In Part 1, Chapters 1-6 of our book, we examine each unit of the gospel of Mark which deals with the ministry of Jesus. We analyze Mark to determine if his gospel is pagan or Jewish and to see to what degree his narrative is a product of the early church.

Chapters 7 and 8 of Jesus: Pagan Christ or Jewish Messiah? examine Mark’s version of Jesus’ arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection in order to determine the historical plausibility and consistency of these events.

We conclude that the Marcan historical Jesus is a pagan literary fiction derived from the Greco-Roman tradition with material from the Jewish Scriptures providing Jewish dress for a pagan tale. Mark is a creation of the early church.

Part 2 of our book seeks an answer to the following question: If the church created Jesus, who created the church? To find an answer to this question, we turn in Chapter 9 to the Apostle Paul. The trouble is, the apostle was not Jewish and knew nothing of Mark’s historical Jesus nor the Jesus of Matthew, Luke, or John. The source of Paul’s divine and ahistorical Jesus is found in the pagan mysteries, gnosticism, and the philosophy of Stoic-Cynicism. A wing of the Pauline mystery historicized his spiritual Christ, in the process creating the gospel of Mark, turning the divine Christ into an historical human being -- Jesus is given a mother, brothers and sisters, a birthplace in Nazareth, is tried by Jewish authorities and Pontius Pilate, etc. The Pauline wing stayed with the divine, ahistorical Christ. Eventually in the second century CE, the two wings combined Christ and the historical Jesus, creating orthodox Christianity.

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