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Acharya S, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold (Adventures Unlimited, 1999)
Okay, I tried.
I've crossed swords with the author before on some of the very issues that show a blind spot in this book (the section on Evemerism is especially weak, for example; more on that below), but in many cases, her response ended up being "read my book," which then hadn't been released yet. Okay, so I got around to reading the book, or at least trying to read the book.
The Christ Conspiracy may well be on the most important subject to be written about in the last two thousand years. And what is here is well-researched, even if the source material isn't always of top quality. But the presentation is absolutely horrible. The book is just on the wrong side of unreadable; it seems almost as if it were written for the purpose of being presented as a textbook (the authors of which often seems if they're being deliberately obtuse). Interesting, this, because Acharya has a style about her that reaches for readability in today's culture; her diction is appealing to gen-X and younger readers, she's witty, a formidable opponent in debate, and simply quite likable. None of which actually comes out in her writing here; what we get is a four-hundred-page rant (well, okay, I only make it through two hundred fifty pages, but saw no reason to believe it would be any different to the end) that's dry as dust. It makes Bjorn Lomborg (The Skeptical Environmentalist) look like Stephen King.
What is most glaring, however, are the places where questions are raised that Acharya either refuses to answer or never thought of answering. I know the latter is not the case for at least one of these questions; she hammers away at evemerist interpretations of Christ by setting up a straw man, saying that anyone to whom evemerism attaches itself must have at least some of the characteristics that get exaggerated, as in the case of Paul Bunyan. Such is not the case. Reader's of Chinua Achebe's novel A Man of the People will easily see through this sleight-of-hand. For a real-life example, try Johnny Appleseed...or, perhaps, Jesus Christ. Such inconsistencies in question-answering are common throughout the book.
Worse yet, a number of her sources have either been discredited to the point where even the atheists don't consider them worthwhile anymore or are of questionable character in the first place.
None of the above is to say the topic itself, whether Jesus Christ truly existed or not, is not worth researching. The opposite, in fact; Christianity is an obvious amalgamation of earlier religions, and Jesus Christ may well have been a mythical figure, something the Gnostics have been claiming for almost two millennia without anyone really listening to them. But such an important topic needs far more solid legs in serious debate than will be found in this book. You can do far better.
First book fed to my starving dustbunnies in 2004. (zero)
Okay, I tried.
I've crossed swords with the author before on some of the very issues that show a blind spot in this book (the section on Evemerism is especially weak, for example; more on that below), but in many cases, her response ended up being "read my book," which then hadn't been released yet. Okay, so I got around to reading the book, or at least trying to read the book.
The Christ Conspiracy may well be on the most important subject to be written about in the last two thousand years. And what is here is well-researched, even if the source material isn't always of top quality. But the presentation is absolutely horrible. The book is just on the wrong side of unreadable; it seems almost as if it were written for the purpose of being presented as a textbook (the authors of which often seems if they're being deliberately obtuse). Interesting, this, because Acharya has a style about her that reaches for readability in today's culture; her diction is appealing to gen-X and younger readers, she's witty, a formidable opponent in debate, and simply quite likable. None of which actually comes out in her writing here; what we get is a four-hundred-page rant (well, okay, I only make it through two hundred fifty pages, but saw no reason to believe it would be any different to the end) that's dry as dust. It makes Bjorn Lomborg (The Skeptical Environmentalist) look like Stephen King.
What is most glaring, however, are the places where questions are raised that Acharya either refuses to answer or never thought of answering. I know the latter is not the case for at least one of these questions; she hammers away at evemerist interpretations of Christ by setting up a straw man, saying that anyone to whom evemerism attaches itself must have at least some of the characteristics that get exaggerated, as in the case of Paul Bunyan. Such is not the case. Reader's of Chinua Achebe's novel A Man of the People will easily see through this sleight-of-hand. For a real-life example, try Johnny Appleseed...or, perhaps, Jesus Christ. Such inconsistencies in question-answering are common throughout the book.
Worse yet, a number of her sources have either been discredited to the point where even the atheists don't consider them worthwhile anymore or are of questionable character in the first place.
None of the above is to say the topic itself, whether Jesus Christ truly existed or not, is not worth researching. The opposite, in fact; Christianity is an obvious amalgamation of earlier religions, and Jesus Christ may well have been a mythical figure, something the Gnostics have been claiming for almost two millennia without anyone really listening to them. But such an important topic needs far more solid legs in serious debate than will be found in this book. You can do far better.
First book fed to my starving dustbunnies in 2004. (zero)
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