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    Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth
    Unavailable
    Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth
    Unavailable
    Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth
    Ebook608 pages11 hours

    Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth

    By Burton L. Mack

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The Making of the Christian Myth

    Commencing in mid February 2004, SBS TV (Australia) will run a two–part documentary based on this title.

    In this groundbreaking and controversial book, Burton Mack brilliantly exposes how the Gospels are fictional mythologies created by different communities for various purposes and are only distantly related to the actual historical Jesus.

    Mack‘s innovative scholarship which boldly challenges traditional Christian understanding‘ will change the way you approach the New Testament and think about how Christianity arose.

    The clarity of Mack‘s prose and the intelligent pursuit of his subject make compelling reading. Mack‘s investigation of the various groups and strands of the early Christian community out of which were generated the texts of Christianity‘s first anthology of religious literature and makes sense of a topic that has been confusing.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 26, 2013
    ISBN9780062275714
    Unavailable
    Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth
    Author

    Burton L. Mack

    Burton L. Mack is John Wesley Professor of the New Testament at the school of Theology at Claremont and the author of The Lost Gospel: The Book Q and Christian Origin and A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins.

    Read more from Burton L. Mack

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    Reviews for Who Wrote the New Testament?

    3.5/5

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    • 1/5
      I agree that modern society sometimes misunderstands and misuses the Bible. However, this arises, in part, because some "scholars" misrepresent it as not reliable and not worth reading. I find it incredible that a professor at a college linked to Methodism claims to be surprised by the Bible's influence in the modern world. It is as if he simply sweeps aside 2000 years of European and world history and says "Huh?". The book assumes that the traditional reading is incorrect and puts forward an alternative. He claims that "scholars locate . . ." [that is, they date] the New Testament over one hundred years. As Wikipedia would say "who?" and "citation needed". He simply makes these claims without providing support and although he speaks of the huge flow of literature around Biblical studies, he does not address any of the huge number of volumes that support the alternative view. Indeed, there are authors who would date the canonical (New Testament) documents even earlier than the mainstream consensus. It should be noted that the idea of extremely late dates for e.g.; Acts arise out of 18th century scepticism and have no strong evidence behind them. Instead, Acts shows a reliable knowledge of the time in which it is set. For example, a plaque supporting the existence of Gallio - a proconsul mentioned in Acts - was found in the 20th century.

      I accept that Jesus' vision of the Kingdom of God had (and has) a strong social dimension, but, unlike the author, I see no problem with seeing this as connected with the God of Israel. The very terminology of the "kingdom of God" is Jewish and Jesus was a Jew. Whatever your view of the identity of Jesus, it should not be difficult to see that any Jewish reformer or prophet would not and could not put forward an agenda that did not meet with the approval of God. The idea that Jesus's teachings were contextless and such a connection had to be forced by his followers makes no sense. The idea that Jesus is similar to the Cynic philosophers has already been put forward by the Jesus Seminar and has been thoroughly debunked, as has their procedure of deciding authenticity of texts by voting. See, for example, "Fabricating Jesus" by Craig A. Evans and Evans's "The Misplaced Jesus".

      Mack starts with the presupposition that the New Testament cannot be trusted and seems to assume that he and he alone, apparently, can work out what really happened. As with other authors of this type of literature, Mack simply lumps together first century texts with later gnostic works of the second or third centuries to argue for a mix of very different groups; for example, he argues that the Gospel of Thomas is very early, when most scholars recognise it as late 2nd century (ad 175.)

      He argues for the existence of many early different views, with no centrist tradition, but he does not explain how the original teachings of Jesus spread so widely and were so influential that all these very early groups wished to claim Jesus for their own whilst, at the same time, supposedly ignoring most of what Jesus said. This flies in the face of both Jewish and Gentile practice, whereby disciples/followers would be careful to preserve what their teacher said. On the other hand, the traditional view makes sense: the early Christian movement spread rapidly, it impacted both Jews and Gentiles and as it grew it became possible for divergence to grow and for other groups to try to co-opt Jesus for their own purposes.
      In contrast to this traditional view Mack claims that the New Testament we have is ultimately a product of Constantine's time. Constantine wanted to favour a particular moderate or centrist type of Christianity as it fitted his needs. The author argues that this "centrist tradition" had "positioned itself against gnostic forms of Christianity on the one hand, and radical forms of Pauline and spiritist communities on the other" - but he does not explain, if that is the case, how Pauline letters and apocalyptic material (e.g.; Revelation and parts of the Gospels) survived this process.

      He ignores early tradition in stating that most of the New Testament was written by anonymous authors and only some letters of Paul and the Revelation are by named authors. While it is true that many texts are not signed, there are strong traditions around authorship, plus the strong sense that the early Church did not just accept any text that was going. In "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" Richard Bauckham shows that there was not a process of free floating oral tradition, rather the communities of believers relied on the eye-witness testimony of living people. The followers of Jesus did not all just disappear the day after Jesus died. Both the New Testament and Church tradition show them living on for decades after. Written documents were produced to preserve the witness of these people as time passed. "The Jesus Legend" by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd also argues for this and for the existence of a reliable oral tradition that fits with the oral culture of the time. The picture painted by Evans, Eddy and Boyd and other historians* fits with what we know of the geographical spread of Christianity and the rise of later movements. *See the many works by N.T. Wright and "A Marginal Jew" (4 volumes) by John P. Meier, for examples of serious historical scholarship.

      Mack is aware of conservative scholarship, but cherry picks examples, so that he can say "Are we to feel confident about the accuracy of the gospel’s account on the basis of three second-century fragments that a scholar has tried to redate?" (Referring to thor e work of Carsten Tiede). Mack may be right about the failings of Tiede's work, but this quote is a confidence trick, since confidence in the Gospels is not based on fragments, nor on the work of a single scholar - but the sarcasm sounds good. Notice as well, that Mack does not apply his criticisms or his sarcasm to his use of Thomas, which most scholars recognise as a late Gnostic text and not an early witness to Jesus.

      As an aside: The traditional view also makes sense of the early Christians fortitude and willingness to suffer and even die, rather than renege on their faith. If the spiritual aspect of Christian faith is a late invention and so utterly alien to Jesus, why were so many people willing to die for it and indeed why was there any persecution of the believers? Jesus was not crucified for telling people "to be nice" to one another. Christian claims revolved around a new King - the Messiah - sent by the one God of Israel. This picture of Jesus and the Church goes far to explain both Jewish and Roman hostility, a fractured picture of many, utterly diverse, christianities does not. After all, if it was so fractured, how did it become such a large and effective movement that Constantine felt compelled to take notice of it? One might have expected an emperor to avoid all mention of a Messiah and to prefer an other-worldly, purely immaterial Gnostic Jesus. But that is not what happened.


      Mack starts from a position of skepticism and creates a portrait of Jesus and the early Church to fit. This is precisely what Albert Schweitzer charged the 19th century "Liberals" with doing - looking into a deep well in search of Jesus and seeing, instead, only their own reflection. We see this in the Jesus Seminar, also where, despite their supposed agreement as to what Jesus said, the various members cannot agree on a single portrait of Jesus and have come up with a multiplicity of their own. The problem is that the New Testament is our only major witness to Jesus, if you ignore it you have little or nothing left that is not dependent upon the New Testament and you either give up or you come up with a Jesus and Christianit(y)/ies of your own invention. The fact that the scholarly tools and presuppositions used by scholars such as Mack have not come to a consensus should tell us something.
    • 5/5
      A excellent book to anyone that has serious and not based on faith interest on the Bible. Yes, there is some dose of speculation but how to investigate these times without some assumptions. And Mack knows how support his thesis with clever clues, building a consistent construction.The amazing chapters about Paul's Gospels analysis give us a impressive idea of Paul's character showing him as a compound of sincerity and charlatanism, common characteristics of a Mythmaker.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I was surprised at the lack of sources and the disappointing amount of opinion.