Author Description

In The Gospel and the Zodiac, Bill Darlison – a Unitarian minister – demonstrates that the Gospel of Mark, which scholars consider the primary document of Christianity, is deliberately structured around the signs of the zodiac, and that the incidents in the career of Jesus which it recounts correspond exactly with the yearly cycle of the sun in the sky. Darlison argues that the Gospel was originally an esoteric, not a historical, text, and that the Gospel’s implausible stories were never intended to be interpreted in a literal sense. Rather, they are dramatic representations of stages in spiritual development, and repositories of arcane wisdom. This extraordinary study shows how Christianity relates to other world faiths and so is deeply ecumenical. It aims to rediscover Christianity’s dynamic character by interpreting the Gospels in the light of the culture in which they were created, rather than viewing them through the distorting lens of contemporary prejudices. As such it is a radical new interpretation of the Gospels and makes an important contribution to the contemporary debate about the existence and significance of Jesus. The book is a revised and expanded version of the author’s 2007 work The Gospel and the Zodiac: The Secret Truth about Jesus, which was published by Duckworth, and translated into German and Czech. ‘An intriguing leap into faith, and not at all the loony speculation the title might suggest.’ (Kirkus review of The Gospel and the Zodiac: The Secret Truth about Jesus)