did a historical jesus exist - jim walker

7/30/2019 Did a historical Jesus exist - Jim Walker

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Did aDid a HHistorical Jesusistorical Jesus EExist?xist?Jim Walker

www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

Amazingly, the question of an actual historical Jesus rarely confronts the religious believer.

The power of faith has so forcefully driven the minds of most believers, and even apologeticscholars, that the question of reliable evidence gets obscured by tradition, religious subterfuge and

outrageous claims.

The following gives a brief outlook about the claims of a historical Jesus and why the

evidence the Christians present us cannot serve as justification for reliable evidence for a historical

Jesus.

ALL CLAIMS OF JESUS DERIVE FROM HEARSAY ACCOUNTS

No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling,

works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of

other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a

man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing thatmentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus came well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either

unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or fraudulent, mythical or

allegorical writings. Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or

interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come

from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply

because all sources about Jesus derive from hearsay accounts.

Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own

knowledge. Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest

modern scholarship. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we should

dismiss it.If you do not understand this, imagine yourself confronted with a charge for a crime which

you know you did not commit. You feel confident that no one can prove guilt because you know

that there exists no evidence whatsoever for the charge against you. Now imagine that you stand

present in a court of law that allows hearsay as evidence. When the prosecution presents its case,

everyone who takes the stand against you claims that you committed the crime, not as a witness

themselves, but solely because they claim other people said so. None of these otherpeople, mind

you, ever show up in court, nor can anyone find them.

Hearsay does not work as evidence because we have no way of knowing whether the person

lied, or simply based his or her information on wrongful belief or bias. We know from history

about witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts that hearsay provides neither reliable nor fairstatements of evidence. We know that mythology can arise out of no good information whatsoever.

We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts, or monsters, and an

innumerable number of fantasies believed as fact taken from nothing but belief and hearsay. It

derives from these reasons why hearsay cannot serves as good evidence, and the same reasoning

must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any other historical person.

Authors of ancient history today, of course, can only write from indirect observation in a time

far removed from their aim. But a valid historian's own writing gets cited with sources that trace to

the subject themselves, or to eyewitnesses and artifacts. For example, a historian today who writes

about the life of George Washington, of course, can not serve as an eyewitness, but he can provide

citations to documents which give personal or eyewitness accounts.None of the historians about

Jesus give reliable sources to eyewitnesses, therefore all we have remains as hearsay.

THE BIBLE GOSPELS

The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels


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of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from

the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most

influential of them all - Irenaeus of Lyon, who lived in the middle of the second century. Many

heretical gospels existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical

reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world,

the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures -

the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John. The four gospels then

became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings wereburned, destroyed, or lost."[Romer]

Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament- like those discovered at

Nag Hammadi- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them."[Pagels, 1995]

Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels existed during

the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus.

Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies.

The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark,

at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would

make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that

mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the

last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the

work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark..."[Pagels, 1995]

The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew and

John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that

the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even

today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many

Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St.

Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's

establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence forauthorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out

from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.

Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average

life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the

apostles births occurred at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in

their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.

The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears

deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before

Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor

served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology ofJesus without question and wrote a crude and ungrammatical account of the popular story at the

time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that

Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for

both of them. Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According

to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus and more likely

at the fourth remove. [Helms]

[* Most Bibles show 678 verses for Mark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses

came later from interpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark 16: 9-

20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transition between verse 8 and 9 appears awkward.

Even some of today's Bibles such as the NIV exclude the last 12 verses.]

The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used

them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He

improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felt theologically important, and


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heightened the miracles and magic.

The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness

(Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a

Hellenized Jew. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke came from the

Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source").

[Helms; Wilson]. However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its

author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced

with unreliable methodology and obscure sources.

John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus

and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John

disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the unknown author(s) of

this gospel wrote it in Greek near the end of the first century, and according to Bishop Shelby

Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John

21:23)." [Spong]

Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts

since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters

themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person.People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the

third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the

invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from

him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the

evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the

Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case, the Gospels can only serve, at

best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological or falsified stories.

OTHER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS

Even in antiquity people like Origen and Eusebius raised doubts about the authenticity of

other books in the New Testament such as Hebrews, James, John 2 & 3, Peter 2, Jude, andRevelation. Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James calling it worthless and an "epistle of

straw" and questioned Jude, Hebrews and the Apocalypse in Revelation. Nevertheless, all New

Testament writings came well after the alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors (with the

possible exception of Paul, although still after the alleged death).

Epistles of Paul: Paul's biblical letters (epistles) serve as the oldest surviving Christian texts,

written probably around 60 C.E. Most scholars have little reason to doubt that Paul wrote some of

them himself. However, there occurs not a single instance in all of Paul's writings that he ever

meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor does he give any reference to Jesus' life on earth. Therefore, all

accounts about a Jesus could only have come from other believers or his imagination - Hearsay.

Epistle of James: Although the epistle identifies a James as the letter writer, but whichJames? Many claim him as the gospel disciple but the gospels mention several different James.

Which one? Or maybe this James has nothing to do with any of the gospel James. Perhaps this

writer comes from any one of innumerable James outside the gospels. James served as a common

name in the first centuries and we simply have no way to tell who this James refers to. More to the

point, the Epistle of James mentions Jesus only once as an introduction to his belief. Nowhere does

the epistle reference a historical Jesus and this alone eliminates it from an historical account. [1]

Epistles of John: The epistles of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation appear so different

in style and content that they could hardly have the same author. Some suggest that these writings

of John come from the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor who followed a "John" or they

came from the work of church fathers who aimed to further the interests of the Church. Or they

could have simply come from people also named John (a very common name). No one knows.

Also note that nowhere in the body of the three epistles of "John" does it mention a John. In any

case, the epistles of John say nothing about seeing an earthly Jesus. Not only do we not know who

wrote these epistles, they can only serve as hearsay accounts. [2]
http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=014BD000http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761569182http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=014BD000http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761569182


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Epistles of Peter: Many scholars question the authorship of Peter of the epistles. Even within

the first epistle, it says in 5:12 that Silvanus wrote it. Most scholars consider the second epistle as

unreliable or an outright forgery (for some examples, see the introduction to 2 Peter in the full

edition ofThe New Jerusalem Bible, 1985, and [3]). In short, no one has any way of determining

whether the epistles of Peter come from fraud, an unknown author also named Peter (a common

name) or from someone trying to further the aims of the Church.

Of the remaining books and letters in the Bible, there occurs no other stretched claims or

eyewitness accounts for a historical Jesus and needs no mention of them here for this deliberation.

As for the existence of original New Testament documents, none exist. No book of the New

Testament survives in the original autograph copy. What we have then come from copies, and

copies of copies, of questionable originals (if the stories came piecemeal over time, as it appears it

has, then there may never have existed an original). The earliest copies we have came more than a

century later than the autographs, and these exist on fragments of papyrus. [Pritchard; Graham]

According to Hugh Schonfield, "It would be impossible to find any manuscript of the New

Testament older than the late third century, and we actually have copies from the fourth and fifth.[Schonfield]

LYING FOR THE CHURCH

The editing and formation of the Bible came from members of the early Christian Church.

Since the fathers of the Church possessed the scriptoria and determined what would appear in the

Bible, there occurred plenty of opportunity and motive to change, modify, or create texts that

might bolster the position of the Church or the members of the Church themselves.

The orthodox Church also fought against competing Christian cults. Irenaeus, who determined

the inclusion of the four (now canonical) gospels, wrote his infamous book, "Against the

Heresies." According to Romer, "Irenaeus' great book not only became the yardstick of major

heresies and their refutations, the starting-point of later inquisitions, but simply by saying what

Christianity was notit also, in a curious inverted way, became a definition of the orthodox faith." If

a Jesus did exist, perhaps eyewitness writings got burnt along with them because of their heretical

nature. We will never know.

In attempting to salvage the Bible, the respected revisionist and scholar Bruce Metzger has

written extensively on the problems of the New Testament. In his book "The Text of the New

Testament-- Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, Metzger addresses: Errors arising

from faulty eyesight; Errors arising from faulty hearing; Errors of the mind; Errors of judgment;

Clearing up historical and geographical difficulties; and Alterations made because of doctrinal

considerations.

The Church had such power over people that to question the Church could result in death.

Regardless of what the Church claimed, most people simply believed what their priests told them.

In letter LII to Nepotian, Jerome writes about his teacher, Gregory of Nazianzus. When heasked him to explain a phrase in Luke, Nazianzus evaded his request by saying I will tell you

about it in church, and there, when all the people applaud me, you will be forced against your will

to know what you do not know at all. For, if you alone remain silent, every one will put you down

for a fool."Jerome responds with, "There is nothing so easy as by sheer volubility to deceive a

common crowd or an uneducated congregation."

In the 5th century, John Chrysostom in his "Treatise on the Priesthood, Book 1,"wrote, "And

often it is necessary to deceive, and to do the greatest benefits by means of this device, whereas he

who has gone by a straight course has done great mischief to the person whom he has not

deceived."

Ignatius Loyola of the 16th century wrote in his Spiritual Exercises: "To be right ineverything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church

so decides it"
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Martin Luther opined: "What harm would it do if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of

the good and for the Christian church a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies

would not be against God, he would accept them."

With such admission to accepting lies, the burning of heretical texts, Bible errors and

alterations, how could any honest scholar take any book from the New Testament as absolute,

much less using extraneous texts that support a Church's intransigent and biased position, as

reliable evidence?

GNOSTIC GOSPELS

In 1945, an Arab made an archeological discovery in Upper Egypt of several ancient papyrus

books. They have since referred to it as The Nag Hammadi texts. They contained fifty-two

heretical books written in Coptic script which include gospels of Thomas, Philip, James, John,

Thomas, and many others. Archeologists have dated them at around 350-400 C.E. They represent

copies from previous copies. None of the original texts exist and scholars argue about a possible

date of the originals. Some of them think that they can hardly have dates later than 120-150 C.E.

Others have put it closer to 140 C.E. [Pagels, 1979]

Other Gnostic gospels such as the Gospel of Judas, found near the Egyptian site of the Nag

Hammadi texts, show a diverse pattern of story telling, always a mark of myth. The Judas gospeltells of Judas Iscariot as Jesus' most loyal disciple, just opposite that of the canonical gospel

stories. Note that the text does not claim that Judas Iscariot wrote it. The Judas gospel, a copy

written in Coptic, dates to around the third-to fourth-century. The original Greek version probably

dates to between 130 and 170 C.E., around the same time as the Nag Hammadi texts. Irenaeus first

mentions this gospel in Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) written around 180 C.E., so we

know that this represented a heretical gospel.

Since these Gnostic texts could only have its unknown authors writing well after the alleged

life of Jesus, they cannot serve as historical evidence of Jesus anymore than the canonical versions.

Again, we only have "heretical" hearsay.

NON-CHRISTIAN SOURCES

Virtually all other claims of Jesus come from sources outside of Christian writings.

Devastating to the claims of Christians, however, comes from the fact that all of these accounts

come from authors who lived afterthe alleged life of Jesus. Since they did not live during the time

of the hypothetical Jesus, none of their accounts serve as eyewitness evidence.

Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, lived as the earliest non-Christian who mentions a

Jesus. Although many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities) came

from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius), Josephus' birth in

37 C.E. (well after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus), puts him out of range of an eyewitness

account. Moreover, he wrote Antiquities in 93 C.E., afterthe first gospels got written! Therefore,

even if his accounts about Jesus came from his hand, his information could only serve as hearsay.

Pliny the Younger (born: 62 C.E.) His letter about the Christians only shows that he got his

information from Christian believers themselves. Regardless, his birth date puts him out of range

as an eyewitness account.

Tacitus, the Roman historian's birth year at 64 C.E., puts him well after the alleged life of

Jesus. He gives a brief mention of a "Christus" in hisAnnals (Book XV, Sec. 44), which he wrote

around 109 C.E. He gives no source for his material. Although many have disputed the authenticity

of Tacitus' mention of Jesus, the very fact that his birth happened afterthe alleged Jesus and wrote

the Annals during the formation of Christianity, shows that his writing can only provide us with

hearsay accounts.

Suetonius, a Roman historian, born in 69 C.E., mentions a "Chrestus," a common name.

Apologists assume that "Chrestus" means "Christ" (a disputable claim). But even if Seutonius had

meant "Christ," it still says nothing about an earthly Jesus. Just like all the others, Suetonius' birth


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occurred well after the purported Jesus. Again, only hearsay.

Talmud: Amazingly, some Christians use brief portions of the Talmud, (a collection of Jewish

civil a religious law, including commentaries on the Torah), as evidence for Jesus. They claim that

Yeshu in the Talmud refers to Jesus. However, this Yeshu, according to scholars, depicts a disciple

of Jehoshua Ben-Perachia at least a century before the alleged Christian Jesus or it may refer to

Yeshu ben Pandera, a teacher of the 2nd centuy CE. Regardless of how one interprets this, the

Palestinian Talmud didn't come into existence until the 3rd and 5th century C.E., and the

Babylonian Talmud between the 3rd and 6th century C.E., at least two centuries after the alleged

crucifixion. At best it can only serve as a controversial Christian or Jewish legend; it cannot

possibly serve as evidence for a historical Jesus.

Christian apologists mostly use the above sources for their "evidence" of Jesus because they

believe they represent the best outside sources. All other sources (Christian and non-Christian)

come from even less reliable sources, some of which include: Mara Bar-Serapion (circa 73 C.E.),

Ignatius (50 - 98? C.E.), Polycarp (69 - 155 C.E.), Clement of Rome (? - circa 160 C.E.), Justin

Martyr (100 - 165 C.E.), Lucian (circa 125 - 180 C.E.), Tertullian (160 - ? C.E.), Clement of

Alexandria (? - 215 C.E.), Origen (185 - 232 C.E.), Hippolytus (? - 236 C.E.), and Cyprian (? - 254

C.E.). As you can see, all these people lived well after the alleged death of Jesus. Not one of them

provides an eyewitness account, all of them simply spout hearsay.

As you can see, apologist Christians embarrass themselves when they unwittingly or

deceptively violate the rules of historiography by using after-the-event writings as evidence for the

event itself. Not one of these writers gives a source or backs up his claims with evidential material

about Jesus. Although we can provide numerous reasons why the Christian and non-Christian

sources prove spurious, and argue endlessly about them, we can cut to the chase by simply

determining the dates of the documents and the birth dates of the authors. It doesn't matter what

these people wrote about Jesus, an author who writes after the alleged happening and gives no

detectable sources for his material can only give example of hearsay. All of these anachronistic

writings about Jesus could easily have come from the beliefs and stories from Christian believers

themselves. And as we know from myth, superstition and faith, beliefs do not require facts orevidence for their propagation and circulation.Thus, we have only beliefs about Jesus' existence,

and nothing more.

FAKES, FRAUDS, AND FICTIONS

Because the religious mind relies on belief and faith, the religious person can inherit a

dependence on any information that supports a belief and that includes fraudulent stories, rumors,

unreliable data, and fictions, without the need to check sources, or to investigate the reliability of

the information. Although hundreds of fraudulent claims exist for the artifacts of Jesus, I will

present only three examples which seem to have a life of their own and have spread through the

religious community and especially on internet discussion groups.

The Shroud of Turin

Many faithful people believe the shroud represents the actual burial cloth of Jesus where they

claim the image on the cloth represents an actual 'photographic' image left behind by the crucified

body.

The first mention of the shroud comes from a treatise (written or dictated) by Geoffroi de

Charny in 1356 and who claims to have owned the cloth (see The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi De

Charny). Later, in the 16th century, it suddenly appeared in a cathedral in Turin, Italy. (Note that

thousands of claimed Jesus relics appeared in cathedrals throughout Europe, including the wood

from the cross, chalices, blood of Jesus, etc. These artifacts proved popular and served as a

prosperous commercial device which filled the money coffers of the churches.)

Sadly, many people of faith believe that there actually exists scientific evidence to support

their beliefs in the shroud's authenticity. Considering how the Shroud's apologists use the words,

"science," "fact," and "authentic," without actual scientific justification, and even include pseudo-


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scientists (without mentioning the 'pseudo') to testify to their conclusions, it should not come to

any surprise why a faithful person would not question their information or their motives.

Television specials have also appeared that purport the authenticity of the shroud. Science,

however, does not operate though television specials who have a commercial interest and have no

qualms about deceiving the public.

Experts around the world consider the 14-foot-long linen sheet, which has remained in a

cathedral in Turin since 1578, a forgery because of carbon-dating tests performed in 1988. Three

different independent radiocarbon dating laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and the University of

Arizona yielded a date range of 1260-1390 C.E. (consistent with the time period of Charny's

claimed ownership). Joe Zias of Hebrew University of Jerusalem calls the shroud indisputably a

fake. "Not only is it a forgery, but it's a bad forgery." The shroud actually depicts a man whose

front measures 2 inches taller than his back and whose elongated hands and arms would indicate

that he had the affliction of gigantism if he actually lived.

Walter C. McCrone, et al, (seeJudgment Day for the Shroud of Turin) discovered red ochre (a

pigment found in earth and widely used in Italy during the Middle Ages) on the cloth which

formed the body image and vermilion paint, made from mercuric sulphide, used to represent

blood. The actual scientific findings reveal the shroud as a 14th century painting, not a two-

thousand year-old cloth with Christ's image. Revealingly, no Biblical scholar or scientist (with anycredibility) cites the shroud of Turin as evidence for a historical Jesus.

The Burial box of James

Even many credible theologians bought this fraud, hook-line-and-sinker. The Nov./Dec. 2002,

issue ofBiblical Archaeology Review magazine announced a "world exclusive!" article about

evidence of Jesus written in stone, claiming that they found the actual ossuary of "James, Brother

of Jesus" in Jerusalem. This story exploded on the news and appeared widely on television and

newspapers around the world.

Interestingly, they announced the find as the "earliest historical reference of Jesus yet found."

Since they claimed the inscribing on the box occurred around 70 C.E., that agrees with everythingclaimed by this thesis (that no contemporary evidence exists for Jesus). Even if the box script

proved authentic, it would not provide evidence for Jesus simply because no one knew who wrote

the script or why. It would only show the first indirect mention of a Jesus and it could not serve as

contemporary evidence simply because it didn't come into existence until long after the alleged

death of Jesus.

The claim for authenticity of the burial box of James, however, proved particularly

embarrassing for the Biblical Archaeology Review and for those who believed them without

question. Just a few months later, archaeologists determined the inscription as a forgery (and an

obvious one at that) and they found the perpetrator and had him arrested.

Regrettably, the news about the fraud never matched the euphoria of the numerous stories ofthe find and many people today still believe the story as true.

Letters of Pontius Pilate

This would appear hilarious if not for the tragic results that can occur from believing in

fiction: many faithful (especially on the internet) have a strong belief that Pontius Pilate actually

wrote letters to Seneca in Rome where he mentions Jesus and his reported healing miracles.

Considering the lack of investigational temper of the religious mind, it might prove interesting

to the critical reader that the main source for the letters of Pilate come from W. P. Crozier's 1928

book titled, "Letters of Pontius Pilate: Written During His Governorship of Judea to His Friend

Seneca in Rome."The book cites Crozier as the editor as if he represented a scholar who edited

Pilate's letters. Well, from the title, it certainly seems to indicate that Pilate wrote some letters,

doesn't it? However, unbeknownst or ignored by the uncritical faithful, this book represents

Crozier's first novel, a fictionalized account of what he thought Pilate would have written.


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During the first publication, no one believed this novel represented fact and reviews of the day

reveal it as a work of fiction.

Crozier, a newspaper editor, went to Oxford University and retained an interest in Latin, Greek

and the Bible. He wrote this novel as if it represented the actual letters of Pilate. Of course, no

scholar would cite this as evidence because no letters exist of Pilate to Seneca, and Seneca never

mentions Jesus in any of his writings.

The belief in Pilate's letters represents one of the more amusing fad beliefs in evidential Jesus,however, it also reveals just how myths, fakes, and fictions can leak into religious thought.

Hundreds of years from now, Crozier's fictionalized account may very well end up just as 'reliable'

as the gospels.

WHAT ABOUT WRITINGS DURING THE LIFE OF JESUS?

What appears most revealing of all comes not from what people later wrote about Jesus but

what people did notwrite about him. Consider that not a single historian, philosopher, scribe or

follower who lived before or during the alleged time of Jesus ever mentions him!

If, indeed, the Gospels portray a historical look at the life of Jesus, then the one feature that

stands out prominently within the stories shows that people claimed to know Jesus far and wide,

not only by a great multitude of followers but by the great priests, the Roman governor Pilate, and

Herod, who claims that he had heard "of the fame of Jesus" (Matt 14:1). One need only read Matt:

4:25 where it claims that "there followed him [Jesus] great multitudes of people from Galilee, and

from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan." The gospels

mention, countless times, the great multitude that followed Jesus and crowds of people who

congregated to hear him. So crowded had some of these gatherings grown that Luke 12:1 alleges

that an "innumerable multitude of people... trode one upon another." Luke 5:15 says that there

grew "a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear..." The persecution of

Jesus in Jerusalem drew so much attention that all the chief priests and scribes, including the high

priest Caiaphas, not only knew about him but helped in his alleged crucifixion. (see Matt 21:15-23,

26:3, Luke 19:47, 23:13). The multitude of people thought of Jesus, not only as a teacher and amiracle healer, but a prophet (see Matt:14:5).

So here we have the gospels portraying Jesus as famous far and wide, a prophet and healer,

with great multitudes of people who knew about him, including the greatest Jewish high priests

and the Roman authorities of the area, and not one person records his existence during his

lifetime? If the poor, the rich, the rulers, the highest priests, and the scribes knew about Jesus, who

would nothave heard of him?

Then we have a particular astronomical event that would have attracted the attention of

anyone interested in the "heavens." According to Luke 23:44-45, there occurred "about the sixth

hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour, and the sun was darkened, and

the veil of the temple was rent in the midst." Yet not a single mention of such a three hour eclipticevent got recorded by anyone, including the astronomers and astrologers, anywhere in the world,

including Pliny the Elder and Seneca who both recorded eclipses from other dates. Note also that,

for obvious reasons, solar eclipses can't occur during a full moon (passovers always occur during

full moons), Nor does a single contemporary person write about the earthquake described in

Matthew 27:51-54 where the earth shook, rocks ripped apart (rent), and graves opened.

Matthew 2 describes Herod and all of Jerusalem as troubled by the worship of the infant Jesus.

Herod then had all of the children of Bethlehem slain. If such extraordinary infanticide of this

magnitude had occurred, why didn't anyone write about it?

Some apologists attempt to dig themselves out of this problem by claiming that there lived no

capable historians during that period, or due to the lack of education of the people with a writingcapacity, or even sillier, the scarcity of paper gave reason why no one recorded their "savior." But

the area in and surrounding Jerusalem served, in fact, as the center of education and record keeping

for the Jewish people. The Romans, of course, also kept many records. Moreover, the gospels


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mention scribes many times, not only as followers of Jesus but the scribes connected with the high

priests. And as for historians, there lived plenty at the time who had the capacity and capability to

record, not only insignificant gossip, but significant events, especially from a religious sect who

drew so much popular attention through an allegedly famous and infamous Jesus.

Take, for example, the works of Philo Judaeus, whose birth occurred in 20 B.C.E. and died 50

C.E. He lived as the greatest Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher and historian of the time and lived in

the area of Jerusalem during the alleged life of Jesus. He wrote detailed accounts of the Jewish

events that occurred in the surrounding area. Yet not once, in all of his volumes of writings, do we

read a single account of a Jesus "the Christ." Nor do we find any mention of Jesus in Seneca's (4?

B.C.E. - 65 C.E.) writings, nor from the historian Pliny the Elder (23? - 79 C.E.).

If, indeed, such a well known Jesus existed, as the gospels allege, does any reader here think it

reasonable that, at the very least, the fame of Jesus would not have reached the ears of one of these

men?

Amazingly, we have not one Jewish, Greek, or Roman writer, even those who lived in the

Middle East, much less anywhere else on the earth, who ever mention him during his supposed life

time. This appears quite extraordinary, and you will find few Christian apologists who dare

mention this embarrassing fact.To illustrate this extraordinary absence of Jesus Christ literature, just imagine going through

nineteenth century literature looking for an Abraham Lincoln but unable to find a single mention

of him in any writing on earth until the 20th century. Yet straight-faced Christian apologists and

historians want you to buy a factual Jesus out of a dearth void of evidence, and rely on nothing but

hearsay written well after his purported life. Considering that most Christians believe that Jesus

lived as God on earth, the Almighty gives an embarrassing example for explaining his existence.

You'd think a Creator might at least have the ability to bark up some good solid evidence.

HISTORICAL SCHOLARS

Many problems occur with the reliability of the accounts from ancient historians. Most of

them did not provide sources for their claims, as they rarely included bibliographic listings, orsupporting claims. They did not have access to modern scholarly techniques, and many times

would include hearsay as evidence. No one today would take a modern scholar seriously who used

the standards of ancient historians, yet this proves as the only kind of source that Christology

comes from. Couple this with the fact that many historians believed as Christians themselves,

sometimes members of the Church, and you have a built-in prejudice towards supporting a "real"

Jesus.

In modern scholarship, even the best historians and Christian apologists play the historian

game. They can only use what documents they have available to them. If they only have hearsay

accounts, then they have to play the cards that history deals them. Many historians feel compelled

to use interpolation or guesses from hearsay, and yet this very dubious information sometimes endsup in encyclopedias and history books as fact.

In other words, Biblical scholarship gets forced into a lower standard by the very sources they

examine. A renowned Biblical scholar illustrated this clearly in an interview when asked about

Biblical interpretation. David Noel Freeman (the General editor of the Anchor Bible Series and

many other works) responded with:

"We have to accept somewhat looser standards. In the legal profession, to convict the

defendant of a crime, you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil cases, a preponderance of

the evidence is sufficient. When dealing with the Bible or any ancient source, we have to loosen up

a little; otherwise, we can't really say anything." (inBible Review magazine, Dec. 1993, p.34)

The implications appear obvious. If one wishes to believe in a historical Jesus, he or she mustaccept this based on loose standards. Couple this with the fact that all of the claims come from

hearsay, and we have a foundation made of sand, and a castle of information built of cards.


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CITING GEOGRAPHY, AND KNOWN HISTORICAL FIGURES AS "EVIDENCE"

Although the New Testament mentions various cities, geological sites, kings and people that

existed or lived during the alleged life of Jesus, these descriptions cannot serve as evidence for the

existence of Jesus anymore than works of fiction that include recognizable locations, and make

mention of actual people.

Homer's Odyssey, for example, describes the travels of Odysseus throughout the Greek

islands. The epic describes, in detail, many locations that existed in history. But should we takeOdysseus, the Greek gods and goddesses, one-eyed giants and monsters as literal fact simply

because the story depicts geographic locations accurately? Of course not. The authors of mythical

stories, fictions, and novels almost always use familiar landmarks as placements for their stories.

The authors of the Greek tragedies not only put their stories in plausible settings as happening in

the real world but their supernatural characters took on the desires, flaws and failures of mortal

human beings. Consider that fictions such as King Kong, Superman, and Star Trek include

recognizable cities, planets, and landmarks, with their protagonists and antagonists miming human

emotions.

Likewise, just because the Gospels mention cities and locations in Judea, and known historical

people, with Jesus behaving like an actual human being (with the added dimension of supernatural

curses, miracles, etc.) but this says nothing about the actuality of the characters portrayed in the

stories. However, when a story uses impossible historical locations, or geographical errors, we may

question the authority of the claims.

For example, in Matt 4:8, the author describes the devil taking Jesus into an exceedingly high

mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world. Since there exists no spot on the spheroid

earth to view "all the kingdoms," we know that the Bible errs here.

John 12:21 says, "The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee. . . ."

Bethsaida resided in Gaulonitis (Golan region), east of the Jordan river, not Galilee, which resided

west of the river.

John 3:23 says, "John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim. . . ." Critics agree that no suchplace as Aenon exists near Salim.

There occurs not a shred of evidence for a city named Nazareth at the time of the alleged

Jesus. [Gauvin] Nazareth does not appear in the Old Testament, nor does it appear in the volumes

of Josephus's writings (even though he provides a detailed list of the cities of Galilee). Oddly, none

of the New Testament epistle writers ever mentions Nazareth or a Jesus of Nazareth even though

most of the epistles appeared before the gospels. In fact no one mentions Nazareth until the

Gospels, where the first one didn't come into existence until about 40 years after the hypothetical

death of Jesus. Apologists attempt to dismiss this by claiming that Nazareth existed as an

insignificant and easily missed village (how would they know?), thus no one recorded it. However,

whenever the Gospels speak of Nazareth, they always refer to it as a city, never a village, and ahistorian of that period would surely have noticed a city. (Note the New Testament uses the terms

village, town, and city.) Nor can apologists fall on archeological evidence of preexisting artifacts

for the simple reason that many cities get built on ancient sites. If a city named Nazareth existed

during the 1st century, then we need at least one contemporary piece of evidence for the name,

otherwise we cannot refer to it as historical.

Many more errors and unsupported geographical locations appear in the New Testament. And

although one cannot use these as evidence against a historical Jesus, we can certainly question the

reliability of the texts. If the scriptures make so many factual errors about geology, science, and

contain so many contradictions, falsehoods could occur any in area.

If we have a coupling with historical people and locations, then we should also have somehistorical reference of a Jesus to these locations and people. But just the opposite proves the case.

The Bible depicts Herod, the Ruler of Jewish Palestine under Rome as sending out men to search

and kill the infant Jesus, yet nothing in history supports such a story. Pontius Pilate supposedly


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performed as judge in the trial and execution of Jesus, yet no Roman record mentions such a trial.

The gospels portray a multitude of believers throughout the land spreading tales of a teacher,

prophet, and healer, yet nobody in Jesus' life time or several decades after, ever records such a

human figure. The lack of a historical Jesus in the known historical record speaks for itself.

COMPARING JESUS TO OTHER HISTORICAL FIGURES

Many Christian apologists attempt to extricate themselves from their lack of evidence by

claiming that if we cannot rely on the post chronicle exegesis of Jesus, then we cannot establish ahistorical foundation for other figures such as Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, Napoleon,

etc. However, there sits a vast difference between historical figures and Jesus. There occurs either

artifacts, writings, or eyewitness accounts for historical people, whereas, for Jesus we have

nothing.

Alexander, for example, left a wake of destroyed and created cities behind. We have buildings,

libraries and cities, such as Alexandria, left in his name. We have treaties, and even a letter from

Alexander to the people of Chios, engraved in stone, dated at 332 B.C.E. For Augustus Caesar, we

have theRes gestae divi augusti, the emperor's own account of his works and deeds, a letter to his

son (Epistula ad Gaium filium), Virgil's eyewitness accounts, and much more. Napoleon left

behind artifacts, eyewitness accounts and letters. We can establishsome historicity to these people

because we have evidence that occurred during their life times. Yet even with contemporary

evidence, historians have become wary of after-the-fact stories of many of these historical people.

For example, some of the stories of Alexander's conquests, or Nero starting the fire in Rome

always get questioned or doubted because they contain inconsistencies or come from authors who

wrote years after the alleged facts. In qualifying the history of Alexander, Pierre Briant writes,

"Although more than twenty of his contemporaries chronicled Alexander's life and campaigns,

none of these texts survive in original form. Many letters and speeches attributed to Alexander are

ancient forgeries or reconstructions inspired by imagination or political motives. The little solid

documentation we possess from Alexander's own time is mainly to be found in stone inscriptions

from the Greek cities of Europe and Asia." [Briant]

Inventing histories out of whole cloth or embellished from a seed of an actual historical eventappears common throughout the chronicle of human thought. Robert Price observes, "Alexander

the Great, Caesar Augustus, Cyrus, King Arthur, and others have nearly suffered this fate. What

keeps historians from dismissing them as mere myths, like Paul Bunyan, is that there is some

residue. We know at least a bit of mundane information about them, perhaps quite a bit, that does

not form part of any legend cycle." [Price, pp. 260-261]

Interestingly, almost all important historical people have descriptions of what they looked like.

We have the image of Augustus Caesar cast on denarius coins, busts of Greek and Roman

aristocrats, artwork of Napoleon, etc. We have descriptions of facial qualities, height, weight, hair

length & color, age and even portraits of most important historical figures. But for Jesus, we have

nothing. Nowhere in the Bible do we have a description of the human shape of Jesus. How can werely on the Gospels as the word of Jesus when no one even describes what he looked like? How

odd that none of the disciple characters record what he looked like, yet believers attribute them to

know exactly what he said. Indeed, this gives us a clue that Jesus came to the gospel writers and

indirect and through myth. Not until hundreds of years after the alleged Jesus did pictures emerge

as to what he looked like from cult Christians, and these widely differed from a blond clean

shaven, curly haired Apollonian youth (found in the Roman catacombs) to a long-bearded Italian

as depicted to this day. This mimics the pattern of Greek mythological figures as their believers

constructed various images of what their gods looked like according to their own cultural image.

Historical people leave us with contemporary evidence, but for Jesus we have nothing. If we

wanted to present a fair comparison of the type of information about Jesus to another example of

equal historical value, we could do no better than to compare Jesus with the mythical figure of

Hercules.

IF JESUS, THEN WHY NOT HERCULES?


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If a person accepts hearsay and accounts from believers as historical evidence for Jesus, then

shouldn't they act consistently to other accounts based solely on hearsay and belief?

To take one example, examine the evidence for Hercules of Greek mythology and you will

find it parallels the "historicity" of Jesus to such an amazing degree that for Christian apologists to

deny Hercules as a historical person belies and contradicts the very same methodology used for a

historical Jesus.

Note that Herculean myth resembles Jesus in many areas. The mortal and chaste Alcmene, themother of Hercules, gave birth to him from a union with God (Zeus). Similar to Herod who wanted

to kill Jesus, Hera wanted to kill Hercules. Like Jesus, Hercules traveled the earth as a mortal

helping mankind and performed miraculous deeds. Similar to Jesus who died and rose to heaven,

Hercules died, rose to Mt. Olympus and became a god. Hercules gives example of perhaps the

most popular hero in Ancient Greece and Rome. They believed that he actually lived, told stories

about him, worshiped him, and dedicated temples to him.

Likewise the "evidence" of Hercules closely parallels that of Jesus. We have historical people

like Hesiod and Plato who mention Hercules in their writings. Similar to the way the gospels tell a

narrative story of Jesus, so do we have the epic stories of Homer who depict the life of Hercules.

Aesop tells stories and quotes the words of Hercules. Just as we have a brief mention of Jesus byJoesphus in hisAntiquities, Joesphus also mentions Hercules (more times than Jesus), in the very

same work(see: 1.15; 8.5.3; 10.11.1). Just as Tacitus mentions a Christus, so does he also mention

Hercules many times in hisAnnals. And most importantly, just as we have no artifacts, writings or

eyewitnesses about Hercules, we also have nothing about Jesus. All information about Hercules

and Jesus comes from stories, beliefs, and hearsay. Should we then believe in a historical Hercules,

simply because ancient historians mention him and that we have stories and beliefs about him? Of

course not, and the same must apply to Jesus if we wish to hold any consistency to historicity.

Some critics doubt that a historicized Jesus could develop from myth because they think there

never occurred any precedence for it. We have many examples of myth from history but what

about the other way around? This doubt fails in the light of the most obvious example-- the Greek

mythologies where Greek and Roman writers including Diodorus, Cicero, Livy, etc., assumed thatthere must have existed a historical root for figures such as Hercules, Theseus, Odysseus, Minos,

Dionysus, etc. These writers put their mythological heroes into an invented historical time chart.

Herodotus, for example, tried to determine when Hercules lived. As Robert M. Price revealed,

"The whole approach earned the name of Euhemerism, from Euhemerus who originated it." [Price,

p. 250] Even today, we see many examples of seedling historicized mythologies: UFO adherents

who's beliefs began as a dream of alien bodily invasion, and then expressed as actually having

occurred (some of which have formed religious cults); beliefs of urban legends which started as

pure fiction or hoaxes; propaganda spread by politicians which stem from fiction but believed by

their constituents.

People consider Hercules and other Greek gods as myth because people no longerbelieve inthe Greek and Roman stories. When a civilization dies, so do their gods. Christianity and its church

authorities, on the other hand, still hold a powerful influence on governments, institutions, and

colleges. Anyone doing research on Jesus, even skeptics, had better allude to his existence or else

risk future funding and damage to their reputations or fear embarrassment against their Christian

friends. Christianity depends on establishing a historical Jesus and it will defend, at all costs, even

the most unreliable sources. The faithful want to believe in Jesus, and belief alone can create

intellectual barriers that leak even into atheist and secular thought. We have so many Christian

professors, theologians and historical "experts" around the world that tell us we should accept a

historical Jesus that if repeated often enough, it tends to convince even the most ardent skeptic.

The establishment of history should never reside with the "experts" words alone or simply because

a scholar has a reputation as a historian. Historical review has yet to achieve the reliability ofscientific investigation, (and in fact, many times ignores it). If a scholar makes a historical claim,

his assertion should depend primarily with the evidence itself and not just because he or she says

so. Facts do not require belief. And whereas beliefs can live comfortably without evidence at all,


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facts dependon evidence.

THEN WHY THE MYTH OF JESUS?

Some people actually believe that just because so much voice and ink has spread the word of a

character named Jesus throughout history, that this must mean that he actually lived. This argument

simply does not hold. The number of people who believe or write about something or the

professional degrees they hold say nothing at all about fact. Facts derive out of evidence, not from

hearsay, not from hubris scholars, and certainly not from faithful believers. Regardless of theposition or admiration held by a scholar, believer, or priest, if he or she cannot support a

hypothesis with good evidence, then it can only remain a hypothesis.

While the possibility exists that an actual Jesus lived, a more likely possibility reveals that a

mythology could have arrived totally out of earlier mythologies. Although we have no evidence for

a historical Jesus, we certainly have many accounts for the mythologies of the Middle East and

Egypt during the first century and before. Many of these stories appear similar to the Christ

saviour story.

Just before and during the first century, the Jews had prophesied about an upcoming Messiah

based on Jewish scripture. Their beliefs influenced many of their followers. We know that

powerful beliefs can create self-fulfilling prophesies, and surely this proved just as true in ancienttimes. It served as a popular dream expressed in Hebrew Scripture for the promise of an "end-

time" with a savior to lead them to the promised land. Indeed, Roman records show executions of

several would-be Messiahs, (but not a single record mentions a Jesus). Many ancients believed that

there could come a final war against the "Sons of Darkness"-- the Romans.

This then could very well have served as the ignition and flame for the future growth of

Christianity. We know that the early Christians lived within pagan communities. Jewish scriptural

beliefs coupled with the pagan myths of the time give sufficient information about how such a

religion could have formed. Many of the Hellenistic and pagan myths parallel so closely to the

alleged Jesus that to ignore its similarities means to ignore the mythological beliefs of history.

Dozens of similar savior stories propagated the minds of humans long before the alleged life ofJesus. Virtually nothing about Jesus "the Christ" came to the Christians as original or new.

For example, the religion of Zoroaster, founded circa 628-551 B.C.E. in ancient Persia, roused

mankind in the need for hating a devil, the belief of a paradise, last judgment and resurrection of

the dead. Mithraism, an offshoot of Zoroastrianism probably influenced early Christianity. The

Magi described in the New Testament appears as Zoroastrian priests. Note the word "paradise"

came from the Persianpairidaeza.

Osiris, Hercules, Mithra, Hermes, Prometheus, Perseus and others compare to the Christian

myth. According to Patrick Campbell ofThe Mythical Jesus, 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 25th; had tyrants who tried to kill them in their infancy; metviolent deaths; rose from the dead; and nearly all got worshiped by "wise men" and had allegedly

fasted for forty days. [McKinsey, Chapter 5]

The pre-Christian cult of Mithra had a deity of light and truth, son of the Most High, fought

against evil, presented the idea of the Logos. Pagan Mithraism mysteries had the burial in a rock

tomb, resurrection, sacrament of bread & water (Eucharist), the marking on the forehead with a

mystic mark, the symbol of the Rock, the Seven Spirits and seven stars, all before the advent of

Christianity.

Even Justin Martyr recognized 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, andascended into heaven; we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those

whom you esteem sons of Jupiter (Zeus)." [First Apology, ch. xxi]

Virtually all of the mythical accounts of a savior Jesus have parallels to past pagan


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mythologies which existed long before Christianity and from the Jewish scriptures that we now

call the Old Testament. The accounts of these myths say nothing about historical reality, but they

do say a lot about believers, how they believed, and how their beliefs spread.

In the bookThe Jesus Puzzle, the biblical scholar, Earl Doherty, presents not only a challenge

to the existence of an historical Jesus but reveals that early pre-Gospel Christian documents show

that the concept of Jesus sprang from non-historical spiritual beliefs of a Christ derived from

Jewish scripture and Hellenized myths of savior gods. Nowhere do any of the New Testament

epistle writers describe a human Jesus, including Paul. None of the epistles mention a Jesus from

Nazareth, an earthly teacher, or as a human miracle worker. Nowhere do we find these writers

quoting Jesus. Nowhere do we find them describing any details of Jesus' life on earth or his

followers. Nowhere do we find the epistle writers even using the word "disciple" (they of course

use the term "apostle" but the word simply means messenger, as Paul saw himself). Except for two

well known interpolations, Jesus always gets presented as a spiritual being that existed before all

time with God, and that knowledge of Christ came directly from God or as a revelation from the

word of scripture. Doherty writes, "Christian documents outside the Gospels, even at the end of the

first century and beyond, show no evidence that any tradition about an earthly life and ministry of

Jesus were in circulation."

Furthermore, the epistle to the Hebrews (8:4), makes it explicitly clear that the epistle writerdid not believe in a historical Jesus: "If He [Jesus] had been on earth, He would not be a priest."

Did the Christians copy (or steal) the pagan ideas directly into their own faith? Not

necessarily. They may have gotten many of their beliefs through syncretism or through

independent hero archetype worship, innate to human story telling. If gotten through syncretism,

pagans could very well have have influenced the first Christians, especially the ideas of

resurrection, beliefs about good and evil, and virgin births. In my opinion, this appears the most

likely, considering the close parallel of these beliefs to pre-Christian pagan beliefs. If gotten

through independent means, it still says nothing about Christian originality because we know that

pagans had beliefs about resurrected gods, long before Christianity existed. The hero archetypes

still exist in our story telling today. As one personal example, as a boy I used to read and collectSuperman comics. It never occurred to me at the time to see Superman as a Christ-figure, or any

other savior story. Yet, if you analyze Superman and Jesus stories, they have uncanny similarities.

In fact the move Superman Returns explicitly tells the Superman story through a savior's point of

view without once mentioning Jesus, yet Christians would innately know the connection. Other

movies like Star Wars,Phenomenon,K-PAX, The Matrix, etc. also covertly tell savior stories. So

whether the first Christians borrowed or independently came up with a savior story makes no

difference whatsoever. The point here only aims to illustrate that Christians did not originate the

savior story.

The early historical documents can prove nothing about an actual Jesus but they do show an

evolution of belief derived from varied and diverse concepts of Christianity, starting from a purely

spiritual form of Christ to a human figure who embodied that spirit, as portrayed in the Gospels.

The New Testament stories appears as an eclectic hodgepodge of Jewish, Hellenized and pagan

stories compiled by pietistic believers to appeal to an audience for their particular religious times.

A NOTE ABOUT DATING:

The A.D. (Anno Domini, or "year of our Lord") dating method derived from a monk named

Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Little), in the sixth-century who used it in his Easter tables. Oddly,

some people seem to think this has relevance to a historical Jesus. But of course it has nothing at

all to do with it. In the time before and during the 6th century, people used various other dating

methods. The Romans used A.U.C. (anno urbis conditae, "year of the founded city," that being

Rome). The Jews had their own dating system. Not until the tenth century did most churches

accept the new dating system. The A.D. system simply reset the time of January 1, 754 A.U.C. to

January 1, of year one A.D., which Dionysius obliquely derived from the belief of the date of

"incarnation" of Jesus. The date, if one uses the Bible as history, can't possibly hold true. *


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Instead of B.C. and A.D., I have used the convention of B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and

C.E. (Common Era) as often used in scholarly literature. They correspond to the same dates as

B.C. and A.D., but without alluding to the birth or death of an alleged Christ.

[* Dionysius believed that the conception (incarnation) of Jesus occurred on March 25. This

meant that the conception must have occurred nine months later on December 25, probably not

coincidentally, the very same date that the Emperor Aurelian, in 274 C.E., declared December 25

a holiday in celebration of the birth of Mithras, the sun god. By 336 C.E., Christians replaced

Mithras with Jesus' birth on the same date. Dionysius then declared the new year several days

later on January 1, probably to coincide with the traditional Roman year starting on January 1st.

Dionysius probably never read the gospel account of the birth of Jesus because the Matthew

gospel says his birth occurred while Herod served as King. That meant that if he did exist, his

birth would have to occur in 4 B.C.E. or earlier. He made another mistake by assigning the first

year as 1 instead of 0 (everyone's birthday starts at year 0, not 1). The concept of zero (invented

from Arabia and India) didn't come into Europe until about two hundred years later.]

QUOTES FROM A FEW SCHOLARS:

Although apologist scholars believe that an actual Jesus lived on earth, the reasons for this

appear obvious considering their Christian beliefs. Although some secular freethinkers and atheists

accept a historical Jesus (minus the miracles), they, like most Christians, simply accept the

traditional view without question. As time goes on, more and more scholars have begun to open

the way to a more honest look at the evidence, or should I say, the lack of evidence. So for those

who wish to rely on scholarly opinion, I will give a few quotes from Biblical scholars, past and

present:

When the Church mythologists established their system, they collected all the writings they

could find and managed them as they pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether

such of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and New Testaments are in the same

state in which those collectors say they found them, or whether they added, altered, abridged or

dressed them up. - Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)

The world has been for a long time engaged in writing lives of Jesus... The library of such

books has grown since then. But when we come to examine them, one startling fact confronts us:

all of these books relate to a personage concerning whom there does not exist a single scrap of

contemporary information -- not one! By accepted tradition he was born in the reign of Augustus,

the great literary age of the nation of which he was a subject. In the Augustan age historians

flourished; poets, orators, critics and travelers abounded. Yet not one mentions the name of Jesus

Christ, much less any incident in his life. - Moncure D. Conway [1832 - 1907] (Modern Thought)

It is only in comparatively modern times that the possibility was considered that Jesus does

not belong to history at all. - M. Robertson (Pagan Christs)

Many people-- then and now-- have assumed that these letters [of Paul] are genuine, and fiveof them were in fact incorporated into the New Testament as "letters of Paul." Even today, scholars

dispute which are authentic and which are not. Most scholars, however, agree that Paul actually

wrote only eight of the thirteen "Pauline" letters now included in the New Testament. collection:

Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Virtually all

scholars agree that Paul himself did not write 1 or 2 Timothy or Titus-- letters written in a style

different from Paul's and reflecting situations and viewpoints in a style different from those in

Paul's own letters. About the authorship of Ephesias, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, debate

continues; but the majority of scholars include these, too, among the "deutero-Pauline"-- literally,

secondarily Pauline-- letters." - Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University,

(Adam, Eve, and the Serpent)

We know virtually nothing about the persons who wrote the gospels we call Matthew, Mark,

Luke, and John. - Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, (The Gnostic

Gospels)


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Some hoped to penetrate the various accounts and to discover the "historical Jesus". . . and

that sorting out "authentic" material in the gospels was virtually impossible in the absence of

independent evidence." - Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University

We can recreate dimensions of the world in which he lived, but outside of the Christian

scriptures, we cannot locate him historically within that world. - Gerald A. Larue (The Book Your

Church Doesn't Want You To Read)

The gospels are so anonymous that their titles, all second-century guesses, are all four wrong.- Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote the Gospels?)

Far from being an intimate of an intimate of Jesus, Mark wrote at the forth remove from

Jesus. - Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote the Gospels?)

Mark himself clearly did not know any eyewitnesses of Jesus. - Randel McCraw Helms

(Who Wrote the Gospels?)

All four gospels are anonymous texts. The familiar attributions of the Gospels to Matthew,

Mark, Luke and John come from the mid-second century and later and we have no good historical

reason to accept these attributions. - Steve Mason, professor of classics, history and religious

studies at York University in Toronto (Bible Review, Feb. 2000, p. 36)

The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any

Gospel. - Bishop John Shelby Spong

Many modern Biblical archaeologists now believe that the village of Nazareth did not exist at

the time of the birth and early life of Jesus. There is simply no evidence for it. - Alan Albert Snow

(The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read)

But even if it could be provedthat John's Gospel had been the first of the four to be written

down, there would still be considerable confusion as to who "John" was. For the various styles of

the New Testament texts ascribed to John- The Gospel, the letters, and the Book of Revelations--

are each so different in their style that it is extremely unlikely that they had been written by one

person. - John Romer, archeologist & Bible scholar (Testament)

It was not until the third century that Jesus' cross of execution became a common symbol of

the Christian faith. - John Romer, archeologist & Bible scholar (Testament)

What one believes and what one can demonstrate historically are usually two different things.

- Robert J. Miller, Bible scholar, (Bible Review, December 1993, Vol. IX, Number 6, p. 9)

When it comes to the historical question about the Gospels, I adopt a mediating position-- that

is, these are religious records, close to the sources, but they are not in accordance with modern

historiographic requirements or professional standards. - David Noel Freedman, Bible scholar and

general editor of the Anchor Bible series (Bible Review, December 1993, Vol. IX, Number 6, p.34)

It is said that the last recourse of the Bible apologist is to fall back upon allegory. After all,when confronted with the many hundreds of biblical problems, allegory permits one to interpret

anything however one might please. - Gene Kasmar, Minnesota Atheists

Paul did not write the letters to Timothy to Titus or several others published under his name;

and it is unlikely that the apostles Matthew, James, Jude, Peter and John had anything to do with

the canonical books ascribed to them. - Michael D. Coogan, Professor of religious studies at

Stonehill College (Bible Review, June 1994)

A generation after Jesus' death, when the Gospels were written, the Romans had destroyed the

Jerusalem Temple (in 70 C.E.); the most influential centers of Christianity were cities of the

Mediterranean world such as Alexandria, Antioch, Corinth, Damascus, Ephesus and Rome.

Although large number of Jews were also followers of Jesus, non-Jews came to predominate in theearly Church. They controlled how the Gospels were written after 70 C.E. - Bruce Chilton, Bell

Professor of Religion at Bard College (Bible Review, Dec. 1994, p. 37)


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James Dunn says that the Sermon on the Mount, mentioned only by Matthew, "is in fact not

historical."

How historical can the Gospels be? Are Murphy-O-Conner's speculations concerning Jesus'

baptism by John simply wrong-headed? How can we really know if the baptism, or any other event

written about in the Gospels, is historical? - Daniel P. Sullivan (Bible Review, June 1996, Vol.

XII, Number 3, p. 5)

David Friedrich Strauss (The Life of Jesus, 1836), had argued that the Gospels could not beread as straightforward accounts of what Jesus actually did and said; rather, the evangelists and

later redactors and commentators, influenced by their religious beliefs, had made use of myths and

legends that rendered the gospel narratives, and traditional accounts of Jesus' life, unreliable as

sources of historical information. - Bible Review, October 1996, Vol. XII, Number 5, p. 39

The Gospel authors were Jews writing within the midrashic tradition and intended their

stories to be read as interpretive narratives, not historical accounts. - Bishop Shelby Spong,

Liberating the Gospels

Other scholars have concluded that the Bible is the product of a purely human endeavor, that

the identity of the authors is forever lost and that their work has been largely obliterated by

centuries of translation and editing. - Jeffery L. Sheler, "Who Wrote the Bible," (U.S. News &World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Yet today, there are few Biblical scholars-- from liberal skeptics to conservative evangelicals-

who believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John actually wrote the Gospels. Nowhere do the

writers of the texts identify themselves by name or claim unambiguously to have known or

traveled with Jesus. - Jeffery L. Sheler, "The Four Gospels," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec.

10, 1990)

Once written, many experts believe, the Gospels were redacted, or edited, repeatedly as they

were copied and circulated among church elders during the last first and early second centuries. -

Jeffery L. Sheler, "The Four Gospels," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

The tradition attributing the fourth Gospel to the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, is first

noted by Irenaeus in A.D. 180. It is a tradition based largely on what some view as the writer's

reference to himself as "the beloved disciple" and "the disciple whom Jesus loved." Current

objection to John's authorship are based largely on modern textural analyses that strongly suggest

the fourth Gospel was the work of several hands, probably followers of an elderly teacher in Asia

Minor named John who claimed as a young man to have been a disciple of Jesus. - Jeffery L.

Sheler, "The Four Gospels," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Some scholars say so many revisions occurred in the 100 years following Jesus' death that no

one can be absolutely sure of the accuracy or authenticity of the Gospels, especially of the words

the authors attributed to Jesus himself. - Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News &

World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Three letters that Paul allegedly wrote to his friends and former co-workers Timothy and

Titus are now widely disputed as having come from Paul's hand. - Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic

papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

The Epistle of James is a practical book, light on theology and full of advice on ethical

behavior. Even so, its place in the Bible has been challenged repeatedly over the years. It is

generally believed to have been written near the end of the first century to Jewish Christians. . . but

scholars are unable conclusively to identify the writer.

Five men named James appear in the New Testament: the brother of Jesus, the son of Zebedee,

the son of Alphaeus, "James the younger" and the father of the Apostle Jude.Little is known of the last three, and since the son of Zebedee was martyred in A.D. 44,

tradition has leaned toward the brother of Jesus. However, the writer never claims to be Jesus'

brother. And scholars find the language too erudite for a simple Palestinian. This letter is also


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disputed on theological grounds. Martin Luther called it "an epistle of straw" that did not belong in

the Bible because it seemed to contradict Paul's teachings that salvation comes by faith as a "gift of

God"-- not by good works. - Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World

Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

The origins of the three letters of John are also far from certain. - Jeffery L. Sheler, "The

catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Christian tradition has held that the Apostle Peter wrote the first [letter], probably in Romeshortly before his martyrdom about A.D. 65. However, some modern scholars cite the epistle's

cultivated language and its references to persecutions that did not occur until the reign of Domitian

(A.D. 81-96) as evidence that it was actually written by Peter's disciples sometime later.

Second Peter has suffered even harsher scrutiny. Many scholars consider it the latest of all

New Testament books, written around A.D. 125. The letter was never mentioned in second-century

writings and was excluded from some church canons into the fifth century. "This letter cannot have

been written by Peter," wrote Werner Kummel, a Heidelberg University scholar, in his highly

regarded Introduction to the New Testament. - Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S.

News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

The letter of Jude also is considered too late to have been written by the attested author-- "thebrother of James" and, thus, of Jesus. The letter, believed written early in the second century.

-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

According to the declaration of the Second Vatican Council, a faithful account of the actions

and words of Jesus is to be found in the Gospels; but it is impossible to reconcile this with the

existence in the text of contradictions, improbabilities, things which are materially impossible or

statements which run contrary to firmly established reality. - Maurice Bucaille (The Bible, the

Quran, and Science)

The bottom line is we really don't know for sure who wrote the Gospels. - Jerome Neyrey, of

the Weston School of Theology, Cambridge, Mass. in "The Four Gospels," (U.S. News & World

Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Most scholars have come to acknowledge, was done not by the Apostles but by their

anonymous followers (or their followers' followers). Each presented a somewhat different picture

of Jesus' life. The earliest appeared to have been written some 40 years after his Crucifixion. -

David Van Biema, "The Gospel Truth?" (Time, April 8, 1996)

So unreliable were the Gospel accounts that "we can now know almost nothing concerning

the life and personality of Jesus." - Rudolf Bultmann, University of Marburg, the foremost

Protestant scholar in the field in 1926

The Synoptic Gospels employ techniques that we today associate with fiction. - Paul Q.

Beeching, Central Connecticut State University (Bible Review, June 1997, Vol. XIII, Number 3, p.43)

Josephus says that he himself witnessed a certain Eleazar casting out demons by a method of

exorcism that had been given to Solomon by God himself-- while Vespasian watched! In the same

work, Josephus tells the story of a rainmaker, Onias (14.2.1). - Paul Q. Beeching, Central

Connecticut State University (Bible Review, June 1997, Vol. XIII, Number 3, p. 43)

For Mark's gospel to work, for instance, you must believe that Isaiah 40:3 (quoted, in a

slightly distorted form, in Mark 1:2-3) correctly predicted that a stranger named John would come

out of the desert to prepare the way for Jesus. It will then come as something of a surprise to learn

in the first chapter of Luke that John is a near relative, well known to Jesus' family. - Paul Q.

Beeching, Central Connecticut State University (Bible Review, June 1997, Vol. XIII, Number 3, p.43)

The narrative conventions and world outlook of the gospel prohibit our using it as a historical

record of that year. - Paul Q. Beeching, Central Connecticut State University (Bible Review, June


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1997, Vol. XIII, Number 3, p. 54)

Jesus is a mythical figure in the tradition of pagan mythology and almost nothing in all of

ancient literature would lead one to believe otherwise. Anyone wanting to believe Jesus lived and

walked as a real live human being must do so despite the evidence, not because of it. - C. Dennis

McKinsey, Bible critic (The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy)

The gospels are very peculiar types of literature. They're not biographies. - Paula

Fredriksen, Professor and historian of early Christianity, Boston University (in the PBSdocumentary,From Jesus to Christ, aired in 1998)

The gospels are not eyewitness accounts. - Allen D. Callahan, Associate Professor of New

Testament, Harvard Divinity School

We are led to conclude that, in Paul's past, there was no historical Jesus. Rather, the activities

of the Son about which God's gospel in scripture told, as interpreted by Paul, had taken place in the

spiritual realm and were accessible only through revelation. - Earl Doherty, "The Jesus Puzzle,"

p.83

Before the Gospels were adopted as history, no record exists that he was ever in the city of

Jerusalem at all-- or anywhere else on earth. - Earl Doherty, "The Jesus Puzzle," p.141

Even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be

recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more. All attempts to recover him

turn out to be just modern remythologizings of Jesus. Every "historical Jesus" is a Christ of faith,

of somebody's faith. So the "historical Jesus" of modern scholarship is no less a fiction. - Robert

M. Price, "Jesus: Fact or Fiction, A Dialogue With Dr. Robert Price and Rev. John Rankin,"

Opening Statement

It is important to recognize the obvious: The gospel story of Jesus is itself apparently mythic

from first to last." - Robert M. Price, professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry

Institute (Deconstructing Jesus, p. 260)

CONCLUSION

Belief cannot produce historical fact, and claims that come from nothing but hearsay do not

amount to an honest attempt to get at the facts. Even with eyewitness accounts we must tread

carefully. Simply because someone makes a claim, does not mean it represents reality. For

example, consider some of the bogus claims that supposedly come from many eyewitness accounts

of alien extraterrestrials and their space craft. They not only assert eyewitnesses but present blurry

photos to boot! If we can question these accounts, then why should we not question claims that

come from hearsay even more? Moreover, consider that the hearsay comes from ancient and

unknown people that no longer live.

Unfortunately, belief and faith substitute as knowledge in many people's minds and nothing,

even direct evidence thrust on the feet of their claims, could possibly change their minds. We havemany stories, myths and beliefs of a Jesus but if we wish to establish the facts of history, we cannot

even begin to put together a knowledgeable account without at least a few reliable eyewitness

accounts.

Of course, a historical Jesus may have existed, perhaps based loosely on a living human even

though his actual history got lost, but this amounts to nothing but speculation. However we do

have an abundance of evidence supporting the mythical evolution of Jesus. Virtually every detail in

the gospel stories occurred in pagan and/or Hebrew stories, long before the advent of Christianity.

We simply do not have a shred of evidence to determine the historicity of a Jesus "the Christ." We

only have evidence for the beliefof Jesus.

So if you hear anyone who claims to have evidence for a witness of a historical Jesus, simplyask for the author's birth date. Anyone who's birth occurred after an event cannot serve as an

eyewitness, nor can their words alone serve as evidence for that event.

-----------------------------------------------


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Sources:

Briant, Pierre, "Alexander the Great: Man of Action, Man of Spirit," Harry N. Abrams, 1996

Doherty, Earl, "The Jesus Puzzle,"Canadian Humanist Publications, 1999

Flavius, Josephus (37 or 38-circa 101 C.E.),Antiquities

Gauvin, Marshall J., "Did Jesus Christ Really Live?" (from: www.infidels.org/)

Gould, Stephen Jay "Dinosaur in a Haystack," (Chapter 2), Harmony Books, New York, 1995

Graham, Henry Grey, Rev., "Where we got the Bible," B. Heder Book Company, 1960

Helms, Randel McCraw , "Who Wrote the Gospels?", Millennium Press

Irenaeus of Lyon (140?-202? C.E.), Against the Heresies

McKinsey, C. Dennis "The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy," Prometheus Books, 1995

Metzger, Bruce,"The Text of the New Testament-- Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration," Oxford

University Press, 1968

Pagels, Elaine, "The Gnostic Gospels,"Vintage Books, New York, 1979

Pagels, Elaine, "Adam, Eve, and the Serpent,"Vintage Books, New York, 1888

Pagels, Elaine, "The Origin of Satan,"Random House, New York, 1995

Price, Robert M., "Deconstructing Jesus,"Prometheus Books, 2000

Pritchard, John Paul, "A Literary Approach to the New Testament,"Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1972

Robertson, J.M. "Pagan Christs,"Barnes & Noble Books, 1966

Romer, John, "Testament: The Bible and History," Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1988

Schonfield, Hugh Joseph, "A History of Biblical L

did a historical jesus exist - jim walker

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