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Revision as of 23:25, 7 June 2005
Acharya S is the pen name of Dorothy Melne Murdock, an American critic of Christianity who operates a web site, "Truth be Known". She bills herself as a historian, mythologist, religious scholar, and linguist, as well as an archeologist. As academic qualification she holds a Master of Liberal Arts degree from Franklin and Marshall College.
On the web site she contends that Jesus is a fictional person, and a plagiarised pagan myth stolen by the Early Christian Church, and supposed as an actual person so as to unify the Roman State. This claim is open to question, as the Roman State was not at that time suffering from any shortage of unifying religious figures, cultural symbols, public figures, or stabilizing institutions.
Her book, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold is an expanded version of her web site. It is based in secondary sources, including Barbara Walker's "Women's Encyclopedia of Myth and Secrets" and "The World's 16 Crucified Saviors" by Kersey Graves. The latter is the main source of her book. Both of these have themselves been criticised, as of suspect authority and lacking in primary research. The followup book The Suns of God expanded on this premise. In it she writes primarily on the lives of Krishna and Buddha, and how they parallel Jesus Christ.
The similarities claimed between these three figures are often not seen as valid by the adherents of the faiths she contrasts Christianity to. For instance, neither Krishna nor the Buddha are believed by their followers to have been crucified as Acharya S claims.