Deciphering the Gospels

The idea that Jesus may never have actually existed has been around in modern scholarship for over a century, but it has never been sufficiently proven. Yet critical analysis shows that every account of the life of Jesus can be traced back to the writing now called the Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Mark was originally written as a fictional political allegory in reaction to the First Jewish–Roman War of 70 CE. In this book, author R. G. Price presents a unique analysis of the Gospels to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Jesus of the Gospels never existed. Looking especially at the Gospel of Mark, analysis shows that the writer of this gospel had read the letters of Paul and used Paul as the basis for his Jesus character—Jesus’s teachings are actually Paul’s teachings, not the other way around. The core of this case is proven largely through analysis of the biblical texts themselves, by demonstrating clear textual relationships that show us how the original story of Mark was written.