Jesus
Christ did not exist. If he did there is
no acceptable evidence for it. And if
there is acceptable evidence then it is too flimsy to justify taking Jesus
seriously as a god or wizard. The
nearest we get to evidence for Jesus having lived is the anonymously authored
and partisan four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John for everything else is
far more, or could be, hearsay than what they are.
If Jesus
had really been a new messenger from God, had he really been the Son of God,
some writings of his would have been left behind. He left nothing at all. There are no writings attributed to
Jesus. There are no archaeological
artefacts. It is impossible to believe
that God would have done nothing to make sure that some direct evidence to
Jesus existed. All we have is
hearsay. Hearsay isn’t always wrong but
it is not very convincing. God didn’t
ensure that any direct evidence for Jesus survived therefore God doesn’t care
if we doubt or even disbelieve the existence of Jesus.
What is
even more incredible and impossible to explain is this. Why did everybody forge writings and
traditions in the name of the apostles and some other New Testament characters,
but not Jesus himself? Even Gnostics
never attributed any of their books to Jesus but to his apostles or some other
disciple of Jesus. And Gnostics often
believed that Jesus was a vision seeming to be a man not a man and sought
direct revelation from him. Yet they
came up with no book claiming to be the direct word of Jesus or even to be
something that Jesus had written. If
Gnostic and orthodox Christians believed in Jesus as someone who had been on
earth, they certainly did not believe that there was any sensible reason for
thinking he had been. They had their
reasons yes. But these reasons had nothing
to do with the kind of evidence a detective or historian or archaeologist would
consider.
The risen
Jesus was a hoax. Yet this Jesus was
similar in all respects as regards teaching and sobriety and things you might
not expect somebody to make up to the Jesus who the gospels say ministered and
died. Examples. The pre-crucifixion Jesus taught things no
less outrageous than the risen one did. The pre-crucifixion Jesus taught that
we must turn the other cheek and the risen one teaches that we can pick up
snakes and be bitten and not be affected.
The risen Jesus appears to a few.
You might expect a liar to say he appeared to more than that. But the pre-crucifixion Jesus did not like to
show off his miracles and only a few really knew him. Basically, if one was made up so was the
other. Was the risen Jesus a hoax? Yes
for the tomb may have been found empty and even the gospels don’t say if it was
impossible that the body may have been only seemingly put there, sneaked out
when nobody at the funeral party was looking, and they even say that the tomb
was open before the women got there that morning. That means the body could have been
stolen. So we have only apparitions of
Jesus to disprove the theft idea.
Clearly the idea of resurrection wouldn’t have taken off without
apparitions of Jesus and yet most theologians hold that apparitions are
unreliable. Protestant theologians
question the apparitions of Mary at Medjugorje and
The first
Christian writer we have, Paul the apostle who Christians believe was converted
not long after Jesus rose from the dead, completely ignored the life of
Jesus. Christians say he did this
because he had no need for the life story but he focused on morality and
defending the faith so much that he would have had to use it. He just had to do without it for there was
nothing he could use. When he had
nothing, the same must have been true of the apostles of Christ whom he
knew. It is only nonsense that Paul was
so wrapped up in the vision he had of Jesus that converted him that he wasn’t
able to think about the life of Jesus for Paul never gives any indication that
the vision had that large of a grip on him.
He was more wrapped up in the crucifixion than any vision. When he was so interested in that event which
happened before Jesus appeared he was interested in Jesus’ life. That he hadn’t more to be interested in
indicates that he just had the bare facts about Jesus as stated to him in a
vision of Jesus.
He said
Jesus was born of a Jewish woman and was of Davidic descent and was
crucified. But he could have been
assuming all that because of the visions he had or he could have been told
these things in the apparitions. He only
spoke of visions of Jesus after his death and he does not even tell us when
Jesus lived or died. Jesus could have
died and rose the third day as he says but centuries before he began appearing
to Paul and the apostles.
When
trying in an epistle to convert the rebel Corinthian Christians who denied that
there was a resurrection of the dead and that Jesus rose back to true
Christianity, Paul never once quoted Jesus or gave a miracle story from his
life to convince them that at least Jesus intended to rise and could do
it. He just admitted that he had no way
to convince them when he uttered so much nonsense. For example, that Paul and Co suffer to
spread the gospel therefore the resurrection of Jesus happened (1 Cor
Now, they
already knew about the visions but he did not elaborate on them or verify them
because he couldn’t and then to fill the gap he tried to make out that the dead
would be lost forever if Jesus had not risen which is an obviously silly
argument and shows he was desperate and he couldn’t provide outside evidence
that Jesus had died and was buried and vanished from the tomb. He knew that the heretics in Corinth had
visions of their own which contradicted these visions and which was the basis
of their belief that the resurrection was just a symbol for a spiritual experience
which was why they were able to say the resurrection of all mankind had already
happened. He was a fraud for he knew
that there was no point in him bragging about his and the apostles’ visions
when there were rival visions.
In Paul’s
First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15, we find incontestable proof that
Paul was not only into twisting facts to trick people into agreeing with him
but had no evidence at all apart from ghost stories and perverted thinking that
Jesus existed. His problem with the
Christians of
Paul used
the charism of speaking in tongues which he admitted
was not a very good one as one of the evidences for Christianity (1 Corinthians
Paul
forbade association with sinners proving that the Jesus he believed in did not
associate with prostitutes and the like though the gospels say he did that a
lot. We read between the lines that
nobody knew of this Jesus until he started appearing. Paul said that love is never offensive which
shows that he denied the existence of the gospel Jesus who often offended the
Jews and insulted them (Matthew 23).
Paul in 1
Corinthians 7 when discussing the morality or otherwise of divorce had to give
his own view and couldn’t quote the saying of Jesus regarding divorce meaning
that the gospels are lying when they said Jesus settled the divorce question.
Paul used
to swear in things that were not very important (Galatians 1:20) showing the
gospels made up the claim that Jesus forbade swearing and wanted people to be
so truthful that they would not need to swear.
2
Corinthians 5:16 says that just as we must forget what others were like before
they were converted for they have been transformed by the power of God and just
dwell on them the way they are now so we must focus on what Jesus is now a
glorious risen personage in Heaven and not worry about what he did on
earth. The earliest Church then opposed
attempts to give Jesus a life story.
Paul is plainly testifying that if gospels come we must reject them as
impostures.
Paul does
not say who was present at the Last Supper and says he received the story from
the Lord – in visions? Yes that is what
it means for it could mean that. Take
the simplest interpretation. Paul told
the Corinthian Christians many of whom did not believe his claims about the
resurrection or about Jesus that he received the rite of taking bread and drink
in memory of the Lord Jesus from the Lord.
This expression must mean that he received the rite in a vision for that
is the simplest meaning. He invented the
Eucharist and the gospels later lied about Jesus inventing it.
Paul in Romans 10 says that the righteousness of faith forbids us
to ask who will ascend to Heaven for that is to bring Christ down to earth
again. And forbids us to say who will
descend under the earth for that would be to demand that Jesus rise again from
the dead. What is sought is the word of
God, God’s truth. Paul concludes that
the word rather is in the heart of the believer because of the preachers of the
gospel putting it there so there is no need to look to go to Heaven or to under
the earth to get it.
This is a very strange chapter.
Whatever can it mean?
Let us break it up.
Why would Christ have to come back to earth if we could go to
Heaven to find the word? It must be to
teach but why would he need to if we get the word there? Plainly then God will
not give the word of God without Christ and will send Christ back to earth
before he lets anybody go to Heaven to find the truth. Paul is being hypothetical. He doesn’t think anybody can actually do
that.
Again Paul is being hypothetical.
Why would looking for the word in the underworld make Christ rise
up again from the dead? How could he
rise more than once? God will raise
Christ from the dead again before he lets anybody go to the abyss to find the
truth if that is where it is. But why
should Jesus have to rise again? If he
rose once how can he be raised once more?
Why doesn’t Paul say Jesus will be made to appear again before anybody
would be allowed to get the truth in the abyss?
Why can’t God send an angel if there is a difficulty? He says only Jesus risen can give us the
truth. Jesus has to rise not just
appear.
The answer is that if Jesus hasn’t brought us truth so that we
need to get it ourselves then Jesus is dead and needs to rise again after
meeting God so he can tell us what God revealed. There is hyperbole in this: you can’t get
God’s truth in Heaven or in the abyss unless God gives you the power to so Paul
is saying that even if God does that we should decline and go to Jesus. Its exaggeration to make a point, don’t
accept truth even from God if he wants to give it to you, go to Jesus and only
the resurrected Jesus. And the point is
that nothing should make up our minds for us but Jesus and the word he
brought. Obviously it is no good if
somebody else has the truth from Jesus and you go to them. You have to go to Jesus himself – he has to
appear to you and tell you. Listening to
somebody telling you what Jesus told them is as bad as not going directly to
Jesus for many misinterpret and lie about his teaching.
Clearly, nobody can be trusted to teach the word accurately
without having visions of the Lord Jesus as a resurrected being. They need to be guided by visions all the
time. This is a clear denial of the
value of focusing on the earthly life of Jesus.
Even Jesus has no authority unless he has risen from the dead. Paul’s Jesus didn’t do miracles in his
pre-resurrection life. Paul’s preachers
can only be trusted if they repeat parrot fashion what he hears in his visions
and get confirmation from Jesus in visions that its all accurate. If Jesus had an earthly life only what he
says about it in visions counts now.
This attitude condemns gospels as heretical for you need the living
prophet, not books and also implies that the second coming of Jesus and the
resurrection of the dead and judgement would have to take place before the
apostles die if Christianity is true.
These events would be necessary to prevent pollution of the faith. We
know the early Church did teach that all these happenings were to be expected
any day back then.
Paul would then have dismissed the gospels as heretical nonsense
or dubious at best. Their authors didn’t
claim to be guided by apparitions.
Paul’s Christianity is totally antithetical to the four gospels we
have. The earliest Christian authorities
didn’t approve of attempts to make gospels and the gospels are lies and cannot
be contemplated as evidence for a historical Jesus.
If Jesus as a man taught us by his life and example and miracles
and teachings none of what Paul wrote in the chapter would make any sense.
Because Jesus came back from the dead and went to God, he knows
what God’s truth is. If we didn’t have
the truth from the risen Jesus and wanted to go to the abyss for it that would
mean God would have to raise him again to stop us. This indicates that God raised Jesus from the
dead so that Jesus would be able to reveal God’s truth. Jesus did not do that when he was a man. He did it after he died and rose again.
The gospel Jesus then was a pack of lies, perhaps good ones and
perhaps based on the lives and teachings of some Jewish saints to make them
look real but lies all the same. If you
read the epistle of James you get the impression that the teaching of Jesus was
plagiarised from that of James and perhaps events from the life of James were
used to make stories up about Jesus.
Paul said
Jesus died according to the scriptures which must mean Isaiah 53 which speaks
of somebody dying like Jesus in the PAST tense.
There is no reason at all to not take this tense literally. Paul may be saying that Jesus died hundreds
of years before.
Paul said
that he received the information that Jesus died for our sins according to the
scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3). It
would seem then that if Jesus died recently Paul would not have to receive that
news from God. But some say that what
Paul received was not that Jesus died but that he died for sinners in
accordance but the main thought is the death.
Paul would have written that Jesus had died and that he received the
information that it was for sinners had he meant what Christians say.
Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1 that Jesus sent him to not to
baptise but to preach the gospel and not with eloquent wisdom in case the cross
would lose its power. Clearly then if
Paul did not preach, the cross would be powerless. That means Paul alone was proclaiming the
cross. That means nobody heard or knew
of the Messiah’s crucifixion until Paul started having visions of Jesus. That means that the evidence for Jesus
resides in visions and not in concrete history.
1 Corinthians 2 says that when Paul proclaimed the cross in
Paul
stated that he had nothing to offer the Jews who wanted signs from Heaven to
verify the gospel but the cross of Jesus which was a stumbling block for them
(1 Corinthians 1:22). The cross of
Christ could only be a sign or a miracle if it was revealed wholly in
visions. That is what Paul is getting at
here.
When the
main event in Jesus’ life, his crucifixion, was not historically verifiable
like the death of Diana, Princess of
Paul, or a
forger, once wrote that Jesus gave his noble profession in front of Pontius
Pilate. This may mean a vision of the
risen Jesus and James who Paul calls the Lord’s brother may not have been a
blood brother for Paul indicates that nobody knew Jesus as a man but only as a
risen being. Paul says the Church is the
body of Jesus, that is the Church in some sense is Jesus so maybe that
helps. Similar ideas were taught in
paganism.
Because
Paul was the first writer what he says goes.
The fact that we know who he was and how prominent he was makes him
supersede the gospels no matter if they are plausible or not so even if he is
the only one that gives evidence that Jesus never existed we can safely ignore
any testimony as to Jesus’ existence after him.
Such testimony is not being dismissed as worthless but as not being
solid enough.
John in a first
century epistle says that the Antichrists are denying that Jesus came in the
flesh and was the Christ. So we have a
plethora of people who regarded Jesus as important but denied that he was a
real flesh and blood man and who denied that he ever claimed to be the
Christ. They contradicted nearly
everything in the gospels by saying that.
If Jesus never claimed to be the Christ, then all the sermons in which
he claimed to fulfil Old Testament prophecy are fabrications, and he never rode
into Jerusalem on a donkey to the cheers of the people like the Messiah was
supposed to do. He would not do it even
if he were just a vision for that would make the people think he was fulfilling
Old Testament prophecy which the antichrist witnesses didn’t believe in. These witnesses were saying that the gospels,
whether they knew of them or not, are untrue.
There might have been no gospels in those days but it does not matter. They were still proving that the gospel Jesus
never existed. To ridicule these
witnesses to the absence of historical data as heretics is totally foul and
unfair and fraudulent for we know nothing about them as people. To say that Jesus existed despite them is as
bad as saying that Jack is guilty of murder and not interviewing the witnesses
who say they know he is innocent. When
the Christians like John were boasting about being of God and saying that
anybody that would not listen to their gospel was not of God (1 John 4:6) it is
plain that they were too hellbent on convincing
people and making threats and causing sectarianism to be trusted. Such nastiness only becomes an option when
people know deep down that their opponents are right.
Written in
70 AD or earlier, Hebrews 8:1-6 states that if Jesus was on earth now he would
not be a priest for there are priests on earth.
The translators shove the word still between was and on to change the
meaning but the word is not in the original.
Obviously, Jesus could still be a priest even if there are priests on
earth so God’s logic here is terrible.
But anyway if priests on earth were stopping Jesus being a priest on
earth who offers his life as a blood sacrifice that means that Jesus was
crucified in Heaven or some other celestial world and was only known through
visions for there were priests since the days of Moses.
The
epistles and the Book of Revelation call Jesus the firstborn and sometimes the
firstborn from the dead. They never hint
that they mean he was just the first in line as heir and not the firstborn in
the sense of firstborn son of God. They
say he was the firstborn of many brethren meaning the first person was saved by
God and adopted as his son. They say he
was the firstborn from the dead meaning that he rose before any of the
resurrections reported in the Old Testament.
Jesus was thought then to have lived centuries before.
1 Peter 3
says that Jesus died and was raised as a ghost and went to preach to the
spirits who had sinned before Noah’s day.
Why just them then? The reason
must be because he died before the flood.
These people died during his day and before it.
The epistle
says that Roman governors must be obeyed for God uses them to punish and reward
people (1 Peter 2:13,14). It is thought
that this denies that one of them, Pilate, killed Jesus – the gospels say
Pilate sentenced Jesus to death by crucifixion.
It seems Peter would be taking it for granted that we know to obey them
only when they are right. But then why
does he tell us to uphold the Roman governor’s decisions about meting out
vengeance on people when most of their punishments were unduly harsh and they
had little concern for justice? I agree
with G A Wells that this command proves that the early Church did not believe
that Pilate unjustly sent Jesus to the cross.
Christians say that Pilate was forced by the Jews or Roman law or both
but this is dubious for Pilate had the power to postpone a decision and could
have decreed a discreet execution of a man who was not Jesus in Jesus’ place to
save Jesus. The John gospel has Pilate
killing Jesus because he is afraid of the Jews and then informing Jesus that he
could release him if he would only clear himself before him so somebody wasn’t
able to make up his mind about Pilate.
The incoherence suggests that the Pilate episode may never have happened
for it should not have been hard to report accurately about it if it had.
In 2 Peter
1 we read that the apostles seeing Jesus glorified and God telling them that he
was his beloved son is not as sure a word as the word in the Jewish Bible, the
Old Testament, saying it. So you should
not look for evidence for Jesus that he lived and did what the Church says
anywhere but in the Old Testament. That
is clearly an admission that they had nothing else. The evidence for Jesus came from the Old
Testament and if visions happened their purpose was to guide people to see what
was in the Old Testament not to be equal with it. The epistle tells us then there was no
evidence for Jesus except the Old Testament prophecies. But these are a matter of
interpretation. They can be made to
refer to Muhammad and Messiahs other than Jesus to mention two possibilities
out of dozens.
The
epistles show that the Jesus of the gospels never existed.
Other
first century writings such as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of Diognetus, the Didache and the
Letter of Clement to the Corinthians do things like saying that the
resurrection of the dead will come for the phoenix rises from the ashes
(meaning there was no evidence that Jesus rose but visions so something else
had to be used as evidence however bad
it was), that the Law of Moses is not literally true and that Jesus stood for
loving your neighbour more than yourself which shows these sources were
undermining the historical nature of the gospels which they fundamentally
contradicted.
Now to the
gospels.
The
gospellers followed not Jesus but an interpretation of him which makes them
unreliable for nobody’s interpretation is infallible and the Church never
claimed that their interpretation was infallible only that the scriptures are
which is unintelligible.
The
gospels themselves give accidental clues that Jesus never existed especially
when they say embarrassing things about Jesus that scholars think they would
not have made up. But they did make
everything up. Here is one
instance. To believe that Jesus was able
to cause trouble in the temple and put animals out and stop people coming in
means he had a huge army with him to help him for the temple was a very big
area is too much. He would have been
apprehended as soon as he threw over the first stall.
If Jesus
was violent in the temple he would have been arrested there and then which
means that the stories of the last supper and his later arrest and crucifixion
and resurrection are untrue for he was in jail.
It is
thought that there are embarrassing things in the gospels like Jesus going into
The
gospels say that Jesus was popular with the people and it was hoped and
suspected by most that he would be the Christ.
If he had been he would have been crucified a lot lot
sooner. This means that nearly all the
Jesus stories must be lies. He would not
have been free to go about end of story for the Romans did not tolerate anybody
who might be a claimant to Christship as the country
was unstable and they tolerated no rivals.
Also it is absurd that the Sanhedrin would have pulled in witnesses who
could not agree on the simplest things at Jesus’ trial to try and secure an
unjust conviction. The Sanhedrin were
not that stupid. If they wanted Jesus
dead so bad they would have been well prepared.
They had been wanting rid of him for years according to the gospels.
The
resurrection narratives are completely lacking in scientific verification. For example, no effort is made to prove that it
was really Jesus who died on the cross – we are not told if anybody who knew
Jesus had a good view of his face which was disfigured anyway. This indicates that the stories were made up
by the gospellers for if something had really happened all objections would
have been carefully refuted and they would have invented stories to remove all
doubts. There is no evidence that the
very early Church let the public read the gospels and plenty of indications
that they did not. Another problem is
the fact that Luke and Matthew report different things regarding the birth of
Jesus and thereabouts. All four gospels
differ on the events surrounding the resurrection. Yet they and Jesus believed that before
anything could be accepted as reliable there had to be at least two
level-headed and honest witnesses as the God of the Law of Moses
commanded. The gospels then defied the
law and showed themselves to be capable of religious fraud. Luke reported that Jesus once said that
having the Law of Moses and the Prophets was more important than listening to
anybody who managed to return from the dead which shows that those
gospel-mongers who stressed the importance of Jesus himself were frauds. The supposedly most reliable account of
Jesus’ life is his passion and crucifixion.
But these stories are full of things that should have been said to
silence critics but which were not showing that the stories were invented. Stories should get more convincing as critics
are responded to.
The risen
Jesus has many of the features associated with the pre-crucifixion Jesus. When the risen Jesus was made up why not the
pre-crucifixion Jesus as well?
When all
the big things in the Jesus story are fiction it follows that the lesser
stories cannot be trusted at all either.
There is
even a hint in the Gospel of John that it is only a novel. Jesus is made to say that human testimony is
useless (John
There is
nothing from a non-Christian source that gives a firsthand mention of Jesus in
the first century. There were many
prolific writers who never mentioned Jesus.
Christians
say that arguments from silence prove little and can be misleading for Jesus
did exist. But arguments from silence
prove a person never existed when nobody mentions that person though you would
expect them to. And even more so when it
is several people who are saying nothing.
The best
thing to do with people who allegedly said that Jesus lived is to find an early
testimony that he did not. That would
mean they were mistaken and the early bird comes first for it’s the one that
has the worm.
Incidentally,
the Book of Q, the original gospel of Jesus’ sayings which is believed to
explain what Mark, Matthew and Luke have in common is only hypothetical. Mark could have easily have been the first
ever Jesus story and the others just changed bits here and there but used a lot
of him as raw material for their gospel.
Yet the Book of Q is treated by many silly scholars as a document that
brings us closer to the historical Jesus and some say it precedes Paul’s
epistles!
The Roman
historian Cornelius Tacitus who died in 117 AD
condemned Christianity as pernicious superstition. In 115 AD he wrote his Annals and declared
that Christ – he doesn’t call him Jesus - had been executed under Pontius
Pilate, lived in Judaea and created a new system of
superstitious evil. Christians say he
plucked this from the Roman legal records and sceptics counter that he was only
taking for granted what Christians were saying which would mean he could not be
used as proof for the existence of Jesus.
A large piece of any historians work has to involve stuff that may be
unreliable but they just use it anyway for you cannot substantiate
everything. Its better than saying
nothing. So the sceptics are right. It is possible that nobody heard of this man
and his death under Pilate until some people reported apparitions that the
messiah had been in obscurity and nailed under Pilate. Perhaps later a candidate who was thought to
be that man was come up with.
There is
no evidence that Tacitus who wrote that Pilate
crucified Christ was depending on official records. He had no reason to think that what the
Christians were saying was not historical fact.
Historians only check sources when there might be reason to think that
they are dubious. We know from the New
Testament that the Docetists, those who believed that
Jesus was not a man but a hallucination sent from Heaven to enlighten us were
around from the start which is good news for those who want to deny the
existence of Jesus. More importantly
nobody was able to refute them to the satisfaction of the rational person.
Why does Tacitus say executed and not crucified? Why does he call him Christ not Jesus? Tacitus hated
Christianity so he would have been proud to say Jesus was crucified for
crucifixion disgusted people those days and would have put them off Jesus for crucifieds were thought to have been cursed. Rome would not have liked Jesus being called
Christ for Christ was a title for the true God given king of the Jews and they
ruled Jesus’ country so Tacitus calling Jesus that
would mean Tacitus was advertising him as a
Christ. These observations make many
believe that the bit about Jesus was put in there by a forger trying to create
evidence for a real Jesus.
It is
known that the part of what Josephus, the Jewish first century historian who
collaborated with
It is
unthinkable that so shortly after saying Herod got rid of the harmless John the
Baptist just because he had a lot of followers and there was a fear that they
might rebel under his guidance that Josephus would write that Jesus was active
and was allowed to copy the Baptist by winning over many people for that
wouldn’t happen.
Josephus is
depicted as calling the believers Christians when in fact the name was only
given to believers at Antioch and a host of names were used, Nazarenes, Jesusers, the Way and so on. Only two New Testament writers use Christian
and it was given as an insulting nickname which was why it was slow of catching
on and also there was the problem that there were as many Jesus faiths as there
was followers of Christ. The official
name used by
Later he
referred to James as the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ which could mean
that he thought that James was the brother of some obscure man who had come back
as a ghost which would mean that Josephus did not claim to have any evidence
that Jesus lived. We have seen from Paul
that Jesus was entirely known through visions and so it might have been
“revealed” by some prophet that Jesus was an unknown brother of James’ through
a long-lost mother. It is possible that
brother of Christ or the Lord or whatever was a honorific title given to
James. Josephus would not mention Christ
without trying to debunk him for he didn’t like false Christs
and was devoted to
It is
certain that some interfering person inserted the “clarification” that James
was Jesus’ brother. Hegassipus
declared that James was holy from birth, was allowed into the holy places of
the Jews as a unique privilege, and was so strict about the Jewish law that he
wore linen and wouldn’t touch wool, and he wouldn’t wash himself or cut his
hair. Because his loyalty to Jewish
tradition was so rigid he was nicknamed James the Just or Righteous. The brother of a man who altered the Jewish
traditions and condemned them and who was believed to have been a false Messiah
and who yearned for the destruction of the
According
to the letter of Paul to Philemon Christians believed you could make somebody
you loved your brother or sister by blood even if they were not a blood
relation. Paul told Philemon that Onesimus was not just a brother in the Lord but a blood
brother from now on. A brother in the
Lord means a non-literal brother but Paul’s saying Onesimus
who was not related to Philemon was more than that and a blood brother
indicates plainly that you can become a literal blood brother by adoption. This practice could have confused people
about James and made them think he really was born a brother of Jesus’.
Even if
the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ reference is real, it was not a
statement Josephus even hinted he had any evidence for. It was James he wrote about. He wasn’t even looking at the Jesus
evidence. It therefore has no more value
than somebody saying that Katie King visited the séances of
James is
certainly not the brother in any sense of the rebellious and turbulent figure
we have in the gospels. That he was
given this title of the just or the righteous proves plainly that the gospel
history is dubious. How could the
supporter of a heretic like Jesus been so greatly esteemed among the Jews of
The fact
that somebody had to put a heap of dogmatic assertions about Jesus in Josephus
just to show he existed proves that Jesus did not exist. Paul clearly showed that the only reason to
believe in Jesus was visions so that supersedes anybody else who said that
Jesus lived for they came along after Paul’s time. Also Paul had the most influence in the early
Church and since he was an apostle and the apostles were special witnesses of
Jesus and the heads of the Church it follows that what any of them says comes
first. And by the way, there is no
reason to believe that any gospel was really written by an apostle and most
scholars agree. So if Paul says there is
no evidence for Jesus but visions that is the case. Period.
About 150
AD, Justin wrote his Dialogue with Trypho the
Jew. Trypho
said that nobody from Jesus’ time knew him and that Jesus was invented. Trypho was an
informed and worthy opponent when Justin had to write a book to challenge him. Justin, like Irenaeus
much later, believed that Jesus lived to be an old man (page 40, St Peter and
Rome) which conflicts with the gospels which we know Justin never knew for they
were hidden and we know from the context of the entire Dialogue that the bits
that spell out the massacre of the innocents and a couple of other gospel tales
in it are later insertions because not only did Justin not need to bring them
up where he did but they would have appeared earlier in the work to shut Trypho up for saying Jesus was a total enigma and Justin
gives many clues that he did not acknowledge anything the gospels were
saying. Justin himself then
inadvertently gives support to Trypho for Justin
himself clearly knew nothing about Jesus.
Thus we have a valuable witness to Jesus being a legend. It is possible that Justin thought the
gospels were useful but did not take them very seriously. That would mean that Justin rejected the
largest body of evidence for the existence of Jesus.
In Chapter
XXXIX we read, “Trypho said, ‘prove to us that the
man who according to you was crucified and rose into Heaven is the Messiah of
God. For you have proved by the
scriptures you have recited before that the scriptures say the Christ must suffer
and return to rule all nations. Show us
that your Christ is the Christ”. Justin
replies, “It has been proved sirs. It
has been proven to those who hear and who have heard what you have heard and
accepted by you. But I return to what I
was discussing and will give the other proof later to you in case you say I
cannot prove”.
Trypho says that the Christians are SAYING Jesus was nailed to the cross
indicating that there was no evidence for it but their word. Justin, in reply, tells the Jews that the
prophecies are proof enough. In other
words, the prophecies must have been fulfilled so even if there is no evidence
for Christ we know from the prophecies that the Christ story is true and can
work out the details of the story from them.
In other words, the prophecies are the only real record of Christ. In other words, if the interpretation is
wrong then Jesus Christ never existed.
The Gospels did the same thing, they used Old Testament verses out of
context to show that the Jesus story was in the Old Testament. Christians forget that the New Testament
teaches that the Old Testament contains the gospel and is superior. Jesus said it was better than anyone rising
from the dead (Luke
APPENDIX –
from my Skeptical Dictionary
MYTHICISM
An interpretation of Christian history
that denies that Jesus existed. The main
evidence for mythicism is as follows:
The gospel stories could have been
invented or influenced by true stories for they contain huge errors like saying
Jesus was publicly active while claiming to be the Messiah an act which would
not have been tolerated by the Jewish leaders or Rome for even a day in those
politically turbulent times. They cannot
be trusted as evidence that Jesus lived.
Maybe they are being truthful but what are we to do? The gospels are the only evidences for a
historical Jesus.
Paul never placed Jesus in a
historical setting or said when he lived and gives no reason for us to deny
that all he said about Jesus came from visions.
He indicated that there was no evidence when he required faith in the
crucifixion. You don’t need faith for
what is historical fact in recent times.
He told the Corinthians that he decided to know and hear nothing among
them but Christ crucified and this was to happen not by the wisdom of men but
by the inspiration of the Spirit (1 Cor 2:1-5). When he put this faith on something so
dangerous as the feeling that you are inspired that shows that it was all he
could do. He had nothing but visions and
communications from the Holy Spirit to tell him that Jesus was crucified
meaning it was NOT something a historian could accept. He couldn’t refute the Corinthian believers
who denied the resurrection except to mention the visions of the risen Jesus
that they scoffed at and say that Jesus must have risen because the dead would
be lost if he didn’t. The desperation
proves that there was no real evidence – he couldn’t say Jesus did miracles
when alive and could have managed to return from the dead. If Jesus lived recently some of the sceptical
Christians would have been saying that the resurrection was a misunderstanding
for the wrong man was nailed or Jesus survived by trickery but he makes no
effort to prove that Jesus was dead which he would have to do to show the
resurrection happened. He can do
nothing.
Paul stated that Christ did not send
him to baptise but to preach the gospel and not with eloquence and wisdom so
that the cross would not be emptied of its power (1 Cor
In Galatians 5:11, Paul declares
that if he preaches circumcision the stumbling block of the cross is
removed. This is plainly saying that to
accept circumcision is denying the cross happened. Theologically this is nonsense. And Paul would have known it for there were
a lot of different views in early Christianity. Millions have believed in the cross as a
vehicle of salvation and atonement without believing that it abolished good
works and religious rites as specified in the Law of Moses. Catholics follow a
replacement for the Law of Moses and still believe that Jesus died in their
place for their sins. You could have
circumcision without denying the cross.
Notice that he doesn’t say denying the atonement or the propitiation but
the cross, the historical event. Clearly,
then if you accept circumcision you contradict Jesus who told the Church about
the cross and if you contradict Jesus you also deny that he was reliable in
relation to the cross having happened.
To deny one then is to deny the other.
Perhaps when Jesus revealed in
visions to the apostles that he was nailed to a cross he stated it had to
happen to free Christians from circumcision for the gospels never portray a
Jesus who was that emphatic about doing this.
There is nothing else that could make the cross and the abolition of the
law so inseparable. But this would be
saying Paul should have written that the block of the propitiation is removed
by accepting circumcision. If he didn’t
mean that then why didn’t he say so?
Paul talked as if the risen Christ
was a mystical supernatural being who somehow was one person with the Church
which was his body so in a sense he and his cult were Jesus Christ (Galatians
2:20; 1 Corinthians 6:15-17; 1 Corinthians 12) which may explain the reference
to Jesus testifying to Pontius Pilate in one of his letters which most scholars
however think is not really his work.
Perhaps Jesus was thought to have had appeared to Pilate after his
resurrection. There were many Christian
legends from early times to that effect.
The Christianity of the apostles and
Paul had nothing to do with a Jesus who provably lived but a visionary
one. This was the testimony of the first
Christian writer so it supersedes any evidence that allegedly shows that Christ
lived.
The idea that people would not say
embarrassing things about Jesus that he insulted pagan women with possessed
daughters and was nailed to the cross as a political criminal is incorrect for
all invented gods have unflattering tales told about them and the crucifixion was
turned into an advantage for it led to the heart-warming idea that Jesus died
for sinners in atonement and rose from the dead and showed himself stronger
than his killers.
The secular references to Jesus, which
are very flimsy, could have come from hearsay that was understandably taken as
fact just like some people believe that Joseph Smith of the Mormons really had
golden plates even though that is part of the Mormon myth though without
accepting any of the other Mormon legends.
They take the plates as history and the rest as nonsense.
There is no evidence that the first
century Jewish historian, Josephus, mentioned Jesus for we know that a
Christian interpolator edited his work and inserted references to Jesus and
could have written all Josephus’ alleged references to Christ.
Even when he wrote about what
happened to “James the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ” it is unthinkable
that he would have passed by a chance to run Jesus down to please his Roman
sponsors like he did with all the other false Christs. Onesimus was an
example of a person who was not related to another man but who was designated
as a blood brother and not just a brother in Jesus. You can see this in Paul’s letter to Philemon
where the idea that blood ties can be created by supernatural adoption and not
just by being a real brother is put forward.
It is a mistake for those who oppose mythicism to disparage it.
Even if it simply shows that the evidence for Jesus is not great or very
weak or that nobody can know if Jesus existed or not or that it is one of the
matters on which competent scholars can choose to disagree it still manages to
destroy Christianity. If Christians
would accept weak evidence, then they have no right to object if somebody
invents a new creed on slender evidence and yet they intolerantly claim to
follow Jesus who called himself “the Truth”.