Jesus Lied - He Was Only Human: Debunking the New Testament (23 page)

The passage in question is:

It’s Mark’s view that Jesus’ crucifixion and death was a pre-ordained human sacrifice to atone for the original sin, Adam’s sin. In other words, his death was one of atonement.

The author of Luke writes in the Book of Acts, however:

Luke’s view is believers will be rewarded for directly asking for the forgiveness of their own sins. In case you’re thinking that this is just a game of literary semantics in play here, it’s not. So there! These are fundamental differences; atonement and forgiveness is not the same thing. I will submit to Ehrman, to illustrate:

Paul, while not one of the four Gospels, but whose writings predated Mark and Luke, writes:

Thus supporting Mark’s position that Jesus died to atone for ‘our sins’, ie original sin. Therefore, Luke is all out on his own – proving once again the Gospels are not in unison.

What I could never understand about Jesus’ ‘sacrifice’ is that - if he were God, as John contends, then what kind of sacrifice was it? He was living in the first century Jerusalem, disease was rife, it was dusty and oppressively hot, everyone hated him, and his closest friends betrayed him. Heaven and Nirvana - were described by sages and prophets as
“paradise”, that is, despite the dragons and creepy beasts detailed in Revelations
. As such, how can Jesus claim to be sacrificing when his death meant leaving the earthly shit-hole for the comfort of eternal life in a wondrous kingdom, where he’d truly be king? If this is the case, then what the hell was he waiting for? I’d have volunteered for a crucifixion well before age 33. “Hurry, here’s a cross and some nails. Let’s get this thing started.” But that’s me!

Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, a Civil War veteran, political leader, and orator during the Golden Age of Free-Thought, suggests that the concept of Jesus’ atonement is simply an extension of the Mosaic tradition. This is the tradition of blood sacrifice and is referred to by many as the “enemy of morality.”

With all of the above said, however, we are left with a very interesting conundrum; if evolution is indeed the evidence based fact that it is, then Adam and Eve never existed and Jesus’ death is, by reverse logic, made irrelevant.

For man living in the first to seventeenth centuries, evolution was neither documented, discovered, nor understood. Thus Jesus’ atonement for the original sin is redundant. The sin committed by Adam and Eve, that of eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, an act that saw their immortality withdrawn and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, never occurred. As such, what did Jesus die for, exactly?

I’m not here to convince you of the fact of evolution, far greater minds than I can do that easily in my stead. Before you read the following excerpt from esteemed evolutionary biologist, bestselling author and outspoken atheist, Professor Richard Dawkins’ book,
The Greatest Show on Earth,
remember that simple little conundrum above. If Adam, Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Snake and the creator of heaven and earth never existed (i.e. as an extrapolation of biological evolution by way of natural selection) then what was the purpose of Jesus?

The answer is simple; there is none.

Theologically speaking, cannot call him or herself a Christian while maintaining belief in evolutionary science.

The two are absolutely mutually exclusive.

Oh, how I love this guy so, Saint Paul. He was arguably the greatest marketer or publicist to ever grace the planet and most certainly the first tabloid journalist of the ancient world. How can you not love the creator of the West’s most dominant religion? As we will soon discover, Christianity, the religion, has less to do with Jesus and much more to do with Paul. Although ‘Paulinity’ or the ‘Pauline Christology’ doesn’t have the same ‘ring’ to it as Christianity, the theology is uniquely, incontrovertibly and unquestionably his.

Born with the name Saul, he claimed that he was Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, from a well-established Pharisee family in Tarsus, thus he was known as Saul of Tarsus. According to the Book of Acts, and although later contradicted by Paul himself, he studied in Jerusalem under the tutelage of the leader of the Pharisees, Gamaliel.

This account is, however, subject to reasonable doubt as the tribe of Benjamin had ceased to exist well before Saul/Paul came along. This contradiction is supported by the Ebionites, as they claimed he came from a family of newly converted Jews, with a background in the tent-making business.

The Bible first introduces us to Saul, prior to taking the name Paul (which he adopted post-conversion to Christianity), in the Book of Acts. His introduction is somewhat perplexing as he enters the scene completely without reference or context. It’s as though he just wrote himself into the script without anyone noticing, and hoped that he’d just be accepted as part of the cast. Apparently, it worked:

It’s odd that the writer makes no previous reference to Saul; while at the same time introduces him in such an overt and apparently well established manner. Nonetheless, we are told that Saul hated Christians so much for their radical non-Jewish teachings and un-circumcised penises, that he loved nothing more than arresting and getting them stoned… sorry, stoning them.
“Hand carved rocks for 1 shekel a packet!”

We are not told for what duration did Saul the
‘Christian hunter’
carry out his mercenary deeds but we are given an elaborate description of his miraculous conversion. For the Bible says:

Paul was not traveling alone; he was with several buddies at the time that Jesus’ ghost spoke to him on the road to Damascus. What is it that his fellow travelers heard?*

* The differences in these three passages also illuminate a dishonest attempt by Bible translators to reconcile the variations of Luke’s accounts. For example, Acts 22:9 in the New International, and the New American versions actually read as: “My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.” However, the Greek word “akouo” is translated 373 times in the New Testament as “heard”. The only occasion where this translation does not apply is in Acts 22:9. Why? A sneaky effort to reconcile this conflicting passage in the hope you weren’t paying attention. These guys were good!

All of the above passages are from the same author, Luke. But we are unable to reconcile whether or not Paul’s companions “stood” or “fell”, upon hearing the voice. Nor can we determine whether they knew it was Jesus (“Him”) or did not. This is yet another example of the same author contradicting himself. Didn’t they have editors back in those days?

This passage makes the Christian faith even less plausible though, if that were at all possible. Not only did Paul invent Christian theology, but he also did so without any conversation or meeting with the living Jesus, and, though this should hardly be surprising by this point, no eyewitness testimony.

Paul’s only dialogue with the corner piece of his religion was a chat with the ghost of Jesus on the road to Damascus. The adage of,
‘If you speak to God you’re faithful, if God speaks to you then you are a lunatic’
, rings loudly for me at this point. Nonetheless, Paul picks himself up from the ground, dusts off his garment, and then comes to the sudden realization that he cannot see. His sight is lost, thus his servants lead him by hand into the city of Damascus.

Now safely at a friend’s house within the city, Saul sits there in shock and does not sleep or eat for three days. All the while his sight was still lost.

What I find somewhat ridiculous though is that he claimed to have seen Jesus and this is why he went blind. But isn’t that a contradiction in terms? How does one see something that is invisible? God, I love the Bible.

We now find ourselves at a contradictory crossing point between Paul’s own account and that of the writer of the book of Acts. According to the writer known as Luke, Paul was led via a vision to a disciple by the name of Ananias, with specific instructions;
“Go to the house of Judas on Main Street and ask for a man named Saul from Tarsus, for he is praying. Once there lay your hands on him and his sight will be restored.”

Ananias tried to argue with God that he did not want to lay hands on a man who had persecuted Christian Jews so viciously and joyfully. God replies:

Ananias carried out God’s orders as instructed, laying his hands on Saul. As he did so, the ‘fish-scales’ covering Saul’s eyes fell to the ground and he could see again.

Obviously grateful for his restored sight, Saul immediately began to preach the word of ‘Jesus the Savior’ in synagogues throughout Jerusalem and Damascus. The chief priests were mortified upon learning of his conversion and immediately concocted a plan to capture and kill him. Saul miraculously stumbled onto their plot and fled, and in the process changed his name to Paul. Henceforth, becoming the most important man in the marketing of brand Jesus.

This story is all fine and dandy until you read Paul’s own testimony about what happened directly following his meeting with Jesus’ ghost on the Damascus Highway. In his letter to Galatians, Paul writes: