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Lies in Jesus’ Passion

 

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FOREWORD

WHAT THE GOSPELS SAY

MORISON AND THE TRIAL

WITNESSES WERE NOT LIARS

TRIAL BEFORE THE SANHEDRIN

FICTITIOUS TRIAL BEFORE PILATE

PETER IN THE COURTYARD

THE HEROD TRIAL

THE SCOURGING AT THE PILLAR LIE

BARABBAS

THURSDAY OR FRIDAY?

I.N.R.I.

CONCLUSION

 

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FOREWORD

 

The passion stories in the four gospels are the stories about Jesus’ sufferings and his death by crucifixion.  These tales are universally assumed to contain the oldest strata of information about Jesus.  But the fact of the matter is that though they are assumed to be the most trustworthy parts of the gospels they are in fact full of legend and impossibility.

 

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WHAT THE GOSPELS SAY

 

According to the gospels, Jesus was betrayed by his disciple Judas Iscariot.  He took the Jewish police to a garden where he knew Jesus was with his disciples.  There he betrayed Jesus with a kiss and Jesus was arrested and tried before Annas and Caiaphas who were Jewish leaders.  False witnesses appeared to try and help the jury find Jesus guilty of blasphemy so that he could be put to death but they made idiots of themselves.  He was tried before King Herod and finally Pontius Pilate the Roman Procurator who reluctantly sentenced Jesus to death by crucifixion as the Jews clamoured for him to do so.  The vast majority of scholars and thinkers and rational people see the story is full of practical and legal contradictions and absurdities.   The Historical Evidence for Jesus, G A Wells, Prometheus Books, New York, 1988 page 174 mentions how Rome giving the Church religious freedom in the fifties AD indicates that the gospels are lying that Jesus was crucified due to Roman and or Jewish hostility to him.  It is reasonable to assume that because the Romans found no evidence that this Messiah or king was a real man but only a vision that they tolerated the faith.  The followers of men who were proclaimed Messiah or lawful king of Israel were not tolerated.

 

 

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MORISON AND THE TRIAL

The arch-defender of the position that the gospels are plausible is Frank Morison.  Frank Morison in his famous Who Moved the Stone? wrote that the trial of Jesus was perfectly plausible but nevertheless made admissions which undermine this.

    On page 16, Morison says that the Temple Guard arrested Jesus which was illegal for they didn’t have the backing of the witnesses against Jesus.  But maybe they did.

    Morison said it was illegal to put anybody on trial for their life at night - only trials relating to money could happen then.  It was illegal for a person to be cross-examined after the witnesses made a shambles of the testimony.  The witnesses were to be stoned to death by law if they were proven false.  The Torah said that if you tell lies to get somebody killed you should undergo what you tried to put the other person through yourself if found out. 

    All of this makes the gospel version of events improbable.

    Would Jesus have been sent to Pilate when he could have blabbed about the illegal trial he had just got and got the Sanhedrin and the witnesses into a lot of trouble and perhaps charged with perjury?

  The gospels say the Sanhedrin got Jesus to commit the capital crime of blasphemy by claiming to be the Son of God at his trial.  And if all the Sanhedrin wanted was for Jesus to claim to be God’s Son and Messiah they had no need of false witnesses for that and would have made the disciples testify.  Why weren’t they questioned?  Incidentally, if they could not prove it, it is likely that Jesus never claimed to be these things and that the gospels are lying in saying that he did. 

    There was no need to try Jesus at night and break the law against night trials.  The Jews waited long enough before so they could have waited a bit longer and tried him some day.  Morison thinks they justified this breach of the law by saying it was necessary for political reasons to stop Jesus and to do it before the feast so that it would be done fast in case there would be trouble (page 20).  Unbiased he isn’t!  It would have been safer to wait a few days until the feast was over and the crowds had gone home.  And if Jesus was so dangerous why did they think they could dispose of him at that time of all time when most of his supporters would have been in Jerusalem?  They wouldn’t have thought that.

    If it was illegal to question the accused after the testimony against him broke down then Jesus was never questioned at all.  The Sanhedrin knew it would be best to get new witnesses and try again soon and they could not send Jesus to Pilate if their own trial had been a shambles.  It had to have been illegal for it was a sensible law.

    Josh Mc Dowell claims that the trial of Jesus was every bit as unusual as the critics admit, and was held late for it was a matter of extreme seriousness, that is, the Jews had come to believe that Jesus had to be tried and put out of the way as soon as possible before a national crisis arose (John 11:50).  This man makes me sick with his lies.  If he believes that it was that urgent then why does he believe the story that thousands clamoured for Jesus’ death the next day?  Why did the apostles get away to tell that Jesus was arrested if it was a national crisis? 

 

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WITNESSES WERE NOT LIARS

 

Morison said that only witnesses could do the accusing and that was the way the Law said it had to be (page 17). 

   Would what the gospels call the “false” witnesses at the trial, have been so stupid and daring as to go in with an unplanned testimony especially when the penalties for perjury were so severe?  Stupid witnesses would not have been chosen by the Sanhedrin who supposedly wanted to find Jesus guilty one way or another according to the gospels.  If the trial were a set-up, each witness would just have had to say what his experience of Jesus was and would not have been asked too much.  There was no need for them to squabble and argue against each other.  That could have been avoided by talking about individual events that were unrelated to the things the others planned to say and if the lawyer guided them by asking questions to prevent contradiction.  The witnesses would have been too terrified of Jesus’ supporters to make mistakes and expose themselves.  False witnesses have to endure the penalty they tried to bring on their victim according to the Law of Moses.  If you tell a lie to get somebody stoned to death you get stoned to death yourself.  And here we are asked by the gospels and Christian nuts like Morison to think that people would risk their lives to tell obvious lies to have Jesus executed!  And Morison would expect us to believe that these people were bad and not martyrs or would-be martyrs who would do anything to get rid of a man they knew to be an evil and fake prophet.

    The witnesses accused Jesus of being unable to do miracles for they said he could not demolish the Temple and rebuild it in three days like he said.  Witnesses who slammed Jesus’ miracles as hoaxes meriting death at the risk of their own lives must have been telling the truth.  There is no blasphemy in saying God will enable you to return from the dead or permit you to raze and rebuild the Temple unless you really cannot do it and God does not authorise it for he has given you no magic power to do it.  So, they were accusing him of blasphemously pretending to have miracle power.  Yet Morison would rather believe the apostles that Jesus could work miracles even though they died years after Jesus.  The people who are as good as martyrs in Jesus’ time come first because their memories are clearest and they risked their lives to say he was a fake.  If one martyr says Jesus did no miracle and another says he did believe the former if one is as honest as the other.  It is simplest to deny miracles.

 

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TRIAL BEFORE THE SANHEDRIN

 

Jesus was taken before the Sanhedrin who were bent on finding him guilty of blasphemy to get him put to death.

    Some scholars believe that possessed and sick people were regarded as inferior beings and barred from the Temple and thought to be unclean.  The Law of Moses taught exactly this.  They think that because Jesus cured people he restored them to the same status as other people had and that upset the leaders.  But the Law itself said that people were to be inferior no more if they got better.  And there is no evidence at all that Jesus got into trouble just for his cures or that he told anybody he cured that they were back on the same level of social status as healthy people.  If the Jews held the miracles against him there was plenty they could have done about it.  He would have been before the Sanhedrin sooner.  The Sanhedrin hoped to find him guilty of blasphemy which would have been easy enough if he had been curing illegitimately and attributing his cures to God.  The evidence is against the notion that the cures got Jesus into trouble.  Most of them were not miraculous by any standard anyway. 

    The Gospels say they got their wish when Jesus admitted to them that he was the Messiah, the Son of God and God’s right hand man who would come on the clouds of Heaven.  The council could not have found this blasphemous or at least bad enough to merit death.  This was one of the points in which Jewish orthodoxy was flexible.  Christians say that Jesus was referring to Daniel which says that God will come on the clouds of Heaven so he was claiming to be God.  That is mere speculation and Jesus never mentioned Daniel.  God cannot be on the right hand of God even though Christians say that Jesus though God is on the right hand as man.  But Jesus as the man-God can make the decisions of God so he is not on the right hand but on the throne.  Perhaps it was offensive because Jesus was claiming to be these things while espousing what the Jews abominated as heresy?  It would be blasphemy for a heretic to claim to be the Son of God.  But heresy was not mentioned so that would not be likely.  Mark is plainly blaming the Sanhedrin’s reaction on what Jesus claimed to be.  That is the simplest understanding so the gospellers incorrectly think the Jews considered it to be blasphemy for anybody to claim to be the Son of God and God’s next in charge.

    It is a mistake to assert that the word translated blasphemy might just mean insolence and not necessarily insolence against God (page 290, The Unauthorized Version).  But the reaction of the High Priest who ripped his own robes in anger and the way it fuelled the hatred in the rest shows blasphemy in the sense of insulting God is the correct understanding.

    The meeting of the Sanhedrin to try Jesus all night is untrue for they were not allowed to  (page 102, Jesus: the Evidence, page 291, The Unauthorized Version).  Some say that the rules about what the Sanhedrin could not do were recorded several decades after it disbanded show we cannot be sure that it was not allowed (page 60, Jesus and the Four Gospels).  But still it is most likely that the rules were used.  We have no reason to assume otherwise.  Why keep anybody out of their beds over something that could wait and should wait until after the feast?  And if all they were looking for ways to make Jesus claim to be God’s Messiah and Son that was easy to prove and there was no need to be up all night.  It was not an emergency.  Mistakes through tiredness and impatience to get home could result from late trials so the law had to be in force for it makes sense.

    The New Testament says that the Sanhedrin employed and listened to false witnesses who were unable to agree among themselves.  When they went to the trouble of getting perjurers they could have and would have coached them first.  All the witnesses had to do was say Jesus claimed to be the messianic and supreme Son of God ruling out the danger of conflict.  Perjury is so serious under Jewish Law that they would not have been careless. 

    The Jews allegedly believed that Jesus had to die or Rome would turn on them (John 11).  If true then the places that accuse them of envy and sin are slandering them.  It was self-defence.  There would have been no shortage of people who would have been happy to assassinate Jesus.  The Sanhedrin had no need to go to all that trouble and do all those reprehensible things that the gospels accuse them off.  It wouldn’t have.  It would have lost its standing with the people.  Jesus himself is said to have pronounced that the Sanhedrin were fair (Matthew 5:22).  Some think the Sanhedrin was the reason the people turned against Jesus.  That is speculation.  The people already knew that Jesus claimed to be what the Sanhedrin said he should die for claiming to be and saw nothing awful in it.

    When Jesus was found deserving of death it is impossible to see why they sent him to Pilate.  They may have needed Pilate’s permission to do away with Jesus themselves but there was no need for another trial or for Pilate to meet him.  When they found Pilate was anxious to save Jesus’’ life and when he told them to kill him themselves for he didn’t want him dead they could have taken Jesus and destroyed him then in case Jesus would get off.  Also, they would not have taken Jesus to Pilate in case he would go free in the first place.  Pilate would not have tried Jesus when the Sanhedrin had already done it and found him guilty of capital crimes and when he heard Jesus say he was the Messiah which deserved death under Roman law.  He would not have gone to the trouble of needlessly interviewing Jesus himself when there were plenty of Roman magistrates to do it. 

 

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FICTITIOUS TRIAL BEFORE PILATE

 

The Gospels claim that Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, by the Jews in the hope that he would be crucified.

    The gospels say Pilate believed that Jesus thought he was the king of the Jews and sought to release him until the Jews reminded him that Caesar tolerated no kings.  This is impossible.  Expressing a desire to set a king free in public would have cost him the trust of the emperor forever.  And Caesar fired anybody he didn’t trust.

    In John, the Jews beg Pilate to crucify Jesus.  But Pilate replies that he finds nothing in Jesus that makes him deserve it.  The Jews answer that he has broken their law by claiming to be the Son of God.  The Jews would not tell Pilate to execute Jesus over their religious bigotry.  The Roman Empire had its own laws.  They didn’t need to bring religion into it at all.  Doing that would only damage their case for using Rome to eliminate Jesus.

    Matthew 27:24 maintains when that Pilate put a sign on the cross of Jesus saying, “The King of the Jews”.  All he had to do was write, “This man said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’”.  The Jews asked him to write that.  And yet he wouldn’t do it.  Now, would Pilate kill Jesus to pacify the Jews as the gospels say when he did a thing like that?  He was provoking the Jews and asking them to riot.  It would be worse than the Police Force of Northern Ireland putting up a Union Jack in a Catholic area during the Twelfth of July.  Yet the gospels say that he had Jesus crucified to keep the peace and even released Barabbas, a killer who was beloved to the Jews, in the process.  For Pilate to call Jesus a king was to insult the Emperor.  It was so unnecessary.  Of course, there was no sign because there was no cross to put it on because the Lord Jesus was as unreal as a character in a fairy-story.

 

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PETER IN THE COURTYARD

 

Peter allegedly let Jesus down three times when he denied knowing him.  So the gospels say.

   Peter was heating himself by the fire in the courtyard of the building where Jesus was being tried by the High Priest.  A maid said she knew that Peter had been with Jesus and was his friend.  He denied this “before them all” and when he went he went to the porch the same thing happened with another maid (Matthew 26).  Peter was afraid for his life and would have fled once the first woman recognised him especially when she said it in front of a group of people.  Peter was not afraid after all when he even let sat with the others at a fire instead of staying in the corner or going away when the Jesus topic came up which would suggest that Jesus was not being tried at all.  Peter risked his life for lies didn’t he for he went around with Jesus and risked his life for him and now he showed he believed he was wrong for he could not stand by Jesus any more?  Peter even denied knowing Jesus under oath though he knew fine well those listening to him knew he was a liar.  The penalty for doing that was death for blasphemy. 

   Peter was deceitful in the extreme and this was the man who was supposedly chosen as the prince of the apostles (according to Roman Catholic fantasy) and the chief witness to Jesus.  Then the Christians tell us that this central figure among the apostles, who according to legend, shed his own blood to prove that his testimony to the resurrection was sincere and expect us to be impressed!  He risked his life by attacking Malchus who was only an innocent slave and despite the fact that the mob could have hacked him to pieces.  The man was a looney and you can be a looney with regard to your own life and be sane in everything else so don’t answer me back that he was too sane to be mad – all lunatics are a mixture of both.

    So far so bad.

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THE HEROD TRIAL

 

Jesus was allegedly tried before King Herod who found no fault with him.  We are told to believe by Luke that Herod had not previously laid eyes on him.  This is stupid for Herod must have met him before when he was keen to see his miracles and when Jesus was out and about meeting the public so much.  Herod would have asked Jesus if he did not want political power then would he take it for spiritual reasons.  Jesus could not say no without confessing to being a hypocrite and not a real Son of God.  So Jesus either did not answer or he said he would.  Thus Herod could not have found him innocent.  He would have been determined to get rid of him because he would be a rival.  Jesus would have been guilty of high treason.  And Herod would have known that Jesus regarded John the Baptist as his forerunner and supreme prophet – if the gospels are to be believed.  Herod threw John in jail for condemning his marriage to his sister-in-law, Herodias, so he would have done the same to Jesus who would have condemned him by implication.  In fact he would have reacted quicker against Jesus.

 

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THE SCOURGING AT THE PILLAR LIE

 

The Bible says Pilate had Jesus scourged at the pillar and after Jesus was mocked as a king and crowned with thorns he then tried to get out of having to crucify him.  If Jesus was dressed in his own clothes to bear the cross to Golgotha as the gospels say, they would have been ruined by the blood and by the tearing that took place by the falling and carrying.  Then the soldiers would not have been casting lots for his robes at the cross after they crucified him.  They were going to tear the robe to give one another a piece and decided not to.  Is that believable?  The gospels are clearly lying.  The robe refutes the scourging and the scourging refutes the robe.  Believing neither is best.  He must have been dressed in an expensive robe when the men wanted it.  Jesus could not have been expecting to be arrested and tried and killed if he was in his best clothes though the gospel says he was expecting it and had even foreseen it like a prophet!

 

   

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BARABBAS

 

The New Testament informs us that Pilate had a custom of releasing a prisoner, anybody they wanted, for the Jews at Passover time (Matthew 27:15).  He invoked the custom during Jesus’ trial in the hope that they would pick Jesus.  He gave a choice between Jesus and Barabbas and they picked Barabbas.  Barabbas was a thief and a murderer (John 18:40).  Luke says Barabbas had caused a disturbance in Jerusalem shortly before (Luke 23:19,25).    Barabbas was probably a zealot, a terrorist who worked to get Rome out of Palestine.

    Look carefully at this.  Pilate decided what choice they would have.  He would not have offered them a monster who was a danger to Romans like Barabbas, and Jesus.  It would have been Jesus and somebody who committed a capital crime that was not so serious or who was sentenced to life in jail.  If he wanted to save Jesus what did he choose Barabbas for?  He knew the Jews would choose him whether they liked him or not for they admired him for his crimes against the Empire. 

   In Luke we read that Pilate was going to release Jesus even after they had chosen Barabbas which indicates that Pilate was not afraid of a riot and could have refused to let them have their custom and refused to execute Jesus.  Yet the gospels say he allowed himself to be bullied by the Jews to keep the peace.  Pilate if he hoped the Jews would choose Jesus, would have chosen a prisoner they hated more than Jesus not one they looked up to like Barabbas.  That Barabbas was chosen proves that Pilate did not make the offer in the hope that he could be allowed to free Jesus at all.  It was a gospel lie.  Also, would he really want to give Jesus back to the people who would tear him to pieces if they hated him as much as the gospels say?  If Pilate offered the Jews a prisoner they hated as much as Jesus if not more then he was not afraid of a riot though tensions were high.

   Christians say Pilate did not decide that Barabbas was an option for release under the custom but the people chose Barabbas.  Matthew alone says that Pilate offered them a choice and stated that only Jesus and Barabbas were on the menu (27:17).  Cross-referencing with the other gospels we are told that Pilate did this thinking he could get Jesus off. 

    It is a ridiculous custom and there is nothing outside the gospels to suggest that it existed.  The horrible Romans were unlikely to establish such a custom.  Why was the popular John the Baptist not saved this way?  His execution contradicts the claim that the Jews could not kill Jesus themselves for they needed the Romans’ permission.  If Rome had decided John should die then John would have been crucified.  Beheading was for Roman citizens. 

    John has it that Pilate thought that if he reminded the Jews of the custom he could have had a chance to have got Jesus freed.  John says it was because he went and told them first that Jesus had committed no crime in the hope that they would relent on their plan to have Jesus destroyed and then he offered to let them keep their custom to try and get Jesus freed.  First of all, Pilate could have appealed to the Emperor or people in high places to let him release Jesus and that would scare the people to let him have it his own way for if Jesus was put out of the way in exile they had no reason to complain and John says they were scared of Rome and that was the reason Jesus had to be vanquished.  Pilate must have had friends who would have done him this favour.  Secondly, Pilate would not have reminded them of the custom or let them avail of it until he had found a way to persuade them not to reject Jesus.  Thirdly, Pilate could have said that Jesus was not a real prisoner but just somebody on trial so if they clamoured for Jesus to be the one to be condemned they had to be ignored.  That is another reason why the Barabbas story as told in the gospels is an impossibility.  Pilate would not have made Jesus an option for condemnation for the custom if he had really judged Jesus to be innocent.  Fourthly, would it not have been a better idea to send Jesus to a cell and say Jesus hanged himself in the cell so that he could be exiled later?  If Pilate wanted to save Jesus’ life he had a strange way of going about it.

    It is absurd that John (18:39) has Pilate reminding the Jews of the custom as if they could have forgotten.  The fact that the Jews are said to have tried to get Jesus executed at the time of the custom is too much of a strain on credibility for they would not have wanted to risk Jesus ending up being offered up as one of the choices for freedom.  It was stupid of Pilate to offer Barabbas and Jesus as a scheme through which he hoped to get Jesus off for he knew the people hated Jesus and Barabbas was a national hero to them and it was too stupid to have really happened. 

    Barabbas was a zealot or an insurrectionist (John 18:40) – an enemy of Rome – so there was no way he would have been offered.  Also, the Sadducees were the main force behind Jesus’ problem and they liked to kiss the backsides of the Romans for the sake of the land and the people.  They could not have chosen Barabbas and done this.  And Pilate would not have offered him.  Did Pilate offer him because he thought Barabbas would not be accepted and Jesus would be?  The thought is preposterous though it is suggested in the gospels (Matthew 27:18).  In the eyes of Roman Law Barabbas was a zealot and a terrorist but Jesus was worse, a self-styled Messiah.  A king will do more harm than a lout. 

    Pilate knew that if the crowd chose Jesus, Jesus would be put through the whole thing all over again anyway and would not be so lucky the second time.  He would continue to alienate the Jews and boast of kingship as before.  Jesus had boasted even before Pilate and incited the High Priest and the council of the Jews at his trial.  Pilate would have seen no sense in saving Jesus.

    If the gospels are true when they say the crowed twisted Pilate’s arm and Pilate tried to get Jesus off by offering them the choice then why did they let him make Jesus an option?  It is very hard to predict what a crowd will choose.  The risk was there especially if Jesus had the big reputation for making people change their ways the gospels say he had.  Most ran after him without knowing him and obeyed him.

    Luke states that the crowd said that Jesus stirs up (present tense) the people of Judea and (more surprisingly and importantly) Jerusalem (23:5).  If Jesus had so many allies even then where were they now in his hour of desperate need?  If Jerusalem was full of mates then we know what would have happened that day.

    If you look up your Revised Standard Version footnotes on Matthew you will read that many ancients asserted that Jesus Barabbas was the name of the man in 27:16.  Jesus Bar Abbas is Jesus, Son of the Father.  Interesting.  Was it really Jesus Christ who was released and are the gospels covering this up?  When testimony about a miracle might be interpreted without recourse to the supernatural even if it is only a vague hint that testimony is invalidated for a miracle can only be accepted when one’s back is to the wall.  In this case, the return of Jesus to life would be invalidated.  It would be explained by holding that Jesus was released and that it was Barabbas who was nailed and mistaken for Jesus and Jesus later pretended to be raised from the dead.

 

 

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THURSDAY OR FRIDAY?

 

The Gospel of John is not reliable for he flatly contradicted the other gospels and said that Jesus was crucified on Thursday and not Friday.

   The gospels apart from John have Jesus dying on Friday.  They say Jesus died the day before the Sabbath meaning the Saturday Sabbath for had they meant any other kind of Sabbath they would have said (Mark 15:42).

    John denies that the Last Supper if he knew of it was the Passover for the next day he has the Jews being afraid to get unclean for they had to eat the Passover (John 18:28).

  John says that the day after Jesus died was a high Sabbath meaning a special Sabbath so it was not an ordinary Saturday Sabbath but one of the other Sabbaths that the Jews kept.  The day after Jesus died was the Sabbath of the Passover and then the Saturday Sabbath followed the day after that (see page 101, In Defence of the Faith).  Again Thursday is the day we come up with as the day of Jesus’ death.

   John says that Jesus died on the Day of Preparation.  The Day of Preparation was the eve of Passover.  The Passover took place on Friday.  Jesus was shown to the people before he was taken straight to the crucifixion site on the Day of Preparation meaning he died on that day (John 19:14).

   John and the other gospels say Jesus had to be taken off the cross and buried before the Sabbath but John says that the Sabbath was a high day and a special day (19:31).  So it was not the ordinary Saturday Sabbath he means but the special Friday one.  He takes pains to show he doesn’t mean the normal Saturday Sabbath.

  Clearly then for John the crucifixion took place on a Thursday.  This is indisputable.

   The research of a physics professor of the University of Tennessee, Dr Roger Rusk, found that the Passover day fell only on a Thursday in the year 30 AD in the span of years that Jesus might have been crucified (page 190, The Vatican Papers).  But according to a correct understanding of John’s saying that Jesus died the day before this would require that Jesus would have been crucified on a Wednesday.

 

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I.N.R.I.

 

The letters I.N.R.I you see on crucifixes signify Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.

    The Gospels state that this sign was placed above Jesus’ head on the cross in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.

    I don’t believe that.

    If Pilate wanted to keep the peace and was afraid to offend the emperor who demanded that all kings and would-be kings be squashed underfoot like the gospels say he would not have put up such a sign.  It is dangerous to admit there is a royal line.  It would mean that Jesus’ nearest relation would be the new King of the Jews.  Pilate would have written, “This man lied saying he was king of the Jews”, if he could have put up a sign at all which is doubtful if Jesus had lots of angry followers and when many believed Jesus was a king before they could again even if he was not one so this claim of Jesus’ was best forgotten about.  If they were all scared of Jesus’ fans instigating a riot like the gospels say then why was Jesus nailed near the city with that sign up?  A gang could have went and pulled him down.  It is hard to believe that there was a sign.  Matthew says that the Jews were able to boss the Romans about to tell lies about the empty tomb so it would be improbable if they let that sign stay up at all.  There would only have been a sign if Jesus was secretly crucified.  But then there would have been no need for it and it wouldn’t have been erected!

    The sign would have been invented if people believed or knew that Jesus had been executed anonymously to silence those who were unconvinced that Jesus was crucified so it stayed in the story when the version that claimed it was a public execution emerged. 

    We are told Pilate wrote it himself and was defiant when the Jews asked him to take it down and put up another one.  He said that what was written down was written down meaning that he would not retract what he wrote for it was true.  He did not speak like somebody that didn’t write it personally.  When the gospel and Pilate both say he wrote it, it is not sensible to say that they mean he told a secretary to write it for there is no need for that idea.  The gospels were written for simple people.  He would have written it personally when the Jews came to him to complain.  And they would not have been allowed to see him if the secretary had done it but they would have gone to the secretary and the secretary would have had a word with Pilate if necessary.  He had the time to write it himself. 

    Pilate did not put the sign up in mockery for the Gospels allege that Pilate asked Jesus in John if he was a king and Jesus said yes and Pilate took his word for it and told the Jews he could not kill their king.  This is incredible for you need documents to prove it and Jesus had none.  Pilate would not have been that stupid.  He would have been sacked for that.  The gospels would say if Pilate did more than just take Jesus’ word for it.

    Mark states that the charge against Jesus was his being king (Mark 15:26) and so does Matthew (27:37).  The authorities would have served their own interests far better by charging him not with being a king which cannot be proved but by charging them with claiming to have been a king.  The king material is supposed to be too controversial and embarrassing to have been invented which is nonsense and would depend on the sensibilities of the audience the stories were meant for.  The early Christians had to say that Jesus was a king even if he never said he was for they needed to say he was the Jewish Messiah predicted in the Old Testament which was their Bible.  It could be that a man thought to have been crucified and showed up after his “death” and disappeared again and all this stuff was read into his alleged resurrection from the dead. 

    The silly Carsten Thiede has claimed that a piece of wood in a Church in Rome which has a part of the inscription about Jesus is genuine and is not a medieval forgery.  He thinks Helena, the mother of Constantine, brought it back from Palestine with the true cross.  The lettering allegedly matches the first century but this is hotly disputed.  Helena and Constantine wanted to unite the Roman Empire under Christianity and spread that faith and so they would have had to resort to fraud if they could not find the relics with which to do this.  She found three crosses buried in Jerusalem and she worked out which one was the cross of Jesus by putting a sick person near it and the person got cured.  First the gospels say that Jesus was nailed to a tree so the cross bar was nailed to a tree or tied to it and would have been taken down for somebody else to carry it after Jesus was removed from it.  There were no crosses to bury.  And why bury all three?  Why bury any?  The Jews and Romans would not have allowed it for they wanted no Jesus cult.  The same crosses were used again and again with the upright post remaining to take the crossbar. 

    Hebrews write from right to left and the Greek inscription on the sign does the same though it should have been written from left to right.  Thiede claims that a Jewish scribe wrote the sign and made this mistake.  First of all nobody would have been stupid enough to employ a man that stupid for such an important job.  Secondly, it would have been checked before it was put on the cross for these things were serious.  Thirdly, Pilate wrote it himself personally and would not have made an error that a schoolboy would not have made.  Fourthly, there is no evidence that anybody took the sign after Jesus died.  Fifthly, the most likely explanation for the letters going the wrong direction is that the author could not read but could engrave and was relying on dictation and a book of letters and the person doing the dictating could not read either.

    All that exists in favour of the title is that it writes in a different order of languages from the gospel of John which alone lists the languages when you would expect a forger to retain the order.   But John only said he was listing the languages not their order.

     And John gives a longer title than the rest of the gospels which say “The King of the Jews” or “Jesus king of the Jews”.  John says, “Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews”. It is three against John who gives the longer title.  Stories get more window dressing as they are passed on so it is no surprise that the longest title appears in John’s gospel.  The title or titulus of Thiede has the same words as John which probably indicates inauthenticity.   The fact that it was engraved does not bode well for authenticity for it was only necessary to write on it and engraving was slow.

    The title was made of walnut and walnut is available all over the Mediterranean countries so it was easy enough for Constantine or Helena to have had one made and made to match ancient scripts of which they had plenty of samples. 

 

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CONCLUSION

 

The gospels tell little else but lies when it comes to the arrest, trial and nailing of Jesus Christ.  They cannot be trusted then when they say when Jesus was nailed for they alone do that and they certainly cannot be trusted when they say Jesus appeared alive after he died on the cross. 

 

 

WORKS CONSULTED

 

Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley, Whitaker House, Pennsylvania, undated

Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995

Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1995

In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1996

In Search of Certainty, John Guest Regal Books, Ventura, California, 1983

Jesus and Early Christianity in the Gospels, Daniel J Grolin, George Ronald, Oxford, 2002

Jesus and the Four Gospels, John Drane, Lion Books, Herts, 1984

Jesus Lived in India, Holger Kersten, Element, Dorset, 1994

Jesus the Evidence, Ian Wilson Pan, London 1985

The Bible Fact or Fantasy? John Drane, Lion Books, Oxford, 1989

The Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1982

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Corgi, London, 1982

The Jesus Conspiracy, Holger Kersten and Elmar R Gruber, Element, Dorset, 1995

The Messianic Legacy, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Corgi, London, 1987

The Metaphor of God Incarnate, John Hick, SCM Press Ltd, London, 1993

The Passover Plot, Hugh Schonfield, Element Books, Dorset, 1996

The Resurrection Factor, Josh McDowell, Alpha Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1993

The Resurrection of Jesus, Pinchas Lapide, SPCK, London, 1984 

The Truth of Christianity, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co Ltd, London, 1905

The Turin Shroud is Genuine, Rodney Hoare, Souvenir Press, London, 1998HoarHo

The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992

The Vatican Papers, Nino Lo Bello, New English Library, Sevenoaks, Kent, 1982

The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Raymond E Brown Paulist Press, New York, 1973

The Womb and the Tomb, Hugh Montefiore, Fount – HarperCollins, London, 1992

Verdict on the Empty Tomb, Val Grieve, Falcon, London, 1976 

Who Moved the Stone? Frank Morison, OM Publishing Cumbria, 1997

Why People believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer, Freeman, New York, 1997

 

 

BIBLE VERSION USED 

The Amplified Bible 

 

 

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