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About Myself |
Was Christ a Myth?
A speech in which I demonstrated that there is sufficient historic evidence
additional to the Gospels that Christ existed, but as a human being, not
the Son of God. His principal accomplishment, I suggest, was his syncretistic
triangulation (a "trinity" of sorts) that combined pagan fertility
sacrifice, Persian eschatology, and Judaic prophecies of a future Messiah.
Christ's Three Identities
An expansion of my speech that explores in depth the historical evidence
of Christ’s role, including Celsus’s report that Christ was
born a natural son of the Roman soldier Panthera, and what seems to have
been Clement of Alexandria’s recommendation to avoid the discussion
of Christ’s homosexuality in order to promulgate Christian faith
with the most success. I also take into account the mythical aspect of
Christianity comparable to other religions prevalent in Rome at the time.
And finally I discuss the possibility of severe delusional tendencies--Christ’s
repeated attacks on family loyalty, his megalomaniac insistence that he
alone was the son of God, and his paranoid expectation that he and those
who believed in him would be rewarded in heaven while all his enemies
would be doomed to eternal hellfire, especially those unwilling to accept
his status as the Son of God.
Brief Christ Bibliography--Skeptical
Research
A brief list of texts by non-Christians and Christians sufficiently dispassionate
to deal with Christ's story on an objective basis. Some are sympathetic,
some hostile, most of them dubious of Christ's status as the Messiah and
a son of God.
Mithra Versus Christ
An exhaustive list of similarities between Christ and Mithra, his principal
competitor among the many gods and saviors worshipped between the second
and fourth centuries, A.D. Since Mithra was one of the most ancient of
gods known then, it may be assumed that much of the story of Christ derived
from that of Mithra, not the other way around.
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