Jesus Lied - He Was Only Human: Debunking the New Testament (28 page)

What appears most revealing of all comes not from what the New Testament authors wrote about him, but what historians and contemporaries did not write about him. Not a single historian, philosopher, or more significantly, one of his followers that lived during his time, makes any mention of him. None! It is this fact alone that is enough to convince Christopher Hitchens that the biblical Jesus is character of pure imagination.

Invariably Christian apologists will offer the factually flawed excuse that there were no prominent historians during that period, or the more fanciful apology that the Romans of Jerusalem were poor record keepers. These are both laughable assertions, as the Romans were astute record keepers, and Jerusalem was regarded as centre of education.

Now, Christians will throw forth the name Josephus Flavius as a non-Christian historian who wrote about Jesus, but this is as easy point to shoot down. Flavius is the earliest historian to mention Jesus, but scholars believe that his brief mentions of Jesus (in
Antiquities
) came from interpolations fraudulently penned by a later Church founder. Further, the date of Josephus’ birth was 37 CE, at least several years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, thus making the premise he was an eyewitness a false one. Moreover, he wrote
Antiquities
in 93 CE, long after Mathew, Mark, and Luke had published their gospels. Therefore we can conclude that even if Josephus’ brief mentions of Jesus were penned by him and not fraudulently added later, then we know that his information came to him second-hand, and therefore serves only as hearsay evidence.

At the end of the day, we have only after-the-event writings of Jesus, the writings we have examined in close detail, and not one of these writers gives a source or supports his claim with evidential material about the ‘Savior’. As far as historians in that place at that time, there were many. One such example is the writings of Philo Judaeus, born in 20 BCE He is regarded as the preeminent Jewish-Hellenistic historian of Jesus’ time and area. He wrote detailed accounts of Jewish events that took place within the Jerusalem and the surrounding regions. Not once does he ever mention the name Jesus. His silence is not isolated, as both Seneca (4 BCE – 65 CE) and Pliny the Elder (23 BCE – 79 CE) wasted not a single drop of ink in recording the life of Christianity’s leading light.

Historian Jim Walker offered this anecdote in framing the absence of Jesus from any eyewitness historical documentation as such:

Now, I have debated theists on the absence of evidence for Jesus’ existence, and invariably the response comes back a little something like this, “If we use your historical standard then we can’t prove also that Caesar, Alexander the Great, or Napoleon, existed.” I hope you can see just how utterly absurd such a notion truly is. For all of these historical figures we have personal writings, artifacts, or eyewitness records, whereas, for the proclaimed Son of God we have
nada
. We have the equivalent of the hole in a donut.

Let’s take a closer examination of Alexander the Great, for example, who preceded Jesus by nearly four centuries. For him we have signed treaties, and even a letter from him to the people of Chios, dated at 332 BCE What or Augustus Caesar? Well, for him we have the
Res gestae divi augusti,
a personal account of his own works and deeds. There is also a letter from him to his son, numerous eyewitness accounts and portraits. Sure, we have paintings of Jesus, but none were painted while he sat or stood before the artist. The fact the Bible makes no mention of Jesus’ description is a further blow to the credibility of the claim that Jesus lived. One must think it odd that not a single record describes Jesus’ appearance, outside of the account found in Josephus’ records that were later proved fraudulent. In fact, it wasn’t until a few hundred years after Jesus’ death that the first images of what he looked like started to appear on the scene, which is why we have Jesus looking like anything from a Mid-West farmer’s son to an Italian soccer player.

Ultimately, we are left with determining historical facts from hearsay. Facts derive out of evidence, and if one cannot support a hypothesis with evidence then it a hypothesis it remains. While this does not completely rule out any likelihood that the Jesus of the Bible lived, it is more likely probable that his biography was ramshackled together, borrowing mythologies from neighboring cultural centers. Stories that were incorporated into the Jesus Christ legend, including the virgin birth, walking on water, and resurrection were narratives familiar to numerous religious sects of that time and place.

While I personally am not sure one way or the other regarding the historicity of Jesus, many notable scholars continue to assert his life a complete fabrication. Some examples include:

John M Allegro,
who argued in two books –
The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross
(1970) and
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth
(1979) – that Christianity began as a hallucinogenic mushroom consuming shamanic cult. In the latter books’ foreword, Mark Hall writes:

GA Wells,
Emeritus Professor at Birkbeck College, London, and author of
Did Jesus Exist?
(1975),
The Jesus Legend
(1996),
The Jesus Myth
(1999),
Can We Trust the New Testament
(2004), and
Cutting Jesus Down to Size
(2009). Wells writes that there are three broad approaches to the historicity of Jesus:

Wells believes that the truth lay somewhere between points 1 and 2.

Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy,
British co-authors of
The Jesus Mysteries
(1999) and
The Laughing Jesus
(2005) argue that the Gospels
“can tell us nothing at all about an historical Jesus because no such man existed.”
They claim that early Christians created Jesus as a Jewish version of an amalgam of dying and rising gods.

Jesus, if there ever really was a historical Jesus and I do doubt that there was, was nothing more than a schizophrenic, uppity asshole whose claim to fame was nothing more than pissing off the ruling Jewish authority, then getting killed because of it. Were it not for a series of good publicists, some very talented PR work and the work of the Emperor Constantine, the memory of Jesus would have decomposed, along with his flesh, TWO THOUSAND FUCKING YEARS AGO!

But don’t let that deter your faith!

Evidence of Jesus’ biographical architecture, throughout the New Testament, is right there for all to see… if you’re willing to open your eyes. Separating fact from fiction and biography from bullshit isn’t nearly as difficult as you may have guessed prior to reading this rudimentary level examination of the Holy authors. Hopefully, like me, you will have the appetite to dig deeper – each shovel of information striking painful blows to a socially retarding man made ancient belief, that is Christianity, or any other religion for that matter.

Teaching our children to look for and ask for the evidence, to question everything, and to think critically are among the most valuable lessons that we can teach. Doing so can only improve the conditions that underlie our incredible civilization.

History has proven time and time again that bad things happen when large chunks of the demographic believe what they’re told
absolutely
and with unwavering blind faith. Do we really want to return to a time where religion rules, and rationality, logic and actual morality take a back seat to “Thou shall worship no gods before me”? It’s those conditions that harvest political despots. Surely, eight years of Bush has taught us to not be so blindsided again.

Despite what we’ve discovered in this book, we can always be sure that the Christian-Right is waiting diligently patiently for their next Messiah. Then again, if Jesus’ own disciples didn’t get to see him again after Jesus had said, in no uncertain terms, that he’d return, Republican or not, you’re ultimately left with two chance, none and none.

Christianity, like its gassy uncle Judaism, and its naughty nephew with ADD, Islam, contains no mystery. It’s not a journey into the unknown, and people shouldn’t treat it as such. The facts for its creation are evident. We have the facts. This book did not find the gunman who shot Kennedy; it only presented what scholars present as verified fact, and the passages of the Bible itself. There was no magic to this, no miracles, no visions or speaking in tongues. I wish I could tell you there was, but there really, truly, plainly wasn’t.

Sociologists have demonstrated in numerous studies that societies move towards religious belief when placed under collective stress. The post 9-11 America was a great example of this. Similarly, in the decades prior to the first century, the Jews prophesized and hungered for a Messiah, a deliverer that would restore their former glory, a time when Jerusalem and the Holy Land was theirs.

The phrase “the end times” was a common meme told as a means to inspire and provide comfort to the Jewish people, while they lived in a nation occupied by their Roman overlords. Many Jews believed a final war at God’s behest would see the destruction and end to the Roman occupation. No doubt it is this sentiment that ignited the flame for the future growth of Christianity.

We know that the early Christians lived within pagan communities, and therefore it is of little surprise or coincidence that many of the Hellenistic and pagan myths parallel so closely to the mythology of Jesus.

One such example is the religion of Zoroaster, founded more than five centuries before Jesus’ alleged arrival, a religion that began in Persia. The cornerstones of this faith were rooted in the belief of a celestial heaven and afterlife, a last judgment, and resurrection of the dead.

Similarly, Osiris, Hercules, Mithra, Hermes, Prometheus, Perseus and others compare to the Christian’s mythical fairytale. They are epic tales, which describe very similar feats of incredulity, but 85% of Americans don’t believe in them. Patrick Campbell, in
The Mythical Jesus
, highlights the similarities of the more topical myths of Hercules, Mirtha, Hermes, and Osiris:

“All served as pre-Christian sun gods, yet all allegedly had gods for fathers, virgins for mothers; had their births announced by stars; got born on the solstice around December 25
^th
; had tyrants who tried to kill them in their infancy; met violent deaths; rose from the dead; and nearly all got worshiped by “wise men” and had allegedly fasted for forty days. [McKinsey, Chapter 5]

Saint Justin Martyr, second century apologist, was at least intellectually honest enough to recognize the analogies between Christianity and Paganism. To the Pagans, he wrote:

“When we say that the Word, who is first born of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven; we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter (Zeus).” [First Apology, ch. Xxi]

I think that adequately illustrates the evidence for this religion’s creation. For the benefit of brevity I will leave you with the Bertrand Russell’s profoundly brilliant summary to a speech he gave in London in 1928:

“We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world – its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not as good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.”

Hope you enjoyed the read, and are now able to see Christianity for what it is – a melting pot of ideology handcrafted by a great number of men, none of whom ever met or knew the living Jesus. The question is – will the evidence thus presented sway Christians from their belief? Perhaps; or perhaps not!