The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold

Acharya S has done a superb job in bringing together this rich panoply of ancient world mythology and culture, and presenting it in a comprehensive and compelling fashion. She grabs the reader from the first page and doesn't let go. --Earl Doherty The Christ Conspiracy --very, very scholarly and wholly researched--is a book for today... --Rev. B. Strauss, ex-Catholic priest, Chicago, ILAcharya S has done a service to forensic anthropology similar to what Euclid did for geometry. She has pulled together all available materials to reveal the inner workings of perhaps the biggest folly of Western man. I enjoyed it immensely. --EBTXAcharya S pulls no punches, beating her adversary to a bloody pulp... This war of words, it seems, is a battle the author takes most seriously in her righteous quest to undo 2000 years of mental slavery inflicted upon humankind. --Adam GorightlyAcharya brings in secular [and] church history, archaeology, theology, mythology, linguistics...to provide plenty of backing for her theses. An essential book for anyone who wants to know the reality behind the world's dominant religion. --Russ Kick Ever since The Christ Conspiracy was published in 1999, I have striven to demonstrate many of its major and minor contentions in a variety of books, articles, blogs, forum posts, videos and radio programs. I have spent countless hours tracking down sources as far back as possible in history, including to the earliest written records. I have sifted through thousands of ancient texts in numerous languages, including ancient Greek, Latin, Egyptian, Hebrew, Sanskrit and others. I have also pored through thousands of modern resources from highly credentialed authorities in a number of relevant disciplines. Over this past decade-plus, again, I have provided this information in freely available articles and ebooks, as well as in several follow-up books such as: Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled ; Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ ; Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection ; and The Gospel According to Acharya S .For the most part - and with great difficulty - I have succeeded in bringing to light the sources from which came many of the contentions in The Christ Conspiracy . Some of the original, corroborative material was very challenging to find, such as various writings of ancient Church fathers and others that back up the claims in "The Characters" chapter, one of the most controversial in the entire book. This chapter discusses several ancient figures considered mostly mythological whose "lives" strangely resemble that of Jesus Christ from the gospels and Christian tradition, including Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Indian gods and godmen. From the attention and reaction this single chapter has gotten, it would seem that it alone is enough to reveal Christianity as a rehash of earlier, mythical traditions, which is the premise of this book. Over the years, common complaints I have addressed include that my sources are "outdated" and are from "19th-century scholars." In reality, I have used primary and ancient sources quite extensively, although at times I have quoted or paraphrased them through the works of more modern scholars from a few centuries ago to the current era. Since writing this book - which was researched from my own private library on a shoe-string budget - I have confirmed these citations in original works as well as in more modern, scholarly resources by the best academic publishers in the world. I refer especially to those found in my most recent works, including Who Was Jesus? , Christ in Egypt and The Gospel . Who Was Jesus? has an almost all-Christian bibliography and has received many accolades from knowledgeable and qualified individuals such as theology professors, ministers and New Testament scholars. Christ in Egypt contains 2,400 footnotes from 900 sources, including thousands of pages of ancient Egyptian writings and the works of highly credentialed individuals from a number of relevant disciplines, such as numerous well-respected Egyptologists from around the world.My follow-up book to The Christ Conspiracy , Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled , delves into some fascinating information that again spans the range of time from antiquity to today. The tome represents a bridge between Christ Con and Christ in Egypt , researching further into the claims of the latter while recounting hard-to-find tales of skulduggery in the field of Jesus mythicism dating back centuries, revealing why this information is so difficult to find, as well as tantalizing hints of more that has been buried, lost or lied about. It also provides much evidence of the ancient religious worship of astrotheology, which to any student or scholar of religion should prove highly intriguing.Over these past several years, a trend developed with the criticisms of Christ Con, which was that many of my critics had not actually read my work but were jumping on bandwagons of others who also had not read my work or who were clearly biased, such as a number of Christian apologists. Not a few of these critics who had either not read my work or who have been true believers with an axe to grind posted reviews that made claims already refuted many times over. We find this pattern of disingenuousness or bias in many places on the internet.There have been other, more subtle reasons for bias, as remarked upon by David Mills, author of Atheist Universe , who in his review of my book Who Was Jesus? remarked, "Having given a fair hearing to some of her online detractors and their 'rebuttal' videos, I have detected not only a lack of knowledge on the part of her critics, but also, in some cases, a thinly disguised misogyny."While some of the details have changed, from my intense investigation over the years I maintain that the scenario put forth in The Christ Conspiracy represents as close to true early Christian history as anyone has gotten so far. The extensive research backing up many germane elements from the "Characters" chapter - as can be also be found in my "ZEITGEIST Sourcebook" - clearly demonstrates that Christ is a mythical rehash, albeit a unique one, of numerous motifs and characteristics of earlier gods, goddesses and godmen, along with various mysteries and wisdom sayings. All of this mythmaking was hung on the framework of "messianic scriptures" from the Old Testament and Jewish intertestamental literature, which I likewise discuss in The Christ Conspiracy. D.M. Murdock, also known as "Acharya S," is an independent scholar of comparative religion and mythology, specializing in the ancient astrotheological origins of popular religious systems and beliefs. Her work can be found on her websites TruthBeKnown.com, StellarHousePublishing.com and FreethoughtNation.com. Acharya's books include The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold ; Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled ; Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ ; Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection, The Gospel According to Acharya S , The 2010 Astrotheology Calendar and The 2011 Astrotheology Calendar . Murdock is also the CEO and president of Stellar House Publishing, which also publishes extraordinary works such as Man Made God by mythology scholar and secular writer Barbara G. Walker. Murdock received her education in Classics, Greek Civilization, at Franklin & Marshall College, and is an alumna of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Regarding the dating of the canonical gospels, lawyer Joseph Wheless states: "The gospels are all priestly forgeries over a century after their pretended dates.... As said by the great critic, Salomon Reinach, 'With the exception of Papias, who speaks of a narrative by Mark, and a collection of sayings of Jesus, no Christian writer of the first half of the second century (i.e., up to 150 A.D.) quotes the Gospels or their reputed authors.'" In "The Christ Myth," John Remsburg elucidates: "The Four Gospels were unknown to the early Christian Fathers. Justin Martyr, the most eminent of the early Fathers, wrote about the middle of the second century. His writings in proof of the divinity of Christ demanded the use of these Gospels, had they existed in his time. He makes more than 300 quotations from the books of the Old Testament, and nearly one hundred from the Apocryphal books of the New Testament; but none from the four Gospels. Rev. Giles says: 'The very names of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, are never mentioned by him (Justin) - do not occur once in all his writings.'" And Judge Charles Waite says: "At the very threshold of the subject, we are met by the fact, that nowhere in all the writings of Justin, does he once so much as mention any of these gospels. Nor does he mention either of their supposed authors, except John. Once his name occurs; not, however, as the author of a gospel, but in such a connection as raises a very strong presumption that Justin knew of no gospel of John the Apostle." Waite further states: "No one of the four gospels is mentioned in any other part of the New Testament.... No work of art of any kind has ever been discovered, no painting, or engraving, no sculpture, or other relic of antiquity, which may be looked upon as furnishing additional evidence of the existence of those gospels, and which was executed earlier than the latter part of the second century. Even the exploration of the Christian catacombs failed to bring to light any evidence of that character.... The four gospels were written in Greek, and there was no translation of them into other languages, earlier than the third century." The Gospel of Luke (170 CE) The Gospel of Luke is acknowledged by early church fathers to be of a late date. As Waite states: "...Jerome admits that not only the Gospel of Basilides, composed about A.D. 125, and other gospels, admitted to have been first published in the second century, were written before that of Luke, but even the Gospel of Apelles also, which was written not earlier than A.D. 160." The Gospel of Mark (175 CE) Like Waite, Mead also does not put Mark first: "It is very evident that Mt. and Lk. do not use our Mk., though they use most the material contained in our Mk..." The Gospel of John (178 CE) The Gospel of John is thought by most authorities to be the latest of the four, but Waite provides a compelling argument to place it third and reveals its purpose not only in refuting the Gnostics but also in establishing the primacy of the Roman Church: "So strong is the evidence of a late date to this gospel, that its apostolic origin is being abandoned by the ablest evangelical writers.... Both Irenaeus and Jerome assert that John wrote against Cerinthus. Cerinthus thus flourished about A.D. 145. [T]here is evidence that in the construction of this gospel, as in that of Matthew, the author had in view the building up of the Roman hierarchy, the foundations of which were then (about A.D. 177-89) being laid.... There is a reason to believe that both [John and Matthew] were written in the interest of the supremacy of the Church of Rome." The Gospel of Matthew (180 CE) Although it was claimed by later Christian writers to be a "translation" of a manuscript written in Hebrew by the apostle Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew did not exist prior to the end of the second century and was originally written in Greek. As Waite says: "The Greek Gospel of Matthew was a subsequent production, and either originally appeared in the Greek language, or was a translation of the Gospel of the Hebrews, with extensive changes and additions. There is reason to believe it to have been an original compilation, based upon the Oracles of Christ, but containing, in whole, or in part, a number of other manuscripts." Read more