Hi Benjamin.

Excellent article, well-argued. As usual, you won't be surprised to discover that I disagree with your conclusions. Too much to go into here, but I'll just rephrase a couple of your sentences:

Existentialism (and, by the way, all atheistic philosophy) is a defense mechanism against difficult spiritual realities and truths, while at the same time congratulating itself for being heroic by adopting the (illusory and false) idea that human life is absurd, and a pointless, potentially catastrophic accident.

I think that, on the whole, the Gnostics have got it right. And probably the Greeks you reference.

A smaller point, I also disagree with your comment about Jesus. I know my last article was very long, and perhaps forbidding, but as outlined there, Salibi argues, convincingly in my opinion, that Jesus was a Nazarene Israelite, in his eyes God's chosen people, and therefore hostile to the Jews on religious, and perhaps political, grounds.