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.



April 17, 2016

The Cave of Saint Mary of Egypt (photos)



On the Jordan side of the Jordan River, near the site of the Baptism of Christ and where the Prophet Elijah was taken up by a chariot, is the site known as the Cave of Mary of Egypt, where she lived in asceticism. However, this place is very unlikely to have been the actual Cave of Mary of Egypt, since it is too close to the Monastery of Saint Gerasimos, from which Zosimas departed. According to the Life of Venerable Mary of Egypt, Zosimas walked twenty days into the desert in order to find some holy ascetic, when he came upon Mary of Egypt. It seems rather that this cave belonged to an imitator of Saint Mary of Egypt, known as the Hermitess Photini, a Syrian woman who fled into the desert just beyond the Jordan in 1884, where she lived in a cave unknown to the world until 1890, when she was discovered by Fr. Joachim Spetsieris, her biographer. Hermitess Photini reposed in the Lord around 1928.

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