The Invention of the Christ

About this book

How did an obscure collection of anonymous Greek writings become the foundation of one of the most powerful religions in human history?In The Invention of the Christ, readers are taken on a bold and deeply researched journey into the making not only of Jesus as the world came to know him, but of early Christianity itself. Moving through the shadowy world of the first centuries, this book examines how anonymous gospel narratives were written, expanded, edited, and attributed to famous names; how rival Christian beliefs competed for authority; and how one version of the faith gradually rose above all others as sacred truth.With a sharp eye for evidence and a gift for clear explanation, it explores the literary borrowing, theological invention, historical silences, and institutional power struggles that transformed scattered Jesus traditions and competing Christian movements into orthodoxy. The result is not a devotional portrait, but a gripping historical investigation into how texts become scripture, how sects become churches, how legends become doctrine, and how belief becomes authority.Provocative, accessible, and unsparing, The Invention of the Christ invites readers to reexamine the origins of Jesus, the Gospels, and early Christianity itself-and to ask how a fractured world of competing stories, sects, and sacred claims became the official faith of an empire.