Jesus the magician

This book challenges traditional Christian teaching about Jesus. While his followers may have seen him as a man from heaven, preaching the good news, and working miracles, Smith asserts that this truth about Jesus is more interesting and rather unsettling. The real Jesus, only barely glimpsed because of a campaign of disinformation, obfuscation, and censorship by religious authorities, was not Jesus the Son of God. In actuality he was Jesus the Magician. Smith marshals all the available evidence including, but not limited to, the Gospels. He succeeds in describing just what was said of Jesus by "outsiders," those who did not believe him. He deals in fascinating detail with the inevitable questions. What was the nature of magic? What did people at that time mean by the term "magician? Who were the other magicians, and how did their magic compare with Jesus' works? What facts led to the general assumption that Jesus practiced magic?… (more)

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LibraryThing member antiquary

If Jesus was not divine, I think he was very probably the kind of religious charlatan depicted by Smith, not the reformist Unitarian rabbi imagined by many modern intellectuals. Smith has, I think, a very good understanding of the atmosphere of popular religion in the time of Jesus. However, I must

admit I find Smith's parallels with Egyptian magic much less close than Smith believes.

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LibraryThing member JayLivernois

This controversial book seems to give a more accurate account of the origins of Christianity than anything else.

LibraryThing member Mary_Overton

From chapter 7, The Evidence for Magical Practice:
"... the most important magical parallel to the gospels is that to Jesus' life and legend as a whole. This we saw in the comparison of Jesus and Apollonius (above, pp. 85ff.), but even when Jesus' career does not parallel that of Apollonius, it is

consistently paralleled by other magical material, and the parallels are not haphazard; they fit together. Taking the gospel material supported by such parallels, we get the following coherent, consistent and credible picture of a magician's career.
"After undergoing a baptism believed to purge him of sin, Jesus experienced the descent of a spirit upon him - the experience that made a man a magician - and heard himself declared a god, as magicians claimed to be. Then 'the spirit drove him out into the desert,' a common shamanic phenomenon. After visionary experiences there, he returned to Galilee where his new spiritual power manifested itself in exorcism, in cures of types familiar in magic, in teaching, with magical parallels and authority, and in the call of disciples, who, like persons enchanted, were constrained to leave their families and belongings and follow him alone.
"With these disciples he lived the predictable life of a traveling magician and holy man .... The company was supported by his success as exorcist and healer, which increased and was increased by his fame. His fame was such that other magicians began to use his name as that of a god in their exorcisms. Soon opposition developed. His neglect of Jewish law, especially as to fasting, purity, and the Sabbath, as well as his association with rich libertines ('tax collectors and sinners') antagonized 'the scribes' (Jewish notaries, lawyers and upper-schoolteachers) who collected, enlarged and disseminated a body of discreditable stories about him, including various charges of magic....
"... he began to initiate his disciples into his own magical experiences. .... The synoptics describe the inner circle of disciples as those 'to whom the mystery (initiation) of the kingdom of God has been given' and who can therefore receive further secret teaching, not given to 'those outside.' They say the 'the twelve' were given power to exorcise. They tell of Jesus revealing himself in glory with two supernatural beings on 'the mountain' in Galilee.... Jesus instituted a rite of footwashing that cleansed his disciples and gave them a share in his lot....
"We are better informed about another magical rite, the eucharist, that Jesus instituted to unite his disciples with himself, both in love and in body.... The rite is a familiar type of magical ceremony in which the magician identifies himself with a deity, and identifies wine and/or food with the blood and/or body of this deity and of himself. The wine and/or food is then given to a recipient who by consuming it is united with him and filled with love for him. This rite is attributed to Jesus by the earliest and most reliable sources." pp. 137-8

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LibraryThing member CindyHMcReynolds

Alternate Christianity, Antiquity,Biblical Criticism, Biblical History, Biography - Jesus, Christian Origins, Christianity, Early Christianity, Gnosticism, Gospels, Historical Jesus, History of Religion, Jesus Christ, Jewish History, Kabbalah, Magic, Magical Papyri, Myth & Religion, New Testament,

New Testament Studies, Occult, Religion Theology, Virgin Birth

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LibraryThing member gwernin

An interesting and generally convincing discussion of the similarities between the reported actions of Jesus and that of the primarily Egyptian magical practitioners of that period. I only diverge from the author's comments that magic (and gods) are not real.

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