Where: Rational Response Squad Chat Room

When: 9pm EST

Who: Rook Hawkins

Speech Title: Misquoting Scripture: How Literary Tropes Created Christianity

Speech Description: Today millions of people worship Yahweh and practice Christianity. They follow a creed established in 325 CE, and a New Testament officially codified shortly after. According to this Creed, the church was founded by a historical Jesus, the son of God, and fully man who took away the sins of the world by being crucified under Pontius Pilate. Millions of people believe this, and they do so without ever realizing that this narrative is simply a retelling of much earlier narratives in the same book they call the Bible, and that those stories in the Old Testament are just retellings of earlier stories of the Greeks and other societies of the Ancient Near East. This presentation will present the evidence and a case against the historical Jesus while giving the Gospel stories the genre of literary mimesis, or imitation, of earlier works. The very foundation of Christianity is about to crumble. (This work is based off the larger amount of research going into my book, Discovering the Gnostics: A Look at the Evolution of Mystery Cults in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods)

Bio: Rook Hawkins is a historian who is currently undergoing the process of Peer Review for the publication of his upcoming book Discovering the Gnostics: A Look at the Evolution of Mystery Cults in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. He has been studying the subject of Classical Civilization and comparative religious studies for the past 8 years. He is also the co-founder of the popular internet radio show, The Rational Response Squad, and currently produces another show specifically on history called Rook’s Nook.

Directions: To enter the room, click the link above. When the page opens, scroll down to the “Live” & “Sapient” boxes and click them, or scroll down to the live streaming video and click the image, or the magnifying glass with the “plus” (+) sign to bring you to the chat room.