Who Wrote the New Testament? : The Making of the Christian Myth
- Book Review,
by Burton L. Mack
From Publishers Weekly
Mack's (The Lost Gospel; A Myth of Innocence) newest book is one of those rare volumes that, upon completion, makes one wonder how we could possibly have lived without it. The clarity of Mack's prose and the intelligent pursuit of his subject make compelling reading. Of course, the question Mack asks is not one Christians have been encouraged to ask, which only adds to the book's interest. Mack's investigation of the various groups and strands of the early Christian Community?out of which were generated the texts of Christianity's first anthology of religious literature?makes sense of a topic that has often been confusing. Regrettably, in an effort to appeal to a popular audience, Mack's treatment has been pruned of much of its scholarly apparatus; his notes would have been a welcome resource. Certainly, as the number of publications emerging from Jesus Seminar draw attack from conservative seminaries, such apparatus will become essential, popular audience or no. Nonetheless, this is an important book; a must-read for any student of the New Testament. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Certainly Mack's book should take a place in the front ranks of the many fine introductions available to students of the New Testament in both academic and nonacademic settings. A comprehensive synthesis of New Testament scholarship that is nevertheless popularly accessible, it will make a particularly useful introductory text in an area where such texts are in great demand. But it is more than an excellent introduction. As the subtitle suggests, the book is also a critical account of the making of the Christian myth--an invitation to critical reflection on the social construction of a foundational epic that has shaped (and been shaped by) the history and behavior of the West since Constantine. That makes it an introduction to mythmaking that is more than a colonial criticism or classification of other people's myths; it is an invitation to cultural self-criticism, an invaluable contribution to liberal education that is a potentially important corrective to triumphalist practices as tempting in our multicultural age as they were in the multicultural matrix out of which Christian scripture emerged. Steve Schroeder
Midwest Book Review
How was the Christian Bible crated? And by whom? The New Testament is commonly viewed and treated as a charter document that came into being much like the Constitution of the United States. According to this view, the authors of the New Testament were all present at the historic beginnings of the new religion and collectively wrote their gospels and letters for the purpose of founding the Christian church that Jesus came to inaugurate.
Certainly Mack's book should take a place in the front ranks [of New Testament introductions].
Ron Cameron, Wesleyan University, author of The Other Gospels
"Burton Mack's lucid description of early Christian mythmaking and social formation clarifies how the Bible came to be, and why we should care. Highly recommended for anyone who is interested in public discourse about the Bible and culture."
Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography
"Where Bible history ends, the philosophy of scripture begins. In this book, Burton Mack adds a deeply pondered thesis about the consequences of scripturalism for religion and of scriptural religion for society to his already influential account of the origins of Christianity. The result is a clarified picture of how the Christian Bible--not just the New Testament--came into being and, more important, how and why its influence continues."
Robert W. Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminar, co-author of The Five Gospels
"A powerful, compact, yet detailed introduction to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity. Mack has sketched the panorama of early Christian literature and social development in a lucid, convincing, and magisterial performance."
Booklist
"Certainly Mack's book should take a place in the front ranks of the many fine introductions available to students of the New Testament in both academic and nonacademic settings. A comprehensive synthesis of New Testament scholarship that is nevertheless popularly accessible, it will make a particularly useful introductory text in an area where such texts are in great demand. But it is more than an excellent introduction. As the subtitle suggests, the book is also a critical account of the making of the Christian myth--an invitation to critical reflection on the social construction of a foundational epic that has shaped (and been shaped by) the history and behavior of the West since Constantine. That makes it an introduction to mythmaking that is more than a colonial criticism or classification of other people's myths; it is an invitation to cultural self-criticism, an invaluable contribution to liberal education that is a potentially important corrective to triumphalist practices as tempting in our multicultural age as they were in the multicultural matrix out of which Christian scripture emerged."
Book Description
In this groundbreaking and controversial book, Burton Mack brilliantly exposes how the Gospels are fictional mythologies created by different communities for various purposes and are only distantly related to the actual historical Jesus. Mack's innovative scholarship'which boldly challenges traditional Christian understanding'will change the way you approach the New Testament and think about how Christianity arose.
From the Publisher
A radical Jesus scholar reveals who really wrote the Gospels and other books of the New Testament--and why.
From the Inside Flap
"The New Testament is commonly viewed and treated as a charter document that came into being much like the Constitution of the United States. According to this view, the authors of the New Testament were all present at the historic beginnings of the new religion and collectively wrote their gospels and letters for the purpose of founding the Christian church that Jesus came to inaugurate. Unfortunately for this view, that is not the way it happened." (from the Prologue) With innovative scholarship and an engaging, detective-like style, an eminent and controversial scholar of Christian origins presents the first comprehensive yet popular explanation of who wrote the New Testament--and why. Burton L. Mack, who won wide acclaim for The Lost Gospel, scrupulously examines the Christian Testament and fleshes out both the social and the cultural context from which it emerged. In contrast to the widely held view of the gospels as complementary accounts of single set of events, Mack offers a history of divergent Christian communities and their anonymous writers who wrote widely different chronicles for distinct purposes and audiences over a period of more than one hundred years. He delineates how Christians in later centuries assigned the names of apostles and disciples to the anonymous stories about Jesus and his teachings, adjusted the chronology, and erased cultural differences in an effort to present a coherent history of the faith and invest the new church with authenticity. This trailblazing reconstruction of early Christianity, which makes cutting-edge scholarship thoroughly accessible to a popular audience, reveals how the Christian Bible was created. Who Wrote the New Testament? challenges us to envision the New Testament as dynamic myth, reinterpreted many times through the course of Western cultural history, rather than as the static statement of any single truth. Much as The Iliad and The Odyssey mythologized events and figures in the remote Greek past, the New Testament writings, Mack shows, transform the historical Jesus, a counter-cultural philosopher with no grand messianic pretensions, into the Christ, the dying and rising son of God. Ultimately, then, the New Testament consists of a powerful religious mythology comparable to those of other great religions. Vital reading for all serious students of the Bible and Christian origins, Who Wrote the New Testament? should also prove enormously enlightening for those who seek to uncover the true story of how the historical Jesus was transformed into the mythologized Christ of faith.
From the Back Cover
A landmark account of Christian origins. In this groundbreaking and controversial book, Burton Mack brilliantly exposes how the Gospels are fictional mythologies created by different communities for various purposes and are only distantly related to the actual historical Jesus. Mack's innovative scholarship--which boldly challenges traditional Christian understanding--will change the way you approach the New Testament and think about how Christianity arose. "Finally! Someone has penetrated the theological agenda that has informed a century of New Testament scholarship to provide a thoroughgoing historical overview of Christian origins. Mack's consummate account of early Christian writings as the mythmaking products of diverse social formations, and of the final selection and shaping of these writings into the Christian Bible according to the requirements of an emergent 'centrist' myth, not only provides a compelling explanation for the continuing fascination with this text throughout the history of Western culture but sets forth a new framework for understanding that text itself." (Luther H. Martin, author of Hellenistic Religions)
About the Author
Burton L. Mack is John Wesley Professor of the New Testament at the school of Theology at Claremont and the author of The Lost Gospel: The Book Q and Christian Origin and A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins.
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