What do you think?
Rate this book
From Paul to Mark: PaleoChristianity
Nearly two thousand years ago the seeds of a new religion were sown in the eastern fringes of the Roman empire. An apostle named Paul wrote letters to his small congregations offering support, rebukes, and the outline of the gospel that would come to be known as Christianity. In the decades after came the Gospel of Mark, followed by more letters and more Gospels, controversies and debates, factions and infighting, until finally, Christianity became an empire.
But what if nearly everything you thought you knew about early Christianity was wrong? When read without preconceptions, the available contemporary sources tell a very different story, filled with ‘colorful’ characters, hardened revolutionaries, political maneuvering, and ideological conflict. In this groundbreaking study, Laura Knight-Jadczyk strips away centuries of assumptions and dogma to reexamine the fundamentals of what we can truly know of the early Christians, how we know it, and how that changes our picture of what was really happening in first-century Judea.
Why are there no historical references to Jesus and Christianity until decades after the events of the Gospels were supposed to have occurred? Why do the first non-Christian historians who mention Jesus seem dependent on the Gospels? Why does Paul make no unambiguous references to the Gospels’ Jesus of Nazareth? What was Paul talking about? Laura Knight-Jadczyk’s answers to these questions are revolutionary. After reading this book, you’ll never see the origins of Christianity the same way again.
“What will happen to you if you read this book? I’ll be glad to tell you. Your paradigm will begin to shift, perhaps only gradually at first. Your assumptions, even your axioms, will be challenged, and this time you will no longer be able to nervously default to the familiar. And all this will happen because you will be seeing the emergence of an exciting new stage of biblical criticism. Laura Knight-Jadczyk has here synthesized the work of a new generation of scholars who are not afraid to venture beyond convention and consensus. She has shown that the work of Wells, Doherty, Doughty, Carrier, Detering, Pervo, and myself are not merely isolated fireworks displays but rather gleams of a new, rising dawn. And in that light she presses on to her own striking advances. Won’t you join her?”––Robert M. Price, host of The Bible Geek podcast, author of Jesus Christ Superstition and The Amazing Colossal Apostle
“Quite a delight, well written, well researched.”––Russell Gmirkin, author of Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible and Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus
But what if nearly everything you thought you knew about early Christianity was wrong? When read without preconceptions, the available contemporary sources tell a very different story, filled with ‘colorful’ characters, hardened revolutionaries, political maneuvering, and ideological conflict. In this groundbreaking study, Laura Knight-Jadczyk strips away centuries of assumptions and dogma to reexamine the fundamentals of what we can truly know of the early Christians, how we know it, and how that changes our picture of what was really happening in first-century Judea.
Why are there no historical references to Jesus and Christianity until decades after the events of the Gospels were supposed to have occurred? Why do the first non-Christian historians who mention Jesus seem dependent on the Gospels? Why does Paul make no unambiguous references to the Gospels’ Jesus of Nazareth? What was Paul talking about? Laura Knight-Jadczyk’s answers to these questions are revolutionary. After reading this book, you’ll never see the origins of Christianity the same way again.
“What will happen to you if you read this book? I’ll be glad to tell you. Your paradigm will begin to shift, perhaps only gradually at first. Your assumptions, even your axioms, will be challenged, and this time you will no longer be able to nervously default to the familiar. And all this will happen because you will be seeing the emergence of an exciting new stage of biblical criticism. Laura Knight-Jadczyk has here synthesized the work of a new generation of scholars who are not afraid to venture beyond convention and consensus. She has shown that the work of Wells, Doherty, Doughty, Carrier, Detering, Pervo, and myself are not merely isolated fireworks displays but rather gleams of a new, rising dawn. And in that light she presses on to her own striking advances. Won’t you join her?”––Robert M. Price, host of The Bible Geek podcast, author of Jesus Christ Superstition and The Amazing Colossal Apostle
“Quite a delight, well written, well researched.”––Russell Gmirkin, author of Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible and Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus
628 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 24, 2021
11 people are currently reading
14 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 12, 2022
I just today (2022-01-16) finished reading the book From Paul to Mark: PaleoChristianity by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Well what a ride that was!
I started in in May 2021, but only wanted to read it when I was totally alert and so it took many elapsed days to read it carefully. Especially in the first chapters, I took notes on a note pad to keep things in order, and to keep me actively thinking. I found after reading a paragraph or two, I often stopped and pondered what I just read. Many times it triggered thoughts, based on my personal experiences and also my previous readings that I had to think through.
I did not mind this slow process of reading that I embarked upon, this was no novel to go through quickly and just be entertained by it.
From the very beginning, I understood this was a work where Laura had poured unimaginable about of time and effort – and it would not be hyperbolic to say poured her own blood, sweat and tears into. I identified with her desire to humbly, with as much objectivity as can be mustered and full effort, to try to untangle the mystery behind something that has heavily influenced the Western civilization for millennia. Looking at it that way, it would be hard to find something more important in our history for a human being to understand better, even if some things might not ever be known for certain. A herculean effort to unveil the truth as close as possible was not going to be ignored by me!
Further, this work was more than intellectual for me, but it pulled at my heart and emotions. I had been brought up in a community where a blind belief in their doctrine about Jesus, and the nature of God, the creator of the universe, and what they proclaimed was his will, and this shaped very real life decisions, my relationships with other people, and choices I made during the first 4 decades of my life. The question of Jesus, Paul, and what happened around 2000 years ago, had been told to me was of eternal importance to the condition of my very soul after death and it whatever simple black and white story I was offered needed to be believed without question.
Over a decade ago or more, I turned my being over to wanting to relate to God and the Universe in a different way: by fully embracing the idea of pure objectivity in order to see reality as it is as best as I could. In this way, by loving truth and objectivity with my heart, mind and soul, I would be for the first time actually loving God, instead of loving someone’s conception of God, or a mere conception of the Universe and reality, based on “a priori” unquestionable assumptions without proof, of which so many of these assumptions were absurd to a rational mind.
I found the journey of this book indescribably valuable to me, regardless if Laura had managed to massively reveal a great hidden truth, or even if she made only an insightful glimpse into this huge veil of mystery that has shrouded this topic left behind by what appears to me as an utter mess by centuries of humans, being what they are, for many purposes that drove them, to redact real writings, add interpolations to them, make up pure fabrications, and destroy other writings
Well what a ride that was!
I started in in May 2021, but only wanted to read it when I was totally alert and so it took many elapsed days to read it carefully. Especially in the first chapters, I took notes on a note pad to keep things in order, and to keep me actively thinking. I found after reading a paragraph or two, I often stopped and pondered what I just read. Many times it triggered thoughts, based on my personal experiences and also my previous readings that I had to think through.
I did not mind this slow process of reading that I embarked upon, this was no novel to go through quickly and just be entertained by it.
From the very beginning, I understood this was a work where Laura had poured unimaginable about of time and effort – and it would not be hyperbolic to say poured her own blood, sweat and tears into. I identified with her desire to humbly, with as much objectivity as can be mustered and full effort, to try to untangle the mystery behind something that has heavily influenced the Western civilization for millennia. Looking at it that way, it would be hard to find something more important in our history for a human being to understand better, even if some things might not ever be known for certain. A herculean effort to unveil the truth as close as possible was not going to be ignored by me!
Further, this work was more than intellectual for me, but it pulled at my heart and emotions. I had been brought up in a community where a blind belief in their doctrine about Jesus, and the nature of God, the creator of the universe, and what they proclaimed was his will, and this shaped very real life decisions, my relationships with other people, and choices I made during the first 4 decades of my life. The question of Jesus, Paul, and what happened around 2000 years ago, had been told to me was of eternal importance to the condition of my very soul after death and it whatever simple black and white story I was offered needed to be believed without question.
Over a decade ago or more, I turned my being over to wanting to relate to God and the Universe in a different way: by fully embracing the idea of pure objectivity in order to see reality as it is as best as I could. In this way, by loving truth and objectivity with my heart, mind and soul, I would be for the first time actually loving God, instead of loving someone’s conception of God, or a mere conception of the Universe and reality, based on “a priori” unquestionable assumptions without proof, of which so many of these assumptions were absurd to a rational mind.
I found the journey of this book indescribably valuable to me, regardless if Laura had managed to massively reveal a great hidden truth, or even if she made only an insightful glimpse into this huge veil of mystery that has shrouded this topic left behind by what appears to me as an utter mess by centuries of humans, being what they are, for many purposes that drove them, to redact real writings, add interpolations to them, make up pure fabrications, and destroy other writings
Displaying 1 of 1 review