Beyond the Myth
Beyond the Myth — by your father
Your father — tenured, published, and away from home
A thin, quick salamander that strikes before it is seen, and is easily knocked over.
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 400
- Stat total
- 374
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
STAMINA — Very low. Two hundred pages, and half of them are endnotes.
CONTEND — Very high. It goes for the throat on page one.
DEFEND — Very low. Check one footnote and a chapter falls apart.
POPULARITY — Very high. It sold well at airports.
Cited for this book
A popular history arguing that Christianity was borrowed from the mystery cults, written down as hearsay, and kept alive by those in power. It gathers Renan, Paine, Marx, Julian and the History-of-Religions school into one fast book.
Moves learned
This book learns nothing new by levelling — everything it knows, it knew from the start or brought with it through development.
What answers it
The specific move or chapter of Scripture that cuts through this one, and why. The number is how much harder it hits than usual — ×4 is four times the normal force.
Bavinck: Christianity is not a product of history to be explained away. It made the history the book is trying to explain.
Paley: the first witnesses suffered for what they said they saw. A myth does not get men killed for telling it.
Irenaeus named four gospels a century after Jesus, inside living memory of the apostles. The legend had no time to grow.