What Do You Do With a Chocolate Jesus? (21 page)

I wonder why Paul has to rely on a supernatural source for his information when, according Scripture, he personally knew Peter and James, who personally knew Jesus. Paul didn’t need a revelation from the dead; a simple conversation with the living would have sufficed.

Well, Paul isn’t big on hard reporting. He’s one of those “gut” thinkers who equates conviction with fact. He’s slopping over with wisdom that just sort of comes to him. Much of it is good advice, and all of it is well-intended. He wants us to be decent, honorable, and respectful. Fine. But then he gets all cultish with how we’re all part of the body of Christ, washed clean by his blood. We live in him and he lives in us. We’re his slaves, his servants, his body, his glory, his ambassadors, the sheep of his pasture, the fish of his aquarium, the special sauce of his Big Mac, and so on.

Paul doesn’t know when to quit. Nor is he burdened by humility:

“I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine;” [Galatians 5:10]

 

There’s a lot of that going around the Christian world these days. What’s really frustrating is that, when Paul finally says something sensible, nobody seems to listen:

“…there is no distinction between Jew and Greek (Gentile).” [Romans 10:12]

 

It’s a declaration of ethnic and religious equality before God. That sentiment sure slipped through the cracks over the centuries, didn’t it?

“…never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God…” [Romans 12:19]

 

That would save on defense spending.

“…if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink…overcome evil with good.” [Romans 12:20–21]

 

Really? So we start sending humanitarian aid to the Taliban? Well, Paul is just a big-hearted guy:

Let all that you do be done in love.” [1 Corinthians 16:14]

 

That’s sweet. But remember, it is love for God that he’s talking about:

“If any one has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.” [1 Corinthians 16:22]

 

See what I mean? Paul always lets you know where he’s coming from, even if where he’s coming from is the booby hatch:

“We are fools for Christ’s sake…” [1 Corinthians 4:10]

 

No argument here.

Paul’s Jesus

Despite his exhaustive evangelizing, Paul leaves the world with a major question: Was his Jesus a human or something else? Paul’s writings are the oldest Christian works known, yet they seem to describe a heavenly savior rather than an earthly one; a cosmic figure in a spiritual realm rather than a flesh-and-blood man.

Paul never mentions any details of Jesus’ life on earth, nor does he place Jesus in any geographic place or historical time. He offers only one quote, about the Eucharist, and that’s it. Otherwise, he never cites Jesus, even when the situation calls for it, and even when Jesus expresses an idea more eloquently than Paul does. He never describes the particulars of Jesus’ ministry. He never mentions Bethlehem or virgin births or John the Baptist or miracle healings. No mass feedings or landmark sermons. He says nothing about Pontius Pilate or Jesus on trial. He seems completely unaware of the stories that show up years later in the four Gospels.

It’s argued that the people Paul was writing to already knew these stories, so he didn’t have to repeat them. But he was writing before the Gospels existed, and the total lack of reference to Jesus’ words and activities starts to make you wonder. It’s almost as if Paul worshipped a mythical figure with no earthly biography at all—a Jewish version of an Olympian deity. The Greeks swapped legends about their gods, but they didn’t always provide full back-stories. Likewise, Paul’s Jesus has the supernatural persona of a Greek myth, but the details that make for a believable life story didn’t hit the press until years after Paul’s death.

Some of the last epistles in the New Testament,
Hebrews 5:7
and
1 John 4:2
, do mention Jesus existing “in the flesh.” But these letters were produced very late in the first century and, by that time, the four Gospels were already making the rounds.

Did Jesus Exist?

Somewhere along the line we have to ask the inevitable question—did Jesus of Nazareth ever actually walk the earth?

Most Bible skeptics figure Jesus was a real guy whose life story was inflated to cosmic proportions by his fan club, or through rumor, over generations of time. But another school of thought claims that there was no historical person at the core of the New Testament at all. They hold that Jesus Christ is an entirely mythical figure created by fiction writers who concocted a life story out of scraps of the Old Testament.

One compelling argument for this view is the striking absence of evidence where there ought to be some for so many details of the Gospels—the Roman census, the Star of Bethlehem, the slaughter of the innocents, miracle healings, raising the dead, the feeding of thousands, the twelve apostles, and a crucifixion drama that included earthquakes, darkness at noon, and zombies stalking Jerusalem. You’d think there’d be
some
kind of independent record of these events. Yet, there is no contemporary evidence at all. Zip.

Even if you take into account the fact that Jerusalem and vicinity were basically burned to the ground in A.D. 70, thus eradicating both documents and eyewitnesses, most of these events would have been known about far beyond the territory flattened by the Romans. This lack of outside verification is called the argument from silence, and it’s a pretty good one.

Still, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Many actual events have left no historical record. Problem is, even the evidence offered to
support
a historical Jesus doesn’t add up. There are the Gospels themselves, with all the inconsistencies, absurdities, historical inaccuracies, mistranslations, and scientific impossibilities you have to roll with to take these stories literally. There is the absence of eyewitness accounts. The disingenuous use of Old Testament verse to make the Jesus story look like the fulfillment of prophecy. And there are the suspicious similarities between his biography and all those other resurrection myths.

Scapegoats

So, where and when do we find the first references to Jesus outside the Bible? One of the earliest was written around A.D. 115 by a Roman senator and historian named Tacitus. He tells us that, in A.D. 64, screwball emperor Nero blamed a fire he set in Rome on the little-known religious sect that followed Jesus. Because they were “infamous for their abominations,” according to Tacitus, they were subjected to “the most exquisite punishments” that included being killed by dogs, nailed to crosses, or set aflame and used as night lamps.

Christians call this the first persecution, and it’s often trumpeted as an epic purge. Actually, the edict against them lasted only one year and only covered the city of Rome—if it happened at all. Tacitus is reporting an event he never saw a half-century after it supposedly happened. He’s getting the story second hand at best. Fact is, there’s scant evidence that Christians were even established in Rome back in A.D. 64.

True or not, the story was useful to Christians because it suggested that they were important enough to persecute, and it never hurt their cause to be seen as victims of a cruel world.

Josephus

The earliest known reference to Jesus from a non-biblical source is a famous, or infamous, passage from a huge, multi-volume work entitled
Antiquities of the Jews
by the great Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. He was one of Rome’s top literary figures and was
the
historian of first century Judea.

In one of his books, written around A.D. 93, he briefly veers off his essay on the troubles Rome is having with its occupation of Jerusalem and inserts a single, intriguing paragraph. Today it’s known as the
Testimonium Flavianum
:

  “At about this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one might call him a man. For he was one who accomplished surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as are eager for novelties. He won over many of the Jews and many of the Greeks. He was The Messiah.

  When Pilate, upon an indictment brought by the principle men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him from the very first did not cease to be attached to him.

  On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the holy prophets had foretold this and myriads of other marvels concerning him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has to this day still not disappeared.”

 

This passage has long been offered as the
best
and earliest evidence outside the Bible for a historical Jesus. There are, however, a lot of problems with it.

For one, it was written sixty years after the crucifixion and at least twenty years after the Gospel of Mark—not exactly an eyewitness report. Worse, the oldest existing copy of it was produced centuries after Josephus allegedly wrote it. Who knows what copyists might have added or changed? (They were known to do such things.)

When reading the
Antiquities
, this Jesus paragraph seems out of context. It interrupts the larger story rather than fitting into it. After it appears, the text goes back to the original subject and there’s no further discussion of Jesus. Its literary style is also different from the surrounding text and, if you delete it altogether, the larger work reads more smoothly. You don’t miss the paragraph.

Suspiciously, the passage neatly summarizes the entire Passion story—in a couple of sentences it crams in references to miracles, The Messiah, prosecution, crucifixion, Pontius Pilate, and resurrection. It’s a little too convenient. It looks for all the world like it was inserted by a later writer.

Let’s apply a little common sense. Josephus was Jewish, so he’d never refer to Jesus, or
anyone
, as “The Messiah.” If he did believe this about Jesus, he wouldn’t describe him like a novelty act for a pack of suckers, and then offhandedly claim he was the long-awaited savior of his people. This would be like a modern reporter casually writing about a local guru with a popular following…oh and, by the way, he’s the Overlord who just arrived on the Mothership to take over the earth. Journalists call that burying the lead.

Nor would a believer in Jesus call him a simple “wise man,” nor would he mention “the tribe of Christians” as if he just discovered them in darkest Africa. Some argue that a Christian forger wouldn’t use this term either…unless, of course, he was being crafty—a distinct possibility, as we’ll see. Still others counter that
some
of this passage may have been written by Josephus and only parts of it were inserted.

Elsewhere in
Antiquities
, Josephus mentions other so-called messiahs, but he doesn’t take any of them seriously. There is also one other dubious passage in which Josephus refers to “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose brother was James.” But similar debates rage over the authenticity of this line.

The fact that the passage comes to us through a prominent fourth century Church propagandist named Eusebius doesn’t help. He was Emperor Constantine’s top religious public relations man, and he had no problem putting a heavy Christian spin on most of what he wrote. Some suggest he was the guy who inserted the dubious paragraph. It’s just the sort of thing he’d do.

Why Faith?

You can go back and forth on the evidence for a historic Jesus forever, but you have to admit it’s all a pretty thin sandwich. It’s most likely that a real person inspired the Gospel accounts of Jesus. But if he existed, his biographers really took liberties. There is no archeological evidence to back them up at all. Discoveries of a garden, or a tomb, or a tattoo parlor mentioned in the Gospels prove nothing. Fictional stories are usually set in real places; unearthing a legend’s location doesn’t make the story true. And every time some antique dealer comes up with a relic traceable to Jesus, the evidence is inconclusive or the guy turns out to be an established huckster.

It makes you wonder—if God was so intent on spreading his word and giving us all a shot at salvation, why do we have to work so hard to ensure we get the message right? Why do we even need biblical scholars, boring archeologists, or bullyragging preachers? Why doesn’t God just appear in the sky in front of the whole world and say, “Hey! Looky here! I’m for real! Mystery over! Now clean up your act!” That’s all it would take.

The classic response to this is that God wants us to love and obey him through faith. But why is that? What does faith accomplish when it comes to love? I love my mother. I wouldn’t love her more if there were some doubt of her existence. Nor would I be more inclined to obey her rules if my belief in her was based solely on ancient writings. What good is this “have faith” requirement if it makes us less likely to get with the program? Frankly, it sounds like a load. You demand faith in an idea when you don’t have anything better to support it, like proof.