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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. Aspects of her work are highly controversial among scholars and the lay public.

Books

In 1999, Acharya published The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. The book is based on development and expansion of an essay from her website, The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ. Christ Conspiracy introduces the concept of Jesus Christ as myth, and argues that the Christ story is a fabrication based on earlier pagan mythology.

A follow-up book, Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, was published in 2004. In Suns of God, 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. Suns of God also seeks to address some of the criticisms leveled at Christ Conspiracy.

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 once they attained control of the Roman Empire.

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.

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

In "The Christ Conspiracy" she describes this theory, noting for instance the allegorical parallels between the story of Christ, and the story of the solar deity: "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 ; hence, the 'Sun of God' begins his ministry at 'age' 30."

Claims about other religions

Acharya S is highly critical of certain aspects of Judaism, in particular Hasidism. She writes online about the possible creation 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 .

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." Her criticisms have also been directed against Islam and Buddhism.

Critical response

A number of Christian apologists have criticised or rebutted Acharya's work. James Patrick Holding has presented a list of criticisms of Christ Conspiracy.

Apologist Mike Licona of the North American Mission Board has also presented a critique which was subsequently rebutted by Acharya, to which Licona wrote another response.

Robert Price, a professor of Theology and fellow proponent of the view that the Gospel accounts are borrowed from pagan sources, is nevertheless openly critical of Acharya's writing.

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.

...The Christ Conspiracy is a random bag of (mainly recycled) eccentricities, some few of them worth considering, most dangerously shaky, many outright looney.

Earl Doherty writes: The other thing the reader comes to recognize is that Acharya S has done a superb job in bringing together this rich panoply of ancient world mythology and culture, and presenting it in a comprehensive and compelling fashion. Moreover, she grabs the reader from the first page and doesn't let go. Her style is colorful, bold, occasionally (and justifiably) indignant, even a touch reckless at times, but never off the track—a little like an exciting roller coaster ride. It may take a fair amount of concentration to absorb all this material, but even if you don't integrate everything on first reading, the broader strokes will leave you convinced that the story of Jesus is simply an imaginative refashioning of the mythological heritage of centuries and that no such man ever existed.

Robert Price also noted: "Murdock presents us with a whole smorgasbord of “unorthodox” theories, some of them quite legitimate, such as a deconstruction of the Rabbinical apologetic that had us imagining for so long that ancient Israelite religion was monotheistic. It is now clear enough (see, e.g., Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 1987, or Margaret Barker, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God, 1992) that the ancient Hebrews worshipped Yahweh amid a pantheon of gods. If that comes as shocking news to some, so be it. That is a reason neither to reject nor to relish the fact.

Life

Acharya S is a self-described historian, mythologist, religious scholar, linguist, archeologist; her supporters consider these claims legitimate based on the strength of her research and writings.

Her formal training includes a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree in Classics, Greek Civilization, from Franklin and Marshall College. She also attended the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 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 reportedly 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.

External links

Acharya S' web site

• Truth be Known

Interviews

• Interview with Acharya S in Paranoia Magazine

Reviews

• Earl Doherty reviews The Christ Conspiracy, see Earl Doherty
• Robert Price reviews The Christ Conspiracy
• Paranoia Magazine review of Suns of God by Joan d'Arc
• "A Refutation of Acharya S's book, The Christ Conspiracy" by Mike Licona
• ebtx.com reviews The Christ Conspiracy
• Tekton Apologetics Ministries reviews The Christ Conspiracy

• Religious philosophy and doctrine