Acharya S - Misplaced Pages

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Acharya S is the pen name of D. Murdock. A proponent of the Christ-myth hypothesis, she has authored two books and operates a website called "Truth be Known". Her contention is that all religion is founded in earlier myth and that the characters depicted in Christianity are the result of the plagiarizing of those myths to unify the Roman State.

Books

Her book, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, is a development of part of her website. A follow-up book, Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, discusses her views further. It is largely written as an address to critics of her former book. In it, she comments on the Hindu story of the life of Krishna, as well as the life of Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama). She points out parallels to the life of Jesus, presenting this as evidence that the story of Jesus was written based on existing stories, and not the life of a real man.

General premise

Acharya's claim is that Christ's story is based on pagan myths, all of which represent "astro-theology" or the story of the Sun. She asserts that the pagans understood these stories to be myths but that Christians destroyed the works stating this, and killed all who did not accept it as literal, factual history.

This purportedly led to widespread illiteracy in the ancient world and ensured that the mythical nature of Christ's story was hidden. Scholars of other sects continued to oppose the historicizing of a mythological figure. Where no evidence exists, Acharya claims that this is because the arguments were destroyed by Christians. However, Christians preserved these contentions, she states, through their own refutations.

In "The Christ Conspiracy" she states this theory in twenty-five points, such as "The sun 'dies' for three days at the winter solstice, to be born again or resurrected on December 25th", and "The sun enters into each sign of the zodiac at 30 ; hence, the 'Sun of God' begins his ministry at 'age' 30."

Acharya compares Jesus' history to that of other gods—such as Adonis, Krishna, Quetzalcoatl, Odin—claiming that the similarities result from a common source, the myth of the sun-god.

Criticisms

Critics have claimed her work is based on poor scholarship, with little primary research and heavy reliance on outdated or fringe sources, and shows ignorance of the topics on which she writes, in particular of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions

Robert Price shares her view that the Gospel accounts are borrowed from pagan sources, but considers her work an embarrassment to the case. He writes:

I got a copy and read it for myself, and immediately I cringed... We sometimes feel, in these pages, to be lost in a forest of false cognates. Can it be true, for instance, that “Solomon” is a trilingual synthesis of words for “the sun”? Sol from Latin, Om from Sanskrit, On from Ethiopic. This conceit she derives from John Hazelrigg. Elsewhere she endorses a contradictory theory, from the same writer, that Solomon is instead derived from Suleyman (=universal emperor), a Persian title. It is symptomatic of the “kettle logic” that permeates this book: any argument is good, whether or not consistent with the others in the arsenal, as long as they are all aimed at the same target.

Her reply began by repeating an unnamed acquantance's speculation that he has "professional jealousy", later adding:

Furthermore, while Price is oh-so-skeptical about this information, as an evangelist for some years--presumably as a willing adult--he evidently had no problem not only swallowing the absurd gospel fable but also spreading it around! Should we respectable mythicists be afraid of being associated with Robert Price because of his bizarre past?

However, his review was not entirely negative. He also said:

"Murdock presents us with a whole smorgasbord of “unorthodox” theories, some of them quite legitimate, such as a deconstruction of the Rabbinical apologetic that had us imagining for so long that ancient Israelite religion was monotheistic. It is now clear enough (see, e.g., Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 1987, or Margaret Barker, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God, 1992) that the ancient Hebrews worshipped Yahweh amid a pantheon of gods. If that comes as shocking news to some, so be it. That is a reason neither to reject nor to relish the fact.

See Idolatry for a longer discussion of Israelite polytheism.

Christian apologist James Patrick Holding has also rebutted her work, to which she replied, "This man, JP Holding, has no integrity, and his writings should not be given credibility."

Another refutation, by Christian apologist Mike Licona, may be found here. She replied, and Licona wrote a rejoinder.

Noahide Laws

Acharya S has written online about the Noahide Laws. She is highly critical of them, and certain aspects of Judaism, in particular Hasidism. She phrases this criticism in terms of a theocratic New World Order .

Life

She has been described as a historian, mythologist, religious scholar, linguist, archeologist, and even, by a person quoted on the splashpage of her site, "the ranking religious philosopher of our era". She has a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree from Franklin and Marshall College. In an interview she said she came from a moderate Christian background. Though not traumatic or "Fundamentalist", she described it as "boring" and said she ceased attending church regularly at age 12.

Her inspiration for labeling Jesus Christ a myth was apparently Joseph Wheless' book Forgery in Christianity. Wheless is also one of her primary sources. She then read other freethought works, such as Kersey Graves' The World's 16 Crucified Saviours, which also serves as one of her main references, and Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopaedia of Myth and Secrets,another source she relies heavily upon.

Acharya has also given interviews on a variety of radio stations, usually discussing her work in The Christ Conspiracy. She is a fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion , a division of the Council for Secular Humanism.

External links

Category:

Religious philosophy and doctrine