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1996-02-19
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Robert Sheaffer
Box 10441
San Jose, CA 95157
May, 1991
The Making of the Messiah
New Book Confronts Christianity with
its Greatest Challenge in Decades
A new book scheduled for November, 1991 publication by Prometheus Books
confronts Christianity with its greatest challenge in many a year. "The Making
of the Messiah" by Robert Sheaffer differs from conventional works of
Freethinkers by suggesting a radically different picture of the rise of
Christianity. The book describes, to use Nietzsche's phrase, "The Birth of
Christianity from the Spirit of Resentment." It tells why Christianity could
only develop as it did, emerging from the envious anger of the lower classes.
It shows how Christian writers altered historical facts to make the new
religion "sell" better among those seething with resentment against Roman
power and wealth. By looking at the chronological evolution of Christian
writings and doctrine, exactly as skeptics investigate contemporary accounts
of UFO abductions or psychic wonders, it is possible to infer the kinds of
objections that the infant Church must have been struggling to meet, and from
these long-suppressed objections deduce probable historical fact. This new
perspective radically impacts Biblical criticism, in a manner that Humanists
and Freethinkers will wholeheartedly applaud.
"The Making of the Messiah" presents a compelling argument that Jesus was
never "crucified" by the Romans, or anyone else. The familiar Gospel account
of Jesus' death is termed the "cruci-fiction story." Biblical scholars
generally acknowledge that the confusing and contradictory Gospel accounts of
Jesus' two trials make absolutely no sense from the perspective of either
Roman or Jewish law. Resolving this dilemma, the book presents compelling
evidence that Jesus was indeed condemned by the Sanhedrin as stated in Mark
14:64, stoned to death, and hanged in a tree until sundown: the inescapable
penalty under the Mosaic law for blasphemers and heretics. All of the ancient
Rabbinical texts mentioning Jesus' death are totally consistent in recalling
that he was "slain and hanged in a tree." There are even a few passages
remaining in the oldest books of the New Testament proclaiming Jesus to have
been slain and "hanged in a tree" - for example, Acts 5:30 and Galatians 3:13.
These passages are NOT metaphor: they describe the punishment Jesus MUST have
suffered if found guilty of the charges he faced! (See Deuteronomy 13:10;
21:22.) How did the cruci-fiction story arise? Several decades after Jesus'
execution, when the infant Church sought to recruit converts among the
Gentiles, the tale of a Jewish prophet "slain and hanged in a tree" probably
failed to excite or inflame the listener. But when the story was changed to
have Jesus "crucified" by the Romans, the tale electrified the resentful
throughout the vast Empire.
Another subject covered in great detail is Jesus' supposed "Virgin Birth." In
recent years even many liberal Christians have been willing to question this
highly-dubious claim. They quietly assume that Jesus must have been the
natural son of Joseph. What they do not seem to realize is that it is