Belief in the Jesus story was originally the first step in Christian spirituality — the Outer Mysteries. Its significance was to be explained by an enlightened teacher when the seeker was spiritually ripe. These Inner Mysteries imparted a mystical Knowledge of God beyond mere belief in dogmas. Although many inspired Christian mystics throughout history have intuitively seen through to this deeper symbolic level of understanding, as a culture we have inherited only the Outer Mysteries of Christianity. We have kept the form, but lost the inner meaning. Our culture has suppressed the fact that the miracles and stories of Jesus were symbolic mythic motiffs that were intended to convey ‘truths’ as opposed to facts.
What had started as a timeless myth encoding perennial teaching [has been improperly converted into] a historical account of a once-only event in time. From this point it was unavoidable that sooner or later it would be interpreted as historical fact. Once it was, a whole new type of religion came into being – a religion based on history not myth, on blind faith in supposed events rather than on a mystical understanding of mythical allegories, a religion of the Outer Mysteries without the Inner Mysteries, of form without content, of belief without Knowledge.

– Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries.