The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of His Existence

This is one of the foundational texts of freethought and biblical criticism, written when a writer could lose his reputation, his community, even his livelihood for asking these questions. Remsburg brings the tools of 19th-century historical scholarship to the most consequential claim in Western civilization: that a man named Jesus was also the divine Christ, born of a virgin, worker of miracles, resurrected and ascended to heaven. With meticulous attention to the New Testament texts, the sparse contemporary pagan sources, and the writings of early Christian apologists, Remsburg finds something startling: the absence of robust historical documentation, glaring discrepancies between the gospel accounts, and a Christ figure that bears the unmistakable imprint of Greek, Roman, and Eastern mythological traditions. His conclusion is careful and devastating: a historical Jesus may have existed, but the supernatural Christ of Christian doctrine is a construction, built over centuries by believers drawing on ancient myths. This book remains essential reading for anyone curious about the intellectual foundations of Christianity and the audacious act of subjecting faith to reason.