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The Pagan Christ I used the internet to check something Tom Harpur mentions in The Pagan Christ and discovered he creates as much heated discussion on the net as does Bishop Spong. The reasons are much the same. Like Spong, he is not really proposing anything new; many of the facts he mentions have been known, and commented upon for decades, if not centuries. But, like Spong, he is not some easily dismissed non-believer. He is a Christian, a former priest, was Professor of New Testament at the University of Toronto, and a Rhodes Scholar. And, like Spong, he eloquently expresses ideas which deeply threaten conservative Christianity in a way ordinary people can read. He is an excellent populariser of ideas that have been inaccessible to many of us. The basic thesis of the book is that the story of Jesus is actually a reshaping of the myth of the dying and rising gods of ancient Egypt. These myths point us to the divine within ourselves. In fact, Jesus may not even have existed as an historical person. The church of the early centuries replaced this first faith, with a crude literalistic gospel and produced its own false itself history. It painted the Gnostic Christians, who were the true believers, as the heretics, and itself as the true faith. This hypothesis is not new. My faith background tells me it is from the realm of the crackpots, but I think it is actually quite arguable. It provides plenty to think about if one takes it seriously! And if a person's faith is dependent upon a strongly literal interpretation of the Bible, Harpur's book will be anathema. I read Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy's 1999 book The Jesus Mysteries immediately after Harpur's book. This book should be required reading for any of us who think Christians have some kind of moral superiority or uniqueness. Freke and Gandy give a better outline of the hypothesis that Jesus is an adaptation of the myth of the dying and rising gods, and have many footnotes. Harpur has very few. Harpur bases much of his book on the work of a little known scholar named Alvin Kuhn whom he clearly admires. The book could almost be characterised as a introduction to Kuhn. Kuhn's association with Theosophy is reason enough for many to consign Harpur to the pile of those who have been "led astray." I may yet re-read Harpur's book. If the term "dying and rising gods" is new, I would suggest a visit to the website Pagan Origins of the Christian Myth. This gives a quick, accessible introduction. Freke and Gandy provide a more detailed and very readable outline of the hypothesis. Reading Harpur is then not to be receiving so many new ideas. One could read him as I will seek to re-read him; as a Christian seeking to find a new way to make sense of his faith. An excellent foil to the two books is Elaine Pagels' Beyond Belief. This brief study of the Gnostic controversies of the early church, based around Irenaeus, tells some of the story from the other side. There is great poignancy in her sharing of her son's fatal illness. Harpur's poignancy is more restrained. But it is his personal struggle and search for meaning, like Pagels', that makes his book worth the reading. The real challenge, of course, is what to do with his hypothesis. At the very least, it highlights what more traditional instances of being church keep forgetting; God lives within us all.
All three books can be bought in eBook format through eReader.com.
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