The first book I read in 2018 and let's hope the rest won't be as dry and moth-eaten as this one. I love the subject and was always fascinated with the way certain idea can with time transform itself into something else completely - I don't care so much for the religious aspect of it, but my main interest is how and when embellishments (and other aspects) came in and changed cult of poor and downtrodden outcasts into the most powerful weapon of ruling classes. Without really planning or analysing it much, trough the years I read several highly idiosyncratic accounts of various authors who strongly disagree with official church dogma, each one usually more fantastic than the previous one - the only thing I got from them was idea about historical moment of ancient Middle East and how hugely different it was from where we are now. For example, the whole phenomenon of wondering preacher was quite common and Jesus was definitely not the only one. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems completely plausible that he is combination of several characters who might have suffered similar fate.
When I look back, the best books I read about the subject so far were "The Passover plot" by Hugh J. Schonfield from 1965 and "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" by Reza Aslan from 2014 - they both analyse the figure of Jesus Christ in historical context and try to understand social and political atmosphere in far away corner of Roman Empire that eventually nested the roots of future religion. Everybody else had different things to say but most of the authors I encountered focus on nitpicking trough the Gospels or any ancient documents and trying to find some chronological sense in all of this. For some reason I always found The Christ myth theory completely fascinating subject and could read about it forever, although this is actually nothing new, apparently people were writing books about it since 17th century (Voltaire was amongst the first, but of course he would be as he lived trough French revolution when such non-orthodox ideas were welcomed).
In his time George Robert Stowe Mead was very well-known and respected scholar, academic indeed. And yes, the subject is fascinating and he treats it with utmost seriousness and care but no matter how you look at it, it is still something written 115 years ago and it shows its age on every page. I should have known better but joy in reading occasional old classic made me overlook the fact that most of the books published in early 1900s are rusty indeed. My first impression of Mead is that he was a classy, well educated gentleman and it shows in his literary "voice", the second impression was that he appears as an old, fussy university professor who gets tangled in too much information's. Actually when Meade write this book he was younger than me right now, but still he was a creature of completely different times and his stiff-lipped way of talking and explaining himself comes across as dry and long-winded. Going for the main core of the problem, he explores Talmud and what does it say about Jesus but it takes forever (and than some) to move from one chapter to another and at certain point (halfway trough) I got so exasperated with the whole crawling trough countless side notes that eventually I just skipped the darn thing and went straight for the ending. Still, there were some fascinating things Meade had to say - he discuss strange silence of usually well-informed Flavius Josephus about the subject of Jesus, truly abominable crimes during Crusades where out of religious intolerance Christians burned every roles of Talmud they could get their hands on (so it is actually a miracle we have anything left of it and probably badly translated), certain Queen Helena of Adiabene who (Jewish tradition claim) was ruler instead of Pontius Pilate and the odd little fact that the onion was a symbol of lasciviousness (!) - somewhere in there my favourite John the Baptist is also mentioned but Meade meanders so much that I actually gave up. I might read this properly if I was shipwrecked on desert island or locked up somewhere without anything else, but in the meantime I decided that it would be better idea to go for some modern day, contemporary writers like Bart D. Ehrman - for better or worse, the way he expresses himself is much closer to my own understanding and phrasing than long gone Meade who might have been well intentioned but he really belongs to Victorian England and it unfortunately shows at every page.
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