The Figure
Behind The Legend
The paramount aspect of Christian faith is
the unwavering belief that a man named Jesus from
At the present, it’s honestly impossible
to verify or dismiss Jesus as a real person because we lack evidence and
crucial eyewitness testimony. Thus, the Christian belief of Jesus being a true
historical figure is entirely predicated upon blind faith. Even if we assume a
successful completion of an endeavor to legitimize a historical Jesus who
lectured on various subjects of life, the burden of proof would still be on the
shoulder of the apologist to prove the typical claims of outlandish miracles.
Thus, it’s these allegations of mystic performances that are relevant to our
analysis.
If Jesus Christ was merely an ordinary man
with extraordinary teaching abilities, or if he was a legend born from the
obvious necessities of turbulent times, the entire foundation of the New
Testament quickly implodes. While we’re still unable to offer the undeniable
proof that contradicts these liberal Christian claims, we can easily demonstrate the incredibly overwhelming unlikelihood of
Jesus ever having lived a life anything like the one depicted in the Gospels.
Such an elementary presentation is, in fact, the intent of this chapter. For
now, try to forget everything you know about Jesus Christ so that you may have
the benefit of learning about this mysterious figure from a refreshingly
unbiased perspective.
Paul’s
Jesus
The
Apostle Paul composed the earliest known records mentioning the name Jesus
Christ from 49-60 CE. Even if he truly realized an earthly Jesus, Paul’s
twelve-year span of writing falls outside the life of his subject. Thus,
instead of providing an eyewitness account written while the miraculous events
were still works in progress, God apparently leaves us with a curious absence
of any contemporaneous testimonies for Jesus’ existence. In fact, there are
absolutely no records of an earthly Jesus until several decades after his
presumed legacy on earth ended with his crucifixion around 30 CE. We’ll return
to this essential consideration a little later.
Since Paul was the first known individual
to write about Jesus, it seems quite peculiar that he chooses to abstain from
mentioning any of the astounding miracles accomplished by his subject. By no
means, however, is this consideration a conclusively modern discovery. The
early church, notoriously recognized for its own redaction of future biblical
works, may have noticed this glaring insufficiency and decided to interpolate
four or five statements into Paul’s work for a variety of potential reasons.
Seeing as how greater than 99.9% of Paul’s writings are shockingly void of
details on Jesus’ life, the handful of upcoming passages should already be held
suspect.
Although we can attribute large portions
of the New Testament to Paul, scholars have generally refuted the idea of one
individual being responsible for the completion of the traditional Pauline
works. Such is the case for the phrase “who before Pontius Pilate,” which
appears in the sixth chapter of 1 Timothy, one of the New Testament works
certain to be a second century product. Thus, someone other than Paul likely
wrote this passage during a time in which the Pilate story was already enjoying
widespread circulation.
Let’s begin our analysis of the authentic
Pauline books with 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16. Verse 16 is, of course, highly
controversial for its direct implication of the Jews as Jesus’ murderers. Such
an anti-Semitic passage is not only the most out of character of Paul’s
writings, but it also breaks up a cohesive passage in the letter. Try reading
the chapter with an omission of these verses to see if you don’t notice a
much-improved flow of the text. In addition to the obvious tangent interjection
thrown into the fray, the verse is typical of the early church’s hatred toward
the Jews. For these and some additional reasons far too complex to delve into
here, the verse is widely regarded in scholarly circles to be an interpolation.
Another passage often referred to as the
Lord’s Supper appears in 1 Corinthians 11:23: “For I have received of the Lord that which also I
delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed
took bread.” Four major points cast doubt on the likelihood of this
passage referring to the earthly supper purported in the Gospels. First, Paul
declares that he gained this knowledge through the Lord. In other words, he was
divinely inspired to tell this part of the story. Why would God need to be the
one to inform him of what must have been a widely distributed report?
Nevertheless, I trust that you vividly remember how accurate these divine
revelations tend to be. Second, Paul doesn’t offer any seemingly essential
details of location or company with the taking of bread. Third, we know final
and sacrificial meals are common mythological tales in a variety of other world
religions. Fourth, translators rendered the word betrayed, a supposed reference to the traitor Judas, from the Greek
word paredideto, a term that should
have been more accurately translated as surrendered.
Otherwise, we see Jesus betraying his
life for us in Ephesians 5:2. Such an idea obviously isn’t consistent with the
Gospel story of Jesus clearly surrendering
his life to the Roman authorities. Likewise, no contemporaneous documents
support the abused English translation of this passage. An individual who
incompetently considered the postdated Gospel story was obviously responsible
for committing this translatory blunder. For these reasons, there’s no
rationality in assuming that Paul was discussing a worldly event over a
fantastical one. If Paul had finished his letters after the Gospels were written, we could reasonably conclude that
he was referencing the corresponding Gospel texts. In reality, the Gospel
writers arrived on the scene well after Paul and had free access to include
this intuitively transcendental event at their own discretion.
A vague reference to Jesus dying and
resurrecting quickly appears and fades in 1 Thessalonians 4:14, but Paul offers
no crucial details to discern these two momentous developments from
mythological episodes. 2 Timothy 1:9 says that God’s grace “was given us in
Christ Jesus before the world began.” The combination of these two statements offers
additional credence to the mythological Jesus hypothesis. According to this
school of thought, Jesus died and returned in a spiritual form at some point in
history long before the Common Era began. Similarly, most of the epistles refer
to Jesus as an earthly spiritual presence instead of a formerly living
individual. Based on the summation of these letters, it seems the popular
belief was that Jesus’ spirit had been present since the world began around
4004 BCE.
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes
about his journey to Jerusalem and his subsequent rendezvous with Peter and
James. Even so, he completely fails to relay any details about these crucially
important meetings to his readers. The Gospels claim that his two new
acquaintances were disciples and close friends of Jesus, yet Paul is completely
silent on the subject of their paramount conversations. Surely, they would have
been capable of telling him something worthy of writing down!
Because we should find it difficult to
accept that Paul would be ignorant of the audience’s desire to hear of Jesus’
divine birth, teachings, miracles, exorcisms, crucifixion, and resurrection, we
should consequently question why he exercises this stunning silence. As I see
it, there are several possible reasons for this omission: he simply forgot to
include details of Jesus’ life in his enormous volume of work, God allowed the
important documents detailing the life of Jesus to become mysteriously lost,
Paul really was ignorant of what
people wanted to hear, the events of Jesus’ life were not remarkable enough to
convey to the readers, or there was no earthly presence to report. We must also
wonder why Paul wasn’t able to locate someone else in the city who could
personally testify to the physical existence of Jesus Christ and the historical
events surrounding his residency. Paul would have had the ability to meet with
thousands who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles, but what could these people
possibly tell him about fantastic events that may have yet to become part of
history?
We can find the most peculiar passage in
Paul’s works in his letter to the Romans. He informs them of the necessity in
believing that God raised Jesus from the dead if they want to be saved (10:9).
Why would they need to have faith in this phenomenon if there were hundreds of
witnesses who could verify the legitimacy of the supernatural claim? The Romans
would have had the benefit of studying their own records, listening to
eyewitness testimony in Jerusalem, and performing their own investigational
research to determine if the assertions of an earthly resurrection were true.
However, Paul speaks to them as though they must take the belief by heart
rather than through tests of research and validity. On the other hand, if Jesus
was the spiritual presence of a mythical figure who resurrected ages ago,
Paul’s insistence on their blind faith is readily understandable. Furthermore,
Paul recalls Elijah crying to God for killing his prophets in the next chapter.
Could there have been a more perfect time to initiate a discussion on the
crucifixion of the supreme prophet? Instead of undeniable inclusions of stories
from Jesus’ Gospel life, Paul’s writings offer abstract concepts and
ultra-sporadic references to vague events appearing independently from the most
opportune times. Paul’s chosen subject matter of a spiritual presence is
extremely inconsistent with that of the Gospel writers’ earthly savior.
A Wealth
Of Missing Information
As I mentioned earlier, there are no
existing records of Jesus made prior to 49 CE. This often-overlooked exclusion
might be understandable, perhaps even anticipated, if there were no reputable
historians or philosophers around to document the unique phenomena purported by
the New Testament. However, this supposed explanation cannot be the case. The
quintessential reason is Philo of Alexandria (approximately 15 BCE - 50 CE), a
devotedly religious Jewish philosopher with a volume of work sizable enough to
fill a modern publication of nearly one thousand pages with small print. Even
though he was adamant about the legitimacy of the Hebrew scripture, not once
does he indicate that he knew the first thing about an earthly Jesus. However,
Philo did choose to refer to the son
of God in the form of Logos, which is
to say a spiritual medium between God and man. As it stands in the biblical
world, the supernatural son of the universe’s almighty creator was supposedly
performing unprecedented miracles and fulfilling prophecies that this
philosopher spent his life analyzing, yet Philo, living well before Jesus’
birth and well after the crucifixion, never
mentions such occurrences! This fact alone should assuredly convince you that
the Gospel authors based a great deal of their work on rumors, urban legends,
and mere fiction.
Justus of Tiberias (approximately 35-100
CE), born in Galilee, is another fine example of a first century Jewish author
who never offered Jesus one line of notation in his works. Justus made
extensive historical writings on the Jewish war for independence and other
contemporaneous events of local interest, but he never mentioned the name of
Jesus once. This is undeniably
remarkable. Was the earthly presence of the divine not important enough to
merit a single mention? The purported rumors on the life of Jesus had at least
sixty years to spread to Justus, but he totally neglected them. What possible
reason could Justus have to ignore such pertinent information other than its
nonexistence?
Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE), a scientist
who wrote on a diverse number of subjects, never mentions any of the darkness
or earthquake phenomena concurrent with Jesus’ crucifixion. Since these events
were within his interests of natural history, one would do well to suppose that
these inexplicable calamities, if they took place, should have been of some
interest to future generations.
Jerusalem born Josephus Flavius
(approximately 37-100 CE) is a favorite reference among Christians for Jesus’
earthly existence. While he wrote an enormous volume of work covering Jewish
history and their ongoing wars, only two short passages out of the enormous 93
CE chronicles mention the name Jesus. As was the case for the handful of
alleged references in Paul’s works, we should impartially scrutinize these
passages before accepting them as valid. As expected, this careful scrutiny
demonstrates that the authenticity of these acknowledgements is highly
questionable.
About this time there lived Jesus, a
wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed
surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly.
He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when,
upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to
a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to
them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had
foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of
the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared
(Antiquities 18).
Festus was now dead, and Albinus was
but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before
them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and
some others (Antiquities 20).
Out of several hundred pages of work, the
preceding material constitutes everything Josephus supposedly had to say about
the most important man to ever live. If the son of God were a true historical
figure, one would anticipate a much broader explanation by the exhaustive
historian.
The first passage raises concern for
several reasons: only Christians referred to Jesus with the phrase “a wise
man,” and Josephus was not a Christian; other sections of Josephus’ work are
already known to have been altered by the church centuries after his death; the
passage was discovered by Eusebius, a man widely known to have forged other
material about Jesus; and no other Christian writers referenced the notable
excerpt until two hundred years after its supposed documentation.
The second passage is also suspect for at
least two additional reasons: even though Josephus was extremely meticulous
about referencing his earlier work, the mention of Jesus in Antiquities 20
doesn’t refer to the previous mention in Antiquities 18; and “Jesus called the
Christ” was another phrase of Christian diction.
Since Josephus’ writing style would have
been easy to mimic after several days of transcribing, we can establish that
there was opportunity in addition to the motive for interpolating foreign ideas
into his chronicles. When researching the historicity of Jesus, we should
obviously only consider the Antiquities with extreme caution. Even if someone
were to prove the passages authentic, a possibility very much in doubt, the
first mention of an earthly Jesus meekly appears more than sixty years
following his alleged death and resurrection. It’s wholly inconceivable to
suggest that the life of Jesus was too insignificant to warrant earlier
mention.
It wasn’t until the second century when
undeniable references to Jesus’ life began to emerge. Pope Clement I alluded to
the blood of Christ in a 101 CE letter to the Corinthians, but that’s a vague
crucifixion reference at best. Around the same time, Pliny the Younger and
Trajan from Bithynia became the first to record the Christianity movement, but
they strangely offer no details concerning an earthly life of the campaign’s
source. Instead, they merely reference other Christian works. Finally, in 107
CE, Ignatius mentions Jesus’ birth from Mary during the reign of Herod and his
execution ordered by Pontius Pilate. Ignatius was an adamant Christian, but he
becomes yet another writer to offer only a crude synopsis of the world’s most
prominent figure. Suetonius mentions the name Chrestus around 110 CE, but there’s no clear indication he intended
to reference Jesus when he mentioned this common name. In 115 CE, Tacitus
possibly becomes the first non-religious individual to include a somewhat
complete account on the life of Jesus. Barnabas offers his readers some stories
of Jesus’ life around 120 CE, but he relies quite heavily on sources that we
would later know as the Gospels. Likewise, Polycarp records additional history
of Jesus around 130 CE with the inclusion of minor life events. The Gospel of
Thomas (135 CE?) offers a complete record of Jesus’ known sayings, but it
ignores his birth, death, and resurrection.
Of all the writers who attempt to convert
people with other faiths over to Christianity before 180 CE, only Justin (150
CE?) and Aristides (145 CE?) choose to include solid references to a historical
Jesus. The rest focus their teachings entirely on the spiritual Jesus known by
Paul. It would be foolish to assume that the balance of these missionaries
would think such undeniably miraculous accomplishments wouldn’t be essential in
the conversion of those with contrasting religious beliefs. Again, we can only
conclude that these authors were ignorant of Jesus’ earthly residency or had
good reason to consider the Gospels fraudulent. It should be clear by now that
stories depicting Jesus on earth were either still in the creation process or
considered unreliable by the vast majority of early Christians.
Making A
Bible
Until the twentieth century came along,
the Christian consensus maintained that the Gospel authors finished their works
some time between 50-70 CE, a date based on the inclusion of vague references
to the destruction of Jerusalem. With the exception of a few individuals
refusing to budge from their own agendas, the Christian community has now
conceded that this was an optimistic assessment. Their current estimations are
now moving into the early end of the 70-120 CE spectrum provided by unbiased
secular scholars. Although there’s no direct evidence to contradict the early
extreme of that assessment, I find it difficult to accept that no one would
reference the Gospels through the first five decades of their existence. Thus,
we must consider the Christian silence of the late first century and compare it
to the movement’s explosion in the early second century.
As
a matter of personal opinion, I surmise that 100 CE is an approximate but fair
designation (for reasons far too lengthy to discuss here) for the first Gospel.
Essentially, one person’s guess is as good as any, provided some impartial and
unbiased research on the subject is involved. There’s simply no foreseeable way
for the Gospels to have positively affixed dates from the universally held
50-120 CE composite timeframe.
Even worse than not being able to date the
scriptures, we can’t be sure of who wrote them. The authors don’t positively
identify themselves by the names designated in the titles or by any other
handle. In addition, not one of the authors claims to have personally known
Jesus. This is no surprise for Mark and Luke, but Matthew and John were two of
his disciples. Moreover, the Gospels are written in a manner hardly befitting
of eyewitnesses: third person. Furthermore, there are no known original
documents for the accounts, only copies. Since it’s probable that several people
handed the tales down via oral recitation before they were archived, thus the
“Gospel According to X” designation
preceding each one, we have a justifiable reason for the glaring complications
and contradictions among the four books.
You may have noticed that I mentioned the
Gospel of Thomas in the previous section, a reference definitely capable of
arousing confusion for readers who have never researched early extrabiblical
Christian writings. Instead of there only being four divinely appointed Gospel writers
to represent the most important person ever to walk the earth, there were at
least a dozen authors who claim to have a unique story about Jesus.
Incidentally, there were about seventy-five known Gospels, epistles, and
letters eligible for New Testament inclusion; a mere third of these made the
cut. Since a number of the Gospels, such as James, Nicodemus, Mary, and Peter,
weren’t chosen to be enshrined in the Bible, you may be curious who made the
decision to include only the four now-canonized versions of Jesus’ life.
With the explosion of Gospel accounts in
the second century, containment was an obvious priority for keeping the
religion within reasonable limits. The first man known to have offered such a
proposal on behalf of the church was Irenaeus of Lyon around 180 CE. His idea
was to accredit only four Gospels because there were four zones of the world,
four winds, four forms of living creatures, four divisions of man’s estate, and
four beasts of the apocalypse. For these poorly thought-out reasons, Irenaeus
believed that there should only be four Gospels accepted by the church. As was
the case for the horrendous slave-trading institution having its origins in
superstitious nonsense, it certainly follows that the most potentially
important books in human history would have been decided in a likewise manner.
Instead of God providing an unquestionably fitting reason for these Gospel
choices, we have a perfectly appropriate act of senselessness leading to the
foundation of contemporary Christian faith. Yet, it’s no wonder surrogate
accounts, such as the Infancy Gospel, didn’t make the cut when you consider
that Jesus strikes his teachers and playmates dead for attempting to correct
him.
Just like the apologists of every world
religion, I could make the same bald assertion that the Infancy Gospel, along
with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, had God’s inspiration to make it 100%
accurate. If anyone thinks that they can find a way to invalidate my claim,
I’ll simply generate a “how-it-could-have-been-scenario” that maintains the
Gospel’s inerrancy while paying no attention to the improbability and absurdity
of my proposed solution.
What if Irenaeus accidentally omitted a
fifth truthful Gospel that contained an additional prerequisite for entering
into Heaven? Christians won’t accept the stated extrabiblical requirement
because there are four, not five, beasts of the apocalypse. I trust that you
understand the fundamental flaw with the blatantly uncertain Christian system.
The
Canonical Gospels
Most likely for no other reason than to
round out the beasts of the apocalypse, John was chosen to be one of the four
Gospels. For the sake of cohesive inerrancy, it would have been more beneficial
in its absence. Although the author doesn’t venture too far on a tangent from
the life of Jesus depicted in the other canon Gospels, there are some
distinguished omissions in this account. The most notable absences are the
exorcism of devils, the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, Satan tempting Jesus
in the wilderness, the transfiguration, the virgin birth from Mary, the Sermon
on the Mount, Jesus’ proclamations of his return, and every last one of the
parables. Scholars agree that the original Gospel of John started at 1:19 and
ended at 20:31. Furthermore, they’ve determined that the remainder of the book
seems heavily edited and reworked. For these reasons, John fails to be an
unquestionably reliable and synoptic source of divine inspiration for the story
of Jesus.
Scholars
unanimously agree that Mark is the most primitive of the four canon Gospels.
Its details are relatively less developed, consequently making this biography
of Jesus very brief. Interestingly, Jesus’ primary biographer was obviously a
distant Roman who never knew him. In fact, the original version of Mark doesn’t
even contain Jesus’ appearance following his crucifixion (16:9-19)! This
concession is made in the NIV but left out of the KJV. Even though the author
was from Rome, he provided enough minor details to have a fair understanding of
his subject. Why, then, would he leave out the indispensable element of the
world’s most important story unless he lived during a period without a
resurrection rumor?
Since about 80% of the verses in Mark
appear verbatim in Matthew, we can seemingly tell that the author of Matthew
used Mark as a template when writing his own account. However, he alters many
of Mark’s details and adds several stories presumably unknown to its author.
The Gospel of Matthew most certainly had a Jewish writer since he strives to
correct many of the mistakes arising from Mark’s ignorance of local knowledge.
Since we have no clear evidence that the author of Matthew was one of Jesus’
disciples, we can’t rule out the likely possibility of its author simply
plagiarizing the Mark account in order to make it more acceptable to residents
of the Middle East. It’s far too coincidental for the writings to match so well
in some passages and contradict in others for there not to have been some minor
transcribing taking place. Thus, we’ll analyze the contrasting details of the
two accounts in order to exemplify the unreliability of the latest God-inspired
product.
Mark (1:2) makes an incorrect reference to
Hebrew scripture by quoting Malachi 3:1 as being the work of Isaiah. The KJV
does not contain this error, although biblical translations concerned more with
honesty and accuracy than advancing inerrancy leave the misattribution in the
text. Needless to say, the more knowledgeable Matthew author doesn’t repeat
Mark’s mistake. Mark also claims that only God can forgive the sin of another
(2:7), but that’s a direct contrast to actual Jewish beliefs, which hold that
other men can forgive sins as well. Again, Matthew drops this statement from
the record (9:3). Mark mentions the region of Gadarenes being near a large body
of water, but it’s about thirty miles from even a sizable lake (5:1). The
Matthew author, realizing that Mark knows next to nothing about local
geography, changes Gadarenes to Gergesenes, which is only a few miles from a
lake (8:28).
Mark mentions multiple “rulers of the
synagogue” even though almost all synagogues only had a single leader (5:22).
The Matthew author corrected this phrase so that the reader could ambiguously
interpret it as having only one ruler (9:18). Mark records Jesus ridiculing the
ancient food laws set by God and Moses (7:18-19), but the author of Matthew,
being a Jew, no doubt considered this to be sacrilegious and dropped the
passage from his account (15:18-20). Mark also has Jesus misquoting one of the
commandments as refraining from defrauding others (10:19). Meanwhile, Matthew
strictly adheres to the exact commandments of Moses by omitting this curious
deception rule but including the “love one another’’ summary commandment
(19:18-19). The author of Mark strangely refers to David as “our father”
(11:10). This is something no Jew would ever do because all Jews weren’t
descendents of David. Seeing as how Abraham and Jacob would be the only
individuals referred to in this manner, the desire for accuracy forces the
Matthew author to correct another one of Mark’s blunders (21:9).
Mark also gets the traditional date for
killing the Passover incorrect (14:12), but the Matthew author settles the
mistake by omitting the phrase from his own work (26:17). The very next verse
in Mark has Jesus ordering two of his disciples to locate a man bearing a
pitcher of water (14:13). In Jewish culture, carrying pitchers of water was the
work of a woman. Naturally, Matthew must drop this phrase as well (26:18). On
the night of the crucifixion, Mark says that it’s the time before the Sabbath
(15:42). Being a Roman, the author was obviously unaware that the Jewish day begins with the evening. Thus, the
evening following the crucifixion wasn’t the night before the Sabbath; it was
the start of it. Matthew must yet again omit one of Mark’s divinely inspired
statements in the transcription (27:57). Unaware that the Sabbath had already
arrived, Mark’s account has Joseph of Arimathaea buying linen to wrap around
Jesus’ body (15:46). Because it was a sin to make purchases on the Sabbath,
Matthew must consequentially drop that detail as well (27:59). Finally, Mark
mentions “the fourth watch of the night” (6:48). The Jews actually divided the
night into only three watches, while
the Romans made the division into fourths.
The author of Matthew makes a few
additional minor corrections from Mark’s account, but I trust that you get the
point I’m attempting to convey. However uncomfortable it may feel, the divinely
inspired author of the earliest Jesus biography, who seemingly invented details
out of thin air, knew very little about what he was writing.
The Gospel of Luke begins with a surmised
admission that the author didn’t personally experience any of the details
contained within his account because he alleges the presence of eyewitnesses
but fails to notify himself as one. Like Mark’s Gospel, Luke was probably
narrated by an individual residing far from Jerusalem because he commits
several translational errors when converting Old Testament Hebrew scripture
into Greek. Additionally, in a manner similar to the way in which Mark was
penned, Luke’s author goes into extensive detail on his explanations of local
phenomena but not those pertaining to Rome. Following the lead of Matthew’s
author, Luke’s consistent duplication of Mark’s verses seemingly indicates that
he also relied heavily on that text when making his report. However,
researchers soon discovered that they could not find 230 verses common to
Matthew and Luke in the more ancient Mark.
The two more recent authors couldn’t have
derived identical verses from a sole source void of necessary information.
Consequently, we can only surmise the hypothetical existence of an even earlier
document used by all three authors as a template. This deduction would eventually
become known as the Q hypothesis (from the German Quelle, meaning source).
The canonical appearance of quotes from Thomas’ Gospel reinforces the
theoretical existence of Q. While Thomas was completed around the same time as
John, it offered an entirely different perspective on the mystery of Jesus.
Even though the Thomas account is nothing but a series of Jesus’ sayings, it
may help to explain the origin of other Gospel material. Thus, it’s quite
possible that a primitive set of quotes served as the foundation from which the
Gospel legends arose. In such a scenario, the early Jews may have actually
known a man who traveled about and shared his philosophies with a number of
audiences. This individual may have even been executed for his heretical
teachings. His followers would then collect these teachings on paper, only to
later subject them to decades of human hyperbole.
The
Conventional Idea
The whole concept of a male god and his
son wasn’t novel to the world when stories of Jesus began to emerge. Almost all
preceding religions and philosophies contain a gender-ridden god of anger who
speaks to his chosen people through an earthly medium, most often his son. It’s
somewhat amusing that the “one and only true God” would choose the exact same
tired avenue of communication.
Historians refer to the original concept likely serving as a
basis for the exaggerated Jesus as Logos,
the communicating spiritual medium between a deity and its chosen people. The idea
had been floating around for centuries prior to Jesus’ arrival and probably
started with the prophet Zarathustra who founded Zoroastrianism around 600 BCE.
Even more lethal to the Christian cause is
the unoriginal nature of Jesus Christ himself. Around 3000 BCE, the ancient
Egyptians had the Sun God Trinity of Atum (father), Horus (son), and Ra (holy
spirit). When we take the Egyptian Book
of Vivifying the Soul Forever into consideration, Jesus appears to be a
mere carbon copy of Horus. Supporters of both beings claim that their
respective subjects are the light of the world, the way, the truth, and the
life; refer to them as good shepherds, lambs, and morning stars; claim that
they are children of virgins; associate them with a cross and refer to them as
Christ/Krst; claim that they have a revelation and bear witness to the world;
claim that they initiate their educations at the age of twelve and have twelve
followers; claim that they venture out on a boat with seven other passengers;
and claim that they become baptized with water upon which they’re miraculously
able to levitate. There are few more parallels than what I’ve listed here, but
they’re rather loose. This analysis isn’t one of those laughable lists in which
an author is determined to parallel a given celebrity with the antichrist;
these are two sons of gods from Middle Eastern religions, alike in an
unforgettable abundance of ways. What evidence do we truly hold that we should
reject one while we embrace the other?
The comparison of Jesus to other religious
characters doesn’t end with Horus. Hercules is another famous legendary figure
consistently drawing parallels with Jesus. Both were products of the local
primary god and a human mother; both had members of royalty seeking to kill
them in infancy; both were travelers who helped people as they made their
journeys; and both became widely worshipped as heroes following their deaths.
Like Jesus, Hercules is a notable reference in many subsequent historical
books. In fact, Josephus and Tacitus both mention Hercules in their exhaustive
works. Like Jesus, Hercules failed to leave artifacts or eyewitness accounts
for his existence. As you can see, Jesus and Hercules are drifting in the same
boat with only one exception: Christianity survived the collapse of the Roman
Empire while ancient Greek religions did not. As was the case for Horus, why
should Hercules face rejection while Jesus is readily accepted?
Aside from Horus and Hercules, there are
hosts of supernatural figures remarkably similar to the Christian one. The
stories of Attis, Isis, Dionysos, Mithras, Osiris, Hermes, Prometheus, and
Perseus include aspects of sacred meals, fasting, wise men, temporary deaths,
violent confrontations, celestial birth announcements, virgin mothers, divine
fathers, and insurmountable odds for surviving through infancy. If Jesus is the
son of the one true God, why is his origin so pathetically unoriginal that we
could have easily predicted it using a random religion generator that contained
aspects of preceding superstitious myths? Out of the hundreds of divine
creatures allegedly capable of miraculous performances, what actual evidence,
not blind faith or gut feelings, tells Christians that Jesus is the force
behind their comfortable sensations? Remember, correlation doesn’t necessarily
equal causation.
Problems
Galore
As I mentioned in This Way and That: Biblical Contradictions, there’s a discrepancy
between two Gospel accounts of at least ten years on when the world’s savior
was born. That’s the equivalent of two people disagreeing today on whether
Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States when
Bob Hope was born. However, the potential importance of Bob Hope is nothing
compared to that of the alleged son of God. While it’s true that we have
increasingly accurate records in our modern society, it shouldn’t be
insurmountably difficult to remember a specific year when an individual was
born because biblical authors tend to base their dates relative to concurrent
events. Such a comparative detail can hardly be easily exaggerated by the
passage of time. If, on the other hand, people whimsically created the birth
story decades after its setting, we could anticipate this large discrepancy.
Also, remember that the Gospel writers had the advantage of divine inspiration for maintaining
consistency. What modern technology could be more helpful in preventing
complications than an omnipotent god’s assistance? Nevertheless, Christians
would like the world to believe that Jesus was born during the distinctive
incumbencies of King Herod and Quirinius.
The crucifixion legend has many problems in
addition to the previously covered contradictions. Although the Romans rarely
crucified thieves, we see them executing one on each side of Jesus. Even though
Romans never performed executions so close to the Passover, they
ignore tradition and carry out the crucifixions on the day before this sacred
observance. While the Romans were meticulous in their documentation, they have
no record of Jesus or his crucifixion. The whole idea of this Roman procession
should be disconcerting if you consider that Rome, the undeniable democratic
leader of the planet, didn’t offer Jesus due process.
Yet another reason why it’s highly
improbable that the son of God appeared in human form was the tendency of
religious Jews to be very adamant about keeping a separation between God and
the human appearance. The Israelites even rioted on one occasion because a
picture of Caesar appeared in the vicinity of their temple. It wouldn’t make
much sense for them to readily accept a human savior when you take their
willful convictions into consideration. Even so, thousands of Jews quickly
accepted the notion of Christ. Instead of the immensely popular human Jesus,
they most likely acknowledged and worshipped the aforementioned spiritual
presence of God’s son. As time progressed and the Gospels emerged, however,
those in the region who believed that their recent ancestors worshipped a human
savior joined the Christian movement. Others who adhered to the traditional
spiritual presence remained loyal to Judaism. To this day, the Jews do not
acknowledge a human presence as the son of God.
The Truth
Hurts, Unfortunately
According to Christian preaching, we are
to accept Jesus Christ based on the divinely inspired accounts contained within
the Gospels. Fortunately, one can easily demonstrate the fundamental flaw in
blindly accepting such outrageous claims. Even though this supernatural being
was supposedly performing unbelievable miracles before rising from the dead,
historians and philosophers neglected these theoretical milestones in favor of
mundane historical accounts. Consequently, we don’t have an attempted portrayal
of an earthly Jesus until several decades following his supposed execution.
Paul was the most important initiator of
the religious movement, yet he never conclusively mentions any earthly activity
of his subject. In a nutshell, the Gospels are wholly unreliable because they
present obvious ignorance of Jewish traditions, contradiction-inducing
variations of oral tradition, a lack of eyewitnesses, extraordinary claims
without a shred of evidence, known historical anomalies, inexplicably delayed
reporting, probable acts of plagiarism, embarrassing scientific blunders, and
unoriginal religious themes invoked many centuries before Christianity ever
came into being.
I can think of no more than two reasonable
hypotheses for the origin of Jesus Christ. Whichever is correct, either
upcoming scenario is incalculably more likely to represent what took place 2000
years ago than the wishful thinking that Christians rapidly but blindly
develop. The first possibility, and the more probable in my opinion, is that a
respectable teacher from Jerusalem who preached his beliefs to a variety of
audiences served as an earthly template for a spiritual entity. While his
lessons may have been positively motivating for some, he may have pushed the
envelope far enough to warrant his death in the opinions of others. As the
gossip of his life spread in subsequent years, his followers probably went into
a desperate frenzy to positively determine that sacred Old Testament prophecies
foretold the arrival of this well-liked man. Spotting possible links here and
there, certain individuals may have combined post hoc details, real life events, and the notion of a mythical
Christ until the stories were arbitrarily deemed worthy of recording. The only
sensible alternative to this “true historical figure” proposal requires us to
write-off the stories as total myths arising from known social desperation and
ancient superstition.
There’s simply no
reasonable method of deduction allowing us to accept the legitimacy of Jesus
Christ as the son of the universe’s omnipotent and omniscient creator. The
Christian community doesn’t acknowledge stories similar to the ones in the New
Testament because they appear in religious texts outside of the Bible. In
reality, the Jesus story engages as much sensibility as any other
unsubstantiated claims made by a number of ancient religions. For these
reasons, we must consider the incredibly dubious set of Jesus biographies to be
the final nail in the Bible’s coffin.