jesus: there is an historical, unbroken chain of witness from the Apostles downwards which preserved the deposit of faith.

Don't even waste a minutes time with this book.

Rating:
Summary: Idiotic Arguments
Review: The authors cannot explain why so many men and women were willing to die for the "historical" Jesus. People, year after year, do not surrender everything, even themselves, and die for a lie or a cover up. Even if one would like this work to be true, I cannot see how these conspiracy theories can be seen as anything other than infantile and idiotic.

Rating:
Summary: Gnostism Shouldn't be the Only Stop
Review: Despite what the authors said, the destruction of the evidence of the historical Christ was not total. As Robert Eisenman so exhaustively pointed out, the evidence for the historical Christ is still in existence through the ample historical record of the Christ's younger brother James the Just; appointed by the Christ himself as his heir and leader of the first Church of Jerusalem. The scholars have found that these true teachings of the Christ Jesus (as taught by James) were not of the sickly paganistic bent of the Gnostics, but was the original, uncompromisingly monotheistic faith of the patriarchs Abraham, Ishmael/Isaac and Jacob. Latching onto Gnosticism's paganism is a mistake that will only lead to a very, very warm and uncomfortable place. Worship the One God alone people. This will be best for you, if you but knew.

Rating:
Summary: An evolving polemic
Review: Since this book came out, Christian scholars - true believers like US Professor Elaine Pagels have produced works that represent partial vindications of this book.

The one think about Freke and Gandy I disagree with is that Jesus did not exist. Most scholars agree he did and there are gospels, some present, some missing which support his existence. Professor Vermes has unearthed something of the Jewish Jesus. Jesus was very much a Jewish teacher who apparently was not intereseted in teaching gentiles (see any scholarly work on Jesus as a historical personage) - "cast not thy pearls before swine".

But it is true that there is very little substantially that we can say on Jesus (given most of the gospels did get facts wrong or distorted facts to suite "prophecies") - certainly at an archaeological level and it is true that Christianity "is the most Syncretistic" of world religions based on a Christian writer in "A handbook of living religions". In other words, Christianity does combine elements from several traditions including Judaism and Greek traditions with possible contributions from Egypt.

It is also true that modern Chritianity, "Literarism" in the book was almost single handedly put together by St Paul - a man who despised some of Jesus' original diciples like St Peter.

Freke and Gandy have set in train a clearer understanding of what Christianity should be. Not John's Gospel and the great commission but a richer, gnostic vein, as highlighted in the gospel of St Thomas.

Freke and Gandy's work is an expose of the dark side of Christianity. A side that has been inflicted not just on ancient pagans, but the entirety of S. America and most of Africa and parts of Asia where the bulk of true believers now live - at the expense of indigenous religions of which "Paganism", Greek civilisation and "Gnosticism" including Jewish Christianity as it was originally practised were victims.

Ruthless, at times scholarly, compelling and very gripping - I would recommend this book to those who wish to study Christianity with clarity. Today, Elaine Pagels and other scholars are trying to restore a spirit of the original Christianity - its harmonies with other traditions rather than its absolutism. I wish them luck given the fierce opposition they are likely to face from certain elements of a more established Christianity.