The first is from a gentleman who was a Franciscan missionary to Japan and who has an interesting perspective. You may recall his remarks on my earlier blog post - boy, did that kick up a storm! 120 comments!
5.0 out of 5 stars Fingerprints that Touched Me May 26, 2009 By Brian Redmond "truthseeker" (Japan)
"Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of the Christ" has touched me greatly, and with a healing touch at that. I have spent a lifetime trapped within the inconsistencies of institutionalized Christianity, with the consequent frustrations and attempts to rationalize the irrational that such a position entails. D.M. Murdock has freed me with this book. Gently, but irrefutably logically, by quoting impeccable sources, she shows that the basis of Christianity, the Four Gospels, are not inerrant, and not even history. This enlightenment has lifted a huge burden from my shoulders, and far from destroying my belief in Christ or God has strengthened my belief in both. Now I see that God, our maker, has never and can never be described in words, and that Christ, our Saviour, will always have to be ourselves doing what God wants, that is being decent people, and thus we will be saved, by God and by ourselves being the Sons and Daughters of God.
Brian Redmond, real name
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5.0 out of 5 stars The Case Against Christ May 22, 2009 By A. Richins (Salem, OR United States)
Christian scholars have made careers being apologists for the Christian faith. This book reveals that they may in fact owe their readers an apology.
I think the title may mislead some. The book isn't about discovering who the real Jesus was, and it certainly has nothing to do with the Templar Knights or whether or not Jesus was married. It's a critical analysis of the gospels, and the dogmatic belief held by many Christians that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, which was written by eye witnesses.
The author, who is fluent in Ancient Greek herself, and an expert in ancient mythology, draws from the research of several biblical scholars, including Christian sources.
For being such a short, easy to read book, she does an incredible job and laying out both sides of the argument. I came away with a better understanding of exactly what source materials biblical scholars actually have to go on, and the methods by which they've approximated their dates.
No one will miss the point that Murdock doesn't believe the gospel accounts are history, but it's not presented in a rash or deliberately abrasive manner.
Though this book is a great resource for those who may choose to engage a fundamentalist Christian in a debate, I believe her target audience for this book was actually Christians. She avoids for example, attacking Christianity on the grounds that it proposes donkeys can talk, people can fly up into outer space, and that loving God will fry you for eternity for not believing he committed a human sacrifice to himself. But rather, she pose questions like, if zombies really rose from the dead and walked around town, why didn't anyone record it? If King Herod knew the precise location of the infant Jesus, why did he need to have every young male in Bethlehem killed? Why does Jesus suggest that men castrate themselves?
If you have a Christian friend of family member who tries to pressure you from time to time to convert to their faith, ask them to read this book in exchange for going to church with them a few times.
For more information, read my book Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ. If you haven't seen the great reviews by scholars and ministers there, do take a look!
Although I deal with many subjects within the fascinating field of comparative religion and mythology, one of my major focuses is on the thesis that the biblical figure called "Jesus Christ" represents a mythological compilation of characters, including various Pagan gods and the awaited Jewish messiah(s). In my various writings, which include The Christ Conspiracy, Suns of God, Who Was Jesus?, Christ in Egypt and Jesus as the Sun, I bring together evidence that a multinational cabal largely composed of Jews, Samaritans, Greeks, Romans and Egyptians created first the Jesus character and then later Christian tradition, eventually in order to unify the Roman Empire under one state religion.
I demonstrate this thesis in a wide variety of ways, including dissecting the canonical gospels on their face, as I do in my book Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ. After this vast amount of evidence both ancient and modern, internal and external, is studied, it becomes obvious that once the mythological and messianic literary layers are peeled away, there remains no core to the onion.
Indeed, we are left with the conclusion that the mythical figure of "Jesus Christ" was largely contrived in order to raise the Jewish religion and scriptures to the forefront of religious ideologies, to fulfill the biblical "prophecy" that the Jews are the "chosen people," that their nation is the "Holy Land" and that their tribal writings represent "God's Word." As stated in the Old Testament:
"For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth."
Deuteronomy 7:6
"When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the LORD your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you. Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save nothing that breathes ..."
Deuteronomy 20:10-16
"Foreigners (Gentiles) shall rebuild your walls, and their kings shall minister to you ...Your gates shall be open continuously; day and night they shall not be shut; that men may bring to you the wealth of the nations, with their kings led in procession. For the nation or kingdom that will not not serve you; shall perish; those nations shall be utterly laid waste...."
Isaiah 60:10-12
"You shall suck the milk of nations, you shall suck the breast of kings; and you shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob."
Isaiah 60:16
"And strangers [Gentiles] shall stand and feed your flocks, strangers shall be your plowmen and vinedressers; but you shall be called the priests of the LORD, men shall speak of you as the ministers of our God; you shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory."
Isaiah 61:5-6
The same sentiment and sense of triumph are reflected in "A Real Case Against the Jews" by Jewish writer Marcus Eli Ravage, published in The Century Magazine, v. 115, no. 3, The Century Co., NY, 1928, p. 346ff:
"Our tribal customs have become the core of your moral code. Our tribal laws have furnished the basic groundwork of all your august constitutions and legal systems. Our legends and our folk-tales are the sacred lore which you croon to your infants. Our poets have filled your hymnals and your prayer-books. Our national history has become an indispensable part of the learning of your pastors and priests and scholars. Our kings, our statesmen, our prophets, our warriors are your heroes. Our ancient little country is your Holy Land. Our national literature is your Holy Bible. What our people thought and taught has become inextricably woven into your very speech and tradition, until no one among you can be called educated who is not familiar with our racial heritage.
"Jewish artisans and Jewish fishermen are your teachers and your saints, with countless statues carved in their image and innumerable cathedrals raised to their memories. A Jewish maiden is your ideal of motherhood and womanhood. A Jewish rebel-prophet is the central figure in your religious worship. We have pulled down your idols, cast aside your racial inheritance, and substituted for them our God and our traditions. No conquest in history can even remotely compare with this clean sweep of our conquest over you."
When we realize that the ancient, pre-Christian world was filled with stories about superhuman gods, goddesses and heroes of all cultures whose purported lives on Earth were replete with miracles of all manner, we must recognize that it is only by extraordinary human perseverance that one particular set of fabulous tales from one particular culture has become accepted as "true," while all the rest are deemed "myths." In actuality, the acceptance as "history" of such patent fairytales as the son of God born of a virgin who miraculously heals the sick, raises the dead, walks on water, transfigures on a mount, resurrects from death and ascends into heaven ranks as cultural bias and extreme prejudice, not reality. It is high time that this fallacious development and lopsided injustice be exposed and the whole of the human cultural record be embraced.
The importance of knowing the history of religious ideology can be illustrated by the following email I recently received:
"Dear Ms. Murdock:
"I have just finished reading Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of the Christ and Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection, and I humbly fall at your feet in admiration. You, with your genius, perseverance and strength have freed me from a lifetime of being shackled by Catholicism. I am 70 years old, and I now I can live out the rest of my life in tranquility of mind and conscience, thanks to you.
It is imperative that the human family not believe blindly in religious ideologies and stories but study scientifically the foundation of those religions, eventually discovering that many of the most important religious and spiritual concepts date back to the hoary mists of time and possess very human origins. If we do not realize our common shared heritage, we will be facing an armageddon and apocalypse of our own making, as evidenced by the debacle concerning the use of biblical scriptures to incite soldiers in Iraq and the ongoing jihad in the opposite direction using koranic writings. These two factions essentially hold the world hostage and will be the demise of the entire human civilization, if humanity does not wake up and stop following these outdated and specious ideologies. We are one family, and we share a small sphere - let us unify as found in the best of futuristic scenarios, not destroy ourselves as in the worst.
For more information, read my book Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ, which was written with Christians in mind and represents a kind and gentle approach to the subject. Here's a testimonial:
I've known people with triple Ph.D's who haven't come close to the scholarship here.
I think I've read every popular alternative theory about Jesus that has come down the pike - with Who Was Jesus I was very impressed.
This book gives me pause for serious thought.
Pastor David Bruce, M.Div North Park Seminary, Chicago
Harassing, slandering, libeling, stalking, abusing, killing or otherwise harming a human being or other living creature in the name of religion, God, Allah, Jesus, the Bible, the Koran or some other religious idea or artifact is evil, period. There simply is no excuse, no justification and no rationale that makes these abuses and transgressions righteous and moral. You are committing evil, and you will suffer for it at some point, by your own conscience at the very least.
You are also sullying and defaming whatever ideology you are defending by making it human-hating and life-destroying. Regardless of what you have been taught, your ideology is not more important than the human being you are debasing, denigrating and demeaning. No religion or ideology feels pain - not even a god feels pain - but human beings certainly do. You are causing pain to a living, breathing being over something that does not feel pain. Have you not heard, "As you sow, so shall you reap?"
Your ideology is only as worthy as it treats the individual human being. Nay, as it treats even animals. As Abraham Lincoln once said:
"I care not for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it."
In any event, if you find yourself merely tempted to abuse another human being or other living creature in the name of your religion, God, son of God and/or prophet, you have already stained and shamed your ideology by your thoughts of violence and hatred.
Think twice or however many times you need to remove these hateful and violent thoughts against your fellow human being. If your ideology teaches anger and hatred towards human beings, it is unworthy of following. You are full of self-hatred, as you hate your fellow human being, because you have been taught that human beings in general are "wretched sinners," and you are one of them. Your ideology is not godly or divine. It is ugly, vicious and evil. And it is making you all of those things. Throw it away as the garbage it has become. Join the human race and practice love, tolerance, patience and acceptance of your fellow human beings and other living creatures.
I've just created a new 37-page ebook for your enjoyment that explores the history of Jesus Christ as the sun in art and literature. The ebook is linked here:
I hope people will enjoy both the ebook and excerpt for their own edification and for that of others around the net, where much disinfo abounds.
Note that the ebook will help me to create a planned paperback on the same subject, so if you can afford it, please donate to the cause by getting it! In these tough times, I need all the help I can get to keep my work going. If you feel there is value in my work, come help out! I greatly appreciate it, and you can be assured that your assistance will help me to continue providing quality material on subjects about which very few others are giving you the lowdown.
You just can't get this material in this concisely presented manner anywhere else, which is why I continue to work so hard to bring it to you!
