So far, Maccoby has painted Christianity as a fraud, the creation of a frustrated “adventurer” and “mythogogue” who with other writers has written a work of fiction and propaganda that demonizes the Jews as an evil force that kills the Christian savior.
HM observes that Christianity exists separate from Judaism because of Paul’s revelations. This is the key.
After Damascus, does Paul create a new religion or is he a convert to one already established? HM argues the former (105).
Acts, written 40 years after the events described, writes of Paul has having converted.
Maccoby observes this bombshell, so to speak: “His ‘revelation’ is thus more than a revelation: it is a transformation and a deification of Paul himself as the supreme manifestation of the phenomenon of impregnation by God” (106).
Paul becomes the ultimate “mystagogue” of his age (107).
My struggle with The Mythmaker comprises of these questions: How much speculation is used to arrive at conclusions? How much conspiracy thinking informs Maccoby's narrative?
How can we know Paul relied on mystery cults, and not the Old Testament itself, for the notion of salvation and sacrifice?
Does one's cognitive bias affect one's willingness to accept Maccoby's points as credible?
The struggle to find the truth about Paul continues.
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