A Review of the History
of Very Early Christianity
CRITICAL COMMENTARY ON "JESUS AND THE LOST GODDESS"
BY TIMOTHY FREKE AND PETER GANDY
Freke and Gandy are also the authors of:
If you have had enough my critical Freke and Gandy observations for the day and are done here:
1. CLICK HERE to go back to the First Early Christianity page.
2. CLICK HERE to go to the Next (3d) Early Christianity page.
3. CLICK HERE to go to the Last (4th) Early Christianity page.
If not, read on . . .
This is a review of and commentary on "Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians,"
by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (Three Rivers Press, New York, 2001). (These two are also the authors of "The
Jesus Mysteries: Was the ‘Original Jesus' a Pagan God?" 2000.)
OF BOOKS AND PEOPLE
We have all experienced it, I bet. We go to a lecture or speech and hear a person say things that really relate
to how we feel about an issue or topic. We are mesmerized by the qualities apparent in the person making the presentation.
Then comes the break and we thank him for his lucid explanation or riveting presentation, and he or she says something
that touches one of our negative spots, and we feel "no way," or "I don't ever want to go there"
inside us as we politely smile and let someone else take over the conversation as we turn away.
People, and the books they write, can be like that. We see aspects of their being, or pieces in a book, that have
real appeal to us. But they also, over time, display other attributes or make other declarations that reveal a
bigger picture, other qualities, ones that may seem like defects rather than qualities to us. People, and books,
have multiple dimensions, and the more of those dimensions we get to know the more likely it becomes that we will
discover differences between us. Just a fact of life.
We don't throw a person away because of this, if we are mature we can focus on and continue to value the attributes
that so enthralled us at the beginning. If we are immature, we say that the person is a big disappointment, focus
only on the negative, and throw him or her away, eventually.
People change over time, and if the change in a persom we are close to means the loss of those qualities we prize
and the accumulation of other qualities that we really do not appreciate or feel comfortable with, it may be time
to move on. Unless, of course, those undesirable changes are inside our selves, and then we are either going to
be very unhappy or we are going to change.
If the change for the worse is in another with whom we have a relationship, it may become intolerable. It shouldn't
be tolerated very long if there is no way to repair it. Hence, if a book is an all-around turnoff to me, I throw
it away, I don't try to finish it, life is too short.
In terms of books, there are some authors that write what seems like poetry made to be inserted directly into our
souls. But we read on. And then comes a knife with a serrated edge, a statement that just dismays us. What to do?
I believe it is a question of either the value or the quantity of what feels positive to us. If the preponderance
of the book still speaks to our souls, keep reading. If there are some nuggets of pure Light hiding in the darkness,
keep reading. But if the darkness gives true offense, toss it.
Never feel obligated to believe what is uncomfortable to you, or even alienating you. Remember that the author
is a person, and every person, if you dig deep enough, will have differences with you. Humans are very similar
at a superficial level, just like snowflakes. But get into the fine structure and no two are exactly alike. Appreciate
the differences, don't compromise your self, and if the differences are uncomfortable for you to be around, take
some action to either resolve them or separate from them.
So what does this have to do with the book currently being read and reviewed? A lot. I just love the engaging style
of these authors and some parts of the book really stike a chord on my soul-strings. But other parts that get repeated
again and again are very irritating and tiresome to me. So, final verdict? Keep reading and discount what you do
not feel to be correct, and digest what seems correct.
So Freke and Gandy offended my sensibilities? Yes. They also made my soul-strings vibrate happily? Yes! Did the
positive outweighed the negative? Yes!! If you care to know some of the details, I'll tell you all about it. Read
on.
SUMMARY OF DISAGREEMENT
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it highly even though I have to throw in a weighty caveat. Its assertions
about the nature of God and reality are ones I buy into lock stock and barrel. That does not, however, mean I buy
every historical assertion in the book as fact. In fact, some of those assertions I find offensive.
The most important historical assertion I found offensive is that Jesus was a fictitious character, one created
to symbolize the new knowledge, the Gnosis, through acts and words and events in his fictional life. In my opinion,
the authors need not have taken such a radical stance. There is not a good basis for auch an assertion. It is not
necessary to their main theme of preaching a new Gnosis. It is the equivalent of "unnecessary roughness"
in a football game.
In Freke and Gandy's first book they show some remarkable parallels between Jesus' life and the life-stories of
a whole range of divinites and mythic figures from contemporary pagan religions. It is a very good discussion of
these parallels, and leads the authors to the conclusion that Jesus' life was invented to provide a local, Jewish,
hence non-pagan, basis for retelling the allegorical myth of the descent and return. The whole story is a complex
initiation myth. The first few chapters of "Jesus and the Lost Goddess" go over this whole "The
Jesus Mysteries" territory again, and nicely wrap it up in just a few pages.
I found it incredible that the sophisiticated and well-read Gnostics would make up, out of whole cloth, the story
of Jesus. I cannot believe they made up the story of Jesus and made him into a fictional magical child and a Cosmic
God, and gave him Sophia as a Cosmic consort and Mary Magadalene as an earthly consort. It seems a bit more plausible
to me that there was a Jesus pretty much as described in the Gospels, and then Gnostics who came into the new faith
read their own expectations and beliefs onto the life of Christ. But that would make them into a secondary movement
in Christianity, they would not have been the first Christians.
I have read many Gnostic treatises. They are extremely interesting and intriguing. I would agree with Freke and
Gandy that they very nicely capture the "perennial philosophy" of mystery cults everywhere. But why Jesus?
Why invent this particular character for this purpose when many existing characters, the ones mentioned at length
in "The Jesus Mysteries" for example, were already suiting the initiatory mysteries well. This idea of
a whole-cloth invention of Jesus's life-story is incredible to me. Of course it is well established that there
has been on overlay on that life to tell a story important to the success of the new religion in the Roman empire:
the likely Pharisaic roots of Christ were obscured and turned upside down to make him an enemy of the Pharisees
who were in turn enemies of Rome. But that is rewriting history, not inventing it.
Freke and gandy make their case by pointing to contradictions about basic facts of Jesus' life history in the New
Testament. Reviewing those many contradictions was enlightening, but not convincing. That various Gnostic groups
were, according to Freke and Gandy, the original Christians, with positive personal and life attributes not found
in the mainline church. That church made war on these original Christians and triumphed over them.
This all seems counter to historical fact and belongs in the centuries after persectuon by Rome stopped. What is
more important is that it seems counter to what I know of human nature: no organization run by humans, no matter
how nobly conceived, is as noble as Freke and Gandy describe the Gnostics to be. Conversely, the mainline surviving
church is nowhere near as literalist and violent as Freke and Gandy make it out to be. Not in the very earliest
years of Christianity anyway. And it is the very earliest years that we are talking about.
AN AGREEMENT TURNED NEARLY INTO A DISAGREEMENT
As I read Freke and Gandy I began to agree with its view of history when it came to the investiture of Paul as
the originator of the Christianity we know today. From that point forward I was in agreement, and warmed up to
the book. In fact I did more than warm up to it. I became enthused about the new insights Freke and Gandy allowed
through their radical retranslations of some of Paul's statements. They showed very nicely that he was a Gnostic.
I was enthsed by this because I pretty well already agreed with the way the history of Paul was written in The
Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity by Hyam Maccoby (Barnes & Boble, 1986). Maccoby makes a very
convincing case for Jesus being a messianic figure by Jewish definitions and expectations. He was killed, as were
two contemporary claimants to Messiah status, because these figures tended to call into question the politically
appointed High Priest's authority, and they tended to threaten the temple which was under his purview. Maccoby
saw the Pauline re-interpretation as being based on an expansive interpretation by Paul of his revelation on the
road to Damascus. Damascus was where he was going to do violence to the original Christians. These Christians were
hiding there, in Damascus, because they were not under the jurisdiction of either the High Priest or Rome. Hence
the Damascus authorities were on the lookout for the unauthorized entry of anyone who represented the High Priest
who had no jurisdiction in Damascus, but who was known to want to do violence to followers of certain Jewish sects
who were overtly opposed to the High Priest's office for his being in league with the foreign oppressors from Rome.
Why did the authorities of Damascus care? These hunted people were residents of, thus under the protection of,
the city of Damascus.
Paul's re-interpretation of the life of the person revered by these Christians was the marriage of a strand out
of the deeply dualistic tapestry of the multivaried Gnostic tradition with the beliefs of this new sect within
Judaism which is correctly called Jewish-Christianity, and described by names like Nazarenes or Ebionites. Maccoby
describes Paul as being at war with these Jewish Christians.
These Jewish Christians were the first Christians. Their Christianity differs materially from modern Christianity
and Paul's Christianity. But the first Christians were not Gnostics.
Freke and Gandy link Paul with the Essene tradition well-known from the Dead Sea Scrolls. I doubt if there is a
more literalist movement than that of the Essenes, in my opion, having read much of the Dead Sea Scrolls available
in translation. Freke and Gandy lump them in with the Gnostics because they believe their Teacher of Righteouness
provides the pattern of expectations met by the Jesus myth they invented to fulfill those expectations.
They attempt to show a link between John the Baptist and the Essenes simply by pointing out they were not located
far from each other. They establish a similar linkage between Paul and the Essenes by showing he uses some of their
unique vocabulary. Paul's vision on the road to Damascus was linked to the Essenes too, by noting that "Damascus"
was a code word used by the Essenes to denote their secret mountain hideout.
I believe Maccoby is right in characterizing Essenes as an extreme Messianic group and an extremely literalist
one at that, expecting a miracle from God to replace the corrupt High Priest with a righteous one and thereby restore
the temple to holiness (pp. 27-28). They physically withdrew from the evil, politically appointed High Priest and
his polluted temple. They went into the tops of the mountains to await the scriptural promises to be fulfilled,
and attempting to make them come true by living lives in perfect conformance with the law. Not Paul's kind of people
at all, in my opinion!
Freke and Gandy's claim that a literalist group within the variety of approaches that was Chrisitianity at one
time, took over and persecuted all other claimants to the title Christian into oblivion is indisputable if we are
talking a few centuries after Christ. But literalist is too facile a label. There was no purely literalist Christianity
and a purely spiritual Christianity. Human nature does not allow such extremes for very long.
If Paul was indeed a Gnostic, then it is Gnostic Christianity that ultimately triumphed. It clearly was not so.
I was ready to believe that Paul was a Gnostic while reading their arguments for it being so. Then I began to ponder
all the evidence I had read in the past about Paul being many things, but Gnostic was not one of them. So I dug
up some old books I had read long ago, including one I had begun to write myself (but abandoned). Then I also looked
into the more recent and voluminous literature on the early years of the Christian movement.
By the time I was done with this literature review, I changed my opinion about Paul and Gnosticism. He was a Hellenizer.
He was eclectic, using words from many different cultures and traditions. But, sorry Freke and Gandy, no Gnostic!
Were there strong Gnostic strains in early Christianity? Of course. Within the first hundred years we see Christian
hermits building huts in the desert to experience and tell of their inspirations while living in total detachment
from the world and especially from the biological realities concerned with procreation. This shows a Gnostic strain,
and it shows that these main-line Christian literalists were not so literal.
Christian mystics from the beginning until the present day haven't exactly been all that literal. That the literalist
ruling faction at various times and places suppressed them is another indisputable fact, as I said before, but
not until he fourth century. That the violence against those who believed differently, but still called themselves
Christians, was appalling was also indisputable, beginning during the reign of Theodotus as Emperor of Rome. But
the violence was instigated by the church, not by the Emperor who was threatened with excommunication when he tried
to forbid such violence against his subjects.
That at other times and places the church Sainted those with mystical experience that have a lot in common with
some Gnostic views is also indisputable, however, making the point for me that as with any human endeavor extended
in time and space, the church encompassed and reflected the whole range of human life characteristics ranging from
literalist to mystical. There were and are literalists in the Gnostic camp as well: people who learn to use the
vocabulary, but fail to gain the revelatory spirit that makes that vocabulary take up life within them.
My point is that there has been a mystical, Gnostic-like strand within the so-called literalist church since its
very beginning. It is not such a black and white world as Freke and Gandy describe.
For any of this to be so has nothing to do with whether or not a human called Jesus really lived. I believe that
he did live. I also believe that his life was embellished to make him into the God of Christians and the symbol
of the God-human continuity of Being in the Gnostic tradition. So there. Now let's leave that historical debate
completely behind and move into some of the things that I really liked and appreciated in Freke and Gandy's "Jesus
and the Lost Goddess" book.
FREKE AND GANDY ALLEGATIONS ABOUT PAUL BEING A GNOSTIC
I address this other, perhaps minor, disagreement between myself and Freke and Gandy in item # 2 of the Annotated
Bibliography linked here and at the very end of this page.
GNOSTIC IDEAS PROMOTED BY FREKE AND GANDY THAT HAVE MERIT
So that this review page does not end on a negative note, there are several samples of statements of Gnostic belief
in Freke and Gandy's book that I appreciate and relate to. To make sure they are not completely lost in this rain
of negativism, I'll put them on a separate page that I will link to here.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY (Click to go there)
Some of the assertions I make above are based on readings in other books. The reason I looked into these books
is simple: Freke and Gandy make claims for the Gnostics that did not ring true for me. In the 70's I was into reading
(and writing) on early Christianity. In the 80's and early 90's I was into Gnosticism in terms of reading everything
I could get my hands on readily pertaining to the subject.
I never came away from those readings with anything approaching the idea that these were the "original Christians."
But to reconfirm this I dug out my own collection of books on Gnosticism, and ordered other books I had read from
the library, and even bought several new ones until I thought I had assembled a representaive overview of the subject.
For each of these books I wrote a short set of paragraphs to discuss my view of the book and what it has to contribute
to the arguments made above. I even included my own, unfinished, book. See items 1 through 38 in the boxes below
for PDF files of these various reviews.
Some of the reviews are simply a few paragraphs. Some are much longer. Much, much longer in one case.