"The Jesus Mysteries"

I decided I'd see if I can cause a little trouble for Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, the authors of "The Jesus Mysteries", and a new book just out this year, "The Laughing Jesus". I've posted these quotes from "Reinventing Jesus" (a book I highly recommend!)

"A good illustration of radical liberalism's critical ignorance about, and abuse of, textual criticism can be found in Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy's book, The Jesus Mysteries: Was the 'Original Jesus' a Pagan God? (New York: Three Rivers, 2001), 145. The authors rely on chapter 4, 'How Reliable Are the Manuscripts of the Gospels?' of Graham Stanton's The Gospel Truth? New Light on Jesus and the Gospels (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity, 1995), 33-48. First, they quote the pagan Celsus's complaint (as recorded by Stanont, Gospel Truth? 35) that Christians had deliberately tampered with the text of the New Testament. Their comment on Celsus's complaint is that 'modern scholars have found that he was right. A careful study of over 3000 early manuscripts has shown how scribes made many changes' (Freke and Gandy, Jesus Mysteries, 145). The lone documentation for this assertion is Stanton's Gospel Truth, 35. But Stanton mentions nothing about three thousand manuscripts on this page - and in fact there are nowhere close to three thousand early manuscripts for the New Testament, let alone any other ancient literature! Indeed, Stanton himself does not agree with this assessment. Stanton goes on to quote Origen's response to Celsus that such alterations were made only by heretics. This quotation and Stanton's subsequent discussion are conveniently left out of Freke and Gandy's treatment. Freke and Gandy's selective quoting of the data seems to be driven by the results the authors wish to achieve, rather than by an honest pursuit of the truth. In the next paragraph, they note that 'scholars also know that whole sections of the gospels were added later.' They give the same example we mentioned in chapter 5 - Mark 16:9-20. By 'whole sections' apparently they mean one or two verses - and verses that have been excised from modern translations. There is only one other large block of material that has affected modern translations of the New Testament, the story of the woman caught in adultery. (John 7:53-8:11). While this passage is a favorite of many Christians, whether it is authentic makes no doctrinal difference. Yet, Freke and Gandy clearly give the impression that we simply cannot trust anything about these manuscripts, that skepticism must rule. The reality is that they have not represented Stanton's treatment, the works of other scholars, or the evidence with anything that remotely resembles an honest appraisal. The most charitable verdict is that such works as Freke and Gandy's are sloppy and irresponsible."(J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, Daniel B. Wallace, "Reinventing Jesus", Kregel Publications, 2006, 278-279)
"Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries: Was the 'Original Jesus' a Pagan God? (New York: Three Rivers, 2001), 224; cite Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 13, in an endnote (311 n. 105) to back up their contention that 'in the first four centuries every single document was at some time or other branded as either heretical or forged!' But that is not what Metzger says. He is citing a late seventeenth-century Irish author, John Toland, who created a scandal when he made such a proclamation. The clear impression one gets when reading Metzger on this point is one of incredulity at, not agreement with, Toland's viewpoint. If Freke and Gandy are so careless in handling a modern author whose writings are well known and accessible, should we really trust them to handle ancient authors?" (J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, Daniel B. Wallace, "Reinventing Jesus", Kregel Publications, 2006, 300)

I will admit that I haven't read this book...I plan to do so very soon, and I will update this post when I have. However, I've read enough about it to know not to take it seriously. It's one of a slew of books out there proclaiming that the Jesus story was based on pagan myths that are centuries older, and that there really was no Jesus Christ who actually existed. There is an amulet depicting a crucified Osiris-Dionysus on the cover of their book. Here's a link to a review written by "The Venerable Bede" on JP Holding's site, http://www.tektonics.org/books/jesmystrvw.html. You'll see that one of Freke and Gandy's sources does a refer to a scholar who thinks the amulet on the cover is a modern day forgery. Now compare this with this quotation from a letter that Freke and Gandy recently wrote to Wikipedia when the Venerable Bede wrote a portion of the article on "The Jesus Mysteries".

"Both Eisler and Guthrie clearly accept the object as genuine as they advance theories about its meaning and significance. This would be absurd if either had any doubts about its authenticity. The fact that neither professor expresses such doubts, or refers to doubts that may have been expressed by any other scholars, undermines the charge that the object ‘has long been suspected of being a fake.’ If Kern had pronounced the object a fake then why do neither Eisler and Guthrie refer to this?"

Here's the full text of the letter:https://www.timothyfreke.com/OrphicRing-Stone.html

I have the Guthrie book coming to me very shortly on an Interlibrary loan and I'll confirm what's in there. But if Guthrie does refer to a scholar expressing doubts about the amulet (as Bede says Guthrie does), then I might just decide to be a little bit of a pest.