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PAGAN CHRIST: IS BLIND FAITH KILLING CHRISTIANITY? FREE DOWNLOAD Tom Harpur | 246 pages | 02 May 2006 | Walker & Company | 9780802777416 | English | New York, NY, United States The Pagan Christ Myths Arent Fairy Tales i. There is much potential here for approaching the Bible mythologically. The collective human unconscious does influence the story of Jesus as found in the Gospels. Harpur has been studying the classics and the Bible since Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity? was a Rhodes Scholar in the early s, and he draws on individuals as diverse as St. Namespaces Article Talk. RobertsonG. Intheologian and author Robert M. In his most recent book, Harpur not only taps into this widespread Gnostic current, he also demonstrates that it runs far deeper than we ever imagined. Tom Harpur. Barnes was able to declare Jesus a mythical Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity?, the product of the mythmaking tendencies common to religious people of all ages, particularly the period of the early Roman Empire. It takes courage for someone with Harpur's background to promote such views. He would also differ from many modern theologians such as Jesus Seminar members John Spong and Marcus Borg, who believe there was an actual Jesus of history. Tom Harpur, columnist for the Toronto Starformer Anglican priest and professor of Greek and The New Testament at the University Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity? Toronto, is a prominent writer on religious and ethical issues. Part I. Truths at the heart of Christianity flow from the deep well of the human unconscious whose core ideas were planted there by God, he says. In Harpur's words, "The vitalizing item of ancient knowledge was the prime datum that man is himself, in his real being, a spark of divine fire struck off like the flint flash from the Eternal Rock of Being, and buried in the flesh of body to support its existence with an unquenchable radiant energy. Horus, who receives but Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity? paragraph of mention in the classic New Laurousse Encyclopedia of Mythologybecomes, for Harpur, the metaphorical and allegorical truth behind the person of Jesus. And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? What began as a universal belief system has become a ritualistic institution headed by ultraconservative literalists. Harpur writes, "Not only did the early Christians take over almost completely the myths and teachings of their Egyptian masters, mediated in many cases by the Mystery Religions and by Judaism in its many forms, but they did everything in their power, through forgery and other fraud, book burning, character assassination, and murder itself, to destroy the crucial evidence of what had happened. Tom Harpur Mar Content protection. He has hosted numerous radio and television programs, including Life After Deatha ten-part series based on his best selling book of the same name, Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity? a six- part television series based on his bestseller The Uncommon Touch: An Investigation of Spiritual Healing. Web, Tablet, Phone, eReader. For Harpur, both literalist and modern critical attempts to locate the Jesus of history are dead ends. Wells Thomas Whittaker Frank Zindler. Erster Band. Karl J. Asking the question, "can we say with any authority that Jesus of Nazareth actually existed as historical person", he concludes, "I have a very grave doubts we can," adding that his gradual realization that Jesus was a "mythical copy of many preceding saviours" was difficult to accept himself. Long before the advent of Christ, the Egyptians and other ancient societies believed in the coming of a messiah, in a Madonna and her child, a virgin birth, and the incarnation of the spirit made flesh. Porter and Stephen J. Harpur would find that indefensible. If we want to challenge fundamentalism, it's not enough to point out its many hypocrisies and flaws; we have to take the battle straight to the heart of the spiritual imagination. What they wrote became a source of vision, not doctrine. Learn more. Leipzig: Verlag Unesma G. The Pagan Christ: Is blind faith killing Christianity? Views Read Edit View history. Andrzej Niemojewski and Deye were noted in the original Barnes list but omitted from the list in The Pagan Christ [21] [22] [23] note; Stendel may be a transcription error of Friedrich Steudel [24] [25] [26] and Deye of Albert Bayet [27] [28]. Leipzig: Oldenburg. Holst is a parish educator at St. But his serendipitous "discovery" of virtually unknown authorities, now long dead and his extravagant use of terms like "overwhelming and incontestable evidence" from them which is "beyond rebuttal" and about which there is "absolutely no question" seems rather overstated. Harpur claims that virtually all words and actions attributed to Jesus in the gospels "originated thousands of years before. From his research into ancient myth, Harpur feels he has undergone a spiritual re-awakening that has revolutionized his Christian faith. He may well have opened himself up to devastating slander and professional marginalization. Augustine reportedly acknowledged certain commonalities between pagan religions and Christianity, Harpur explains that the extent of these similarities was hidden until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity? Many early church fathers, in an attempt to declare exclusive rights to this mythological Jesus, made him an historical biblical person. It is one that takes myth seriously. The Pagan Christ is forthright in declaring that counter to precedent, Christianity launched a hostile takeover of the ancient salvation myths. Download as PDF Printable version. Harpur goes on to argue that this myth was never intended to be taken as a literal story about a supernatural person named Horus; instead, Horus symbolizes humanity itself. Robertson, G. The material Harpur presents raises questions that need to be addressed, not repressed. What began as a belief system with the potential to transform the faith of Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity? has been twisted by blind literalism into a mind-numbing tradition of unquestioned belief in allegory and ritual. The Pagan Christ on Tom Harpur's official website v t e. In Schmidt, Heinrich ed. Augustine and Sigmund Freud for Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity? quotes. The Jesus story can become a profoundly spiritual allegory of the soul, he says. According to Harpur, the early Christian church accepted these ancient truths as the very tenets of Christianity and set about covering up all attempts to reveal any elements of the Bible as myth..

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