The Christian Myth

"This failure stems in large part from taking the canonical gospels as history, and ignoring the pre-gospel and extra-gospel accounts from the earliest layers of Jesus stories and sayings. Those layers disclose a widespread and variegated mythmaking process in the earliest schools and communities of Jesus' followers that was generated by social, economic, even geographical "interests." What is needed, Burton Mack suggests, is a systematic analysis of those interests which is not driven by either personal ("meeting Jesus") or theological ("building Church") motives, but which seeks to redescribe and understand the cultural and anthropological modalities whereby Christian myths and rituals were first conceived and agreed upon."--BOOK JACKET.