What do you think?
Rate this book
The Complete Heretic's Guide to Western Religion #4
Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. III
About the book:
David Fitzgerald’s award-winning 2010 book Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All pointed out the top ten fatal flaws of Christianity’s origin story. Now, Jesus: 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 volume:
Mything in Action, vol. III (chapters 19 – 25)
presents a bold thought experiment:
“The Gospel According to H.G. Wells,”
a multi-chapter time travel expedition
through the origins and evolution of Christianity.
David Fitzgerald’s award-winning 2010 book Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All pointed out the top ten fatal flaws of Christianity’s origin story. Now, Jesus: 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 volume:
Mything in Action, vol. III (chapters 19 – 25)
presents a bold thought experiment:
“The Gospel According to H.G. Wells,”
a multi-chapter time travel expedition
through the origins and evolution of Christianity.
Audible Audio
Published November 13, 2018
84 people are currently reading
138 people want to read
About the author
David Fitzgerald
16 books107 followersDavid 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.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 17, 2025
Even if this is nonfiction, it's presented almost as speculative fiction as we get to travel back in time to discover truths about christianity. It's a short last installment of "Jesus: Mything in action", which has been a true eyeopener. Definitely recommended!
February 19, 2020
This a fascinating book. After reading the previous book in the series, where Fitzgerald argues very persuasively, that Jesus Christ was not an actual historical figure, he turns his attention in this book to the question: ‘If Jesus didn’t exist, how did Christianity begin, grow, and become so successful. It’s an excellent read. Fitzgerald is an engaging writer, his material is well researched and he provides lots of evidence to support his reasoning. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in the question of who Jesus was and whether he really existed.
December 7, 2024
We use are present reality to adjust for how we understand the past and the creators of that reality did the same. There is a recursive reliance that all history relies on to reach its truth, and by the time it gets handed down to us, it is up to us to remove those recursive glasses we see the world with.
Fitzgerald removes our recursive reliance on systematic revisionist history regarding the development of Christianity and gives a reasonable interpretation to Christianity’s development. The story is just as easily explained with or without an earthly man named Jesus, or as he quotes Bart Ehrman a few delusional visions by no more than three people would be enough to explain the story.
I just recently read two overly long dull books and not very convincing on the necessity of the resurrection, one by Habermas and the other by Licona. They both needed to address but didn’t the reality present in this book.
Hebrews and Paul have a supernatural Jesus in a spiritual world and only revisionist thinking undoes that interpretation. The single most destructive fantasy book ever is the Book of Acts. To read it is to see its nonsense and Habermas and Licona assume its validity based on nothing but their feelings since it allows them to prove their presuppositions recursively.
There are no Jesus color glasses that we can wear that makes the NT cohere when we don’t recursively presuppose our conclusions Fitzgerald looks at the chronological presentation of the NT forcing the religious propaganda into its proper shape.
The Bible creators were smart to make Matthew the first book in the Bible even though it comes after Acts, Hebrews, and Mark chronologically. I’m irritated at myself that I used to think the Civil War was about state rights and Southern honor because we always see history with recursive lenses and when those glasses were removed, I now know it was about slavery. When the Jesus glasses are removed the mystery cult and magic become what they really are. Fitzgerald helps one remove those Jesus glasses.
Fitzgerald removes our recursive reliance on systematic revisionist history regarding the development of Christianity and gives a reasonable interpretation to Christianity’s development. The story is just as easily explained with or without an earthly man named Jesus, or as he quotes Bart Ehrman a few delusional visions by no more than three people would be enough to explain the story.
I just recently read two overly long dull books and not very convincing on the necessity of the resurrection, one by Habermas and the other by Licona. They both needed to address but didn’t the reality present in this book.
Hebrews and Paul have a supernatural Jesus in a spiritual world and only revisionist thinking undoes that interpretation. The single most destructive fantasy book ever is the Book of Acts. To read it is to see its nonsense and Habermas and Licona assume its validity based on nothing but their feelings since it allows them to prove their presuppositions recursively.
There are no Jesus color glasses that we can wear that makes the NT cohere when we don’t recursively presuppose our conclusions Fitzgerald looks at the chronological presentation of the NT forcing the religious propaganda into its proper shape.
The Bible creators were smart to make Matthew the first book in the Bible even though it comes after Acts, Hebrews, and Mark chronologically. I’m irritated at myself that I used to think the Civil War was about state rights and Southern honor because we always see history with recursive lenses and when those glasses were removed, I now know it was about slavery. When the Jesus glasses are removed the mystery cult and magic become what they really are. Fitzgerald helps one remove those Jesus glasses.
March 2, 2020
A neat conceit, using a time machine to pop forward incrementally to see the growth of Christianity from its roots until the time of Constantine. While there is no proving an actual Jesus existed or not, the evidence shows that his existence is not required for the religion to take off like it did.
September 18, 2020
Great series! Impressive author. Does his homework. Definitely recommended.
October 19, 2020
So good and also hilarious, I found myself pausing to laugh every now and then!
April 30, 2017
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.
June 2, 2024
THE THIRD VOLUME OF THE “MYTHING IN ACTION” BOOK SERIES
Author David Fitzgerald wrote in this 2017 book, “The Jews and Christians weren’t the only ones who picked up on the divine ‘Logos’ meme; it was widespread and cross-cultural… The Egyptian savior go Osiris was also called ‘the Logos,’ ‘the first’ and ‘the Lord’; and he was the one through whom all things were created and governed. At any rate, Philo shows us these ideas were already marinating in Jewish theological and intellectual circles. His explanation of Zechariah 6 shows that some Jew already believed that God had a firstborn son in heaven, a preexistent being through whom God created the universe, the very image of God, the supreme of all beings next to God, whose name is Jesus; a heavenly high priest who advocates on our behalf for the forgiveness of sins, and that earthly priests were but a copy of him. Not only is this clearly the same deity as the celestial Jesus we find in our NT book of Hebrews [Ch. 17]---it is clearly the same deity worshipped by Paul and the first generation of Christian… Which means, as nearly as we can tell, this was the original deity of Christianity.” (Pg. 82-83)
He notes that “Paul’s Jesus is a ‘life-giving spirit,’ ‘a man from heaven,’ not a man with an earthly body, but a celestial body. There’s another catch-22 for Christians here: if Paul thought that Jesus had ever been on earth at all… that would entail that when Jesus dies, he would have left his old body behind to rot in the grave, and was raised from the dead on the third day in a NEW SPIRITUAL BODY. So whether Paul believed in an earthly Jesus or a celestial one, there could not have been an empty tomb either way---or indeed, any physical evidence at all to back up his claim; which is one reason why he has to work so hard to reassure his flock that there really IS a resurrection of the dead. This is also why Paul (and the other epistles) never point us to an empty tomb as proof; that story had to be invented by the Gospel writers.” (Pg. 95-96)
He summarizes, “Everything we think we know about Jesus boils down to this… Our four gospels are merely four out of the four dozen or so early Christian gospels we know of, not counting who knows how many others that have since been lost to history… What we have today are texts taken from copies (of copies of copies of copies…). Despite the ridiculously overconfident pronouncements from apologists, our text does NOT match up to the originals; nor would we have any way to identify what an original looked like… since we don’t have anything but tiny fragments for the first one and a half to two centuries of Christianity. What we DO have are conflicting texts that all show marks of later editing, tampering and interpolations… by opposing factions of scribes for generations and generations before our oldest complete surviving texts finally appear in the beginning of the fourth century. These problematic writings are where Jesus really lives; the only place he ever did live, except for in our imaginations.” (Pg. 130-131)
He concludes, “One last thought. Keep in mind that all this fictional window dressing has been presenting actual historical developments that led to Christianity and resulted from it, whether there was a Jesus or not. If we ignore all the problems surround[ing] the historical Jesus, we could still plug him into the timeline, but the evolution of the Christian movement, before and afterwards, would remain the same---and he would still be completely superfluous to the process.” (Pg. 148)
This book will be of keen interest to Atheists and other skeptics of traditional Christianity.
Author David Fitzgerald wrote in this 2017 book, “The Jews and Christians weren’t the only ones who picked up on the divine ‘Logos’ meme; it was widespread and cross-cultural… The Egyptian savior go Osiris was also called ‘the Logos,’ ‘the first’ and ‘the Lord’; and he was the one through whom all things were created and governed. At any rate, Philo shows us these ideas were already marinating in Jewish theological and intellectual circles. His explanation of Zechariah 6 shows that some Jew already believed that God had a firstborn son in heaven, a preexistent being through whom God created the universe, the very image of God, the supreme of all beings next to God, whose name is Jesus; a heavenly high priest who advocates on our behalf for the forgiveness of sins, and that earthly priests were but a copy of him. Not only is this clearly the same deity as the celestial Jesus we find in our NT book of Hebrews [Ch. 17]---it is clearly the same deity worshipped by Paul and the first generation of Christian… Which means, as nearly as we can tell, this was the original deity of Christianity.” (Pg. 82-83)
He notes that “Paul’s Jesus is a ‘life-giving spirit,’ ‘a man from heaven,’ not a man with an earthly body, but a celestial body. There’s another catch-22 for Christians here: if Paul thought that Jesus had ever been on earth at all… that would entail that when Jesus dies, he would have left his old body behind to rot in the grave, and was raised from the dead on the third day in a NEW SPIRITUAL BODY. So whether Paul believed in an earthly Jesus or a celestial one, there could not have been an empty tomb either way---or indeed, any physical evidence at all to back up his claim; which is one reason why he has to work so hard to reassure his flock that there really IS a resurrection of the dead. This is also why Paul (and the other epistles) never point us to an empty tomb as proof; that story had to be invented by the Gospel writers.” (Pg. 95-96)
He summarizes, “Everything we think we know about Jesus boils down to this… Our four gospels are merely four out of the four dozen or so early Christian gospels we know of, not counting who knows how many others that have since been lost to history… What we have today are texts taken from copies (of copies of copies of copies…). Despite the ridiculously overconfident pronouncements from apologists, our text does NOT match up to the originals; nor would we have any way to identify what an original looked like… since we don’t have anything but tiny fragments for the first one and a half to two centuries of Christianity. What we DO have are conflicting texts that all show marks of later editing, tampering and interpolations… by opposing factions of scribes for generations and generations before our oldest complete surviving texts finally appear in the beginning of the fourth century. These problematic writings are where Jesus really lives; the only place he ever did live, except for in our imaginations.” (Pg. 130-131)
He concludes, “One last thought. Keep in mind that all this fictional window dressing has been presenting actual historical developments that led to Christianity and resulted from it, whether there was a Jesus or not. If we ignore all the problems surround[ing] the historical Jesus, we could still plug him into the timeline, but the evolution of the Christian movement, before and afterwards, would remain the same---and he would still be completely superfluous to the process.” (Pg. 148)
This book will be of keen interest to Atheists and other skeptics of traditional Christianity.
May 5, 2025
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."
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."
July 21, 2021
Things that make you go hmm...
A continued summary of previous books that examine the authenticity of Christianity. It is definitely eye opening and a must for those questioning their faith.
A continued summary of previous books that examine the authenticity of Christianity. It is definitely eye opening and a must for those questioning their faith.
November 29, 2019
Loses points for trying to hard to be entertaining and let his facts get obscured by too many hypotheticals. Still interesting but not as well delivered as the first two parts.
May 15, 2024
Superbly written and researched
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews