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Rating: 
Summary: A unique approach by a gifted scholar.
Review: Burton Mack, who also authored "Who Wrote The New Testament", has attempted neither to find the historical Jesus nor to reinterpret the new testament based on any newly found exegetical clues. Instead Mack has taken on, in this latest work, the daunting task of explaining the social structure of the world in which the new testament was written and how it affected and influenced its writers. Accordingly, Mack takes into account the general influence of the disruption to society by the rise of the Greek and Roman empires, and specifically the influence of the destruction of the Jewish Temple State. These factors, Mack asserts, led to a social need to invent an entirely new theology that could compete in the pagan Roman world of late antiquity, and at the same time accrue to itself the extensive history of the Jews and their religion. It was a daring enterprise that would in time embrace nearly all of europe and the americas, and would, starting with Constantine's endorsement, systematically bury any competing theologies or theosophies where it resided.Using modern anthropological and social psychology insights as a backdrop, along with his own extensive professional knowledge of the new testament, Mack succeeds in devising a very credible explanation of a mythology that was capable of raising an obscure Jewish sect into a world-changing power and, as Mack points out, that power is still very much in evidence when one considers the popularity of such phenomena as creationism
in modern day america. To that I would add the remarkable staying power of fundamentalism in the face of modern biblical scholarship If you enjoy reading painstakingly detailed and extemely well researched books about biblical origins, Burton Mack's "The Christian Myth" will be hard for you to put down.
Rating:
Summary: A unique approach by a gifted scholar.
Review: Burton Mack, who also authored "Who Wrote The New Testament", has attempted neither to find the historical Jesus nor to reinterpret the new testament based on any newly found exegetical clues. Instead Mack has taken on, in this latest work, the daunting task of explaining the social structure of the world in which the new testament was written and how it affected and influenced its writers. Accordingly, Mack takes into account the general influence of the disruption to society by the rise of the Greek and Roman empires, and specifically the influence of the destruction of the Jewish Temple State. These factors, Mack asserts, led to a social need to invent an entirely new theology that could compete in the pagan Roman world of late antiquity, and at the same time accrue to itself the extensive history of the Jews and their religion. It was a daring enterprise that would in time embrace nearly all of europe and the americas, and would, starting with Constantine's endorsement, systematically bury any competing theologies or theosophies where it resided. Using modern anthropological and social psychology insights as a backdrop, along with his own extensive professional knowledge of the new testament, Mack succeeds in devising a very credible explanation of a mythology that was capable of raising an obscure Jewish sect into a world-changing power and, as Mack points out, that power is still very much in evidence when one considers the popularity of such phenomena as creationism
in modern day america. To that I would add the remarkable staying power of fundamentalism in the face of modern biblical scholarship If you enjoy reading painstakingly detailed and extemely well researched books about biblical origins, Burton Mack's "The Christian Myth" will be hard for you to put down.
Rating: 
Summary: Just my opinion
Review: Well, I must say, I was quite disappointed with this book. I was hoping to read what actualy happened and how Christian Myths were created, but instead the book talks about theories and examines them so deeply that it would totally lose me; it felt like a really boring text book that quotes other books and people in every line of the book. I am an avid hostory reader and in particular love European hiistory, but this book was really bad. Half way through the book, I stopped reading and picked up Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King, whatta book. I also read his other book, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling (see my reviews).
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