Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism. 

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written. 

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.



March 29, 2011

Bulgarian Schismatic Priest Dies In Car Accident



March 29, 2011

Kamen Barakov, a priest from Bulgaria's alternative synod, who was among the front-runners of the rebel clergy, has been killed in a car crash.

The crash occurred on Monday on Sofia ring-road near the villages of Busmantsi and Kazichane. Barakov was driving his own BMW, but it was not immediately clear what caused the crash and whether other cars were involved in it. He died on the spot.

Kamen Barakov was one of those who secured the Alternative Synod victory in the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in September last year that the Bulgarian state has unduly forced Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Christians to worship under only one Church by chasing out clergy from the 'alternative' synod out of temples.

The schism in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was started in 1992 when a group of senior clergy headed by Metropolitan Pimen of Nevrokop decided to split from the rest, claiming that a Church headed by allegedly communist-related Patriarch Maxim is illegitimate.

The rightist Union of Democratic Forces cabinet of PM Filip Dimitrov was instrumental in supporting the rebel clergy and even attempted to ban the prior synod headed by Maxim, only to be countered by Bulgarian courts.

In 1998 Pimen repented in front of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, but after his death one year later the schism was flared up by his successor Inokentii in the alternative synod.

In 2004, the Bulgarian police stormed through 250 churches countrywide and detained many priests of the 'alternative' synod to restore proprietorship to the official Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
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