Saturday, July 10, 2010

Christopher Hitchens reviews 'The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ'


From NY Times Book Review Podcast:
Belief in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and belief in the virtue of his teachings are not at all the same thing. Writing to John Adams in 1813, having taken his razor blade to the books of the New Testament and removed all “the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests,” Thomas Jefferson said the 46-page residue contained “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.” Ernest Renan, in his pathbreaking “Life of Jesus” in 1863, also repudiated the idea that Jesus was the son of God while affirming the beauty of his teachings. In rather striking contrast, C. S. Lewis maintained in his classic statement “Mere Christianity”: “That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse.”
Continue reading
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (Myths)

(via Daily Hitchens)

2 comments:

  1. Damn straight Hitchens.  It's like when Sarah Silvermen bitches about the Pope.  Well duh, that's because she's Jewish.  Or how Sam Harris basically lets Buddhism slide.  Have the balls to check your own sacred cows, or you've got no creibility.  Withour divinity Jesus was just an apocalyptic hippie cult leader.

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