If, as Aslan contends, the gospels are both infected with Pauline theology and a source for the aboriginal Jesus cult, then how can he tell when they are wrong and when they are right? That the gospels were written later creates his second problem. The earliest references to Jesus are from Paul, wherein he is not just one of many Messianic aspirants, but more even than that. In fiction, Naomi Alderman's The Liars' Gospeldeals with many of the same ideas with both scepticism and sensitivity, while Richard Beard's Lazarus is Deadis far more imaginative in its analysis of the Jesus stories.Īslan's argument is undermined by various facts, which even he admits. From Nazareth to Nicaea by Geza Vermes should be at the top of the list AN Wilson's biographies of Jesus and Paul for the more narratively minded Albert Schweitzer's Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung of 1906 to put this tradition in context and Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino's The Theology of Liberation to show how the ideas might be activated without leaving behind the "cosmological Christ". If one were minded to follow this line, there are plenty of books that do a more scholarly job, and are written more eloquently.
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