ALTERNATIVE HISTORY OR THE TRUTH?

 "Our dead are always with us. But they are not alive. That's the nature of being dead, and it's best we accept it." 

         - C.K. Stead 'My Name Was Judas'

I listened to the final of the National Programme's recording of C.K. Stead's 'My Name Was Judas' on the radio this morning. I missed most of the series and will try and get it on repeat or podcast. Robert, I'm sure you will find it of interest even if you will be in conflict with a lot of the content.
To me it is excellent. It's a sensible, common sense and likely look at Jesus, his life and his activities that grew in myth through the gospels and have become the mainstay of Christianity.

"And when I heard, two days later that the stone had been rolled away from the mouth of the tomb in the night, and that the body was gone, I knew this must be the work of the Temple priests and the Sanhedrin - or must have been done at their behest. It's one of the ironies of the story, as I look back on it, that this piece of grave robbery by the priesthood, intended to prevent a cult of Jesus growing around the site of his burial had (from their point of view) the worse effect of fostering the much more powerful myth that he had risen from death." 

-C.K. Stead 'My Name Was Judas'

Stead's book was published in 2006. I haven't read it but will borrow it on OVERDRIVE and read it alongside the podcast if I find it. I like Stead's writing (Smith's Dream, Talking About O'Dwyer).
I wish that this had been written in the 1960s and I'd read it then. It would have made for some very stimulating conversations in Christian Doctrine classes at Marist Brothers and St Patrick's schools.