Edward Jayne

Christology

 

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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.