I've been reading Hyam Maccoby-- I just finished Revolution in Judaea: Jesus and the Jewish Resistance and I'm currently reading The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity. They are extremely interesting. Maccoby's premise is basically that Jesus was a member of the Pharisee movement whose supposed anti-Pharisee views were the work of the authors/editors of the Synoptic Gospels and later, Paul. He asserts that Jesus saw his role as a political Messiah (not as a spiritual Messiah and divine sacrifice for sin) and that Jesus believed that the Jews would be liberated from Roman rule by miraculous intervention, and that he would be a literal king after the Davidic model. Such as he was a political rebel, the Romans captured and executed him.

I need an outlet for my heretics, and thus is born "The Pseudo Mormon." In the meantime, I need to figure out how to make the most out of drupal.

More to come.

--Dom