The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy"This failure stems in large part from taking the canonical gospels as history, and ignoring the pre-gospel and extra-gospel accounts from the earliest layers of Jesus stories and sayings. Those layers disclose a widespread and variegated mythmaking process in the earliest schools and communities of Jesus' followers that was generated by social, economic, even geographical "interests." What is needed, Burton Mack suggests, is a systematic analysis of those interests which is not driven by either personal ("meeting Jesus") or theological ("building Church") motives, but which seeks to redescribe and understand the cultural and anthropological modalities whereby Christian myths and rituals were first conceived and agreed upon."--BOOK JACKET. |
Contents
The Historical Jesus Hoopla | 25 |
The Case for a Cyniclike Jesus | 41 |
On Redescribing Christian Origins | 59 |
Copyright | |
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American apocalyptic Bible called century chapter chreiai Chris Christian beginnings Christian myth Christian origins christos myth church claim concept construction cosmic created critical critique crucifixion Cynic Cynic-like Diogenes Laertius disciples divine early Christian early Christian groups early Jesus epic formation and mythmaking gods Gospel of Mark Gospel of Thomas gospel story Greco-Roman age Greek hellenistic hermeneutical hero historical Jesus important intellectual Israel Jerusalem Jesus christos Jesus movements Jesus schools Jesus Seminar Jesus's Jewish Jews Jonathan Z Judaism kerygma king kingdom kingdom of God Luke Mark messiah monocratic mythmaking mythology myths and rituals narrative gospels notion Paul priest pronouncement stories quest question redescription religious role Roman sayings seminar social and cultural social formation social interests social logic social theory systems of signs teachings of Jesus temple temple-state term Testament scholars Testament studies texts theologies theory of religion thinking thought tian tion