The Christ Myth

By Arthur Drews and C DeLisle Burns

Book Overview

"The Christ Myth," by Arthur Drews, is a seminal work exploring the origins of Christianity and offering a critical examination of the historical Jesus. A cornerstone of Christ myth theory, this book delves into New Testament criticism, questioning the historicity of the Jesus figure as portrayed in the Gospels. Drews meticulously analyzes the biblical texts, presenting arguments challenging the traditional understanding of Christian origins.

A significant contribution to the study of religion and science, as well as religious history, "The Christ Myth" remains a thought-provoking and influential text. It continues to engage readers interested in the historical and theological debates surrounding Jesus Christ and the development of Christian beliefs. This edition offers a faithfully reproduced text of this important and controversial work.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1023199238
• ISBN13: 9781023199230
• Release Date: March 2025
• Publisher: Anson Street Press
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Thorough and convincing

I was very satisfied with the quality of this work. Probably not a coincidence that Oxford University calls it a "Classic". The author systematically demolishes every aspect of the Jesus Christ story, convincingly arguing that Jesus Christ was a mythical figure who never actually existed, and the Jesus cult is an updating and re-telling of myths that existed in all of what we now call middle-eastern societies 3,000 years ago. He relates that all of the cultures in the area had this mythology: son of God born to a virgin, suffering, dying and being resurrected. The Babylonians, Attics, Greeks, Egyptians, Essenes, Persians, Indians, and even Jews with their story of Joshua. In every one, the name of the mother of the son was a variation of "Mary". In the Vedic Indian cult, the son's name was Jesudu. We learn that all of these myths were related to the cycle of the changing length of the days and intensity of the sun during the year; and that Paul rehashed existing sun-worship myths into story of a person he never met named Jesus who was the Messiah who had been born to a young woman named Mary, lived, died, came back to life then levitated up into the sky someplace... and as this had conveniently happened in the past, there was no need to wait for the Messiah any more, we could start worshipping right away. Drews also shows how the stories in the canonical New Testament are a collection of traditional folk tales from Jesus cults that were mostly oral then written down mostly in the second century after Paul. He also explains how the story of the cross is wrong - people were hung from poles at the time, not nailed to crosses.... the cross is a stylized representation of the two sticks used to create fire in the sun worship rituals. Normally, a lamb was shown at the center of the cross as this was the symbol of the simultaneous death of the winter and birth of the summer. It wasn't until 600 years after Paul that the Church required a figure of a man representing Jesus at the center of the cross instead of a lamb. Though a bit turgid, being translated from German, and a bit of heavy slogging in places, the book finishes on a strong note. If you believe the Jesus story, you will not be pleased with this book. If you doubt the Jesus story and are looking for some well-researched analysis of the historicity and veracity of the story, this book will be of great interest.

Surprisingly good

Drews wrote this book in German and it was translated to English with sometimes difficult sentence construction, but the ideas are good and essentially clear. The ideas are not at all outdated. I've read the recent Christ-myth books, such as The Jesus Puzzle, The Christ Conspiracy, The Jesus Mysteries, The Jesus Myth, and Deconstructing Jesus. This book and The Jesus Mysteries are my favorites because instead of only refuting the historical Jesus and discarding the whole of the Jesus story, they ask what is the meaning and value of the myth, in terms of religious experiencing and insight into the relation of self and world.The conclusion of this book is that given the choice between Jesus as myth and the historical Jesus, the right path for religion as religion is to choose Jesus as myth. If all we have is the historical Jesus of liberal Protestantism, then we no longer have religion, just mundane morality divested of both myth and the supernatural. But if we retain Jesus as myth, then we retain the religious redemption that is possible. He asserts that the Catholic Church could become legitimate by abandoning the historical Jesus and emphasizing the mythic Jesus as redeemer. Despite his elevation of redemption as the true essence of religion, Drews does not define redemption. (I'd define redemption as reconciliation between the self as moral agent and that from which it emanates.) Drews does not explicitly define this reconciliation and explain specifically how the Jesus myth assists this reconciliation.He explains a main motive for creating the assertion of the historical Jesus. The early Jewish Christian leaders used a strategy of trying to limit authority to themselves and shut out competitors such as Paul and his Gentile/mythic Christianity by creating historical requirements that would serve to exclude others and restrict authority to themselves. Drews shows that this is the same strategy the Church fathers used: assert that the only spiritual authority is that of the person who spent time with the historical Jesus. If Jesus is allowed to be purely mythic, religious authority is potentially spread evenly among all people, but if Jesus is historical as well as mythic, the profitable and advantageous possibility of excluding other authorities arises.Drews emphasizes the sacred meal as central to early Christian worship and compares it to the central role of soma (= "body") in Vedic religion, thus this book is useful for the entheogenic theory of religion.

A classical book on this subject.

You must take a carefull look on this book originally writted at the turn of the century (1910). How actual are the views of this eminent German philosopher.

balanced and detailed

To my surprise, The Christ Myth is not at all a rant of Christianity and Christian theology, but rather simply a comparsion between Christian beliefs, similar pagan belies, and the essential meaning behind the motiff of the suffering god image that has persisted religious faith in a number of different ways from Mithras, Odin, and on to the sacraficial vegetation god worshipped by modern pagans. That is at least the first part of the book, the second part takes a look at the Jesus figure himself, apart from his pagan influences, and relates how the character of Jesus came about, meaning what went into him, what sources were used, and the eventual product character that is today the centerpiece of Christianity. But all throughout this, the book is still not work of religious forgery of deception, but rather a book about literature and poetry, and how these two elements forged the image of Jesus Christ.