Chapter 3: Fragments From the Christ Cult Summary and Analysis

A drastic and apparently sudden change took place in the Jesus movement around the middle of the first century C.E. The movement shifts from being concerned mainly with how one belongs to the movement and toward the importance of Jesus' death in signaling the beginning of a new age. The prime source for evidence of this shift comes in the letters of Paul.

It is in Paul that the notion of Jesus having died for the sins of his followers was presented in what Mack calls the "Christ myth." (p. 79). Jesus became a martyr figure who purified his followers with his death. Mack aligns this Christ myth with other popular mythologies in the Jewish and Greek traditions of the "persecuted sage," the wise man who was punished for speaking the...