D.M. Murdock

The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Achayra S (1999)

Book Description
Publication Date: September 15, 1999
Controversial and explosive, The Christ Conspiracy marshals an enormous amount of startling evidence that the religion of Christianity and Jesus Christ were created by members of various secret societies, mystery schools and religions in order to unify the Roman Empire under one state religion! This powerful book maintains that these groups drew upon a multitude of myths and rituals that already existed long before the Christian era and reworked them into the story the Christian religion presents today-known to most Westerners as the Bible.
Author Acharya makes the case that there was no actual person named Jesus, but that several characters were rolled into one mythic being inspired by the deities Mithras, Heracles/Hercules, Dionysus and many others of the Roman Empire. She demonstrates that the story of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, is nearly identical in detail to those of the earlier savior-gods Krishna and Horus, and concludes that Jesus was certainly neither original nor unique, nor was he the divine revelation. Rather, he represents the very ancient body of knowledge derived from celestial observation and natural forces. A book that will initiate heated debate and inner struggle, it is intelligently written and referenced. The only book of its kind, it is destined for controversy.
Chapters in The Christ Conspiracy include:
The Quest for Jesus Christ
The Holy Forgery Mill
Biblical Sources
Non-Biblical Sources
Further Evidence of a Fraud
Physical Evidence
The Myth of Hebrew Monotheism
The Characters
Astrology and the Bible
The Son of God is the Sun of God
The Disciples are the Signs of the Zodiac
The Gospel Story
Other Elements and Symbols of the Christian Myth
The Patriarchs and Saints are the Gods of Other Cultures
The Meaning of Revelation
The Bible, Sex and Drugs
Essenes, Zealots and Zadokites
Alexandria: Crucible of Christianity
Enter Rome
The Making of a Myth, etc.
This book contains a table of contents, bibliography and index, and includes over 1,100 citations and 30+ illustrations. Primary sources discussed include the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, Talmud, Book of Enoch, Gospel of the Hebrews, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of the Infancy, Epistle of Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas, as well as Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, Justin Martyr, Marcion, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine, Eusebius, Porphyry, Celsus, et al.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Acharya S has done a superb job in bringing together this rich panoply of ancient world mythology and culture, and presenting it in a comprehensive and compelling fashion. She grabs the reader from the first page and doesn't let go. --Earl Doherty
The Christ Conspiracy--very, very scholarly and wholly researched--is a book for today... --Rev. B. Strauss, ex-Catholic priest, Chicago, IL
Acharya S has done a service to forensic anthropology similar to what Euclid did for geometry. She has pulled together all available materials to reveal the inner workings of perhaps the biggest folly of Western man. I enjoyed it immensely. --EBTX
Acharya S pulls no punches, beating her adversary to a bloody pulp... This war of words, it seems, is a battle the author takes most seriously in her righteous quest to undo 2000 years of mental slavery inflicted upon humankind. --Adam Gorightly
Acharya brings in secular [and] church history, archaeology, theology, mythology, linguistics...to provide plenty of backing for her theses. An essential book for anyone who wants to know the reality behind the world's dominant religion. --Russ Kick
Drawing together an amazing amount of research, Acharya S...demolishes the facade of Christianity, showing that it is 100% mythology. -- You Are Being Lied Too, April 1, 2001
From the Author
Ever since The Christ Conspiracy was published in 1999, I have striven to demonstrate many of its major and minor contentions in a variety of books, articles, blogs, forum posts, videos and radio programs. I have spent countless hours tracking down sources as far back as possible in history, including to the earliest written records. I have sifted through thousands of ancient texts in numerous languages, including ancient Greek, Latin, Egyptian, Hebrew, Sanskrit and others. I have also pored through thousands of modern resources from highly credentialed authorities in a number of relevant disciplines. Over this past decade-plus, again, I have provided this information in freely available articles and ebooks, as well as in several follow-up books such as: Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled; Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ; Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection; and The Gospel According to Acharya S.
For the most part - and with great difficulty - I have succeeded in bringing to light the sources from which came many of the contentions in The Christ Conspiracy. Some of the original, corroborative material was very challenging to find, such as various writings of ancient Church fathers and others that back up the claims in "The Characters" chapter, one of the most controversial in the entire book. This chapter discusses several ancient figures considered mostly mythological whose "lives" strangely resemble that of Jesus Christ from the gospels and Christian tradition, including Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Indian gods and godmen. From the attention and reaction this single chapter has gotten, it would seem that it alone is enough to reveal Christianity as a rehash of earlier, mythical traditions, which is the premise of this book.
Over the years, common complaints I have addressed include that my sources are "outdated" and are from "19th-century scholars." In reality, I have used primary and ancient sources quite extensively, although at times I have quoted or paraphrased them through the works of more modern scholars from a few centuries ago to the current era. Since writing this book - which was researched from my own private library on a shoe-string budget - I have confirmed these citations in original works as well as in more modern, scholarly resources by the best academic publishers in the world. I refer especially to those found in my most recent works, including Who Was Jesus?, Christ in Egypt and The Gospel.
Who Was Jesus? has an almost all-Christian bibliography and has received many accolades from knowledgeable and qualified individuals such as theology professors, ministers and New Testament scholars. Christ in Egypt contains 2,400 footnotes from 900 sources, including thousands of pages of ancient Egyptian writings and the works of highly credentialed individuals from a number of relevant disciplines, such as numerous well-respected Egyptologists from around the world.
My follow-up book to The Christ Conspiracy, Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, delves into some fascinating information that again spans the range of time from antiquity to today. The tome represents a bridge between Christ Con and Christ in Egypt, researching further into the claims of the latter while recounting hard-to-find tales of skulduggery in the field of Jesus mythicism dating back centuries, revealing why this information is so difficult to find, as well as tantalizing hints of more that has been buried, lost or lied about. It also provides much evidence of the ancient religious worship of astrotheology, which to any student or scholar of religion should prove highly intriguing.
Over these past several years, a trend developed with the criticisms of Christ Con, which was that many of my critics had not actually read my work but were jumping on bandwagons of others who also had not read my work or who were clearly biased, such as a number of Christian apologists. Not a few of these critics who had either not read my work or who have been true believers with an axe to grind posted reviews that made claims already refuted many times over. We find this pattern of disingenuousness or bias in many places on the internet.
There have been other, more subtle reasons for bias, as remarked upon by David Mills, author of Atheist Universe, who in his review of my book Who Was Jesus? remarked, "Having given a fair hearing to some of her online detractors and their 'rebuttal' videos, I have detected not only a lack of knowledge on the part of her critics, but also, in some cases, a thinly disguised misogyny."
While some of the details have changed, from my intense investigation over the years I maintain that the scenario put forth in The Christ Conspiracy represents as close to true early Christian history as anyone has gotten so far. The extensive research backing up many germane elements from the "Characters" chapter - as can be also be found in my "ZEITGEIST Sourcebook" - clearly demonstrates that Christ is a mythical rehash, albeit a unique one, of numerous motifs and characteristics of earlier gods, goddesses and godmen, along with various mysteries and wisdom sayings. All of this mythmaking was hung on the framework of "messianic scriptures" from the Old Testament and Jewish intertestamental literature, which I likewise discuss in The Christ Conspiracy.
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Paperback: 430 pages
Publisher: Adventures Unlimited Press (September 15, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0932813747
ISBN-13: 978-0932813749