Thank you very much for this more complete response. I met you at the Harrisburg Atheist Convention shortly after your book ‘OHJ’ came out and you autographed a copy of it for me. I read it then cover to cover and found it fascinating and well documented (and a slow but rewarding read).
Our Atheist group here in Lancaster, PA has become enamored of the Freke & Gandy book, so I have printed off your replies to my questions and will share them with our group when it meets this evening. I will also read the relevant portions of your book. Thank you for helping me to help our group!

Thank you very much for this

I agree with the general thesis that Christianity began as a mystery religion and (probably) created the biography later. But that being true, does not make Freke and Gandy reliable defenders of the thesis. They are not. Their work is trash, sadly. And their crap makes it harder for real scholars like us to defend the thesis. Because other scholars see their garbage work and conclude only garbage work can produce the thesis, therefore the thesis is false. So we then have to spend inordinate time correcting the misinformation spread by the likes of Freke and Gandy and explaining why their garbage work is a straw man of the thesis and scholars should attend to peer reviewed arguments for that thesis instead.

Precisely because of that, I was engaged to produce a reliable argument to that conclusion, one that would pass expert peer review in the field (which theirs has not). That is my book On the Historicity of Jesus. Christianity as a mystery religion is proved with reliable evidence and source citation in Ch. 4 (Element 11). And Chs. 6 to 11 likewise argue the biography was a later development and (more likely) not original to the religion, and that the original creed regarded a celestial rather than an earthly event. I spent years of post-doc research “applying my expertise” to that possibility. And my results passed peer review, and thus met the standards of serious scholarship. That is therefore what you should look to if you want to see the best, most reliable case for the conclusion.

Thank you for your response. I thought it was interesting to consider that ‘Jesus’ may have begun as a mystery cult, (which were so common at that time) and then acquired a biography later. It is hard for me to grasp that ‘he’ began as a celestial being (less common in that era). Would you consider applying your expertise to this possibility?
Yours, Elaine

Freke and Gandy have no relevant qualifications and their book is woefully full of inaccuracies and a gross want of credible cited sources. I would toss it in the trash. It will only mislead and miseducate you. Even what they contribute that checks out, is buried among bad history, and it’s a tedious chore to figure out which is which, especially for laypeople.

Are you familiar with the book ‘The Jesus Mysteries’ by Timothy Freke and Peter Grandy? It is older, 1999, but gives a clear explanation of how Paul only know of Jesus as the mythical hero of a mystery religion, which explains a lot of early Christianity. I’d be interested in your take on this book. Elaine Olson olson.rn@gmail.com

I’m also surprised that no one suggested the now-discontinued Rationally Speaking blog. It’s successor, Scientia Salon, which spans the academic milieu but tends to emphasize philosophy of X in tandem with X, should perhaps be included.

Finally, i also just came across the blog Skeptical Cubefarm, which looks promising to me but i leave to you to vet.

SkepticLawyer doesn’t seem very useful. I checked one test example (posts tagged “feminism”) and found routine overgeneralization and error (unsubstantiated claims about feminists and frequently getting feminist ideas and arguments wrong). Beyond that the blog doesn’t really write much in actual skepticism that is well informed. Indeed, it’s mostly just armchair opinion editorializing rather than actual fact-checking. The lead author is a stock Libertarian (which means: ideology stands in for actual science or facts, pretty much the opposite of a real skeptic).

But 538 is worth noting. That’s Nate Silver’s column for the New York Times online (which several authors contribute to). Lots of good math-applied-to-real-world stuff there, good fact-based skepticism, and so on. I definitely think it counts (in the sphere of politics/journalism/economics). I’m adding it.

It also surprises me that no one, including myself, has suggested FiveThirtyEight. While perhaps better categorized under “quantitative humanities”, much of its content aims to evaluate popular political and media claims rigorously, most recently whether the party in the White House alternates like a metronome.