Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God?
A Religion, Christianity, Fantasy book. Religious people might be put off by the implication of this book's title, but the late...
Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? is a 1978 book by Morton Smith arguing that the historical Jesus was a magician who "sprang from a Galilean strain of Semitic paganism" (p. 68). The charge that he was a magician didn't originate with Smith. It was previously voiced by the philosopher & critic Celsus (The True Word c. 200 CE) as we know from the rebuttal authored by the Christian apologist/scholar Origen: “It was by magic that he was able to do the miracles” (Contra Celsum 1.6). Clearly, for Celsus to have repeated the story, it must have had long currency before he came to write his book. Hans Dieter Betz (1994) observes that "from early on even Jesus of Nazareth was implicated in that he was said to be mad or a magician possessed by Satan"...
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- Filetype: PDF
- Pages: 248 pages
- ISBN: 9781569751558 / 1569751552
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More About Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God?
Scholars in search of a historical Jesus usually assume the miraculous stories are later additions and that the real Jesus was either a sage dispensing wisdom or a prophet preaching the end of the world. However, Morton Smith believes the opposite is true."Teachers of the law were not, in this period, made over into miracle workers.... When I told my fiancee the title of the book, she said, "Heck yeah, my type of book." Indeed it is, and seeing as how she probably represents a large portion of believers of various faiths, but particularly Christians, I imagine this is a book a lot of people would enjoy reading. Anyone who digs New Age Christianity or, on the other... Religious people might be put off by the implication of this book's title, but the late Morton Smith's "Jesus the Magician" is not quite what you might think. It begins by exploring what will be instantly recognized by the biblically literate person: that Jesus' enemies accused him of being a magician. Smith quotes every scriptural...
