Joseph McCabe

Is the creation story in Genesis nothing more than a botched version of a Babylonian myth? Is 'free will' illusory? Are the Jesuits really educated men? In these three classic essays "The Forgery of the Old Testament", "The Myth of Immortality" and "Lies of Religious Literature" Joseph McCabe (1867-1955), ex-priest and the 'world's greatest scholar', exposes the inconsistencies, absurdities, and outright mendacity that lie behind the most revered texts and 'truths' of Christianity. With forcefulness, clarity, and often biting humor, McCabe attacks two millennia of Christian tradition which, he says, must withdraw before the weapons of science and reason.

Did Jesus ever live? Was he the Messiah as Christianity has claimed? And what are the true foundations of the Christian religion? These are the fundamental questions posed by ex-priest Joseph McCabe (1867-1955), a prodigious scholar, translator, and lecturer, who tirelessly promoted scientific inquiry, skepticism, and anticlericalism in works that were exhaustively researched yet accessible to the general reader. In these three lively, informative, and combative essays, McCabe takes us through the ancient Mediterranean world to show how Christianity appropriated the ceremonies and myths of paganism to elaborate the Resurrection story. McCabe cogently demonstrates that the Jesus of the gospels is not historical at all but a curious amalgam built up after his death. The gospels themselves are completely unreliable as biographies of Jesus. Critically examining all the ancient sources, McCabe reveals a series of shameless distortions by Christian apologists who, he argues, destroyed classical civilization and inaugurated the Dark Ages.