The Truth About Jesus: Is He a Myth?

Published in 1909, this bracing work of freethought applies the tools of historical criticism and comparative mythology to one of the West's most sacred figures. Mangasarian opens with a striking theatrical device: a Greek philosopher awakens after centuries of sleep to debate a priest about the existence of deities. If Apollo cannot be proven real, the Greek asks, why should Jesus be different? The priest insists faith operates by different rules than ancient myth. This tension, between evidence-based inquiry and the claims of revelation, animates the entire book. Mangasarian systematically examines the historical record (or lack thereof), draws parallels between Christian narratives and older sun-god cults, and asks whether the Gospels meet the standards we would apply to any other historical figure. This is not a polemic for the faint-hearted, but a rigorous philosophical inquiry into what we can actually know about the man at the center of Christianity, and how the religion that bears his name came to be.