Paradox

I've recently read a book called "The Jesus Mysteries". Despite it being an obvious sensationalist book, I found it to be a very plausible reason for the birth of Christianity as we know it today.

The idea that the gospel messages were a conglomoration of ancient mythology designed to reach out to the Jewsih community during a time of national crisis apparently isn't a new one and has been debated before.
Apparently there followed a theological battle between the gnostics and the literalists and as the years passed the established church, supported by the newly converted Roman empire, gradually eradicated (as best they could) all the gnostic Scriptures and began to write certain fake letters to back up their own theology.

But, while I find this quite convincing, there are a few things that bother me about the theory. Hopefully, those that are either familiar with this theory or the book will be able to help me out in this thread or point me towards other threads (the search seemed to hang when I tried it).

1) The letter of 2 Peter is apparently one of the fake letters. If the church wanted to push their own viewpoint why then did they include 2 Peter 2:4 which seems to support the old view that angels had sex with humans creating a dangerous race of giants on the earth? The book of Enoch also has this myth, but the church did not support that view. Why did they therefore include that in this letter?

2) The arguments in the book seem to weaken considerably when they examined the letters of Paul. They claim that Paul was originally a gnostic, but I'm not so sure if this is an accurate view. If it isn't then perhaps the early church did in fact believe in a literal resurrection of Jesus?

Other than these 2 points, the theory seems highly likely to me. Can anyone help with this?

capnkirk

I will attempt to point you to a thread or two, but I will have to do some searching first. In the meantime, may I point you to a similar, but much better argued book (that is decidedly not sensationalist): Who Wrote the New Testament? The Creation of the Christian Myth by Burton Mack.

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Paradox

Thanks for the tip, I've just ordered it.
I'll look forward to reading the other threads too.

capnkirk

Paradox,

Check out this thread. It is quite a long thread, but most of it is taken up in a comparison between Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle and Mack's Who Wrote the NT? Doherty holds that there was no Jesus at all, that he was a mythical concept from the beginning. Mack holds that the earliest source document (now lost, but reconstructed by scholars), "Q" was the collected sayings of a real person (called Jesus). Both scholars are "Christ mythers", but it is interesting how strongly the (only marginally) differing views of these two authors are debated. Towards the end, it gets very deeply involved in a minutae battle between vorkosigan and bernard_muller...which got so esoteric that it put most of us to sleep, but there is a lot of good info before then. Just working through that thread and the links imbedded in it should keep you busy until your order arrives.


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Al Kafirun

I've never been impressed by the Jewish disguise that was placed on Christianity. I not only think there was no Jesus-figure but that there was never a Christianity. Currently, I'm becoming skeptical that there was ever a messanic Judaism in early orthodoxy. Christianity to me is just a Pagan composite with vaguely Hebrew names.

capnkirk

Thank you for that penetrating insight!

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Al Kafirun

LOL Because you're a JEW, Kyle!

Sorry, the op was a simple observation so I thought I'd be indulgent and whip out my philosophy and see if anybody rested their eyes on it for very long.

GakuseiDon

Paradox, don't trust anything in that book, without verifying it elsewhere. The authors, Freke and Gandy, have (IMO) offer up a load of distortions and half-truths to push their cause. I think that this is easily shown. Worse, they use a "join-the-dots" approach to lead the reader to a conclusion, without actually stating anything.

Two cases in point:

(1) In the "Death of a Godman" section, F&G talk about a dozen or so gods. Tell me: how did any of them die? What does F&G imply about how they die? Also, you've read the book: from reading it, what impression do you have of how Dionysus and Osiris died? (I'll let you know afterwards)

(2) F&G refer to the "Bacchae", a play about Dionysus, quite a bit. From their book, what is the plot of the "Bacchae"? (I'll let you know what the plot is afterwards)

capnkirk

Actually, I don't disagree with you about the authenticity (not) of Xtianity's Judaic roots. I do however think that the earliest level of the "Q" gospel represent the sayings of a real person (not a divinity), so in that respect I am an HJer (just not a JCer). Messianism came to the Hebrews in the aftermath of the disillusionment of the Exile, and Xtianity is the result of the cultural collision between Hellenism and Judaism. What Xtians believe about the origins of the core issue (Jesus' sacrificial death for the sins of the world) is pure myth.

Your post drew a response long on sarcasm and short on substance because that was the tone of your post. IOW, you came in sounding like Cartman. Most of the theists with the courage to debate on this forum won't rise to that kind of bait. It's too obvious that it's just that...bait.

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graymouser

Jesus Mysteries is a decent book from what I can tell (I'm no NT scholar), though I find its tendency to separate religion into "literalists" and "Gnostics" a bit polemical. I've actually been wondering about a sort of hybrid gnostic / Flavian origin for Christianity...basically, the thought that orthodox Christianity grew from a Roman propagandistic hijacking of the Jewish mystery movements in order to form a Rome-friendly pseudo-Jewish religion. But that's probably just wild speculation on my part.

-Wayne