The Pagan Christ Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity?

For forty years and in nine previous books, scholar and religious commentator Tom Harpur has challenged church orthodoxy and guided thousands of readers on subjects as controversial as the true nature of Christ and life after death. Now, in his most radical and groundbreaking work, Harpur digs deep into the origins of Christianity. What he has discovered will have a profound effect on the way we think about religion. Long before the advent of Jesus Christ, the Egyptians and other peoples believed in the coming of a messiah, a madonna and her child, a virgin birth, and the incarnation of the spirit in flesh. The early Christian church accepted these ancient truths as the very tenets of Christianity but disavowed their origins. What began as a universal belief system based on myth and allegory became instead, in the third and fourth centuries A.D., a ritualistic institution headed by ultraconservative literalists. "The transcendent meaning of glorious myths and symbols was reduced to miraculous, quite unbelievable events. The truth that Christ was to come in man, that the Christ principle was potentially in each of us, was changed to the exclusivist teaching that the Christ had come as a man." Harpur's message is clear: Our blind faith in literalism is killing Christianity. Only with a return to an inclusive religion will we gain a true understanding of who we are and who we are intended to become. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Gerald Massey and Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Tom Harpur has written a book of rare insight and power. Tom Harpuris a former Anglican priest and professor of Greek and New Testament at the University of Toronto. He is the acclaimed author of nine previous books, includingFor Christ's SakeandLife After Death. For forty years, scholar and religious commentator Tom Harpur has challenged church orthodoxy and guided readers on subjects as controversial as the true nature of Christ and life after death. Now, in his most radical work, Harpur digs deep into the origins of Christianity. InThe Pagan Christ, Harpur provides a provocative argument for a mystical, rather than historical, understanding of Jesus. Long before the advent of Jesus Christ, the Egyptians and other peoples believed in the coming of a messiah, a virgin birth, a Madonna and her child, and the incarnation of the spirit in flesh. While the early Christian church accepted these ancient truths as the very basis of Christianity, it disavowed their origins. What had begun as a universal belief system built on myth and allegory was transformed, by the third and fourth centuries A.D., into a ritualistic institution based on a literal interpretation of myths and symbols. But, as Tom Harpur argues inThe Pagan Christ, "to take the Gospels literally as history or biography is to utterly miss their inner spiritual meaning." At a time of religious extremism, Tom Harpur reveals the virtue of a cosmic faith based on ancient truths that the modern church has renounced. His message is clear: Our blind faith in literalism is killing Christianity. Only with a return to an inclusive religion where Christ lives within each of us will we gain a true understanding of who we are and who we are intended to become. "Our world is aflame with a thousand hatreds, and can ill afford further divisiveness among religions.The Pagan Christis an antidote for this strife, because it embodies an inclusivist, unifying approach that takes seriously the injunction of the major religionsthat we behave toward one another with compassion, love, and good will."Larry Dossey, M.D., author ofThe Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things "In this passionate hymn to Christ universal,

TOM HARPUR is a former Anglican priest and professor of Greek and New Testament at the University of Toronto. D.C. Coles