Paper #3: The Disappearing Jesus
There is no evidence that Jesus, the man, also known as the historic Jesus, ever existed. The “evidence” used by Christian churches comes, mainly, from four sources: the prophesies of the Old Testament, the Gospels of the New Testament, the Epistles of the New Testament, and the writings of non-Christians of the period. All of these sources are tainted by inconsistencies, forgery, fraud and lies by Christians who knew there was scant evidence for the historic Jesus and who, therefore, attempted to create such “evidence”. (see, also, "The Historicity of Jesus" from The Atheist Foundation of Australia.)
The prophesies can be discounted immediately because they are made in the context of Jewish lore and relate to the Jewish Messiah. When the New Testament was in production, there are indications that they were altered in an attempt to accord with the prophesies, but this attempt was crude and was not successful. The Gospels need a little more attention.
The production of the New Testament as we know it was developed by about 350 AD. Under the control of Christian Bishops from Rome, Jerusalem and other places in Asia minor, the extant writings of Christian sects were put together for examination. This production was stimulated by a meeting of Bishops of all Christian sects ordered by the Roman Emperor Constantine in Nicaea in 325 AD. Constantine’s purpose was to stop Christian sect bickering and fighting across his domain. To this end, he eventually ordered all Christian sects with the exception of the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church to be disbanded or assimilated under threat of banishment, imprisonment, torture and death. This began a purge which lasted about fifty years, after which the two selected sects reigned supreme. The Nicaean conference lasted several months and two further things were accomplished: the Nicaean Creed was adopted articulating exactly what Christians believed, and the Bible compilation was begun.
The compilation of the New Testament was made with one target in mind. Those pieces that were selected were ruled “the word of God”. There is no description of how this selection was made or how these Bishops knew that the selected pieces were “the word of God”, but many pieces such as the Gospel of St. Thomas and the Q Gospel were excluded. The chosen Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by unknown authors - the names attached to them are arbitrary and for identification purposes only. In fact, the Gospels were written by many people over the 325 years since Jesus’ “death” and served as advertisements of the religion by various Christian sects. Evidence of this is found in the writing analyses of the Gospels using modern technology.
The Gospels, themselves, are not reliable evidence of Jesus the man. They are contradictory, Matthew, Luke and John have used Mark as their foundation, they were written between 70 and 150 years after Jesus’ “death” and are, therefore not the production of eye witnesses, but are the compilation of many stories passed down by word-of-mouth, and many of their assertions are wrong, historically and factually. If the laws of evidence are to be applied equally to social customs such as legal systems, scientific research, historic analysis, and the Gospels then the Gospels cannot be accepted as evidence of anything.
The Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles provide no further evidence of Jesus the man. Each of them refers to a mystical (spiritual) Jesus, even the Pauline Epistles. There is also evidence that both of these sources were tampered with. For example, not all the Pauline Epistles were written by Paul and we know from details of his travels and his decisions that Paul was not an honest man. He tended to select sides of an issue which suited him according to the people who were hosting him. For example, he was for the inclusion of non-Jews (gentiles) in the church at times, and at times he was against it according to whom he was with. These attributes and exclusions, once again, make the Epistles unreliable as evidence. Paul did not know Jesus and so his provided information is all hearsay anyway.
Outside the Christian churches, another source of so-called evidence is found in various writings such as Josephus’ writings (Josephus was a Jew captured by the Romans in the Roman/Jewish war when the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed. He lived in Rome, pandering to the Romans by writing informational material about the Jews that could be used to identify them and to analyze their threat to Rome. One of his books is, “The History of the Jews”.) In Josephus’ writing there is one paragraph that refers to Jesus. This paragraph clashes with the text before it and after it. If it is excluded then the meanings of these before and after texts accord precisely. The style of the paragraph is also different from the rest of the book. It is, therefore, considered a fraudulent inclusion put in the middle of the book as “evidence” by a Christian or Christians. In fact this is the case with all of the non-Christian references which include both Jewish and Roman texts: forgery of the pieces referring to Jesus is predominant and, once again therefore, they cannot be used as evidence of Jesus, the man.
Some reference to Jesus’ life as described in the Gospels is important. The virgin birth is a copy of the birth of Horus to Isis, Gods of both the Egyptians and the Romans (and others) before Christ was born (see PHOTOS on the main page of this website, top menu).
The information of Jesus as a child is scanty, and then about fifteen years of his life are excluded. It seems strange that the Son of God should not have as much of his life on earth well documented, but it is not so. When we meet him again he is trying to preach to the rich of Galilee, but is forcefully evicted by them. He then turns to the poor and from them he selects his Apostles. Both Jesus and his Apostles were illiterate and spoke a language, Aramaic, which was not widely used. No Christian publications were in Aramaic, but in Latin, Greek or Hebrew. The recording of Jesus’ life, therefore, was not directly from his followers unless from word of mouth - and it is well known how inaccurate this is. Jesus meets John the Baptist who selects him to carry on his work after baptizing him - again, a strange thing to do since Jesus was the Son of God, and would not need, it seems, to be baptized. Another strange thing that is supposed to have happened here, is that God tells Jesus that he is proud of him. Strange because if Jesus was God, then he was congratulating himself. These items show that many of the stories about Jesus’ are not clearly thought out and provide peculiarly twisted views of him and his actions.
Jesus goes to Jerusalem to join in the Passover celebrations. He is described in the Gospels as riding on a donkey with adoring crowds laying palm fronds in front of the donkey’s feet as he progressed towards one of the main gates to the city. This is nonsense. During Passover each year thousands of pilgrims came to Jerusalem to pray in the Temple and participate in the festivities. The palm fronds were laid to keep down the dust from all the feet walking on the roads into Jerusalem. To say that they were laid down for Jesus again twists the facts. The story of Jesus being betrayed by Judas is another piece of nonsense - Jesus had told his Apostles at the Passover seder that he was going to die. He could have done one of two things when the soldiers came to arrest him - given himself up without the help of Judas, going to his death as predicted, or slip away without getting caught as did most of his Apostles. If the place where, it is alleged, he was caught is examined, the ease of escape is simple to see, but Jesus made no effort to escape - in fact, as it is described and knowing he was going to his death, he committed suicide. Not a good thing for a God to do.
The execution of Jesus was said to be done by crucifixion on a cross. However, it is clear that the Romans did not use crosses for crucifixion at this time. They used a single stake, sharpened at one end. The hands were stretched out above the head and nailed or bound together to the stake as were the feet and the pointed end of the stake was placed in the ground. The sharpened stake was also used in different ways - to be hammered up a victim’s anus, to be hammered through a victims body, or to be hammered down a victim’s throat. Nasty, but effective as a combination of torture and execution. The cross did not become a symbol of Christianity until around 400 AD when it was first depicted on a coin. Several churches have questioned the use of the cross, given its doubtful origin. The Anglican Church has questioned its use and suggested other symbols.
There are so many fraudulent pieces of writing, so many inaccuracies, and so many forgeries that it is impossible to accept that an historic Jesus actually existed. From his birth to his death (without those elusive fifteen years), from the descriptions of his teachings to his entrance to Jerusalem on Passover, from his execution to his mythical rising from the death and ascent into heaven, every act and every process is questionable. The Gospels cannot be trusted as evidence of anything except multiple advertisements for Christian sects who exaggerated and lied to get their flock to grow. The Epistles do not describe a human Jesus, and the non-Christian writings are all forgeries. The manipulation of the New Testament by the exclusion of many pieces of writing, and the statement that the selected pieces are the word of God indicate the same thing - fraud to maintain Christian growth among the ignorant.
Given the lack of reliable evidence, therefore, we must agree that Jesus never lived on earth, never was a human being, and that all the stories about him are myth. This means that the entire corpus on which Christianity is based is false and the actions which define Christianity by the historic Jesus (the resurrection, and the ascent into heaven) are figments of many imaginations. Jesus the man and, therefore, the beliefs in Christianity, do not exist.
(See, "The Criminal Christ", a later paper on this web site, as an extension of this paper.)
For an expansion of precise references covering some of the assertions in this essay see: “The Jesus Puzzle” by Earl Doherty.
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