A Bonfire of Inanities: The Bible Dismantled Mistaken Messiahs is the second volume in a three-book series called A Bonfire of Inanities: The Bible Dismantled A Bonfire of Inanities: The Bible Dismantled offers, in three volumes, a revolutionary new understanding of the roots of Judaism and Christianity by way of a complete, rationalistic re-interpretation of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. There has never been anything like this - in scope, in approach, and in findings. It may be possible to continue in Jewish or Christian belief in the light of this trilogy, but it would be a very different kind of religious faith from the one normally espoused. Each volume has been written to stand alone, but there is a natural sequence to the arguments developed which is facilitated if they are read in order. This volume, Mistaken Messiahs, traces how Jewish messianic belief finds its way unrecognisably into the New Testament. It shows that the Jesus of the Gospels was a fiction disguising a more mundane reality. And that the entire chronology of 1st Century Palestine is shifted forwards by a decade, obscuring the real personalities and events behind the Christian story. The previous volume, Ancestral Tales, traces the true ancestral and religious history of the Israelites and in particular, identifies among much else, the Pharoah of the Exodus, and the historical figures behind Joseph and Moses. Volume Three, Apocalypse Postponed, focusses on the Christian belief in imminent apocalypse and traces how thoroughgoing misunderstanding of the relevant Old and New Testament texts has led to two millennia of fallacious expectation.