No work has influenced academic understanding of religion as mythology as Gerald Massey’s 1828 lecture he delivered titled “On the Historicity of Jesus and the Myth of Christ.” At the time, these ideas were so controversial that Massey did not formulate a book – delivering it instead as a lecture to huddled groups of scholars and fans of ancient history, and most notably Egyptology.

Massey frames his views based on the recent decipherement of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, a few years earlier. He does what Campbell would later do more systematically, which is to recognize that the Hebrew system of the Old Testament was based on the Egyptian astral or cosmic mythology, that linked the sky and the earth, and he then deduces from it the “con” of the New Testament.

The lecture was later printed as a book. Not everything in this lecture is correct. But it is a good start for anyone looking to broaden their understanding of the con of religion and unshackle their man-made manacles.

Yours, as always, in the truth of Epicurus and Democritus, and in the pursuit of eternal truth,

Iannis Stamatakos