Customer Reviews

Unmasking the Pagan Christ: An Evangelical Response to the Cosmic Christ Idea

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This book is a readable and short response to Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ, which argues that Jesus never existed except as an allegorical understanding of true spirituality. New Testament scholars and historians usually avoid such marginal ideas, but - as Porter and Bedard explain - Harpur has garnered more attention than most advocates of the Jesus Myth (the notion that Jesus did not really exist). Given the vacuity of Harpur's ideas, the only explanation for the attention is his credentials. Harpur seems to be an otherwise smart fellow, being a Rhodes Scholar and having taught Greek and New Testament at Wycliffe College.

Harpur's main thesis is that Jesus did not exist as a real person, but only as a symbolic representation of universal spiritual principles based on pagan dying and rising savior figures. According to Harpur, Egyptian myth and religion as well as Mithraism (a pagan cult) are the true roots of Christianity. But as Porter and Bedard demonstrate in the first two-thirds of their book, Harpur's argument rests on misrepresentations of the nature of the forerunning Egyptian beliefs, the couching of very different ideas and events in inapplicable Biblical terms, unsourced references to primary sources, dependence on secondary sources who themselves were even more wrong than Harpur, reversed chronologies (such as seeing Mithraic influences on Christianity when the reverse is much more likely) and a no-doubt genuine desire to fashion a universal religious ethic out of the world's different religions.

After reading these chapters, the term "not even wrong" comes to mind as an apt description of Harpur's reconstruction. Scientists use it to refer to theories that are so bad, so erroneous, so far off, that they are not even worthy of being called wrong. The notion that Jesus' virgin birth, miracles, death & resurrection are just recast Egpytian myths is so baseless it is not even wrong.

While performing their destructive work, Porter and Bedard provide a nice nutshell of Egyptian history and religious belief. The origins of development of the pertinent Egyptian myths are well-covered, though they could have been even more effective by highlighting the Jewish origins of so much that Harpur claims is pagan. However, given the effectiveness of what they do argue, perhaps they were just showing mercy.

The last few chapters discuss the non-Christian evidence for Jesus, as well as a Harpur's use of the Apostolic Fathers. The latter is fine and probably would have better served their purposes had it been moved up in the book. The discussion of non-Christian evidence for Jesus is very basic. It will be helpful for new comers to the debate, but anyone looking for more substantive discussion of these sources will best be served by reading Robert Van Voorst's Jesus Outside the New Testament or even some of the online discussions at apologetics websites.

But the refutation is so easy despite some missed opportunities that it comes across to the informed reader like picking the low-lying fruit. Still, it is nice to see genuine New Testament scholars turning their attention to marginal but popularized theories about Jesus and early Christianity. I would like to see more, and more in-depth, books so doing.

I give it 4 stars because of its effectiveness in refuting the target. But this is kind of like giving 4 stars for accurately shooting fish in a barrel. Probably 3 and 1/2 would be more appropriate.

Having read the other reviews, I wonder if we are reading the same book. I suppose if one fervently wanted to discredit Harpur's "The Pagan Christ," this book would be viewed as wonderful in the extreme. But for unimpassioned readers looking for a constructive discussion of the not-really-original thesis in Harpur's work, it falls far short. If Porter and Bedard were really up to the task, they could have tried to explain why Paul didn't know any of the wonderful stories about Jesus that only later cropped up in the Gospels, and why many of the other would-be gospels that were rejected often had significantly different "historical" versions of events (take the Gospel of Peter, for instance). There is also the basic issue of the lack of consistency between the accepted Gospels themselves. Clearly, resolving these issues must be the first step in any defense of the notion of an "historic" Jesus. Personally, there are many problems and errors in Harpur's work, which I would hope to see resolved in future editions. But none of them proves fatal to the core thesis. This is an issue that can not be resolved, by either side, without some lucky archaeological find that supports one side or the other. But to argue about the veracity of historical events based solely on works of literature is to invite an unending debate. Sadly, this book by Porter and Bedard adds little to the debt itself, and is mostly poorly argued rhetoric. For serious students of religion, I would give it a pass unless you are interested in something about the "true believers" retort.

I give it only 4 stars rather than 5 because I wish it were LONGER.

In this volume, two NT scholars give Tom "I Threw My Common Sense Away" Harpur the thrashing in print he's deserved since he exported the toxic waste titled The Pagan Christ from his pen. Porter and Bedard survey the positive evidence for the historical Christ and also briefly undermine the credibility of Harpur's fave sources, Kuhn and Massey. I wish they'd have done more on these guys, but having done a few numbers on them myself I can understand why they wouldn't want to. Too much of nut like Massey and Kuhn can make your stomach turn.

Buy it for two reasons: To counter Harpur's role as Nut in Chief, and to show your support for MORE stuff like this to be on the market.