Customer Reviews

Making of the Messiah: Christianity and Resentment

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For anyone who wants to take a challenging, intellectually viable look at the creation of Christianity. Many people proclaim to "believe in the Bible" without knowing anything of the Bible's history or of the motivations of those who wrote it. It seems to me that one cannot claim to be a true believer or disbeliever in the stories of the bible without first questioning the validity of the writings contained therein. This book presents an interesting, and well documented theory which accounts for many of the discrepancies in the "synoptic" gospels. It is a pointed reminder that the bible was written by early church beaurocrats - not witnesses to the events of Christ's life

The author posits that Jesus' deificaiton was a construct of later ages in the quest to make people victims. The author gives a fair review of the literature of the debate regarding Jesus' existence as an actual historical figure. Add it to the library on the most important figure in Western history.

When I saw that Robert Sheaffer, who has also written on UFO claims, had written a book on Jesus, I was excited. I thought he might analyze the claims made about Jesus in light of his knowledge of extraordinary claims made today.

He does - briefly - but otherwise, a theme that could have been his strongest point gets largely left to the side. Instead, he relies largely on the assumption that the Toldoth Jesu, a fourth-century Talmudic work, can provide us with facts about Jesus not recorded in the Gospels. The book's sole strong point is that he provides a summary of the Toldoth, which shows its obviously mythic character and makes for entertaining reading besides. Let me emphasize that I think the historical Gospels are none too reliable, but the Toldoth is certainly less so.