About book Who Wrote The New Testament? The Making Of The Christian Myth (1996)
I was advised this book in Derren Brown's Tricks Of The Mind, where he claims that he started reading it as an christian agnostic and laid it down as an atheist. That sounded nice!The book doesn't deliver completely, I think there are better options if you want to see someone wiping the floor with religion. In fact, reading Holy Bible: King James Version itself is probably the best choice to get a clear idea of the load of sadistic and patriottic self delusion it contains. But let us return to Mack.He does a good job in showing how the preachings of some historical Jesus figure gave rise to a small cult of followers, who all had different interpretations of their master's sayings. Instrumental in the rise of Christianity was the Jew Paul, who at first opposed non-jews becoming a christian but then realised that allowing the gentiles to be followers as well, was the key point in making the movement a success. He wrote his famous letters advocating that view to the different Jesus communities and Christ cults that had emerged. Also, some later letters were attributed to him after his death, just as what happened to the evangelists. Mack clearly shows that attributing a large body of text produced by a group of followers to one single, mythical author, was a widely spread practice in hellenistic times. Historically, one can date the production of the gospels somewhere between the first and second century. The 'official' gospels are by no means the eyewitness accounts they are supposed to be, but more the point of view of a particular group of followers who made sure to work their own agendas into the main focus of the gospel in question.Whereas the early Jesus teachings had no bearings on the Jewish tradition, their Torah was twisted and turned and reinterpreted during the first centuries of Christianity, and the gospels were made to match it, so that finally the Jewish tradition could be adopted by Christianity. The Messiah-idea and the legacy of King David were very artificially arm wrestled to point towards the Jesus figure, who by that time bore little resemblance to the historical man he once was. It is hard to believe even then that anyone would fall for such an obvious and convoluted construction, but two billion Christians today sadly prove otherwise.The good about Mack is that he proves his point in a detailed, philological way, but the bad is also that he makes his point so academically. The lay out of the book is pure boredom, with not a single illustration, no line spaces and hardly any titles in between. It is just pure text, without any humour or literary aspiration. I think that even in a serious work, one can make a slight effort to present one's ideas in an agreeable manner. Burton L. Mack never bothers.So, all in all it is a book with valuable insights, but absolutely no fun to read!
This was an excellent book and I learned a great deal from it. It goes into the history of early Christianity and the various sects and then discusses who wrote the New Testament (we don't really know, but we know for sure that it was not written by who it is accredited to, except some of the letters of Paul) and why it is the way it is. some of the things in this book were really surprising – such as the fact that the early Jesus followers did not believe in his divinity or in his resurrection. Those doctrines were added later – I thought that was very interesting that surprised me a lot. Christianity as it is known today read as it was known in the Middle Ages was completely different than the way it was in the beginning. There were so many competing sects, the Gnostics, the Jesus cults, etc.it also discussed why the Bible is the way it is – how the doctrines that were developed for responses to what was actually going on among the different congregations. For example, it says that Paul developed the whole theory of atoning grace because he needed tomake peace between Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus, the Jewish people were saying that the Gentiles needed to be circumcised, which was causing a huge schism between them. In order to ameliorate this conflict, Paul came up with the fact that there was a new covenant, and that Jesus had put people into a new level of grace where they no longer needed to be circumcised to follow the Jewish laws. The book also discussed how different writers of the Bible had different views on Christianity and what the truth was – they emphasize different things, and sometimes contradicted one another. This is an excellent book for anyone who's interested in the history of Christianity or in the Bible and why and how was written. It is extremely informative but also easy to read and understand. The only people who won't benefit from this book are hard-line Christian fundamentalists who will refuse to believe what they are reading because they feel that the Bible is infallible and deny the fact that it was written 50-150 years after Jesus died (or even later)
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Anyone buying this book in the expectation of finding out who actually wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke and John will be sadly disappointed since no one knows who wrote them and the names given to them in the Good Book might best be considered courtesy titles. Likewise, anyone buying this book in the expectation of discovering that the texts presently comprising the New Testament are verbatim transcripts of God’s word through carefully selected scribes will also be disappointed. No such claim is considered and the book’s sub-title should be borne in mind – ‘The Making of the Christian Myth’. This book is not for the faint-hearted. The author is a scholar with considerable depth of knowledge and, though well written, his book is a weighty one requiring some application on the part of the reader.Some readers might feel that his inferences concerning the various Jesus communities which sprang up after his death are overly conjectural in places. He will not have got everything right, but his account of how these texts came into being is persuasive. And he also deals with how it was that certain texts were eventually selected for inclusion while others were not.I found this book most instructive.
—Roderick Hart
This book certainly brings to the surface many obscure aspects of the first few hundred years of Christianity. It spends a surprisingly short amount of time on the four Gospels, but covers many important twists and turns in Christian thinking after the books of the New Testament came out. I don’t quite trust Mack’s instincts, though. I am uncomfortable with his degree of confidence. He ascribes many feelings and thought processes to Paul, for instance, that no one nowadays could possibly know about for sure. Mack’s insights are fascinating, but his comprehensive viewpoint is open to criticism. He also has a political and polemical agenda that involves puncturing what he calls “Christian mythology.”
—Andy Oram
A fascinating and readable account of the history of the Christian scriptures and the communities that produced them. The New Testament is known to most of us as a monolith, as if the books were all written simultaneously to be read together. Historical research makes it clear that they represent a long period of struggle among different groups with radically different interpretations of the life and teachings of Jesus. Mack provides an excellent introduction to those sects and controversies in this book.
—Allen
