Who Really Wrote the New Testament?: Facts, Myths, and Motives

What was and is the fascination of the Bible, of the Old Testament and especially of the New Testament? What were the real sources of inspiration and motives of the authors, what were the facts and what were the myths? If one thing can be said with certainty about Jesus, it is that he was not the 'founder of Christianity'. How then could Christianity be so successful? How did the adaptation of Jesus' ideas to the culture of the Greeks and the Romans proceed? These intriguing questions have been clearly mapped out by Burton Mack, so that the reader himself experiences at close range how the various books of the Bible came into being and how the formation of the Christian myth and the power of the church worked. This book shows that it was not until the fourth century that the New Testament, and the entire Bible, acquired their definitive form. Before that time there was no Bible in the sense as we know it today, nor a well-organized church or theology. For anyone interested in the origins of Christianity, in what Jesus really taught, in the backgrounds of the creation of the Christian Bible, this masterfully written book is without a doubt an asset. This book will determine our view of Christianity for the coming decades.