Acharya S: Encyclopedia - Acharya S

Acharya S

Acharya S is the pen name of D. Murdock. A proponent of the Christ-myth hypothesis, she has authored two books and operates a website called "Truth be Known". Her contention is that all religion is founded in earlier myth and that the characters depicted in Christianity are the result of the plagiarizing of those myths to unify the Roman State.

Acharya S - Books

Her 1999 book, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, is a development of part of her website. A follow-up book, Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, discusses her views further. It is largely written as an address to critics of her former book. In it, she comments on the Hindu story of the life of Krishna, as well as the life of Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama). She claims parallels to the life of Jesus, presenting this as evidence that the story of Jesus was written based on existing stories, and not the life of a real man.

Acharya S - Claims about Christianity

Acharya denies the historical existence of Jesus Christ, describing the New Testament as a work of mythic fiction with an historical setting. The story of Christ, she maintains, is actually a retelling of various pagan myths, all of which represent "astro-theology" or the story of the Sun. She asserts that the pagans understood these stories to be myths but that Christians obliterated evidence to the contrary through the destruction and control of literature. [1]

This purportedly led to widespread illiteracy in the ancient world and ensured that the mythical nature of Christ's story was hidden. Scholars of other sects continued to oppose the historicizing of a mythological figure. Where no evidence exists, Acharya claims that this is because the arguments were destroyed by Christians. However, Christians preserved these contentions, she states, through their own refutations. [2] [3]

In "The Christ Conspiracy" she states this theory in twenty-five points, such as "The sun 'dies' for three days at the winter solstice, to be born again or resurrected on December 25th", and "The sun enters into each sign of the zodiac at 30 [degrees]; hence, the 'Sun of God' begins his ministry at 'age' 30."

Acharya compares Jesus' history to that of other gods—such as Mithra, Horus, Adonis, Krishna, Quetzalcoatl, Odin—claiming that the alleged similarities result from a common source, the myth of the sun-god.

Acharya S - Claims about other religions

Acharya S is highly critical of certain aspects of Judaism, in particular Hasidism. She writes online about an alleged conspiracy to create of a theocratic New World Order which would impose the Noahide Laws:

If the Hassidic Jewish Movement has its way, the so-called Noahide Laws would be followed to the letter, as would many others found in the "Old Testament," prescribing capital punishment for abortion, euthanasia and "sexual deviation" such as adultery and homosexuality. The punishment, in fact, for breaking any of the Noahide Laws is decapitation [4].

In another online essay, she quotes allegations by conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints smuggled uranium to Australia "for future use when it would attempt to obtain world conquest and single world government.... The rumor was... that the Mormon Church had arranged to assist Israel in bringing off Armageddon." [5]

Her criticisms have also been directed against Islam [6] and Buddhism:

Also, it is claimed there is at least one secret society within Buddhism that has been in existence since the times of Asoka, the Buddhist reformer-king of India during the 2nd century BCE. This secret society is claimed to hold tremendous power, with each member in possession of a magical "key" that when combined with the others can create or destroy on a cosmic scale. When a keyholder dies, he is replaced by another person, and it is believed that the keyholders are continually reincarnated, such that eventually there will be many of them living at once, thus increasing their power.While the Dalai Lama himself may be a charismatic caring leader, the Tibetan religious system is not devoid of exploitation. When Tibet was autonomous, the firstborn male of every household was required to enter the priesthood, a repressive law that served as one of the justifications by the Chinese for invading Tibet and "freeing" its people from despotic priests.

Acharya S - Criticisms

Critics have claimed her work is based on poor scholarship, with little primary research and heavy reliance on outdated or fringe sources, and shows ignorance of the topics on which she writes, in particular of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Mainstream scholars have paid little attention to her work.

Robert Price shares her view that the Gospel accounts are borrowed from pagan sources, but considers her work so poor as to constitute an embarrassment to the case. He writes:

I got a copy and read it for myself, and immediately I cringed... Writing at second hand, she is too quick to state as bald-faced fact what turn out to be, once one chases down her sources, either wild speculations or complex inferences from a chain of complicated data open to many interpretations. And sometimes she swallows their fanciful etymologies like so many shiny goldfish at a frat party. Worse yet, she just goofs here and there and betrays a lack of ability to weigh evidential claims... The Christ Conspiracy is a random bag of (mainly recycled) eccentricities, some few of them worth considering, most dangerously shaky, many outright looney.

Her reply began by repeating an unnamed acquantance's speculation that he has "professional jealousy", later adding:

Furthermore, while Price is oh-so-skeptical about this information, as an evangelist for some years--presumably as a willing adult--he evidently had no problem not only swallowing the absurd gospel fable but also spreading it around! Should we respectable mythicists be afraid of being associated with Robert Price because of his bizarre past?

Christian apologist James Patrick Holding has also rebutted her work, to which she replied, "This man, JP Holding, has no integrity, and his writings should not be given credibility." [7]

Another refutation, by Christian apologist Mike Licona, may be found here. She replied, and Licona wrote a rejoinder. His article includes correspondence with several scholars who noted inaccuracies in her work, in one case writing that she should take a Religion 101 class.

Acharya S - Life

Acharya S has been described, by the Paranoia Magazine website, as a historian, mythologist, religious scholar, linguist, archeologist; and even, by Internet essayist John Kaminski, quoted on the splashpage of her own site, as "the ranking religious philosopher of our era". She has a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree in Classics, Greek Civilization, from Franklin and Marshall College, and attended the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece. She is a fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, a division of the Council for Secular Humanism.

While preserving her privacy, she been interviewed on a variety of radio stations. In an interview she said she came from a moderate Christian background. Though not traumatic or "Fundamentalist", she described it as "boring" and said she ceased attending church regularly at age 12.

Her inspiration for exploring the Jesus myth theory was apparently Joseph Wheless's book Forgery in Christianity. She then read other works, such as Kersey Graves' The World's 16 Crucified Saviours, and Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopaedia of Myth and Secrets.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Acharya S", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki