Mythologizing Jesus: From Jewish Teacher to Epic Hero [Hardcover]

The Christian scriptures took shape within a rich literary landscape, as the gnostic gospels and the Dead Sea Scrolls make clear. But MacDonald, a biblical studies professor at Claremont Graduate School and Claremont School of Theology, sheds light on a different dimension of literary dependence: Homeric material, especially the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. MacDonald (author of The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, to which he directs interested readers for more scholarly treatments) aims here to distill his findings and present a cogent comparison of Homeric tropes with the Christian gospels of Mark and Luke. To that end, in brief chapters, the author shows some 24 major parallels explored chapter by chapter, from 'Born Divine and Human' to 'Disappearing into the Sky.' . . . The evidence certainly seems to demonstrate . . . dependence by the gospel writers on their masterful Greek predecessor in their stories about and portrayals of Jesus.MacDonald provides a substantive and careful comparison of early Christian writings with cherished literature of the ancient world (e.g., Homer, Hesiod). Using examples and thorough comparisons of Greek and Roman sources, MacDonald explains how the authors of the Gospels understood that Jesus was in contention with the images of Odysseus, Heracles, and Romulus and, as a result, created fictions to prove that their hero exemplified those figures and more. VERDICT MacDonald doesnt intend to assail belief; this is not an atheists or a scoffers approach but rather a postRudolf Bultmann view of the Christian ideal, suitable for believers who are ready to embrace a Christianity that acknowledges its own myth.[T]his book is an intriguing read and worth the time to dig through it...Mythologizing Jesus convincingly explains the numerous correspondences between the synoptic Gospels of Luke and Mark and the Greek poet Homer; too many, in fact, to be just coincidences and thereby shedding new light on old texts and unmistakabló&