Where do I start? We've been down the Freke and Gandy road before, see here, here , here and here where we found them to be misusing data to fit a Christ-myth thesis. And here we are again, a work that is not quite as popular as their Jesus Mysteries and with another controversial cover; again published by Thorsons, whose inside advertisement for their website is an "online sanctuary" which claims to "help you on the path to physical and spiritual well-being" while offering astrology and tarot as its products. I think that speaks for itself, really.
It says in the prefatory pages that Gandy is a "respected scholar", whereas I can't find scholars who write respectfully of their work - however I can find G. A. Wells and John Shelby Spong saying glowing things about Jesus Mysteries, but considering the controversial nature of their works that may not be saying very much, and neither of these are scholars in the relevant field.
And so, on with the book itself: We have Christ-mythers and liberal works being posed to the reader as "rigorous scholarship" [7]; yet on the same page they admit to circumventing the scholarly process in order to present their ideas to the public.
We are told that the Christians were originally "Jewish Gnostics", whatever that means - the Jews held the God of Israel to be the good and perfect Creator; the Gnostics, the lowest and imperfect. The term is an oxymoron, as even James Robinson makes clear in the Introduction to the Nag Hammadi texts ... used often by Freke and Gandy. This claim also involves rejecting some of Paul's anti-gnostic letters (e.g. 1 & 2 Timothy), however we are not given reasons for this, just that these letters are "thoroughly discredited"; in the footnote to Jesus Mysteries we are told that those who are not "all but the most conservative of theologians" reject them (what about Philip Jenkins..?) - and their source is not a scholar but a journalist; these authors are living in the 19th century and are not following up on "rigorous scholarship" for key points in their premise. Let us remind our authors that theology is not the basis for accepting a text as genuine, but rather textual criticism.
There's a whole section forebodingly entitled "Fundamentalism" as if they've just stepped on someone's hallowed toe. So what does this word mean? Freke and Gandy don't define the word as such, but describe the group that holds to this as those who "[insist] the bible is literally the word of God and cannot be questioned" [76]. Actually, we have no problem with questioning it, what we want to know is, are these questions rational? "Let's just have a quick look at the sort of god they are worshipping" [77]- yes, let's skip being rigorous(!) and object about how Jehovah destroys people but never discussing or answering the reasons why He did these things (which would fit in a scholarly discourse, such as this), never mind that rejecting the Old Testament in this context is Marcionism instead of Gnosticism proper.
Elsewhere in the book we are told (via Stephan Hoeller, a lecturer in gnosis) that "It is time that a Gnostic interprets the Gnostic scriptures" [312) - that's fine, but we counter their criticisms on the Old Testament with "Jewish scriptures should be interpreted by Jews", if they want to be consistent. Jews would never describe their sacred text as "barbarous". [77]
Their Christ myth thesis suffers from the usual problems: "Under Jesus, historical" in the Index we find a comment [9-10] by an Indian mystic who they claim influenced Theosophist founder Blavatsky; Carl Jung gets cited, and the Therapeuts: there you go, Jesus' existence is supposedly removed to psychological reconstruction of the unconscious and of mystical visions.
I would in the near future like to take on the gnostic part of their arguments, but for now I would point out that Jewish culture in the first century AD wouldn't have any time for a goddess (apart from perhaps heretical views), also, supporting unorthodox viewpoints with other unorthodox viewpoints isn't very inspiring (e.g. Ramon K. Jusino's "Mary Magdalene wrote the Fourth Gospel" thesis which suffers from its own problems e.g. over-reliance on Raymond E. Brown - rather ironic, there, an anti-Catholic book relying on Catholic scholarship) and neither is relying on work by G.R.S. Mead on gnosticism who wrote prior to the discovery of the Gnostic gospels.
Other arguments include: Paul sought to dismiss the Law - he didn't, he dismissed righteousness by the Law (Philippians 3:7-8), late dating the gospels (indeed, they ignore all scholarship on this, even to the extent of avoiding the internal pre-70 AD evidence in the gospels themselves), Morton Smith's Secret Mark (now shown by Stphen Carlson to have been a forgery), uncritical use of the Q theory, the Essenes, asserting theories already answered (like, Greek philosophy influenced early Christians - on this, read The Gospel and the Greeks by Ronald H. Nash), the error of linking gnostic views of Christ with the Christ-myth, misapplying the anti-gnostic letter Colossians as if it is proclaiming a gnostic Christ-within viewpoint - "but now He has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death" (Colossians 1:22) hardly fits a "mythical resurrection" required for a gnostic view of Christ - indeed they never give lexical definitions of 'anastasis' (the Greek term for resurrection, it means "to stand up"). None of this suggests our authors are being scholarly about the biblical discussions in their work.
They have a particularly one sided discussion about the denial of the historical Jesus [312-313, a footnote from p.10] which "soundbites" from Robert E. Van Voorst - professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary, in Michigan - who calls the Frekes and Gandys of this world the "noisy" folk on the side; the "controversial question" being, "Did Jesus really exist? Some readers may be surprised or shocked that many books and essays - by my count, over one hundred - in the past two hundred years have fervently denied the very existance of Jesus"; this being the quote given by our authors [Jesus Outside the New Testament, 6], then the following sentence in Van Voorst reads: "Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely". Selective citation alert! Of course, our authors make no attempt whatsoever to address the refutations found in the professor's work. (For example, he cites Morton Smith criticising G.A. Wells for arguing from silence.) N.T. Wright? Who is that?
It is from Elaine Pagels that they get their strange Pauline translations; strange in two ways - not only have most readers perhaps not come across this sort of thing before (e.g. "so that I may share with you a certain pneumatic charisma", cf Romans 1:11) but also Pagels says in her Gnostic Paul [p.8] that her gathering of Valentinian sources is incomplete and her 'translations' are according to gnostic readings and their exegesis which she extracts from the Church Fathers and referenced in footnotes - i.e. these are not actually translations as such. Further, Pagels specifically warns against attempting to historicize these 2nd century readings and make Paul himself into a gnostic initiate (ibid, 9, which she criticizes as "unjustified" and "premature") - something our authors do quite deliberately, even though they clearly have Pagels in front of them. Such is the anachronism and anti-scholarship of their Christ-myth thesis.
As far as later historical issues go, on the Inquisition and the Cathars, they rely on the non-scholar Helen Ellerbe who in turn uses the polemical and controversial author George Gordon Coulton who wrote in 1929. Our authors don't even define Catharism - simply quoting part of what Bernard of Clairvaux said is hardly sufficient. There's a half-hearted attempt at definition in the glossary, but in reality they were a gnostic, dualistic sect that rejected the Incarnation due to their view of the material world as evil; they also refused to take part in church sacraments. (J.B. Russell & D.W. Lumsden, A History of Medieval Christianity, pp138-139)
And now for the most outrageous of all their mad sourcework: They invite readers to check out their sources [7], well enough, but watch this: (I don't recommend reading this part if you just had lunch.)
"[In] eastern Europe, the Inquisition used ovens to burn heretics, who were rubbed with grease and roasted alive." [72]
Terrible inquisitors? No, just terrible scholarship. The footnote points the reader to Ellerbe, who wrote this:
"The rack, the hoist and water tortures were the most common. Victims were rubbed with lard or grease and slowly roasted alive. Ovens built to kill people... were first used by the Christian Inquisition in Eastern Europe." (Dark Side of Christian History, p83)
So the grease doesn't relate directly to the ovens: however, it gets worse. The first sentence comes from Coulton's Inquisition and Liberty, the second sentence comes from Barbara Walker, whose work is decidedly non-scholarly, and whose footnote to Robbins' Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology doesn't match the quote - it simply isn't there on the page cited. I couldn't stop laughing when I saw this, not only conflating two different sources about different medieval tortures, but using such awful nonsense as Walker who appears to have pointed you to the wrong page of her source, or (equally possible, given other howlers I have documented in my Ellerbe review) made it up.
Why take Jesus and the Lost Goddess seriously? This is a profound embarassment; I'm not at all surprised they didn't take this through scholarly channels before presenting it to the public.
Other sources include: Alvar Ellegard, John Allegro, Earl Doherty, J. S. Spong, Riane Eisler, Karen Armstrong, J.D. Crossan, Arthur Drews and use of Freke & Gandy's previous works including the Complete Guide to World Mysticism which is out of print. (I have managed to get hold of this book and it is not scholarly; this and their Hermetica were published by Judy Piatkus, a New Age outlet - which puts out wonderful titles like "Feng Shui for You and your Cat".)
The copious notes and the list of websites on gnosticism is the most useful part of the book, although I wouldn't rely too much on this as websites are sometimes moveable feasts; and if you follow up the works given in the notes you will see for yourself how they mangled their own sources. On the back cover the book proclaims it draws on the "cutting edge of modern scholarship" and that it is "groundbreaking" - these claims are simply unbelievable and delusional given the contents: how is a work "groundbreaking" if it ignores previous scholarship that has already answered their theory? (e.g. Nash) Jesus and the Lost Goddess ends with the conclusion that as a gnostic you will be enlightened and informed - for these things, this book informed me to look elsewhere!
If you think this is a work of scholarship, we are not able to assist you.
-"Punkish"