by Acharya S
Year: 2006.
Succinct 39 page eBook for donation of $5.
(284 page book now available below.)
 |
 |
 |
| Ethiopian Jesus | Blond Jesus | Native Jesus |
Syntagma Of The Evidences Of The Christian Religion
by Robert Taylor.
Year: 1828.
The Truth About Jesus — Is He a Myth?
The Christ Myth (Westminster College-Oxford Classics in the Study of Religion)
by Arthur Drews, C. Deslisle Burns (Translator).
Year: 1910.
Drews argues that no basis exists for seeking a historical figure behind the Christ myth.
Through a comparative study of ancient religions, Drews shows that Christianity is a
syncretism of various pagan and Jewish beliefs, and that a strong pre-Christian cult of
Jesus as son of God and messiah existed.
Jesus—God, Man or Myth : An Examination of the Evidence
by Herbert Cutner. Year: 1950.
A thorough examination of all the 'evidence' any Christian apologist has ever cited to
support the existence of a historical Jesus, along with an exhaustive search of all the
other places we would expect to find some mention of Jesus had he existed. It's actually
a boring book because it's so thorough. It's quite obvious from the evidence that the
Jesus Story did not originate as the biography of a man named Jesus.
The Jesus Myth
THE CHRIST CONSPIRACY: The Greatest Story Ever Sold
by Acharya S.
Year: 1999.
An excellent book examining the Jesus Story and the myths surrounding it, and the
inexplicable dearth of historical evidence where there should be an immense plethora of
evidence to support it. It combines together the research of everyone else. Highly
recommended.
THE JESUS PUZZLE. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?: Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus
The Fabrication of the Christ Myth
|
Who Was Jesus?
by Acharya S Year: 2006. Succinct 39 page eBook for donation of $5. (284 page book now available below.) |
|
Who was Jesus? Fingerprints of the Christ
The Origins of Christianity
and the Quest for
the Historical Jesus Christ
DIEGESIS: Being a Discovery of the Origin, Evidences, and Early History of Christianity
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours
by Kersey Graves.
Year 1875.
Biography of Satan: Exposing the Origins of the Devil
by Kersey Graves.
Year: circa 1877?
Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions
The Non-Christian Cross: An enquiry into the origin and history of the symbol eventually adopted as that of our religion
by John Denham Parsons. Year: 1896.
Aryan Sun-Myths the Origin of Religion
Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ: or Natural Genesis and Typology of Equinoctial Christolatry
Gerald Massey's Lectures by Gerald Massey. Year: 1900.
Pagan Christs by J.M. Robertson. Year: 1903.
The paganism in our Christianity by Arthur Weigall. Year: 1928.
Christianity Before Christ
THE JESUS MYSTERIES: Was the original Jesus a Pagan God?
101 Myths of the Bible: How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History
Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
The Ruins or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature
THE DEVIL'S PULPIT: Astro-theological Sermons
Fairy Tales: Their Origin and Meaning by John Thackray Bunce. Year: 1878.
The Gospel In The Stars by Joseph A. Seiss. Year: 1882.
Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy or the Origin and Meaning of Ancient and Modern Mysteries Explained
Echoes of the Ancient Skies: The Astronomy of Lost Civilizations
Christianity, Astrology and Myth
Jesus as the Sun
ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN: The Cosmic Myth of the Bible
The Ruins or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires
by Constantin François de Volney.
(Originally published in 1791, updates were apparently made until his death in 1820.
Volney does draw from the works of Dupuis (above)).
The 1890 publication referenced here also contains Volney's book The Law of Nature.)
The Childhood of Religions: Embracing a Simple Account of the Birth and Growth of
Myths and Legends.
Lectures on the Origin & Growth of the Conception
of God as Illustrated by Anthropology & History (The Hibbert Lectures 1891)
by Count Goblet D'Alviella.
Year: 1891.
In 1891 the University of Brussels had an excellent History of Religion department,
judging by this book written by the chair of the department back then. It does an
excellent job tracing the evolution of religion, religious practices, and beliefs, from
ancient times to the then present day (1891). It has good insight into how religion has
evolved from the dawn of man to the present day (which was then 1891). By drawing on his
extensive knowledge of how religion has evolved over time up to the then present day, the
author predicts what society's future religion might be like. It's interesting to
see a century later that back in 1891 he pretty much predicted the future of religion
correctly.
Astral Worship
by J.H. Hill.
Year: 1895.
Pagan and Christian Creeds
Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile
by Bishop John Shelby Spong.
Year: 1998.
The believers in exile are people who want to believe but can not deny the reality
of modern day science which contradicts the Bible. Christianity must change its outdated
interpretation of the Bible or Christianity will die because the next generation will
dismiss the old outdated interpretation as hopelessly antiquated and incompatible with
today's scientific knowledge.
A New Christianity for a New World:
Why Traditional Faith is Dying & How a New Faith is Being Born
by Bishop John Shelby Spong.
Year: 2002.
Recommended Reading: Chapter 3, which is
an excellent summary of the evolution of religion, from the dawn of human
consciousness to the present day.
Drawing upon his lifetime of experience as a Bishop and his knowledge of the past
evolution of religion, John Shelby Spong predicts what the religion of our future might
look like. Only time will tell if he is correct, but my guess is he got it right, just as
Count Goblet D'Alviella (above) pretty much got it right when he predicted the future of
religion back in 1891.
(View an excellent entertaining lecture by Bishop John Shelby Spong) [offsite. UCTV show #9117]
The Great Emergence:
How Christianity is Changing and Why
by Phyllis Tickle.
Year: 2008.
A superb overview of how Religion has evolved over the past two millennia,
culminating with a clear overview of what the crucial questions of our current time are.
| "The two overarching, but complementary questions of the Great Emergence are: | |
| 1. | What is human consciousness and/or consciousness's relation to humanness? |
| 2. | What is the relation of all religions to one another—or, put another way, how can we live responsibly as devout and faithful adherents of one religion in a world of many religions? |
"The problem for thousands of American Christians—and especially for the American Protestant majority—was that the Christianity they had been born into had given them little or no religious-based vocabulary and few or no religious-based practices or cannons by which to articulate, assess, utilize, or interpret this burgeoning world of subjective experience. ... We are a public whose extant religious institutions have to date shown themselves to be ill-prepared both theologically and intellectually to wrestle with the practical implications involved in such intellectual and technological developments."
Celsus, on the True Doctrine : A Discourse Against the Christians
A Short History of the Bible by Bronson C. Keeler. Year: 1881.
History of the Christian Religion to the Year Two Hundred
Forgery in Christianity
A documented Record of the Foundations of the Christian Religion.
by Joseph Wheless.
Year: 1930.
Examines the disgraceful history of the Catholic Church. For hundreds of years the
Catholic Church forged religious documents for political purposes. The religious document
would be claimed authentic, written by one of the apostles or sometimes by Jesus himself.
The document would invariably imply that the Catholic Church had been given supreme God
ordained authority to rule the world. Hundreds of years later, after the Church had
firmly established itself as the God ordained supreme infallible authority and a very
powerful political ruler, the forged documents were exposed as frauds, but by then it
didn't matter; the Catholic Church had firmly established itself as the supreme authority,
and no longer needed the framework of forged documents to keep it standing.
Misquoting Jesus
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. Year: 1795.
Bible of Bibles
by Kersey Graves.
Year: circa 1881?
Bible Unmasked by Joseph Lewis. Year: 1926
Is It God's Word?
An Exposition of the Fables and Mythology of the Bible and the Fallacies of Theology.
by Joseph Wheless
Year: 1926.
A brutal look at the Bible, walking through the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation
(except it doesn't cover the Book of Revelation). Similar to Thomas Paine's Age of Reason, so not much had changed in 131 years.
Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman. Year: 1987.
The best general reference on the Documentary Hypothesis. The book goes into the history
and evolution of the J, E, P, and D sources, and shows how they influenced the writing
of the first five books of the Bible. The appendix has a useful chart that separates the
biblical verses by source (click here).
Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture
by Bishop John Shelby Spong.
Year: 1991.
The Bible can not be interpreted literally. It is not without error. It does
contradict itself. A deeper understanding is achieved when we accept this.
Is The Bible The Word Of God?
by Emmett F. Fields.
Year: 1995. (38 pages).
Succinct and well written. The God of the Old Testament commands murder, rape, slavery,
incest, and all that is repulsive to our nature. He is cruel, jealous, violent,
vindictive, and vengeful. The Catholic Church promotes fear and even reaches beyond the
grave with fear of a hell eternal and never ending.
The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love
by Bishop John Shelby Spong.
Year: 2005. Examines the "terrible texts" of the Bible which promote overbreeding,
denigration of women, hostility towards homosexuals, corporal punishment of children,
and anti-semitism. View an excellent lecture by John Shelby Spong on this topic at
http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=9117
“Osama Bin Laden hurled his suicide airplanes into the World Trade
Center and into the Pentagon, invoking God. George W. Bush invoked
God when he began the Iraq war, hurling his missiles and his
bombers on the people of Iraq. Palistinians in the name of God
strap dynamite around their waste and go into Jewish restaraunts or
Jewish busses killing themselves and anyone else who is hapless
enough to be in that location. And not to be outdone, Jewish people
invoke God when they send their tanks into the Gaza strip or into
the West Banks smashing the homes of would-be terrorists. One has
only to go to Ireland where you can find Catholics who invoke God
while they kill Protestants. And not to be outdone Protestants
invoke God when they kill Catholics. Have you ever wondered what
kind of religion it is that produces this kind of behavior?”
(See Spong's synopsis of The Book of Hosea, which concludes this
lecture, to understand why Spong remains a Christian.)
MORAL POLITICS: How Liberals and Conservatives Think
by George Lakoff.
Year: 1996 (2nd edition 2002). “Contemporary American Politics is about worldview. Conservatives
simply see the world differently than do progressives, and both often have a difficult time
understanding accurately what the other’s worldview is.” Lakoff explains
that Conservatives and Progressives have two very different concepts of Morality. This is
an excellent book for anyone wanting to understand the other side's point of view.
Since this book takes work to understand, I've made an outline of the main points.
Click here for outline.
See a lecture given by George Lakoff at
http://www.uctv.tv/library-popup.asp?showID=11194
Also see
RED vs. BLUE:
The Difference Between the Conservative and Progressive Thought Process
Don't Think of an Elephant
by George Lakoff.
Year: 2004.
This book summarizes the results of
Moral Politics (above). However, if you are not familiar with the foundation
that
Moral Politics
builds, you won't possess the right categories to place the results in. You'll think Lakoff
is just talking about "Spin", as that will be the closest category you can put the results
in. But it's not "Spin". It goes much deeper than that.
Whose Freedom?: The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea
by George Lakoff.
Year: 2006.
Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision
by George Lakoff.
Year: 2006.
Cognitive Policy Works. Taking over where Rockridge left off.
Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence
by David Keirsey.
Year: 1998.
A classic book on the 16 different personality types identified by Myers-Briggs.
Myers-Briggs divides personality types into four major categories, with each category
having four subcategories, for a total of 16 different personality types. Understanding
that other people actually think in different ways from you is initially a hard concept
to learn, but eventually you'll understand why most other people seem to be different
from you—it's because they are. Again, there is no "right" personality type, there
are just different personalities. Also see www.keirsey.com where
you can order the book direct.
There appears to be a connection between conservative thought and the SJ 'Guardian'
personality type described in this book. Not that all Guardians are conservative,
but possibly many conservatives are Guardians who don't understand there are other
personality types. Conservatives classify all these other people as immoral.
Presidential Temperament: The Unfolding of Character in the Forty Presidents of the United States
Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism Into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking,
Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving,
Left-Wing Freak Show
by Geoffrey Nunberg.
Year: 2006.
Lakoff talks a lot about language and how the conservatives have taken control of our
language defining the words and phrases we use. Here's a book by a linguist explaining the same thing.
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
by Steven Pinker
Year: 1994.
No politics in this book, but a good precursor to
Moral Minds
below which uses the recent scientific study of language as explained in this book as an
example of how to scientifically study our inborn natural instinct of morality. This is a
well written easy to read book which makes a complicated subject easily accessible to the
layperson.
Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong
THE BIBLE UNEARTHED: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
by Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman
Year: 2001.
"We will reconstruct the history of ancient Israel on the basis of archaeological
evidence—the only source of information on the biblical period that was not extensively
emended, edited, or censored by many generations of biblical scribes."
An excellent book detailing what really happened in Old Testament times.
The evidence clearly shows the Biblical version of history is wrong. Highly recommended.
Christian Mythology Unveiled by Mitchell Logan(?), 1842(?). This wonderful book has
a little bit of everything, making it a very interesting book to read. It also contains
The Humble Petition of The Spinsters to the Legislature of
Great Britain and Ireland on why divorce should be legal.
[NOTE: The authorship and date of this book is not certain, as the book itself was
published anonymously with no date.]
This Hebrew Lord: A Bishop's Search for the Authentic Jesus
by Bishop John Shelby Spong.
Year: 1988.
Living in Sin?: A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality
by Bishop John Shelby Spong.
Year: 1990.
The Fallen Star: or the History of a False Religion
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love
The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe
Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction
 |
Back to Solar Mythology and the Jesus Story |