This narrative exploration traces Burton Mack's intellectual evolution from an analyst of ancient texts to a scholar searching for the motives and interests of Jesus's followers who composed those texts, and for the social logic of "the Christian myths" they created. He rejects the standard portrayals of Jesus as peasant teacher, mystical visionary, and miracle-working prophet, as being contradictory and untrue to the many images of Jesus produced by the early Christians. Mack traces the the legacy of the Christian myth's colonizing aspirations and monopolistic ambitions, concluding with a reflection of the Christian myth and Christian nation in the context of recent American history.