Rating: 
Summary: saddens me
Review: i cannot believe where christianity has gone..it makes me so sad to think a group of people would whole heartedly believe that another (non christains) group of people will "burn in hell" for not believeing in "the one true way to god"....will this ever end? 2003 years of deception
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Summary: History
Review: F.F. Bruce, Rylands professor of biblical criticism and exegesis at the University of Manchester said, "The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for and unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians that propagate the 'Christ-myth' theories."Inside The Jesus Mysteries, Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy repeditively attack the historical Jesus. Clinging to their Jesus myth theories, in hopes to destroy modern christianity; it's truly pointless without historical evidence. They should've listed some of the early pagan writers(namely: C.Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Thallus, Phlegon,...) who wrote full works about Jesus and told why they believe that these pagans were not conferming the historicity of Jesus ...Instead they just nag on comparative mythologies (the evidence of non-evidence). Indeed, writers like Freke & Gandy like to toy with the idea of a 'Christ-myth,' but I would like to see them do so on grounds of historical evidence!
Rating:
Summary: UTTERLY LAUGHABLE!!!
Review: HO!HO!HO! neo-paganists and gnostics united!! Let`s see how much [junk] we are still going to read!! The writers of this book (call me thesis)are presenting partial historical evidence which brutally and shamelessly DISTORT,FAKE AND COMBINE in order to serve their own opinions and views!! Who are you people trying to deceive?? TRUE CHRISTIANS??
mmm..you have to do better than that to challenge FAITH and of course if i should put it in your way...reasoning and giving answers after careful research! All the arguments presented in this book can be OVERULLED/DISMISSED within seconds!
And for God`s shake will you stop with the "caramel" of Celsus sayings??
Didn`t he get enough answers from ORIGEN alone???
But of course in your book you distort ORIGEN`s sayings relentlessly! ARE READERS AWARE THAT WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT CELSUS COMES FROM ORIGEN`S WRITINGS??
ARE READERS AWARE ABOUT THE TRUE VIEWS, OPINIONS AND ARGUMENTS OF ORIGEN EXPRESSED IN HIS OWN WRITINGS NAMED "AGAINST CELSUS"!!??? So, before i read more reviews praising this "masterpiece of lies" i challenge people at least to read ORIGEN
If you are still blind, try to remember when was the last time you were in a difficult situation (eg disease) and said a prayer JESUS LORD FORGIVE ME AND SAVE ME!! PS1: TRUTH IS LIKE THE SUNLIGHT! NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, YOU CAN NEVER HIDE IT! PS2: NO COURT OF JUSTICE GAVE A VERDICT BY LISTENING ONLY THE PROSECUTOR PS3: DON`T EVEN DARE TO MENTION AGAIN GREEK FILOSOPHERS SAYINGS IF YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA OF WHAT THEY REALLY SAID AND WHAT THEY MEANT
Rating: 
Summary: Genuine Seeker of Truth
Review: This book will save you thousands of hours and researching hundreds of books worth of truthful seeking the discrepencies about the MAN from Galilee, it will help you discern the truth from the convolusions in your Bible even.
Rating:
Summary: This book changed my life
Review: There is really nothing I can say to give this book the credit that it deserves, but I will say this; if you are a Christian, or even if you are not, make this your "bible buddy". Don't be caught with a Bible, without this. This book deserves more credit than the Bible could ever imagine deserving, partly because it isn't based on pure lies (BIBLE!!!!!!!!), and mostly because it is a much more deserving book for someone's attention to be placed. Learn the real truth; you deserve knowing what the Christian Church has been covering up since the beggining.
Rating:
Summary: It changed my life!
Review: I was a Christian all my life (25 years) I was devout and worshiped Jesus, until I read this book (+ their follow-up 'Jesus & The Lost Goddess').
It took me about 6 months of careful study (I nearly threw the book away thinking it was blasphemous!) but luckily I didn't and I couldn't get past the overwhelming documentation that there were many other stories in different cultures before the 'time of Christ' all saying the same thing as the Jesus story. But these were considered allegorical myths.
I assumed of course that 'well they were myths but the Jesus story was real.' The book explained in incredible detail that there is actually ZERO evidence for Jesus' historical exsitance! I did some research outside of the book to check out their claims and I found and that it was true!
I felt as though my wife had been cheating on me for years and lying to me! Indeed if such an event would happen I would rather know the truth than carry on with the blind belief that she's faithfull, even though people say they have photos of her with the other bloke!
That is exactly what this book is, conclusive evidence that the Jesus story was nothing more than an allegorical myth, that doesn't mean to say that makes it any less of spiritual importance, no, even more so, because it helps bring the realisation of (as Paul spoke about) 'the Christ within YOU'.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting parallels with many flaws
Review: Freke and Gandy present evidence to support their theory that the Christ Jesus that Western civilization came to believe in was a creation of pagan mythology blending various rites, beliefs, and mythological stories. They demonstrate the remarkable number of parallels to the Jesus we find in the New Testament to pagan mythologies that preceded or co-existed with him. There are definitely an astonishing number of them that are worthy of significant investigation and consideration. However, this book is generally poorly written. The writing style presents lists of similarities, incomplete quotations of outside sources, and assumed linkages followed by exclamation points. The authors are certain they are uncovering a vast conspiracy here and wish to evoke a sense of complete shock on the part of the reader. Initially this didn't bother me as I assumed that this style would give way to more thorough scholarship and explanation. It never did and I grew weary of the logical errors, jumps to conclusions, and incessant use of exclamation points. This book is also riddled with logical fallacies, particularly causal fallacies. The post hoc fallacy, which posits that since one event follows another then the former caused the latter is committed extensively. Another is the false analogy where there are multiple comparisons between different pagan mythologies and the story of Christ that are taken piecemeal and assumed that the former was the source of the latter. However, on examination, the individual pagan mythologies in total bear little resemblance to the New Testament. The complexity of the birth of early Christianity and the subsequent build-up of the New Testament myth cannot be compared piecemeal to individual pagan mythologies that assume causal linkage. Christianity began as a Jewish sect that because of political and personal forces developed into a full religion that was then layered with mythological elements. The authors fail to recognize the complex religious, political, and social environment that this occurred in and essentially ignore these as unimportant outside factors. In addition, any careful examination of Christian origins requires investigation into the personalities involved in its birth. This book probes the mind only of Paul and that incompletely. If you like sensationalist conspiracy theories, this is the book for you. If you are looking for a careful and scholarly examination of Christian origins, skip this one.
Rating:
Summary: Truth revealed
Review: Easy to read and understand, this a a great scholarly study of a historical Jesus from a nuetral point of view. The fact that Jesus is a myth is nothing new (anybody that has spent an hour or more researching knows there is no evidence at all). The proof offered is both scholastic and entertaining. A fun and informative read..what books should be!
Rating:
Summary: I Liked the Book Very Much
Review: I am no scholar, I don't even have and education above 12th grade. I picked up this book in a book store. I wasn't looking for anything even on this subject matter, but the title caught my attention. I believed till read the book that the Bible was the truth and inspired by God for mankind. Well after reading it, I read their other book "Jesus And The Lost Goddess". Well then it lead to reading "The Christ Conspiracy, and 101 Myths of the Bible". Basically it opened my mind to explore these concepts. I would not have likely understood something that read like a text book, so I think this book is good for those of us who like to read and explore life in general. I think books about serious subject matters need to be readable by anyone. Scholars aren't the only readers out there. I'm most thankful it was written in a way the average person can understand without straining.
Rating:
Summary: Throwing the baby out with the bathwater
Review: It's not a scholarly work, but don't let that put you off reading THE JESUS MYSTERIES. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy have done their homework, including some 90 pages of footnotes to document the evidence amassed by the most recent generation of scholars. So, for those of you put off by the sensationalist packaging: swallow your pride. There's more to this book than appearances might suggest. Like any paperback mystery worth its salt, and despite its fairly obscure subject matter, THE JESUS MYSTERIES is a real page turner. Freke and Gandy take you back to the Hellenistic world of the Mediterranean in the First Century CE. Through an examination of the morphological similarities between the pagan mystery cults and the religion of the early Christians, they construct a convincing argument that Christianity was more Greek than Jewish in its origins (not such a stretch when you recall that the original language of the New Testament was Greek) and that the Gnostics, far from being the heretics depicted in orthodox lore, were the actual founders of the movement. Indeed, the 1945 discovery of the Gnostic gospels in a cave near Nag Hammadi in Egypt has challenged many an orthodox conception of the founding of the Christian church. Even without these texts, however, the pattern of correspondences between the dying and resurrecting god-man of pagan spirituality (Osiris-Dionysus) and the Christ figure of Jesus, occurred to this reader years ago while taking a college course in ancient mythologies. As long as they confine themselves to elucidating current scholarship on the mystery cults and the Gnostics, Freke and Gandy are safe in charted waters. The unfortunate thing about THE JESUS MYSTERIES is that after establishing such a credible case for the Gnostic character of earliest Christianity, the authors insist on advancing the foolish hypothesis that Jesus was not a historical person. By throwing the baby out with the bathwater in this fashion, Freke and Gandy become the very reductionists and literalists they decry among the orthodox. Sadly, the mainstream readers who seem to be the target audience, will likely abandon ship at this point. Still, I found enough of value in this book that I may read it a second time (and I've already bought the sequel, JESUS AND THE LOST GODDESS). "There is one river of Truth which receives tributaries from every side," wrote Clement of Alexandria. Freke and Gandy have contributed their stream in good faith.
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