A recently finished reading The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.
First the good part. The book is interesting and the authors are obviously very passionate about their subject. Also, unlike Tom Harpur’s Pagan Christ, which basically makes the same claims, this book is very well documented. There are many footnotes and this very helpful for tracing back to where they got their ideas from.
Now the bad part. There are many problems with this book and I will give a more detailed response at a later date. First of all, they too easily discount the evidence for the historical Jesus. They gloss over Josephus, Paul and the Gospels, even though if this was for any other historical figure it would be plenty of evidence. Secondly they artificially blend a number of gods into a composite being that no ancient person would recognize. They claim that Jesus is a form of Osiris-Dionysus and by that they mean that they can take little bits from a dozen or so unrelated myths and see some similarity with the Gospels. Thirdly, they misrepresent the role of Gnosticism. I think they are right to see Gnosticism as playing a parellel role to the pagan mystery religions, socially if not theologically. However, they fall into the popular trap of saying that there were numerous Christianities right from the beginning, suggesting that Gnosticism might even have been earliest, with orthodox Christianity only later emerging. The earliest Christian texts that we have (which are found in the New Testament) are in continuity with what became orthodox Christianity and in opposition to Gnosticism. To get where they want to be, they have to make some ridiculous claims such as Paul being a Gnostic and many of the New Testament books having a late date, well into the second century. They are totally out of touch even with critical scholarship and their claims are far from the evidence.
This book is great for people attracted to conspiracy theories but it fails as good history. The traditional explanation is still the best: Jesus was a historical figure and that the Gospels reflect his actual experiences and are not Jewish versions of pagan myths. For more information, see our book Unmasking the Pagan Christ.
