The Lost Religion of Jesus: Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity

i would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to get beyond all the confusion and distortion in "christianity" and get a glimpse of the real faith and real message at the root of yeshua's ministry.

Keith Akers argues that Jesus didn't want to start a new religion, but rather a reform movement based in simple living and nonviolence. The reader might not be convinced of his thesis that Jesus was a vegetarian, but Akers presents many bold, refreshing theories about the early Church. Written in excellent prose.

Clearly Akers has his personal biases, but I think his effort is mainly refreshing and helpful. Concerning the Bible, Akers emphasizes that Jesus presented himself as a Jewish reformer, who viewed the Bible critically. For Jesus, real faith required discerning a primary message among the Bible's diverse accounts of wars, visions, laws and traditions. He made selective judgements of what to emphasize or ignore, which made him so highly controversial to the Pharisaical legalists or defenders of scriptural inerrancy in his time. Akers also claims that Jesus was a vegetarian. I was not convinced either that this was true, or that it was important to the early Jewish Chrisitans. But related to this, Akers points out something which does seem important: Jesus opposition to animal sacrifice. And here, Akers emphasizes a side of the Gospel accounts that might shock many later Christians -- that Jesus was almost violently opposed to making his religion a cult of sacrifice for sin. Like John the Baptist he believed in baptism as a rite of repentance and renewal, but not in sacrifice or killing to buy freedom from guilt. For his well presented arguments on how Jesus took the Bible, and how he viewed the whole notion of sacrifice, I think Akers' book would be stimulating for any Christian study or discussion group. --author of Correcting Jesus

I enjoyed this book. It was a very refreshing look at Jesus, and early Christianity. The early Christians were quite different from the face of Christianity today. How often it is neglected and forgotten that Jesus spoke strongly for non-violence. Was he really a vegetarian? This is hard to prove or disprove. Maybe he eschewed red meat but not fish. Anyway, the vegetarian aspect of the book was interesting. Overall a very good read.

What DID Jesus really teach? Most people try to answer that question by referring exclusively to the New Testament. According to Keith Akers, that's where the problem starts. He shows how early Christians divided into factions almost from the beginning with strong doctrinal differences separating them. His book examines those differences under the light of the many writings from the first four centuries (both Christian and non-Christian) that are NOT part of today's New Testament canons. Akers thus attempts to discover what Jesus really lived and died for and finds answers that may be new or even shocking to many. "The Lost Religion of Jesus" is a well-researched, well-written and worthwhile read for anyone with a spiritual or academic interest in Jesus of Nazareth.