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Canada: The former religious editor of the Toronto Star has published a book, and I think we can safely say that fundies won't like it. Its basic thesis is that Christ is a mythological character, and should be understood as such, and that Christianity built on what had gone before, then tried to deny it violently.
The Church of the 3rd and 4th centuries, when challenged by its Pagan critics as to the real sources of its gospels, dogmas, and rites, reacted with fierce hostility, systematically hunting down and eliminating all traces of its Pagan past. It hounded anyone, whether Christian or not, who bore witness to the old truths. It closed down the traditional,Paganphilosophical schools, persecuted those involved in the various popular Greco-Roman Mystery Religions, burned hundreds of thousands of books, and hurled the charge of heresy -- with its penalty of excommunication -- at any who threatened to question the orthodox party line. Many were put to death. The Pagan inheritance was everywhere hotly denied. This was the beginning of a violent process that was to recur over the centuries and eventuate in a Christianity that Frye once bluntly described asa ghost with the chains of a foul historical record of cruelty clanking behind it.Studying this attempt to squelch the truth in detail for the first time was a profound shock for me.
Today there is no longer any excuse for any hierarchy to ignore the truth of what has actually transpired. The record is now plain for all to see. Not only did the early Christians take over almost completely the myths and teachings of their Egyptian masters, mediated in many cases by the Mystery Religions and by Judaism in its many forms, but they did everything in their power, through forgery and other fraud, book burning, character assassination, and murder itself, to destroy the crucial evidence of what had happened.
The result became known as the Dark Ages. But Tom Harpur is no secularist, nor a neopagan trying to prove a point. He was trained as an Anglican priest, and rather than killing his faith, his research has had an immensely positive difference for my understanding of my faith and my own spiritual life. Simultaneously, it has transformed my view of the future of Christianity into one of hope
. He argues that accepting that the Bible is mythology, and was intended to be read as mythology by its authors, gives it much greater power and meaning than any attempt at literalism.
Keep in mind throughout that however negative -- even shocking -- the evidence may seem at times, a vast hope shines through it all. The overwhelmingly positive conclusions finally reached point toward an exhilarating new approach to faith and to a sorely needed, truly spiritual Christianity in this still very new millennium. My goal is not to summarily dismiss the deep beliefs held by many millions in North America, Europe, and increasingly now in the Southern Hemisphere, where the vast majority of today's Christians live. But I do want these people to think deeply about their faith anew.
Once thesurgeryis over, you will see, with me, how the Bible is wonderfully illumined afresh, how a rational, cosmic faith not only is possible but indeed is the only thing that makes sense in our fast-changing, pluralistic world. You will learn how any future faith must and can be fully grounded in nature and its cycles. The Jesus story will come alive and strike your heart and intellect as never before. Traditional rituals such as Holy Communion, baptism, and the Church's key festivals of Christmas and Easter will have new power once we understand their true meaning in the light of the ancient wisdom. The near-universal belief in a glorious destiny beyond the grave will be grounded once and for all in something more solid than a merely pious or emotion-based faith. Belief in the Christ within will be established as the key to personal and communal transformation.
Christianity's Pagan roots—Toronto Star, 28th March 2004; The Pagan Christ jolts complacency - Toronto Star, 28th March 2004.
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Comments
1: Posted by: Red Wolf | March 28, 2004 11:14 PM
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I have to admit that every time I hear some fundie loon using a political agenda to force their invisible friend on others and not getting laughed out of the building, I think we're headed for another Dark Age.
2: Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge | March 29, 2004 4:11 PM
It often amazes how many intelligent people either don't know or refuse to admit the pagan past of Christianity. It is probably easier to stay gormless about it in the US (since the country is so old), but being a Christian in the UK who does not connect the dots is beyond pathetic.
Evangelism, witnessing and similar activitites go by one name here—, and is no different from spam for viagra, penis enlargement products and pornography. We do not take advertising. If you want to advertise your imaginary friend, please spend your own money on your own web space to do so. Any attempts to use the comments section for advertisements will be deleted, and the perpetrator barred, unless they are particularly stupid, in which case I reserve the right to pinch an idea from Teresa Nielsen Hayden and delete all the vowels.
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