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| The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom | 
 enlarge | Authors: Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00 (32.96 RON)
Buy New: $11.20 (26.37 RON)
You Save: $2.80 (6.59 RON) (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 256132
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 0.6
ISBN: 140008279X
Dewey Decimal Number: 299.932
EAN: 9781400082797
ASIN: 140008279X
Publication Date: June 27, 2006
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
An Incendiary Wake-Up Call to the World
What if the Old Testament is a work of fiction, Jesus never existed, and Muhammad was a mobster?
What if the Bible and the Qur'an are works of political propaganda created by Taliban-like fundamentalists to justify the sort of religious violence we are witnessing in the world today?
What if there is a big idea that could free us from the us-versus-them world created by religion and make it possible for us to truly love our neighbors—and even our enemies?
What if it is possible to awaken to a profound state of oneness and love, which the Gnostic Christians symbolized by the enigmatic figure of the laughing Jesus?
Discover for Yourself Why the Gnostic Jesus Laughs
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| Customer Reviews: Read 34 more reviews...
 The Laughing Jesus November 24, 2008
If you saw and loved Bill Maher's new documentary "Religulous," you will love all the books of Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. "The Laughing Jesus" pulls it all together, and offers a way to move forward before we fulfill the prophecy of Revelations.
Excellent Expose May 4, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The book is written with such level of decency and truth that it is almost imposible to find a flaw. When you compare the book with many in the field, this is a gem! No other author have pleaded so much for love and peace than this two! My respect to Freke and Gandi. I book worth reading!
 Found the flaws in the scholarship yet? January 26, 2008
7 out of 15 found this review helpful
The first flaw is in their misunderstanding of the Gnostics. Gnostics did not exist before about the middle of the 2nd century. And even then, they were never a centralized religion. On the contrary, there were various schools of Gnosticism, none of which agreed with one another, but all of whom believed in very, very strange things. My all-time favorite Gnostic quote (from the Gospel of Thomas): Women do not deserve to live.
Most of the Gnostic schools were anti-flesh, anti-woman, anti-earth. They believed there were two Gods, one evil, and it was the evil one who created the world. Thoroughly elitist, they were very small in number. As for those so-called gospels they wrote, ever wonder why they titled them with Christian names? Not because they thought they were Christian. Nor was anyone else under the misapprehension that they were Christian. The Romans never once mistakenly tossed a Gnostic to the lions. No, only the Christians were persecuted, and the Gnostics, who were perfectly happy with the pagan myths and emperor worship, would have been baffled by Freke and Gandy's claims that they were somehow Christian, just not literalists.
So why did the Gnostics steal apostles's titles for their gospels? It was because by now the Christians were arguing loudly, drawing huge numbers of people into their religion, and therefore calling their gospels "The Gospel of the apostle so and so" added gloss and a flavor of sophistication to their works. After all, we have a letter from Pliny circa 110 AD (long before the Gnostics came) complaining that all the pagan temples had been deserted, and cheerfully offering to kill Christians.
Freke and Gandy's claims about the Gnostics are simply, flat-out, untrue. Here is a book considered the single best book on Gnosticism: A Separate God by Petrement. Reading it, or anything else scholarly, will prove that Freke and Gandy simply know nothing about the subject.
They claim Jesus never lived, but was merely a complication of pagan myths. Actually, this was a very popular theory among biblical scholars--in the years 1880-1930. By that time, some thousand, or perhaps five thousand books later, the issue was considered dead and b buried. It was untrue. Today, not a single biblical scholar in the world, Christian or atheist, will do anything but roar with laughter if you bring up the subject. Look it up in your library under the "History of Religions" theory.
The most thorough book on Amazon about the "History of Religions" school and why it has been refuted, is "The Jesus Legend" by Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd. Or you can read "The Gospel and the Greeks" by Nash, which is a very well written, popular overview of the subject. For deeper scholarship, try "Son of God" by Martin Hengel and "Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries" by Gunter Wagner.
So many, many of their statements are flat-out lies that it is hard to choose, but here is one that is especially funny: "Literalists do all they can to portray the Gnostics as fringe heretics and themselves and the Catholic, or 'universal' Church, but but is actually a complete reversal of the truth. For the first three centuries AD Literalist Christianity was the fringe sect and Gnostic Christianity was far more popular" (p 67).
Pick up any book by any biblical scholar (a biblical scholar is somebody with a PhD and years of school studying the bible, it's history and social situation, and someone who usually knows ancient Aramaic, Greek, Latin, etc.). Any one, Christian or atheist, and you will discover this is a lie. It's the complete reverse of the truth, in fact. A good book on the numbers of Christians during each of the first three centuries would be the classic "The Early Church" by Frend.
Since they have clearly never read a single work on the Gnostics, the entire last fourth of the book in which they go on and on about a Gnostic church they wish to found, is bizarre and funny at the same time.
Freke has a master in philosophy and Gandy a masters in the classical history. And, very clearly, neither has ever taken a single class in anything to do with biblical scholarship. At the least, even a very, very basic class would have covered the History of Religions theory and the Gnostics. If they didn't want to take classes, why didn't they read anything on the subject???
How did this book get published??
only for the brave December 14, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book answers all the questions brought up but not answered in the television documentaries about Jesus.
It explains the Da Vinci code and the real reason there can't be a "Lost Tomb of Jesus".
A must-read book! May 5, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I won't provide a summary of the book's content and key messages, as other reviewers have done that very well. This book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in religion and/or the mystery of life. If you read this book with an open mind (i.e. not as a stout religious person) you'll likely conclude that the literalist religions are a dreadful lie.
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