Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. I

The Complete Heretic's Guide to Western Religion #2

by David Fitzgerald

About the
David Fitzgerald’s award-winning 2010 book Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All pointed out the top ten fatal flaws of Christianity’s origin story. Now, Mything in Action presents the most compelling new findings in Jesus Myth theory and critically examines its controversial reception by biblical scholars, the extent and reliability of our sources for Jesus, and reveals the surprising history behind Jesus’ evolution.

In this
Mything in Action, vol. I (chapters 1 – 12) looks at the myths of Jesus what it is and isn’t; what biblical scholars are saying about it (and why); and examines our oldest “biographical” source for Jesus – the allegorical story we know as the Gospel of Mark.

Genres: Religion, History, Nonfiction, Atheism, Christianity, Audiobook, Philosophy

357 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 20, 2017

About the author

David Fitzgerald is a writer and historical researcher who has been actively investigating the Historical Jesus question for over ten years.

He lectures around the country at universities and national secular events and is best known for his book Nailed and The Complete Heretic's Guide to Western Religion series.

He is also the co-author of the science fiction trilogy Time Shards with his wife, Dana Fredsti.

Reviews

[Jim Knight · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like an addict, I keep going back to this topic. I still find it utterly astounding how little evidence there is for the historical Jesus. Shocking I know. If you are happy in your faith or not confident it can withstand scrutiny, don’t read any of David Fitzgerald's books on the subject. Too risky.

I lost my faith in the Bible and Yahweh but still assumed there was a religious guy named Jesus walking around in the first century. But then I read David Fitzgerald’s first book on this subject: “Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All” with skepticism. I read it as a lark, the same way that I watch flat earth videos on youtube now. I expected it to be an atheist kook book. But then it wasn’t. It was so compelling because it rang true and the religious responses seemed so tenuous. Josephus & Tacitus they scream. Hmm… But I digress.

I listened to this book on audio and I loved Fitzgerald’s narration. He doesn’t sound like he’s reading. He laughs when it’s appropriate. He’s just an entertaining reader (and writer). These books are very digestible compared to some of the other books in this field. By comparison, I find Richard Carrier’s book compelling but he’s too high brow for me. I have recommended Fitzgerald’s “Nailed” as a good intro to this topic because it is so approachable.

This book is meant as a follow-on to “Nailed” so it moves the focus into deeper issues like the Gospel resurrection narratives. The author does a lot of comparative analysis. It’s very interesting. This is the first in a new three part series. Kind of bummed I have to buy three books instead of one but I probably will. Like I wrote above, I’m addicted.

[Craig Cowled · Rating 5 out of 5]

This first volume of David Fitzgerald's "Mything in Action" is quite an eye opener. The author draws on the trail-blazing research of a growing cohort of Jesus scholars along with some of his own original research on the historicity of Jesus. He builds the argument that there never was a real person called Jesus. His argument is rational, solidly supported, and well written. Highly recommended!

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fitzgerald shows the Gospels are a muddled mess and read as a poorly constructed series of fictional books. It’s amazing that the incoherence gets harmonized through repetition and dogma.

I wish Fitzgerald took the argument a little further. It’s the 8 or so authentic letters of Paul that matter to me. Paul wrote them and he persecuted Christian followers and met with James, the brother of Jesus. Paul’s visions were real to himself and led him down his mythological false path and James (Jesus’ brother) was real. The Book of Acts is phony and obscures Paul and is Tabitha still alive today? Will the holy spirit kill you and your spouse if you give only 90 percent of your wealth to the church but claim you gave everything. Fitzgerald mentioned the ‘disciples’ behave mostly as a Greek Chorus and by the Book of Acts they fade into obscurity as if they never existed except for Peter and Judas who dies by hanging while his stomach explodes.

There was a war going on between legalistic Jerusalem early Christians (Peter and James) and Paul and it gets played out in the NT. Paul basically says he visited them in Jerusalem and didn’t learn anything from them that he did not already know. Paul was real and his letters are and they show what he thought while thinking he was special because of his psychotic break from reality. He clearly believed something crazy and there was a reason he had his psychotic break from reality and thought James was the brother of Christ and that Peter was real.

Fitzgerald writes a good book that shows it’s reasonable to doubt the existence of Jesus, but I lean towards ambivalence on that question since Christianity is empty of truth beyond trivialities and that is the real reason why I think it’s toxic.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant exploration of the arguments for understanding the New Testament gospels as non-historical works by anonymous authors. Clearly articulated and compelling evidence provided. Quite a few spelling errors which I hope will be fixed in future additions, but the quality of the argument is what matters. If you're interested in the mythicist perspective then this is a must read.

[Tanja Berg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine, I admit it. I have not been a christian for a good number of years, but I still thought there was someone called Jesus at approximately 2000 years ago. After this book, I no longer do.

The problem of finding out the truth is exacerbated because most people studying early Christianity are employed at universities that require them to be christian. If they come up with any evidence against, they are sacked. The author gives at least a dozen examples and there are many more. This is before he goes on to explain how the mything came about.

Quite fascinating. It's not often you get books that change your world view. This was one for me.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was expecting a loose and unoriginal synthesis of the various arguments for mythicism. However, Fitzgerald is much more rigorous than I had expected, and the initial sections of the book detailing the incentives that many mainstream historians have for affirming - even if dubiously - Jesus's historicity, and the many conspicuous disincentives that they have regarding affirming any mythicist arguments (no matter how trivial), were very eye-opening. That many are contractually obligated to tow the theological line certainly casts doubt on the authenticity of the current consensus.

His outline of the many flaws in trying to extract historical truth from the gospel narratives was very accessible and entertaining, and he rightly notes the lack of any valid or consistently applied method for doing so. And his exploration of many allegories and metaphors in the gospel narratives (that further undermine the case that these were valid historical accounts) was fascinating, though I recall finding one or two of the arguments about the presence of particular allegories being a little loose (e.g., regarding the relevance of Simon of Cyrene; though he does cite Richard Carrier, who made a more thorough and readable case regarding the symbolism here in his 'On the Historicity of Jesus').

A finer point to note is that Fitzgerald provides a handy mix of arguments from probability and from possibility. At times, he cites arguments that more plausibly and probably account for the evidence we have (e.g., that early Christians were happy to meddle with the texts and forge evidence to support their own agendas, as evidenced by such things as the currently canonical long endings of Mark [i.e., 16:9-20] and John [i.e., 21:1-25], both of which are widely regarded as early forgeries). And at times, he explores possible accounts of particular pieces of textual evidence that we have, usually citing Robert Price's demonstrations of perculiar parallels between gospel narratives and other ancient narratives (e.g., the possibility that the original Gospel of Mark did not have Jesus die, and that Mark's death and burial narratives took inspiration from certain tropes from Ancient Greek novels about people being presumed dead, prematurely buried, and then accidentally exhumed by would-be grave-robbers).

Fitzgerald rightly avoids pressing these possible accounts as somehow probable, but cites them simply to show that there are other plausible explanations of the evidence we have. Even if they are not the most probable, they should at least shake our certainty that the more probable accounts 'must be' true or that they are the only plausible accounts on offer.

Fitzgerald also does a good job of demonstrating how many other mythical figures were written into what otherwise seem to be historical texts. That the gospel narratives refer to many real historical locations and people lends virtually no credence to the claim that Jesus himself existed, any more than the fact that the movie Godzilla showed the giant monster being killed on the Brooklyn Bridge supports the historicity of Godzilla. Fitzgerald notes many other ahistorical figures (e.g., Hercules and Moses) whose stories took place in real locations and involved real people, and notes that Jesus being historical would make him quite exceptional, considering the many similarities between his story and the stories of many similar - yet non-existent - people, and given how much of his story is obviously legendary.

There are bits and pieces of loose and needless argumentation. For example, while his criticisms of the evidence for the historicity of Nazareth were fair, I think they were incomplete. He cited the work of Rene Salm, but did not address any criticisms of Salm's conclusions, which made his account seem skewed. I was also hoping for a few more paragraphs on the case for/against the Q source, as I felt he was too brief, but there is always Mark Goodacre's 'The Case Against Q' for that.

There are also a few cheap jousts at Christianity which are not particularly relevant to the secular debate surrounding the historicity of Jesus, but they are entertaining and probably too hard for anyone to resist.

So overall, this was a very impressive book. Certainly good enough to justify investing in Part 2.

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book convinced me, as a Bart Ehrman fan, of how Bart hadn't taken the evidence far enough and realized that Jesus was a purely mythical figure. The gospel according to Mark is really fascinating to me now, much more so than before, and I appreciate its richness of allegory and harmonizing of various OT texts into a figure that did so many interesting things.

Makes me wonder what the Christ of Paul and the first believers really was then, and what writings inspired belief in a resurrected Messiah in the first place. Sad we have so little from that time.

In any case though, I think this book and its subsequent parts have the strength of logic to convince even the most adamant Christian, if they are willing to look at it seriously.

I have many friends and authority I used to trust on the topic of the Bible that have said things most interpreters have known for decades are completely wrong. It is sad how easily humans will cling to the first faith that seems to make sense to them, and how willing entire masses of people are to justify their interpretations by resorting to truly absurd workarounds and allegory and other literary tools of analysis when the truth is staring them in the face.

I was often told growing up that the Bible is by its nature simple to understand. Years of not seeing how it is simple at all behind me, I now see indeed that it is simple to understand. As a mythical tale of a human that never even existed in the first place, twisted and warped with time and containing countless incongruities and contradicting views. This is the only view that can make sense, given all the evidence.

[Amber Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

For years I never question...

This was an eye opening. For years I never question the bible. I never challenge the issues I found. They I read, Nailed. And then I read this book. Now I see just how blindly I followed the teachings never testing it. Blinded by the light and an finally I see.

This was no easy road. I was a former bible teacher, pastor, theology teacher and speaker on the cults. Condemning them when I was wrong all along. Thank you.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author (whom we know from Nailed) is referred to as a writer and historical researcher. The book is fascinating, but it does sometimes seem a little disorganized and it has long quotes from the academic workers in this field that can be distracting (you may ask yourself, why don't I just read Dr. Carrier?). For the same reason, I think this could have been published as one volume. Fitzgerald does do a nice job of summarizing a lot of work on this topic and presenting it in an easily digestible form. I think I may hold off on volumes II and III, since I was convinced long ago that Hercules was not a real person and that if someone starts telling you about a haunted house, the eyewitness will usually be their cousin's friend.

[Scott Holstad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! Packed with stats, historical evidence, and basic common sense to show how absurd it is to think the "gospels" have anything remotely true in them, especially in light of the fact that no one knows who the real authors were, they were written between 35 - nearly 100 years after his death, the authors wrote the books in a totally different language with limited understanding of the language used by Jesus and his followers, and these were obviously educated authors, unlike anyone with Jesus, and none of the authors were eyewitnesses to anything they wrote about, nor were they likely to even have known ANY eyewitnesses, they often magically explained what various characters were thinking or saying while alone with no witnesses, that these original disciples never wrote anything down recording Jesus's words, let alone he himself, because they were all illiterate so that no one could possibly know what, if anything, Jesus actually said and thus much of it to all of it is likely fiction, and most damning, while there were tons of independent historians alive and writing during the first 2-3 centuries CE, there is not one shred of independent evidence that Jesus of Nazareth ever lived! No one ever wrote of him, mentioned him or his amazing miracles that brought crowds of thousands, per the bible, to follow him, because the only mention of such things is in ... the bible and nowhere else, thus casting massive doubt on any of it. Indeed, there were a ton of messiahs and prophets running around declaring the coming end of the world, and even one named Jesus, all documented, none of him the one found in the bible. The amazing events written about in one of the gospels upon Jesus's death (Matthew?) such as two major earthquakes, the sun doing completely dark for hours, and the dead "saints" in Jerusalem rose out of their graves and proceeded into the city, for the heck of it? Zombie saints??? If such amazing things had actually occurred, there would be both scientific evidence of the earthquakes and the sun disappearing for hours, and likewise, many of the historians would have noted these events along with something as bizarre as jesus-following zombies, yet again, none of these are mentioned by ANY independent sources anywhere during the first one and a half centuries, and thus, these stories are utterly false and total BS. These are just a few examples of the fine work done by Fitzgerald in this book, which I think is more impressive than his previous work. Highly recommended -- especially for skeptics and those questioning the accuracy of the bible...

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE “MYTHING IN ACTION” BOOK SERIES

Author David Fitzgerald wrote in the Preface of this 2017 book, ‘Jesus: Mything in Action’ is the follow-up to my 2010 book, ‘Nailed: Ten Christian Myths that Show Jesus Never Existed at All.’ … it soon became apparent that there were still many questions left unanswered… So here to help with those and more questions is [this book]. I planned this to be both a follow-up to ‘Nailed’ and the second book in ‘The Complete Heretic’s Guide to Western Religion’ series. But … it became apparent that at around 900 pages, J:MIA would have to be three books instead.”

He wrote in the Introduction, “Yes, I am indeed a big bad atheist who wants Christianity and all the other religions to stop being ridiculous and just go away already. However… that has absolutely nothing to do with my thoughts on the historicity of Jesus. While I may indeed have an atheist axe to grind, I have no ideological allegiance to Jesus Myth theory, and will be just as happy an atheist if it turns out there really WAS a wildly overrated first century Judean preacher named Jesus… I’d be perfectly fine with it, should enough new evidence turn up to change my mind. Until then, I continue to argue for the Jesus Myth position for just one reason: because I think it’s the correct one.” (Pg. 29)

He explains, “Two billion or so people on this planet claim to be on a first name basis and in constant psychic contact with Jesus of Nazareth. This book is not for them. Instead, I want to talk to YOU---those of you who have weighed the claims of religions like Christianity and found them wanting; or perhaps never even took them that seriously to begin with: you, the atheists, the agnostics, the secular humanists, the unbelievers---the complete heretics, if you will. Here is my question to you, Heretic Nation: Did Jesus exist?... here’s a second question for you: Does it matter if Jesus was real or not?... first we need to ask a different question: WHICH Jesus?... for the moment we can pretend there are just two of them: the ‘Jesus of Faith,’ and the ‘Jesus of History.’” (Pg. 21-22)

He points out, “Here are half a dozen cases (and there are more) of sincere, devout Christian biblical scholars who have found themselves in hot water over issues that may seem fairly innocuous to the rest of us. CASE ONE: Mike Licona… [who] specializes in defending the resurrection of Jesus… [and] dared suggest one of the wiggier events in the Gospels might not be literally true. In his 2010 book, ‘The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, Licona briefly questioned the historical reality of [Mt 27:52-53]… Naturally, such blasphemy triggered a paroxysm of outrage from fellow evangelical apologists like Norman Geisler… At least two Southern Baptist entities, including the New Orleans seminary and the Southern Baptists of Texas convention, rescinded invitations for Licona to speak… a year later… Licona resigned … as a research professor at Southern Evangelical Seminary and as the apologetics coordinator for the North American Mission Board… A few leading evangelical scholars such as William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, and Gary Habermas tried unsuccessfully to come to Licona’s defense, but most scholars feared showing their support openly…” (Pg. 63-65)

“CASE TWO: Peter Enns… CASE THREE: Christopher Rollston… CASE FOUR: Bruce Waltke… [who] has often been called the preeminent Old Testament scholar in the field… His crime took place during a video interview … where… he said this: ‘If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult… some odd group that is not really interacting with the world…’ …Reformed Theological Seminary soon announced it had accepted his resignation… CASE FIVE: Tom Thompson… CASE SIX: Anthony Le Donne… What makes all these … so heinous is the blatant violation of basic principles of scholarship: touting academic freedom while covertly quashing it… What’s more, in every instance here, all the vicious has been over relatively minor matters, nowhere near as potentially faith-shattering as the Jesus historicity issues.” (Pg. 65-78)

He notes, “let’s forgo the imaginative for the plausible and return to focus on the more viable historical Jesus theories that have bene confidently proposed by respected scholars and accepted by the mainstream. If we restrict ourselves to just those, we still have a surprising number of options. All of them are plausible---but are any of them true? This multiplicity of convincing possibilities is PRECISELY THE PROBLEM: the various scholarly reconstructions of Jesus cancel each other out. Each sounds good until you hear the next one.” (Pg. 110)

He observes, “there were many different Jesuses and Christs being preached by different groups in the first century… No single individual Jesus made an impact on history, but many different ones made an impact on theology—at least on the cultic fringe… Consider: Either Jesus taught or did a host of amazing, revolutionary things---and no one outside his fringe sect noticed for generations---OR, he didn’t… and yet still managed to inspire a network of tiny communities to arise all over… although they couldn’t agree about even the basics of his life, his ministry, who he was, who his followers were, or what he taught.” (Pg. 117)

He asserts, “Mark and his gospel presents an ‘Adoptionist’ theology … that Jesus was an ordinary man whom God declared to be his son at his baptism and, because of his obedience unto death, God raised him from the dead and exalted him to Lord. In Mark’s no-frills gospel, there is no miraculous virgin birth, no star of Bethlehem, no wise men, no empire-wide taxations, no angelic announcements, nor tales of precocious young Jesus astounding the rabbis with his knowledge. These spectacular embellishments are all later Christian developments.” (Pg. 162)

He argues, “And was Mark---the original basis that all later gospels were built upon---even meant to be taken literally in the first place? Mark tells us … he is writing a gospel, not a history or biography [Mk 1:1]. Numerous historians across the theological spectrum, both historicists and mythicists alike, have confirmed this… All have detailed the ways that Mark’s entire Gospel is a treasure trove of symbolic, rather than historical, meaning, with parts created by borrowing from the Old Testament, the Homeric epics, and the letters of Paul. From start to finish, this is allegory, not history.” (Pg. 227)

Of Matthew’s accounts of the resurrection, he comments, “Matthew has more miracles for us. It’s a shame that apparently no one else in human history seemed to notice any of them, because they are doozies… If it seems unrealistic to accept that everyone in the ancient world would miss supernatural darkness, the tearing of the temple veil, and not one but two rock-shattering earthquakes hitting Jerusalem… Matthew reports [27:52-53] one last miracle… For sheer unbelievability, few Bible passages make Christians squirm like this one. I have had believers try to tell me… that this was probably a very localized event, only witnessed by a handful of people (forgetting what the word ‘many’ means; or that this is describing a mass resurrection of famous dead people in downtown Jerusalem)…” (Pg. 306-306)

This book will be of keen interest to Atheists and other skeptics of traditional Christianity.

[Jc · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am reviewing this set (2010 Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All; 2017 The Complete Heretic's Guide to Western Religion Book 2: Jesus: Mything in Action Vol. 1-3) as one book, as the four volumes actually constitute one extended essay (with Nailed as the introductory chapter). I found Fitzgerald’s Mything works to be a masterpiece: a very complete overview of all the major issues with the theological theory that “Jesus of Nazareth” not only was “the Messiah” aka “the Christ,” but an actual historical individual. This set of works thoroughly addresses the problems with this view, and explores in detail the “Christ Myth Theory” that the historical person Jesus did not even exist in Palestine or anywhere. The fourth and final volume I was unsure about, as I found its subtitle a bit worrying: “The Gospel According to H.G. Wells.” However, this turned out to be my favorite volume. “Wells” certainly was the perfect cap to the entire series. It traces, in a very readable way, what is known of the first few centuries of Christianity, including some of the background Jewish, Greek, and Roman history which allowed for its development. After reading the earlier volumes (all of which were well researched and well put together), the final volume brings it all together and tries to explain why a cornucopia of loosely related Middle Eastern cults finally coalesced into what the world, after the 4th century, came to know as orthodox christianity. All told, these four volumes are a must read for anyone who takes seriously the history and origin of christianity and related religions – believer or not. I certainly hope that Fitzgerald is able to continue his Complete Heretic’s Guide series. His effort to put together this thorough guide is an important addition to the serious, academic examination of the origins and meaning of what became christianity.

[Arensb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fitzgerald is not a Bible scholar, so take this book with a grain (but only a grain) of salt, the same way you'd read a science book written by someone who's a science popularizer rather than a scientist.
Although the view he presents, that Jesus Christ is entirely mythical, is far from mainstream, it seems defensible.
For one thing, as he takes pains to explain, entire field of Bible studies tends to attract people who already believe that Jesus is real, and is thus biased in that direction. But if scholars like Bart Ehrman, Richard Carrier, and Robert Price can be believed, and I think they can, solid historical evidence is in very short supply.
All in all Fitzgerald does a good job of presenting reasons to think that the gospels have been copied, recopied, edited, and adapted from earlier stories that, once you strip away the myths, exaggerations, and forgeries, there's no real core left.

[Jeff Powers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic book. The final nail in the coffin, or cross as it were, pulling apart the gospels and early drafts of Christian scripture to show that there is no viable proof of a historical Jesus. Well worth the effort to find a copy and read it. If you are atheist, agnostic, grew up in the tradition or not, this will make rethink the religion that sits at the center of western culture.

[Alfred St · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating

This book is one that every free thinking person should read. It's packed with relevant information regarding many biblical events and most certainly puts the life of Jesus in the fictional category. I personally found it difficult to put down.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed Fitzgerald's previous book "Nailed" and Mything in Action expands on the research presented in that. Vol I dives into the overall reasons why/how the Jesus story appears to be all mythology without a real historical person at the center.

I'm looking forward to reading Volumes 2 and 3.

[Guilherme · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poucos temas são tão delicados quanto a historicidade de Jesus Cristo e os relatos bíblicos associados a ele. Em Jesus: Mything in Action — obra dividida em três volumes — David Fitzgerald apresenta uma defesa abrangente da “Teoria do Mito de Cristo”, que propõe que o personagem Jesus, tal como é tradicionalmente conhecido, não foi uma figura histórica real, mas uma construção mitológica posterior.

Fitzgerald articula sua tese com base em uma revisão extensa da literatura acadêmica sobre o Novo Testamento, analisando as lacunas históricas, as contradições nos evangelhos e o contexto religioso do mundo antigo. Ao longo do texto, ele examina criticamente os principais argumentos pró e contra a existência histórica de Jesus e conclui com uma espécie de “viagem no tempo” pelas origens e transformações do cristianismo primitivo.

Trata-se, sem dúvida, de uma leitura provocadora — e, para alguns, até desconfortável. No entanto, a escrita é clara, bem-humorada e rigorosa, e o autor demonstra amplo domínio do material que apresenta. O resultado é uma obra instigante, que convida à reflexão crítica tanto crentes quanto céticos.
.
"O problema não é a falta de evidências da existência de Jesus — é a abundância de evidências de que ele nunca existiu."

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've not actually read it, but I'm quite familiar with the claims of Jesus mythicism in general, and with an academic background (though not currently used) I'm familiar with the BS level. So, this is a "marker" for young-gun mythicists with whom I may be less familiar.

That said? It sounds like Fitzgerald, per more enthusiastic reviewers, commits the normal mistakes, including but not limited to arguments from silence, assumptions that a relative paucity of material is true of Jesus stories vs classical antiquity in general, that narrative devices etc. are also ditto, etc.

Side note: One can easily be an atheist, including one of formerly Christian background, without needing to be a Jesus mythicist. Sadly (and infuriatingly, as far as their intellectual level or lack thereof) a lot of Gnu Atheists don't get this.

Per Wolfgang Pauli, more on the Not.Even.Wrongness of "name" mythicists here.

[BethK · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book offers good evidence that much of the New Testament is based on older writings, of other people, casting more doubt on there ever having been an historical Jesus. Rather, there were a number of actual and mythical people the story was blamed upon.

The author gives a great deal of scholarly credence, with evidence, that many of the canonical gospel was forged much later than believed - some even into the third century. Oddly, some of these forgeries contain warnings to look out for forgeries!

A good bit of the New Testament uses the literary device of omniscient narrator - that is a person who knows the secrets when there were no eyewitnesses - such as when Jesus was praying along, the dreams of Joseph, the events that took place in secret meetings. This device is for a fiction plot. Nonfiction does not know about these private thoughts, dreams, or events.

[Brian Asalone · Rating 5 out of 5]

concise. detailed. to the point. If you are new to the accuracy (or lack) of accurate authorship and text in the new testament, this is not a bad place to start. Fitzgerald notes the flaws, the likely sources and the motivations behind new testament passages. In addition, he adds references for further reading at the ends of the various chapters.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good read detailing specific scripture verses and the improbability of the verses. Mr Fitzgerald also ties New Testament verses with Old Testament counterparts to show the blatant plagiarism in the Bible. I would have given him 5 stars if he would have refrained from political snark.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting

Decent read that examines the notion that there is probably no real Jesus as we think we know him. A lot of evidence to support forgery and falsehoods throughout the 4 gospels.

[Alan Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly things to consider.

[Ailith Twinning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh, 6 paragraphs into a response and I got bored trying to hack thru the linguistic minefield of this topic. My thoughts on the matter are irrelevant so let's just blurb the book.

Amusing book, give it a listen (go for the audiobook).

Also: Mildly annoyed it got split into three books.