Heretical musings on religion and culture from a literary scholar
A collection of older articles on Christ Myth theory.
"Many were led astray by reading the allegorical contents of the scriptures literally in the method of the Pharisees and Sadducees" Eusebius, Ecclestical History I believed in Santa Claus until I was nearly thirteen years old. Like my friends, I'd been brought up to think of him as a real person, who made his rounds on a sled pulled by magic reindeer. One day in my parent's kitchen, my best friend told me the truth. His ...
Finally we get to the crucial question: if Jesus was mythological, how and why did people ever start to imagine that he was a historical person? The answer is accidentally preserved in the biblical "Acts of the Apostles" and in the letters of Paul. The New Testament is arranged to appear chronological: the four gospels present the story of Jesus' ministry, Acts of the Apostles narrates the adventures of the disciples, and the letters of Paul ...
A lot of the articles I've provided so far have been background information, which is indispensable for first becoming aware of the possibility of the mythological Jesus, and then developing the ability to recognize him within the available evidence. I recognize that the material I've provided so far, while educational and fascinating, may still be dismissed as conjecture or fabrication by those who refuse to believe in the mythological Jesus Christ. However, as we approach the ...
In the last article we discovered how many creations myths include the icon of a serpent which divided the polarities - an idea inspired by the constellation Draco spinning over the north pole. In this article, I want to focus on the philosophy of expansion and retraction - how religious traditions portrayed the "fall" with holy icons and symbols, and how they developed theories of salvation as a means to return to the original unity. This ...
In the last section we examined how the basic biographical details of Jesus Christ can be traced to an ancient story about the sun. For many Christians, however, the biography of Jesus is not the important part anyway - it is his role as mediator, his divine sonship, and his sacrifice for our sins that sum up the real purpose and message of Christ's ministry. These are powerful spiritual ideas which cannot be removed even ...
Before King Herod tried to find and kill the infant Christ, who was smuggled safely into Egypt, a Pharaoh tried to kill the infant Moses, who also survived. Both returned to triumph over their adversaries. Before either of them came Horus and many others, all based on the sun myth. In the most recent adaptation of this story, the infant Harry Potter survived an attack from his enemy Voldemort, went into hiding, and likewise came ...
In this article I will provide a basic overview of sun-mythology, including the battle between light and dark, the birth, death and resurrection of a savior, and the triumph over darkness. Next I will give some contemporary examples to show how deeply, and yet unrecognized, the sun story influences our lives, and finally, I will prove that Jesus Christ shares more than an accidental similarity with the story of the sun. The study of astro-mythology, or ...
Conventional wisdom views Jesus Christ as being a novel and revolutionary person, whose message of love and kindness was rejected by the wicked Jews and Pagans, because they were evil and stupid. This is Christian propaganda of the worst kind, and absolutely untrue; the reason that many could not accept Jesus Christ, was because they saw him as an obvious copy of Pagan spiritual tradition. Those who argue against the historical Jesus point out that ...
"To the question, then, On what grounds do you deny that such a person as Jesus Christ existed as a man? the proper answer is, Because his existence as a man has, from the earliest day on which it can be shown to have been asserted, been as earnestly and strenuously denied, and that, not by enemies of the Christian name, or unbelievers of the Christian faith, but by the most intelligent, most learned, most ...
The road to the mythical Christ leads from an examination of the historical Jesus. As long as there is sufficiently credible evidence for the historical Christ, then of course the idea of claiming Jesus to have been a mythological figure is ridiculous. Research into the historical Christ, from a brief internet search to an in depth comparison of scholarly texts, always brings to light the same handful of historical passages, which have been used for ...
Before we look at the evidence, it is important to look at the nature of the conflict. People have been arguing about the historical nature of Jesus since the very beginning of the Christian era. That this conflict exists at all is a clue that the evidence for the historical Jesus is lacking vitality. In this article we will briefly explain the "debate" over the historical nature of Jesus Christ, and the reasons why Jesus' ...
This article explains that believing in Jesus Christ is very different from believing that Jesus Christ was historical. Christianity's claim of divine revelation is a claim of intervention into history; therefore it is not really a place for faith. History really happened, one way, and there is evidence to discover how it really went down. Christians' belief in a fictional history is the weakest part of their creed, and always has been. It creates much ...
If you're interested in religious mythology, astrological symbolism, or supernatural folklore, grab my book Gods of Myth and Man. You can go buy it on Amazon.
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