Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? [Paperback]

Morton Smith (Author), Russell Shorto (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1998

Offering readers a new perspective on Jesus, this volume fundamentally challenges the accepted Christian version of Jesus's life, offering today's learned lay reader a fascinating view of the historical Jesus.

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Ulysses Press (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569751552
• ISBN-13: 978-1569751558
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,512,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars maverick scholarship with flawless methodology, June 27, 2000

By 

xaosdog "xaosdog" (Cardiff-by-the-Sea, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (Paperback)

Morton Smith, the author of this book, died while I was pursuing coursework in earliest Christianity at Brown University, so I saw firsthand the effect of his passing on (a set of) his peers, most of whom, it turns out, are believers. Although Smith's views are frightening and sometimes even repugnant to the faithful, his work commands a real (and not always grudging) respect among Christian scholars. Smith's method is heavily comparative, analyzing the four Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus in terms of choice of language and expositional technique, and comparing them to contemporaneous rabbinical and Hellenic writing. Granting a very few premises - such as, that Jesus and his followers did not conceive of themselves as representative of a wholly new historical paradigm, but rather as a part of their own cultural context, a premise quite consistent with the decisions they made in describing themselves and Jesus - the resulting historical account is virtually unassailable, and powerfully compelling. The most controversial aspect of Smith's results is the theory that Jesus thought of himself as a "magician", in the sense that that word was used 2000 years ago in the Levant, in addition to - but very much overlapping with - his roles as a religious teacher and political revolutionary. In conclusion, I can say with confidence that this is one of those books of history which come along only once in a very great while - Guns, Germs, and Steel; Plagues and Peoples; Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs - which leave the reader unshakeably certain that this is how it *must* have been.

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jesus according to Nero, September 10, 2001

By 

Jeffrey Bolden (Princeton, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (Paperback)

For centuries The Secret Gospel of Mark has been a pink elephant in studies of reconstructing the gospel. Without the plethora of strong denials of this document's existence, there would be no reason to suppose it exists, but with these denials one could be led to a "the lady doth protest too much" conclusion. In the 1960's Morton Smith discovered a letter from Saint Clement of Alexandria to one of his followers, regarding the Secret Gospel of Mark. In this letter he corrects certain comments the follower had heard but instructs him not to reveal the existence of this document. What's interesting about these few passages we have from the longer version of Mark is that all of them revolve around quasi-magical practices. In other words was Mark part of a longer work, and the magical material censored out? Since Morton Smith was unlikely to trip over gold again and find more of this lost book, he begins investigating the nature of magical practice in 1st century Palestine using texts like the magical papyri. What did people mean by magic? From this study we are able to understand much more clearly what verses like, Matt 9:34, "It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons ", meant to the speaker which as it turns out is quite different than what they mean to a modern audience. A very good book, I wouldn't recommend it as a first "true life of Jesus" but it makes an excellent contrast to the Crossen, E.P. Sanders school which tries to place Jesus in a fully Jewish context by ignoring everything that doesn't fit.

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exposing the Myth, April 21, 2001

By 

Dennis Fetcho (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (Paperback)

Jesus the Magician is a thoroughly documented and fascinating account of the multiple parallels of ancient Pagan Magic practices and how these practices are woven into the "Gospels", or "gods spells" and the "magical spells of Jesus the Magician". Morton Smith's care to show "what makes a magician", to then showing how Jesus was a magician is well done and logically presented. Only the lack of information available to the author from a larger historical base prevents this story from really jumping out at the reader.

Such is hardly the fault of the author.

For those who seek to understand the personality cult that has become known as "Christianity", Morton Smith's exhaustive research is a great primer as Mr. Smith fully exposes the source documents of the "mythos" behind this ancient Jewish fabricated personality cult whose roots lie in Pagan philosophies.

Jesus the Magician provides a great deal of cross reference material for the serious scholar as well as the weekend historian who wishes to have a greater understanding of the enigma which came to be known as Jesus.