The Invention of Jesus

Peter Cresswell has taken an in-depth look at the earliest surviving manuscripts of the gospels describing the life and death of Jesus, as well as letters, attributed to Paul and others, to the outposts of the early Church.

After the Romans adopted Christianity in the fourth century, the Church had an unrivalled opportunity to spread its message – and a big problem, how to make the texts to conform with what it then wanted people to believe.
In effect, it chose to forge its own records.
Peter Cresswell has taken an in-depth look at the earliest surviving manuscripts of the gospels describing the life and death of Jesus, as well as letters, attributed to Paul and others, to the outposts of the early Church. He will analyse the texts to show how doctrines, such as the divinity of Jesus and the Resurrection, have been progressively introduced into the narrative. By establishing what has been added, he defines what part of the character of Jesus the Christian Church has, over time, invented.
Peter Cresswell studied Social Anthropology at Cambridge University and went on to do a B.Phil. in Sociology at York. In recent years, he has researched the origins of Christianity and its textual transmission.
He is the author of Censored Messiah, Jesus the Terrorist and The Invention of Jesus: How the Church Rewrote the New Testament.

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