The Mythological And Political Origins Of Christianity
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The Mythological and Political Origins of Christianity by David J.P Haasbroek Pdf
Previous research about Jesus was confined to Israel only. Researchers did so because they took it for granted that Christianity had begun on Jewish soil only. Therefore the lacking information of the gospels forced researchers to conclude that Jesus was mythical, and not historical. This conclusion was due to the many Old Testament quotations that attribute to Jesus in the New Testament. The Old Testament deals with Jewish history and the myths of the ancient world with whom the Jews have come into contact. On that basis, any nation can write an overview of its history and then use the myths of the ancient world to explain the intervention of gods in its history. Likewise, evangelists, several centuries later, have also been able to associate Jesus, an orthodox Jewish king, with the myths and politics of their times.
The Myth of a Christian Nation by Gregory A. Boyd Pdf
The church was established to serve the world with Christ-like love, not to rule the world. It is called to look like a corporate Jesus, dying on the cross for those who crucified him, not a religious version of Caesar. It is called to manifest the kingdom of the cross in contrast to the kingdom of the sword. Whenever the church has succeeded in gaining what most American evangelicals are now trying to get – political power – it has been disastrous both for the church and the culture. Whenever the church picks up the sword, it lays down the cross. The present activity of the religious right is destroying the heart and soul of the evangelical church and destroying its unique witness to the world. The church is to have a political voice, but we are to have it the way Jesus had it: by manifesting an alternative to the political, “power over,” way of doing life. We are to transform the world by being willing to suffer for others – exercising “power under,” not by getting our way in society – exercising “power over.”
The Rise and Fall of the Christian Myth by Burton L. Mack Pdf
This book is the culmination of a lifelong scholarly inquiry into Christian history, religion as a social institution, and the role of myth in the history of religions. Mack shows that religions are essentially mythological and that Christianity in particular has been an ever-changing mythological engine of social formation, from Roman times to its distinct American expression in our time. The author traces the cultural influence of the Christian myth that has persisted for sixteen hundred years but now should be much less consequential in our social and cultural life, since it runs counter to our democratic ideals. We stand at a critical impasse: badly splintered by conflicting groups pursuing their own social interests, a binding common myth needs to be established by renewing a truly cohesive national and international story rooted in our democratic and egalitarian origins, committed to freedom, equality, and vital human values.
Myth and the Christian Nation by Burton L. Mack Pdf
America is widely regarded as the ultimate "Christian Nation." Religious language has always been at the forefront of American politics but this has increased since the events of 9/11. 'Myth and the Christian Nation' presents a startling analysis of how and why Christianity and national identity have been woven together in recent American political discourse. Drawing on examples of religious myth-making across the ancient world 'Myth and the Christian Nation' brings the weight of history to bear on America today, a place where myth, monotheism, sovereignty and power can be harnessed together in the service of specific interests. The book invites readers to rethink the role of religion in the construction of social democracy and to see America afresh.
The Origins of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by John Pickard Pdf
There has never been a more important time for a study of the social, economic and political origins of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, three important world religions which share a common root. This book takes as its starting point the idea that gods, angels, miracles and other supernatural phenomena do not exist in the real world and therefore cannot explain the origins of these faiths. It looks instead at the material conditions at appropriate periods in antiquity and the social and economic forces at work, and it examines the historicity of key figures like Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. This is a unique book which draws on the research, knowledge and expertise of hundreds of historians, archaeologists and scholars, to create a synthesis that is completely coherent and at the same time is based on real-world social conditions. It is a book by a non-believer for other non-believers, and it will be a revelatory read, even to those already of an atheist, agnostic or secularist persuasion.
The Historical Jesus, and the Mythical Christ by Gerald Massey Pdf
Redefining the roots of Christianity via Egypt, this peculiar book, by British poet and Egyptologist GERARD MASSEY (1828-1907), will intrigue and delight readers of history, religion, and mythology. Massey connects the story of Jesus with far older tales, exploring. . pre-Christian Christology . Persian revelation . Horus as Ichthys, the Christ . Khunsu the expeller of Demons as Christ . Hermetic Sermon on the Mount . mysteries of the Solar God . the two dates of the Crucifixion . the seven women who fed Christ identified . Gospel of Truth, Egyptian . false teaching and the coming end of Equinoctial Christolatry . and much more.
Christ and the Caesars by Helmut Brunar,Byron Marchant Pdf
Nearly thirty years after Bruno Bauer published his 1877 book, Christus und die Caesaren...(Christ and the Caesars...), Albert Schweitzer left the Lutheran ministry in his native Alsace-Lorraine to study medicine in Paris (1905 at age 30). In 1911 he earned a Doctorate in Medicine and two years later (1913) he and his wife set off to establish a hospital in Lambarene, now Gabon, West Central Africa. He had given chapter eleven of his 1906 book (Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung; English: The Quest of the Historical Jesus) the title "Bruno Bauer." In that chapter, Dr. Schweitzer had concluded with this statement: ..".his [Bruno Bauer's] work...is the ablest and most complete collection of the difficulties of the Life of Jesus which is anywhere to be found...The shaft which he had driven into the mountain...laid bare once more the veins of ore which he had struck...for his contemporaries he was a mere eccentric...But his eccentricity concealed a penetrating insight. No one else had as yet grasped with the same completeness the idea that primitive Christianity and early Christianity were not merely the direct outcome of the preachings of Jesus, not merely a teaching put into practice, but more, much more, since to the experience of which Jesus was the subject there allied itself [with] the experience of the world-soul at a time when its body-humanity under the Roman Empire-lay in the throes of death...Bauer transferred it to the historical plane and found the 'body of Christ' in the Roman Empire," The Quest of the Historical Jesus, translated by W. Montgomery, B.A., B.D. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1911), second English edition, pp. 159-160, with a Preface by, F. C. Burkitt, M.A., D.D. What, according to Albert Schweitzer, were the ..".bare...veins of ore..." that Bruno Bauer had struck about Jesus' history (and the New Testament)? Chances are that it can be found in the last chapter (VIII) of Christ and the Caesars(Bloomington IN: Xlibris, 2015): Chapter VIII The Completion of New Testament Literature A Great History and a Late Work of Fiction "We have now seen unfold, in a series of images, the fate of imperial rule, nationalities and social classes during the first two centuries of our calendar. As diverse as the figures were who acted before our eyes, they were still just shells hiding one and the same fact. If on the one hand already at that time the friends of tradition saw the removal of the citizens from their political and national efforts only as a violent act of the new Lord of the world, so we also recognized on the other hand in imperial rule the consequence and image of an emancipation of minds from their limited daily tasks, and a political form that corresponded with the ideal of a world community during that time. Personal freedom within the newly opened world-wide coherence was the heartfelt wish of that discredited time, which, in the history books since the days of Tacitus, has been decried as decayed and lost. The immaterial goods which Greece had produced in a similar time of political decline filled the political void; in Rome and Alexandria they united around the center of the Jewish Law, and Seneca gave the new associations the leader in the image of the one who would perfect mankind and who was eventually able to join in battle with the powerful ruler in Rome," Christ and the Caesars, pp. 365-
Religion, Race, Multiculturalism, and Everyday Life by Christopher Williams Pdf
Religion, Race, Multiculturalism, and Everyday Life takes a spirited conceptualist look back into the history of our development. The book sets out to explore the ways in which a punditry of human equality continues to lock in unassailably assured logical postures, enabled by the historically intertwined roles played by power and the passage of time, towards the invention and sustenance of social truth. Religion, race, and multiculturalism have been written about many times, and from a variety of academic, discipline-specific perspectives. Nonetheless, these social issues remain ever relevant to any sincere bid to understand the inegalitarian aspects of modern society. Religion, Race, Multiculturalism, and Everyday Life was primarily written with serious students of philosophy, sociology, the humanities, and history in mind. The author contends that we should never be too afraid to explore contentious or difficult philosophical and social questions.
In The Myth of Persecution, Candida Moss, a leading expert on early Christianity, reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs and how the dangerous legacy of a martyrdom complex is employed today to silence dissent and galvanize a new generation of culture warriors. According to cherished church tradition and popular belief, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the fourth century, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. These saints, Christianity's inspirational heroes, are still venerated today. Moss, however, exposes that the "Age of Martyrs" is a fiction—there was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still taught in Sunday school classes, celebrated in sermons, and employed by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get Christians and, rather, embrace the consolation, moral instruction, and spiritual guidance that these martyrdom stories provide.
Hermeneutics, Politics, and the History of Religions by Christian Wedemeyer,Wendy Doniger Pdf
This volume comprises papers presented at a conference marking the 50th anniversary of Joachim Wach's death, and the centennial of Mircea Eliade's birth. Its purpose is to reconsider both the problematic, separate legacies of these two major twentieth-century historians of religions, and the bearing of these two legacies upon each other. Shortly after Wach's death in 1955, Eliade succeeded him as the premiere historian of religions at the University of Chicago. As a result, the two have been associated with each other in many people's minds as the successive leaders of the so-called "Chicago School" in the history of religions. In fact, as this volume makes clear, there never was a monolithic Chicago School. Although Wach reportedly referred to Eliade as the most astute historian of religions of the day; the two never met, and their approaches to the study of religions differed significantly. Several dominant issues run through the essays collected here: the relationship between the two men's writings and their lives, and in Eliade's case, the relationship between his political commitments and his writings in fiction, history of religions, and autobiography. Both men's contributions to the field continue to provoke controversy and debate, and this volume sheds new light on these controversies and what they reveal about these two `scholars' legacies.
