Rating: 
Summary: Worthy Insights into the Gospel of Matthew
Review: and so does MacDonald. This book will either change your perception of the gospel story or further bolster your faith in it. Those who can will read it and weigh it for the content and not for what it does to the Christian myth.A note to those unfamiliar with Mr. J.P. Holding... he attacks anything that doesn't fit his preconceived ideas of Christianity and his "review" here is classic "Robert Turkel" (his real name). The idea that "Mark" used content from the Odyssey and the Iliad to help him create his gospel is a relatively new (several years) idea but clearly, there is no doubt of it. One great example of mimesis (although not specifically Homeric) is when MacDonald exposes the source behind Jesus renaming James and John to the "Sons of Thunder". In Antiquity, the mythical twins, Castor and Polydeuces, were referred to as the sons of Zeus or boys of Zeus and we all remember that Zeus was a god of thunder. These twins were often depicted on coins, art, etc. as being on the left and right of a deity and they always were seen as a team and mostly referred to as "Castor and Polydeuces" in that order. What did James and John ask Jesus in Mark? Mark 36 And He said to them, "What do you want Me to do for you?" 37 They said to Him, "Grant that we may sit, one on Your right and one on Your left, in Your glory." Also, in Mark, James and John are referred to as "James and John" always in that order except for once. Of course, without reading the book and more detailed analysis, one could dismiss this as mere coincidence. Read this book! It is not coincidence. This idea is going to change Biblical scholarship and explode the myth that the gospels are historically reliable.
Rating: 
Summary: Mark hits a Homer!
Review: and so does MacDonald. This book will either change your perception of the gospel story or further bolster your faith in it. Those who can will read it and weigh it for the content and not for what it does to the Christian myth. A note to those unfamiliar with Mr. J.P. Holding... he attacks anything that doesn't fit his preconceived ideas of Christianity and his "review" here is classic "Robert Turkel" (his real name). The idea that "Mark" used content from the Odyssey and the Iliad to help him create his gospel is a relatively new (several years) idea but clearly, there is no doubt of it. One great example of mimesis (although not specifically Homeric) is when MacDonald exposes the source behind Jesus renaming James and John to the "Sons of Thunder". In Antiquity, the mythical twins, Castor and Polydeuces, were referred to as the sons of Zeus or boys of Zeus and we all remember that Zeus was a god of thunder. These twins were often depicted on coins, art, etc. as being on the left and right of a deity and they always were seen as a team and mostly referred to as "Castor and Polydeuces" in that order. What did James and John ask Jesus in Mark? Mark 36 And He said to them, "What do you want Me to do for you?" 37 They said to Him, "Grant that we may sit, one on Your right and one on Your left, in Your glory." Also, in Mark, James and John are referred to as "James and John" always in that order except for once. Of course, without reading the book and more detailed analysis, one could dismiss this as mere coincidence. Read this book! It is not coincidence. This idea is going to change Biblical scholarship and explode the myth that the gospels are historically reliable.
Rating:
Summary: anonymous listings
Review: I am the author of this book and I resent the anonymity of the reviews from Stupified in California. This is cowardly, not academic, and not in keeping with intellectual decency. Furthermore, you pass yourself off as something of a classicist, but no classicist would agree that ancient Greek readers would have been unfamiliar with Homer. PS. I'm sorry I rated my own book with five stars, but I could not post this note without a vote. DRM
Rating:
Summary: 1/3 of the puzzle solved
Review: I was delighted to read the material in this book because it
solved 1/3 of the puzzle of Christian origins. I view these
parts as: 1. what were they trying to do
2. how were they doing it
3. why were they doing it This book explains how Mark accomplished his task of creating
a detailed myth of Jesus. The book, "The Jesus Mysteries"
explains what they were trying to do. The book, "The greatest
story ever sold" only explains part of "why". If you read in
The Jesus Mysteries about how the Mystery religions work, you
see quotes from Celsus and Philo, and others explaining the
joy they derived from the Mystery cults to which they belonged.
This joy is shared by modern Christians (followers of the Jesus
Mystery) -- and they too want to share their happiness. Once the early bishops (originally overseers of the church
buildings) figured out how much money they could make from
their trusted positions within the churches, the selling part
of the "why" of Christianity took over. That and the fact that
the emperor Constantine (who only converted on his deathbed)
needed the people to unite behind him so as to better defend the
empire from foreign invaders, explain the rest of the "why". If you still believe that there is a historical Jesus, read
Robert Eisenman's "James the brother of Jesus". This book takes
all the ancient literature into account and shows how
inconsistent and mutually contradictory it all is -- especially
showing how the old testament was deliberately misquoted by
new testament authors to give false creedence to the myth they
were creating. It also shows how non-canonical works parallel and extend the canonicals. Also, read "How Jesus Became God" for a discussion of how the
catholic "holy trinity" idea got voted (!) into the religion!
Rating:
Summary: Hurrah for Homer
Review: I've not actually read the book--I've heard the lecture. I and several students in a small Northwest part-time seminary program listened as Dr. MacDonald spun the seminal ideas for this work prior to its' going to press. Many students felt Dr. MacDonald was speaking pure herasy, as "stupified" seems to think. Others, myself included, were amazed and intrigued at the comparisons between Homer and Mark's texts and the notion that Mark used a common literary method to express what has been referred to as the greatest story ever told. Many in our program, the Northwest House of Theological Studies, were concerned that accepting a Homeric origin for the Markan story (the gospel used by Matthew and Luke in writing their gospels) meant accepting a secular and not "holy" origin. Not so. If anything, the notion that Mark, a person undoubtedly educated in authorship via the Greek method--via reading and emulating Homer, made the Jesus message of salvation emerge from within common literary style is more miraculous. It is more intriguing than accepting a supernatural explanation. I applaud the notions in this book and highly recommend it--though not for the faint of theological heart. Be prepared to have your notions of Biblical origin and inerrancy expanded to the corners of your known universe. Hurrah for Homer!
Rating:
Summary: Hurrah for Homer
Review: I've not actually read the book--I've heard the lecture. I and several students in a small Northwest part-time seminary program listened as Dr. MacDonald spun the seminal ideas for this work prior to its' going to press. Many students felt Dr. MacDonald was speaking pure herasy, as "stupified" seems to think. Others, myself included, were amazed and intrigued at the comparisons between Homer and Mark's texts and the notion that Mark used a common literary method to express what has been referred to as the greatest story ever told. Many in our program, the Northwest House of Theological Studies, were concerned that accepting a Homeric origin for the Markan story (the gospel used by Matthew and Luke in writing their gospels) meant accepting a secular and not "holy" origin. Not so. If anything, the notion that Mark, a person undoubtedly educated in authorship via the Greek method--via reading and emulating Homer, made the Jesus message of salvation emerge from within common literary style is more miraculous. It is more intriguing than accepting a supernatural explanation. I applaud the notions in this book and highly recommend it--though not for the faint of theological heart. Be prepared to have your notions of Biblical origin and inerrancy expanded to the corners of your known universe. Hurrah for Homer!
Rating: 
Summary: Homer on the Range, Sauteed with Snake Oil
Review: If Odysseus "sat down", and Jesus also "sat down," did Mark make Jesus sit down only because of Homer? That's the essence of the theory behind this book, and it's enough to make a disciplined mind climb a wall. Over 70% of the parallels drawn by MacDonald involve inevitable contextual elements of daily life (eating, movements, conditions of light, etc.) that prove nothing in terms of his thesis that Mark is creating fiction. It is especially "easy" when one is allowed to count opposite conditions ("transvaluations") as matches -- i.e., if a room is dark in Homer, that can match to a place where the NT says a room had light. (Nor is the link between mimesis and fiction ever established by MacDonald; actually bad mimesis COULD result in mangling history, but well-practiced and skilled mimesis did not. Checking the book's sources, I find that the technique was used also by trustworthy historians like Tacitus, though you won't find this discussed to any real extent, and no discussion at all of whether secular historians like Plutarch were thereby creating "fiction" in their own works.) Of the remaining 30%, most are examples of MacDonald collapsing down events and providing his OWN descriptions which he has made to sound as similar as possible, where reading from the actual texts of Homer and Mark isn't convincing. In the process MacDonald omits vast amounts of detail contrary to his thesis. Perhaps 5-10% of the examples have any merit at all. I agree with a classical scholar, who evaluated this book with the words of Groucho Marx: "There's less here than meets the eye."
Rating: 
Summary: Macdonald underestimates the static nature of the oral event
Review: Sadly Macdonald is far behind the times in homeric studies. He never cites the ground breaking works of Perry and barely references Lord. Perry and Lord launched a paradigm shift in homeric studies, by arguing that Homer was never intended to be written but was an oral epic which followed certain formulaic patterns. More recently Eric Havelock and Walter J. Ong have done major studies in the different psychodynamics of primary oral cultures verses chirographic and text based cultures. Ong gives 9 main characteristics of oral thought and oral epic:
1) additive rather than subordinative
2) aggregative rather than analytic
3) redundant or 'copius'
4) conservative or traditionalist
5) Close to the human life world
6) agonistically toned
7) empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced
8) homeostatic
9)situation rather than abstract All of these function mnemonically to assist in memorization. The bases of oral thought is that it is does not often change. It repeats common formulas which do not easily change over time. Many readers may ask what this has to do with the Gospel of Mark. Recent studies in Mark's gospel by Joanna Dewey, Werner Kelber, Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Richard Horsley etc... have demonstrated that Mark contains all of the above 9 features. Mark was not meant to be read silently but heard aloud. This makes sense when you consider that the literacy rates in the ancient world were probably between 5-15%. Macdonald is stuck in a text-based paradigm which leads him to erroneous conclusions. Mark's audience would never have thought of, nor had texts to compare Mark to, Homer. The similarities between Mark and Homer, which Macdonald point out do not convincingly demonstrate literary dependancy; rather they most likely stem from a common oral thought world which is based on repetitive and standard formulas in order to assist memorization. I have read it for my thesis on Mark; However, I do not see this book adding anything to the field of Markan studies.
Rating:
Summary: Worthy Insights into the Gospel of Matthew
Review: The main premise of this well written book is that the author of Mark had used the Iliad and the Odyssus as a type of template for the Gospel of Mark. In the first chapter Mr. MacDonald sets up the criteria he uses to support his ideas. These are accessibility, analogy, density, order, distinctiveness, and interpretability. Using these criteria, Mr. MacDonald than goes on to compare the Homeric Epics with the Marcian Gospel. He does this with great respect for both works. I greatly enjoyed the parallels that he drew but was personally not always sure I understood when he was using which criteria until I read the last chapter. I wondered, at times, if a scholar with the insights and abilities of a Mr. MacDonald could compare any great work with the lengthy Homeric Epics and find equally compelling parallels. I also wondered if we were just seeing the same themes in both works being repeated in Jungian fashion. Despite these doubts I did feel that Mr. MacDonald had indeed uncovered some fascinating parallells. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on foolish companions. Like Odysseus, Jesus's companions continued to behave foolishly and display doubts. How many miracles does it take before the disciples understand what is happening? Why do the disciples wonder how Jesus can feed four thousand after having fed the five thousand and performing numerous other miracles? This book gives a new explanation for the disciples' odd behaviors. I am now convinced that there was, at the very least, some subconscious use of the Homeric Epics by the author of Mark. I have certainly developed a new appreciation for the Gospel of Mark. This alone made the book worth reading. The connections to the Homeric Epics made the book all the more fascinating for me.
Rating:
Summary: The Premise is Valid
Review: This is a great book.
Mr.MacDonald has compared the Gospel of Mark with Homer's The Odyssey,and it really looks like he's made a connection. One reviewer calls the parallels "vague," but I didn't see it that way. There are many similarities. In fact, there are so many similarities, not just in what the characters do and say, but in the exact order they take place. Sometimes the narratives switch from 3rd to 1st person in the exact same spot! If all these are simply coincidences, there sure are alot of them. The author, Dennis MacDonald, has previously written about other books that use the ancient practice of "textual mimesis" (copying from one text to another), and the Book of Mark seems to have done the same. This idea may be difficult for people who want to believe that the Scriptures are recorded history, but this book casts serious doubts about that. I had never heard of textual mimesis before, but it seems to make alot of sense, and was apparently commonplace in the ancient world.
Either MacDonald is completely mistaken, or he has really done his homework. You should read this book and make up your own mind.
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