3,294 words
Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
James S. Valliant & Warren Fahy
Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity
Crossroad Press, 2018
“Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (more…)
2,127 words
There is a time for us to wander.
When time is young and so are we.
The woods are greener over yonder.
The path is new, the world is free.
There is a time when leaves are fallin’.
The woods are gray, the paths are old.
The snow will come when geese are callin.’
You need a fire against the cold.
— The Dillards, “There is a Time,” 1963 (more…)
Dr. Robert M. Price
3,240 words
Dr. Robert M. Price is a prominent New Testament scholar and an eldritch mage of the Lovecraft cult. With such a range of interests, he is obviously a believer in free expression, free thought, and engagement with as many perspectives as possible. These days, such qualities are rarely found in either the academic or literary fields, and he has been “de-platformed” from time to time, most recently from two YouTube podcasts. (more…)
5,842 words
Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
Although the book is not polemical or sensationalistic, still less speculative (de Benoist is no Dan Brown), it is nevertheless provocative. There is provocation in the very title chosen: L’Homme qui n’avait pas de Père, the man who had no father. If there is originality in this book, it is in its insistence on the importance of closely examining Jesus’ family tree, of stressing its importance and weighing up the evidence of his parenthood and family relations. (more…)
6,102 words
Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
Alain de Benoist
L’Homme qui n’avait pas de Père: Le Dossier Jésus
Paris: Krisis, 2021
964 pages
All translations of quotations from the book in this review are the author’s. Passages from the Bible are from the King James Version. (more…)
4,087 words
Like many children, some of my most vivid early memories center on the Christmas season. Preparations always began immediately after Thanksgiving. My mother and I would drag the dusty boxes of decorations down from the attic, while my father ascended onto our rooftop to string up the lights. A few weeks later we would go to the tree farm, ideally on a cold and overcast day, where my sister and I would run around searching for the ideal Christmas tree to be felled by my father’s handsaw. (more…)
5,383 words
Robert M. Price
Judaizing Jesus: How New Testament Scholars Created the Ecumenical Golem
Durham, N.C.: Pitchstone Publishing, 2021
“[The] Christian faith, sprung from the wisdom of India,[1] overspreads the old trunk of rude Judaism, a tree of alien growth; the original form must in part remain, but it suffers a complete change and becomes full of life and truth, so that it appears to be the same tree, but is really another.” — Schopenhauer, “The Christian System” (more…)
William Powell Frith (1819-1909), A May Day Celebration (private collection)
6,740 words
Throughout Europe and the United States, the chill mornings and blossoming trees of spring are giving way to summer’s warmth and abundance. As the midway point between spring and summer, the month of May has historically been a season of great importance to the peoples of Europe, a joyful time of sowing, revelry, feasting, and courtship. (more…)
Francesco Trevisani, Saint Peter Baptizing the Centurion Cornelius, 1709.
2,482 words
See James O’Meara’s review of The Jesus Hoax here and David Skrbina’s reply here.
First off, I want to relieve Prof. Skrbina of his concern over my “grudge” against him. I happened upon this book (and in a burst of synchronicity, was asked by our esteemed editor at Counter-Currents to review it), but was unfamiliar with Skrbina’s work to begin with. That, of course, means nothing, as I am not an academic myself. But a brief glance at his Amazon listing led me to take a positive interest in him, (more…)
Detail, Albrecht Dürer, The Four Apostles, 1526.
2,517 words
Recently, James O’Meara offered a fairly detailed review and critique of my book The Jesus Hoax. On the one hand, I want to thank him; as most writers know, any review is better than none at all! Any review is sure to prompt thoughts and debate on all sides of a given issue. On the other, it is a negative review — at times, unduly so — and hence I want to respond to some of his points and concerns. (more…)
4,348 words
David Skrbina
The Jesus Hoax: How St. Paul’s Cabal Fooled the World for Two Thousand Years
Creative Fire Press, 2019
This short book presents itself as the latest in a genre whose brightest lights are Nietzsche’s The Antichrist (which the author quotes extensively) and Savitri Devi’s pamphlet Paul of Tarsus, or Christianity and Jewry (reviewed here; Skrbina has produced an excellent new and revised edition of her related work, Son of the Sun). (more…)
2,952 words
In my last essay, I presented the argument for why the strength of the historical evidence for the life of Jesus provided by the Gospels basically reduces to the strength of the evidence provided by the anonymously-authored book, written shortly after AD 70, that subsequently acquired the title “The Gospel According to Mark” most likely sometime in the 2nd century AD (henceforth, “Mark”).
So now it’s time to ask how strong that evidence is. (more…)