There's no escaping it. From the outset of Christianity, Jesus was often portrayed like a pagan sun god who died and rose again, just like the sun, even in the earliest Gospels.

This connects him to the ancient traditions of sun worship that saturated the world before Christ, like those found in Egypt, Persia, India, Greece, and Rome, and to the even older Religion of the Sun that lies at the root of them all.

But how did a Jewish peasant from Galilee become "the light of the world"? And importantly, did Jesus make this connection himself?

To answer these questions, we plunge into the world of historical Jesus scholarship to explore some of the most intriguing mysteries about Jesus, such as:
Did Jesus really exist?
What kind of Jew was he, did he believe in the wrathful God of the Old Testament?
Where was he during his "lost years"?
Did he travel to India, Egypt, the Americas, or Britain?
Was he an Essene? Was he an Eastern mystic?
Was he an animal-loving vegetarian?
What was his real message?
Did he give secret teachings, and are these preserved in Gnostic texts?
Is he an example of "Christ consciousness"?
Were his miracles from divine power or magic?
Were there secretive people helping him in his mission?
Did he really die and resurrect? And if so, did he survive physically or spiritually?
Is the Turin Shroud proof of Jesus' resurrection?

Drawing on the latest in historical scholarship, the author reconstructs how the traditions of the Religion of the Sun did indeed weave their way into the very oldest records about Jesus and irreversibly impact Christianity, which preserves the memory of ancient "sun/son worship" up to this day. Through twist after turn, this inquiry leads to the unraveling of a thousands-year-old enigma.

An accessible and easy read for those wanting to explore the many spiritual mysteries about Jesus based on real historical evidence.

LARA ATWOOD is an author, researcher, and practitioner of the Religion of the Sun, an ancient religion she and her husband began reconstructing in 2013. She has spent more than a decade researching ancient spiritual traditions, religious texts, and sacred sites from across the world. She runs the website [...] where she presents her findings ("Sakro Sawel" means "sacred sun" in the Proto-Indo-European language).