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 1999 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 to address criticisms 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 claims 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.

Claims about Christianity

Acharya denies the historical existence of Jesus Christ, describing the New Testament as a work of mythic fiction with an historical setting,plagerised form earlier Sources. The story of Christ, she maintains, is actually a retelling of various 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 obliterated evidence to the contrary through the destruction and control of literature, such as the Library of Alexandria for instance, once they attained control of the Roman Empire.

This purportedly led to widespread illiteracy in the ancient world and ensured that the mythical nature of Christ's story was hidden. It is maintained that 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.

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

In "The Christ Conspiracy" she describes this theory, noting for instance the Alledged allegorical parallels between the story of Christ, and the stories of other deities. She claims this is rooted in the motion of the SUn throuough the year. Her claism arethat the oriigonal solar myth contianed several key elements, including: "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."

Claims about other religions

Acharya S is highly critical of certain aspects of Judaism, in particular Hasidism. She writes online about the alledged creation of a theocratic New World Order which would impose the Noahide Laws:

If the Hassidic Jewish Movement has its way, the so-called Noahide Laws would be followed to the letter, as would many others found in the "Old Testament," prescribing capital punishment for abortion, euthanasia and "sexual deviation" such as adultery and homosexuality. The punishment, in fact, for breaking any of the Noahide Laws is decapitation .

In another online essay, she quotes allegations by conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints smuggled uranium to Australia "for future use when it would attempt to obtain world conquest and single world government.... The rumor was... that the Mormon Church had arranged to assist Israel in bringing off Armageddon."

Her criticisms have also been directed against Islam and Buddhism:

While the Dalai Lama himself may be a charismatic caring leader, the Tibetan religious system is not devoid of exploitation. When Tibet was autonomous, the firstborn male of every household was required to enter the priesthood, a repressive law that served as one of the justifications by the Chinese for invading Tibet and "freeing" its people from despotic priests.

Criticisms

While Robert Price shares her view that the Gospel accounts are borrowed from pagan sources, he is critical of her scholarship. 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.

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. See also response to Robert Price"s review by Acharya here: --

Christian apologist James Patrick Holding has also rebutted her work, to which she replied:

The disreputable and untrustworthy Christian apologist "James Patrick Holding" has been receiving and releasing malicious, false and libelous information about me, provided to him by a mentally ill fugitive wanted on three felonies, including child abduction. In his typically vicious, unprofessional, unethical and immoral manner, Holding first revealed my name--also gained from this felonious source and now posted all over the internet--and then passed along the false and libelous material to his fanatic followers, who have since threatened me with further exposure of personal information and lies received from this deranged criminal, who committed violent crimes against me and my small son. Because of this despicable behavior, it is obvious that this man, JP Holding, has no integrity, and that 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.

Life

Acharya S has been described, by the Paranoia Magazine website, as a historian, mythologist, religious scholar, linguist, archeologist, a Claim she herself makes on her website and in her books, and even, by Internet essayist John Kaminski, as "the ranking religious philosopher of our era". She has a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree in Classics, Greek Civilization, from Franklin and Marshall College. SHe wasadmited into the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece.

She is a fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, a division of the Council for Secular Humanism.

While preserving her privacy, she been interviewed on a variety of radio stations. 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 exploring the Jesus myth theory was apparently Joseph Wheless's book Forgery in Christianity. She then read other works, such as Kersey Graves' The World's 16 Crucified Saviours, and Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopaedia of Myth and Secrets.

External links

Category:

Religious philosophy and doctrine