One Jesus, Many Christs: The Truth about Christian Origins

by Gregory J. Riley

Book Overview

In One Jesus, Many Christs Gregory Riley reveals that there was not just one true Christianity, but many different Christianities from the very beginning. United by passionate allegiance to Jesus as hero, these early, doctinally diverse Christianities have led to the development of many different kinds of Christian churches among us today. Riley shows that early Christianity harbored major doctrinal differences about all aspects of Jesus' life, death,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060667990
• ISBN13: 9780060667993
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

An amazing book. With a rich telling of early and pre-church history.

This book helped tie up some loose ends I had in my own independent studies of the figure of Jesus. In many ways I wish I could have stumbled upon this book first when I began my studies of Christianity's famous founder. Riley details the classic history that surroned the time of Jesus and the people who would come to follow him afterwards,while adding his own commentaries on the social and spiritual world that was inhabited by the Greeks. If you want to further,or begin your research on Jesus I would suggest this book as a great reference no matter were you're at in your studies.

Strong argument for Christian diversity

The Kirkus review above gives a good description of the book. The author, Gregory Riley, is a professor at Claremont College in California. He provides a good history of Greek and Jewish legends, along with the details of how they could have affected early Christian writers. He also shows the development of dualistic and Hellenistic beliefs (body-soul and God-Satan) in the late Old Testament and New Testament writers. I would also mention Riley's emphasis on the diversity of early Christianity (which was lost for the most part in the 4th Century when Constantine took over the church and imposed uniformity, and which was regained again in the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century). What Riley might have ignored is the intense, often bloody rivalries between Christian sects, then and now. As Garry Wills mentions in "Papal Sin," there is evidence that Peter and Paul were fingered by a rival Christian group as instigators of the burning of Rome, resulting in their execution. Christians--and members of all religions--will find diversity and harmony difficult as long as they are committed to the idea of absolute truth.

Interesting Angle on the Jesus Debate

After a broad overview of the various views of Jesus in the early church, the majority of Riley's book is occupied with explaining Jesus' appeal to first and second century pagans. The life of Jesus follows the heroic pattern so familiar to them in the stories they had heard all their lives. Like Achilles and Heracles, Jesus learns through suffering, brings liberation to his people, and wins eternal life. But the real appeal of Jesus is that the gift of eternal life--once reserved for semi-divine heroes and sage philosophers--is now offered to even the most lowly in society. This makes Jesus not only worthy of emulation--but worth dying for. This leads Riley into an in-depth analysis of the reasons for Rome's especially virulent persecution of the early church. I found this part of the book a bit tedious, but overall the book is highly accessible and provides welcome insight to any individual in the process of forming his or her own personal christology.

A broad comparison of Jesus Christ with Graeco-Roman heroes

Gregory Riley's contribution to the growing debate about one way to God or many ways to God demonstrates that the paradigms which the New Testament writers drew upon as they wrote about Jesus of Nazareth trace some of their origins to the heroes of the Graeco-Roman world. Though the overall approach of the book does not seem to me to describe "many Christs", "Christ" being the technical word for "anointed one" or "messiah", he makes it very plain that in Jesus of Nazareth we find a historical figure who commanded the respect, adoration, and the desire by many to emulate Jesus as a heroic figure and define their own understanding of true heroism in indvidual Christians. This desire has produced a living movement, the church, and its core beliefs, which have given deep meaning to the struggles of life, suffering, death, and life after death.

Riley opens the doors on new understandings of Christianity

With his classic classroom humor, Riley shows us that the origins of Christianity were a blend of ideas from a "primordial"soup of many ancient cultures. In order to describe who Jesus was, the writers of the Gospels used story lines and formulations that would best be understood by those who could read in the Greco-Roman world, the hero stories by Homer. Riley's ideas liberate Christianity to continue in relavance to the cultures where it is found and introduced, even the cultures of the 21st century. This book is easy and stimulating reading and a must for any religious scholar.