Rating: 
Summary: Well-Written with Many Irrefutable Points
Review: This book presents an irrefutable case that the story of Jesus Christ as told in the canonical Gospels (i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) is merely a collection of older pagan savior myths, such as Horus (Egypt), Mithra (Persia), Christna (India), etc. She not only shows that the various aspects of the biography of "Jesus" existed in earlier religions (such as the virgin birth, the transmutation of water into wine, etc.), but she shows where they come from (sun worship). Indeed, in discussing this issue with modern-day Christians, and in reading the writings of the early church fathers (those from the fourth century or earlier), they have only one explanation for the fact that the biography of Jesus belongs to so many other religious figures. They say this is all the doing of the devil, who, centuries in advance, anticipated Christianity and sought to mock it. In fact, some Christians I know attribute to the devil an unlimited power to not only create deceptions, but to also give them physical substance. Only in this way can a person maintain a dogman no matter how much evidence is presented to the contrary. But I digress... This book is sometimes criticised as not being "scholarly," but to the extent this complaint has any validity at all, it only means that it's not boring or dispassionate. But this in no way takes away from the quality of the information. Imagine serious archaeological and theological facts presented by Howard Stern... The most unique contribution of this book is that it asks a question that everyone else has missed: Since this story of a resurrected savior existed in every culture on earth (including the ancient Americas), then does this mean it has a common origin? Perhaps in an ancient civlisation? Acharaya even attempts to answer this as well. Of course, it's too much for one book, but perhaps one day someone will prevail upon her to write a sequel...
Rating:
Summary: The Christ Conspiracy
Review: ... This material is for broad-minded individuals only. Acharya S removes the scab from Christianity to expose what has been the biggest hoax that has paralyzed mankind for centuries. Fear and guilt is the mechanism that has been used to control the population with the priesthood being the "middleman" with the direct pipeline to God to ensure your eternal life. This book is filled with pages of verifiable historical data as opposed to the faith and belief MO of the Church. It points out that the documentation used to confirm Jesus existence is spurious at best and the church fathers had an agenda to enslave and dupe its followers. How can you ignore that what is supposed to divine revelation has appeared in numerous savior gods and religions, some thousands of years before the Christ. This book is filled with such astounding information, but Acharya's style is such that it reads like a Tom Clancy novel. I couldn't put the book down and I went through it so quickly that I'll have to read it again to capture more of the nuggets she dispenses. For her maiden voyage AS has shown that she is a force that will have to be reckoned with with for years to come and that she is one the great freethinkers of this generation. I'll conclude with a dare to anyone to approach this work with an open mind and the FACTS will change your life for the better. Remember, the truth will set you free.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: It's about time someone came down on Christianity because it's a historic fact that Christianity was FORCED on ethnic peoples of the world. It was nothing more than an enslavement tool and the best one yet! It should ring a bell in your head when you research history and find out that the same peoples (Europeans) who forced ethnic peoples (Africans and Indians) to follow Christianity are the same peoples who tortured and murdered them. Some Christians! Wake up people! It's because of Christianity that many ethnic peoples are still slaves in their minds. Research your true roots!
Rating: 
Summary: Great concept. Awful presentation.
Review: Acharya S, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold (Adventures Unlimited, 1999) Okay, I tried. I've crossed swords with the author before on some of the very issues that show a blind spot in this book (the section on Evemerism is especially weak, for example; more on that below), but in many cases, her response ended up being "read my book," which then hadn't been released yet. Okay, so I got around to reading the book, or at least trying to read the book. The Christ Conspiracy may well be on the most important subject to be written about in the last two thousand years. And what is here is well-researched, even if the source material isn't always of top quality. But the presentation is absolutely horrible. The book is just on the wrong side of unreadable; it seems almost as if it were written for the purpose of being presented as a textbook (the authors of which often seems if they're being deliberately obtuse). Interesting, this, because Acharya has a style about her that reaches for readability in today's culture; her diction is appealing to gen-X and younger readers, she's witty, a formidable opponent in debate, and simply quite likable. None of which actually comes out in her writing here; what we get is a four-hundred-page rant (well, okay, I only make it through two hundred fifty pages, but saw no reason to believe it would be any different to the end) that's dry as dust. It makes Bjorn Lomborg (The Skeptical Environmentalist) look like Stephen King. What is most glaring, however, are the places where questions are raised that Acharya either refuses to answer or never thought of answering. I know the latter is not the case for at least one of these questions; she hammers away at evemerist interpretations of Christ by setting up a straw man, saying that anyone to whom evemerism attaches itself must have at least some of the characteristics that get exaggerated, as in the case of Paul Bunyan. Such is not the case. Reader's of Chinua Achebe's novel A Man of the People will easily see through this sleight-of-hand. For a real-life example, try Johnny Appleseed...or, perhaps, Jesus Christ. Such inconsistencies in question-answering are common throughout the book. Worse yet, a number of her sources have either been discredited to the point where even the atheists don't consider them worthwhile anymore or are of questionable character in the first place. None of the above is to say the topic itself, whether Jesus Christ truly existed or not, is not worth researching. The opposite, in fact; Christianity is an obvious amalgamation of earlier religions, and Jesus Christ may well have been a mythical figure, something the Gnostics have been claiming for almost two millennia without anyone really listening to them. But such an important topic needs far more solid legs in serious debate than will be found in this book. You can do far better. First book fed to my starving dustbunnies in 2004. (zero)
Rating:
Summary: Jesus never existed? You've got to be kidding!
Review: The Roman historian Tacitus in Book 15, Chapter 44 of his "Annals of Rome" talks about the great fire in Rome during Nero's reign. He has this to say about the fraudulent Roman state religion of Christianity: "Consequently, to get rid of the report [that Nero had ordered the fire be set], Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischevious superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular." That evidence alone is sufficient to establish Jesus' existence as good history. Proceeding from the fact that a Palestinian religious leader called Christ was crucified by the Roman governor Pilate, you may make whatever you will of him. You may choose any one of the horns of C.S. Lewis' trilemma: "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord." But no serious scholar can deny that Jesus lived. For a thorough review of the early non-Christian evidence for Jesus, read F.F. Bruce's "Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament."
Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: It's about time someone exposed Christianity because it's a historic fact that Christianity was FORCED on many peoples of the world. It seemed more like an enslavement tool rather than a religion. This has to be the best religious conspiracy book to ever come out! It's very detailed and the author backs up every statement.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Achievement
Review: I have never been as satisfied with any other book as I am with this one. After about thirty pages or so I had already gotten about as much out of it as I had expected before purchasing it.
This book seems to be as good as currency.
A friend borrowed it from me and before getting a quarter of the way through it he decided to trade me cash instead.
I now intend to purchase two more.
I first found out about this book on infidelguy internet radio.
Rating:
Summary: Debunking Xianity in one fell swoop...
Review: There is a fundamental problem with Christianity. One so bewilderingly unimaginable as to have remained almost entirely unplumbed, save by the most intelligent few of our recent history. This simple fact is: Christianity is obsolete. To wit:
"The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful."
Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire And it was due (at least in part) to said magistrates' very realization that the 'useful tool' of the Holy Catholic Church of Rome came into being. It was the 'perfect' blending of "church and state", the establishment of a national religion that encompassed aspects of many of the popular religions during that time. For some time now, though, Christianity has outlived its original purpose: to establish a 'unified church' within the then religiously scattered, impossibly philosophically segmented Roman Empire under one all-encompassing religion. Thus, Christianity has been rendered inutile to modern-day humanity. In fact, for anyone to continue to 'believe' in any religion, including and especially one such as Christianity, in light of the well-established facts surrounding its foundation and history (both past and present), is tantamount to that person choosing to cling to a psychological pathology equal to dementia praecox or multiple personality disorder or worse. There has never been, in all of recorded history, a bloodier, more vile and despicable chronicle associated with any religion than that of Christianity. Suffice to say that Christianity holds the record for the most human lives folded, spindled, and mutilated in the name of God in recorded history. Now, if that doesn't want to make you take a screaming leap from Noah's Ark, then I humbly direct your attention to the book entitled The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. Acharya S (a 'pseudonym' meaning "teacher") has written a book that I can unabashedly refer to as 'one of, if not the, most mind-bending bodies of information ever compiled on the subject of the myth known as Christianity'. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that, to the Christian and non-Christian alike, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold is, by far, a more important book than the one many folks refer to glibly as the Good Book itself. That may sound like an outrageously haughty claim. Very well. Let us put that claim to the test, shall we? I challenge you, Joe Reader, to read it, cover to cover, word for word. My wager is that you won't make it all the way through the 417+ pages of overwhelmingly erudite information contained in this book; just as you, the average reader, has never made it all the way through the Holy Bible. If you are like me, you are terminally intimidated by the very idea of reading the Bible in its seemingly endlessly mind-numbing entirety. But then, reading the Bible is only half the battle. The problem that most Christians share in common is this: though they may read the Holy Bible, they never really truly understand it. To read the Bible without knowing how to read it, how to interpret it, how to work through the thousands of errors of translation and interpolation, the resultant blatant self-contradictions and the layers upon layers of symbolism, metaphor and allegory, is a most outrageous waste of time at best. Not only has Acharya S read the Holy Bible in its entirety (in the languages in which the texts were originally written), but she has also armed herself with the knowledge necessary to accurately interpret it. This fact only serves to bolster her qualification to comment critically on it. In order to thoroughly and satisfactorily examine the Holy Bible, one must not only painstakingly study the Bible in every conceivable aspect of its detail but also do the same with all other related texts that hold something in common, even remotely so, with that thing in question. In this case, one must look outside the Bible in order to compare and contrast, poke and prod, question and ruminate and then, finally, discover the truth about its foundation, the reason for its very existence - the religion of Christianity. This is a feat most Christians have never accomplished. They might have read it, but they just haven't understood it. The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold is the single most effective antidote to Christianity ever written. It is definitely not the book your pastor wants you to read. There is nothing I could write here in a review that could hope to do this ineffably profound work justice. It is neither magniloquent nor is it written for the simple-minded. Many will find the book daunting to read, almost text-like, not because of the vocabulary or the concepts presented but simply because of the very fact that Acharya S has poured so much information into it that it is definitely not to be taken in large bites. It is heavy at times, like wading upstream in a river in flood. It is not a casual read and it shouldn't be, considering the subject matter. On the contrary, I recommend taking it in slowly, like a rich liqueur, taking the time to savor each point, paragraph or page, in order to grok its profundity completely, to get its full benefit. From a scholar's point of view, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, is a challenging and respectable contribution to philosophical academia and, hence, a very rewarding read. From a layperson's perspective, it is nothing less than a wakeless revelation whose time has definitely come. Scholar or layperson, regardless, it will change you. So be prepared. Amen.
Rating:
Summary: A monumental and much needed book at this time
Review: In an age where religions of all kinds encourage their various flocks to be more and more exclusive, judgemental, and (sometimes) downright lethal towards unbelievers, this is an important work. To quote John Lennon, imagine there were no religion. What if all people simply interacted with each other as equal human beings, with ethics and honesty being our sole guide? What if our sole world religion amounted to this: Treat everyone as you would be treated, and love others as you love yourself? Believe it or not, those words weren't spoken by Christ, but rather by more ancient sources. "The Christ Conspiracy" came at a significant time for me in my own spiritual journey. Call me a "Recovering Southern Baptist." I finally became disenchanted with the religion I grew up in and dared to allow myself to question EVERYTHING. In searching for ultimate truths, I only had a few rules. First among them was that nothing would be off limits, I would simply read and follow where the data took me. Eventually, after reading Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll, I came to this work. Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I'm free at last. The fealty and downright slavery I was in to the Christian church was lifted, and I saw, like the proverbial scales falling from Paul's eyes, the lies, the mendacity, and the control I had been in chains to. I invite any open minded reader to open "The Christ Conspiracy" and see if you have the same epiphany that I and many others have had. All you have to lose is your chains. Since then, the God I've come to know is a more gentle and loving God, a spiritual entity that all we humans came from and will one day return to. I've gotten rid of all the clutter and interference that Christianity has tried to put in the way of my conscious contact with God. The Christian church was built on lies, pious frauds, blood, control, and pain. In the 21st Century, we should get beyond that if we are to grow as a species and not destroy ourselves. I'm now free of the Church and the used religion salesmen who run the silly thing. You can be free too. This book, "The Christ Conspiracy", is a good place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Caesar, Christ, and a Roman Chronicler
Review: The Roman historian Tacitus in Book 15, Chapter 44 of his "Annals of Rome" wrote of the great fire in Rome during Nero's reign. He had this to say about the fraudulent Roman state religion of Christianity: Nero, who was suspected of setting the fire, needed a scapegoat. In order to point the finger of fault in another direction, he "fastened the guilt" on a group which was "hated for their abominations" -- Christians. Tacitus went on to say that the group took its name from a man called Christus who was executed in Judea during the reign of Tiberius by the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. Tacitus added that Christus' execution checked the "mischievous superstition" temporarily, but it sprang up again and even spread to Rome, where "all things hideous and shameful" eventually come.That evidence alone is sufficient to 1. Establish Jesus' existence as good history, and 2. Call into serious question the thesis that Christianity was created by members of various secret societies, mystery schools and religions in order to unify the Roman Empire under one state religion. Based on sound historical evidence, you are free to make of Jesus what you will. You may choose any of the horns of C.S. Lewis' trilemma: "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord," but you cannot seriously deny his existence. For a thorough review of the early non-Christian evidence for Jesus, read F.F. Bruce's "Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament." Interestingly, the author deals with Tacitus' notice by peremptorily dismissing it as a pious fraud. The only reason advanced for this dismissal is the weak argument that, although the early Church fathers cited to various passages in Tacitus, they never referred to his mention of Christ. There is an old saying in forensic science: "negative evidence proves nothing." The fact that the Church fathers didn't mention Tacitus' notice doesn't mean it wasn't there. There's good reason for them not to mention it. They could hardly be expected to call attention such an unflattering account of early Christians. If some later interpolator were going to insert a fraudulent passage, they would have put something in a little more laudatory -- something along the lines of the pious reworking of Josephus' notice of Jesus. The author's dismissal of the Tacitus passage as fraudulent puts me in mind of another old saying: "When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When they're both against you, slander the other side."
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