brushing up on some languages and I see all of this!

All of this talk of Christianity and cannibalism got me thinking. Have any of you ever read Smith's Jesus the Magician? For those not familiar, Smith's thesis was that Jesus was a black mage/con man/necromancer who studied in Egypt and picked up some bitchin' tattoos while he was there. All of his 'miracles' were not acts of God, but rather produced by Satan. The cult grew after his death and turned into what we have today. The book made a big splash in the day, but now it's read for entertainment, as a warning to undergrads of how not to do textual reconstruction, or as a Gospel among some of the tinfoil hat crowd.

Lagrange, I'm very interested in what you said about Taylor trying to be "African" and how such an identity was constructed using Hollywood/American stereotypes. For a long while, anything associated with African religion was thought to be one huge Satanic cult- witch doctors, cannibals- the whole 9 yards. I wonder how much of that mixed with some remnants of some gnostic groups that practiced such rituals is going on?