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Analyzing the Bible Scientifically


Faith is knowing everything.

I. The Origins and History of Christianity


Exposing Biblicist Falsehoods
My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the 
scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I 
shall ever change them.  

Abraham Lincoln 

1. Personal Introduction
Christian doctrine is… presented as having such unique authority that it must have been made in heaven 
rather  than  being  the  work  of  thinkers  and  negotiators,  in  particular  periods  in  church  history,  and 
therefore open to historical criticism and the problems of cultural relativism.  

John Bowden, SCM  

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, July 19, 1999

• Scholarly Integrity  
• Truth  
• Pious Lies  
• Jewish Myth  
• New Testament  
• The Fashion for Dying Gods  
• Gospels  
• An Honest Religion  

 

Abstracct 
The genttile Christian
n bishops didd not tell thee truth but deliberately
d o
obscured it. Pious lying is
i not
simply ann ‘aberrationn’ of Christiaanity; it is its
ts very found dation. Thesee original piious lies werre not
merely whims
w of ove
ver enthusiasttic converts but were deeliberate decceptions need eded to refutte the
stories ab
bout the reaal Jesus thatt people weere bringing back from Palestine.P Thhere never wasw a
Jesus of faith
f until th
he first Chrisstians inventeted him by telling
t pious lies about another
a Jesus
us: the
Jesus of history. Agaain the oral tradition was w strong an nd could neeither be ign nored nor denied
de
because too many people
p weree telling thee truth. In the t lead up p to the Jew wish War an nd its
aftermath
th, many Jew ws left Palest
stine to join their brothe hers in the wider
w empiree. They knew w the
story of Jesus
J the Naazarene and toldt it freelyy. It was a different
di storyy from that of
o the first gentile
ge
bishops.

Scholarrly Integrity 
Certain reeaders of the bible, namelyy theologianss, masquerade as historian
ns. 

I have beeen interesteed in the origgins of Chrisstianity sincee the mid 19950s when I was a schooolboy
and the discovery
d off the Scrolls by the Deadd Sea had sttimulated innterest in bibblical studiess. My
father haad been diag gnosed withh tuberculossis and had to spend a year in hosspital, eventtually
having a lung removed before he recovereed. Being off Irish imm migrant desceent, he had been
brought upu as a Cathholic but, havving met andd fallen in loove with a stuubborn Proteestant womaan, he
had decliined to bring g up his chilldren as Catholics and had
h fallen ouut with the church.
c In thhe TB
sanatoriuum, no doub bt conscious of his own mortality annd having loots of spare time, he took to
exploringg various religious
r alternatives, none
n of whhich he fouund satisfacttory. Duringg his
exploratiions howeveer he read vaarious bookss that examinned the histoorical originns of Christiaanity.
Amongstt them weree King Jesuss, the didacctic novel byy Robert Grraves, The Nazarene N G
Gospel
Restoredd by Graves anda Podro, TheT Other Siide of the Stoory by Ruperrt Furneaux and a book about a
the liberaal Babyloniaan Rabbi, Hilllel, the title of which I have
h forgotteen.

 

When I cycled the seventeen miles to Ilkley to visit him each Saturday, he would tell me about
his week’s explorations and we would discuss them. It was sufficient to ease his conscience
about his split with the church but naturally when he recovered, as a working man, he found less
time to continue his studies and his interest waned. I too found myself doing school examinations
and eventually entering university to study sciences and my interest also waned. It remained but
in attenuated form and I would still read popular books about Christian origins from time to time.

When I retired from government service the chance arose for me to follow these long suspended
interests and that is how I came to write these books.

My discoveries astonished me. They seemed so obvious that they quickly led me to doubt the
integrity of scholars in the field of biblical scholarship. Trained as a scientist, I looked for
rational answers to the questions that arose, but biblical scholars seek to confirm their religious
outlook. Experts in biblical studies are usually religious people, whether Christian or Jewish.
Those who have no interest in religion turn to physics, molecular biology, music or literature.
Though religious people might well opt for any of these subjects too, non-religious students
rarely opt for religious studies.

The result is that, whereas normal endeavours of life are practiced by a cross section of society in
respect of religious views, religious studies are the field of religiously inclined people almost
exclusively. So, in biblical studies, a subject that professes to be scientific—nowadays at any
rate—the normal checks and balances that allow science to progress do not apply. I speak
generally knowing that there are some who try hard to be objective but for most it is either too
difficult or they are so indoctrinated in religious belief they do not want to try.

Religious experts are consequently far from a fair sample of society. They are biased towards the
beliefs they have grown up with and unlikely to question their basic tenets. Quite the reverse,
though they profess to be scientific, they are really apologists for their religious view. When
astonishing hypotheses are published which cast doubt on the accepted views of the religious
experts they will be ignored. This allows biblical scholars to continue in well-paid careers raking
over the same muddy spoil and coming to false conclusions forever. Sometimes the same
happens in science but there, new discoveries cannot be ignored for long. Science is too big and
scientists too diverse for an important discovery to be ignored. What some group would prefer to
go away, another group find is just the link or breakthrough they have been waiting for.
Essentially biblical research is monolithic. Everyone wants to confirm God’s plan. No one wants
to have their lifelong beliefs destroyed.

Strong pressures have always existed for biblical scholars to maintain the status quo—their peers
who value the sinecures they have, their own careers within this orthodoxy, their belief that
Christians are saintly people and do not tell lies except to glory God and their conviction that
they could not have been wrong all their lives and the church wrong for two thousand years.

 

The key to it all is honesty. Sincere Christians are honest people but Christians since the
beginning of their religion have not thought it dishonest to tell a lie—when Christianity benefits!
This pious lying has become so accepted since the introduction of state education, with its
religious emphasis on Christianity, that not only does no one now think it unusual, few people
recognize it.

Truth  

The starting point for the Christians was Jesus the Nazarene who is perhaps the most influential
person who has ever lived, even though, in scientific historical terms, little is known about him.
Whether this is the power of God at work or the astonishing credulity of human beings is the
moot point. The authorized accounts, the gospels, suggest that he was active for between one and
three years, and within only two generations of the crucifixion, a Christian group, the Docetists,
attracted converts saying Jesus had never lived at all, except as a phantom.

It is possible to argue that Jesus indeed never lived but was invented to explain the origins of the
belief in a cosmic person called Christ. Yet the gospel stories are not conducive to the idea that
the earthly life of Jesus was invented because to have been crucified was a liability to the gentile
bishops. It must therefore have been what they had and had no choice about accepting. What
they could do was pretend that the stories about Jesus had been confused by their tellers in the
confusion of the times. So, we can assume that Jesus did exist, that he was a man of inspiring
deeds and a religions leader, that he was crucified, that his followers believed he had risen from
the dead and was intending to return to earth in glory.

Beginning in Sunday school or in the religious instruction classroom, worthy Christians


embellish arguable stories about Jesus as if they were true. No teacher of infants and juniors
stops to consider what truth there is in what they themselves know about the founder of their
religion and they then compound the felony by painting astonishing fairy tales based on their
own conceptions and not on any evidence. None of it matters to Christian teachers who know
they are doing God’s work. Psychologically they are telling lies believing it to be God’s truth put
into their hearts. Jesus himself justified it when he instructed his disciples in Matthew 10:19:

Take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall 
speak. 

It differs from having God’s conviction that heretics should burn at the stake only in degree. A
mass religious delusion has been created and given social approval. If some pious lie fits the
delusion then it is all right by God and society.

 

There are Christian books purporting to tell the childhood of Jesus, but no one can truthfully say
anything positive about Jesus’s childhood. These books seem like novels but their writers, if they
claim anything, say they are writing inspired or spiritual history. Novels can be quite instructive
and they are intended to be entertaining. A novel can indeed be inspiring but, however inspiring
it is, it is not history. Do we “believe in” novels? Christians certainly believe in the inspiration of
the spirit or the Holy Ghost. But even the inspired gospels contradict each other interminably.
The Christian will consider such pious works of imagination as “God’s Truth”, if it does not
contradict the mass delusion of our age. If it does, it will be ignored or decried, according to its
importance.

Biblical scholars equally build themselves reputations by writing fantasies called doctoral
dissertations about a few sentences of some ancient epistle, the significance of the prophet Elijah
at the Transfiguration or whether Jesus ascended to heaven after a few days or forty days. Such
contributions to knowledge are no different from discussing how many angels can dance on the
head of a needle, the example always quoted of how enlightened we now are compared with the
middle ages.

All of it is dryly accepted nowadays by Christian and secularist alike. The pious dishonesty
underlying Christian belief pervades society to the extent that editors, historians, scientists and
literary reviewers accept it and excuse it as tradition, if they find an excuse necessary. Practicing
Christians in the UK now comprise about a twentieth of the population, but every newspaper will
have a “Faith” column devoted to Christian speculations. New Agers, Pagans, Witches, Druids
and even Moslems and Hindus do not get this coverage yet together there are more of them than
there are Christians. Most people believe in no religion, though many have the habit of
answering the question, “What religion are you?” by saying, “Christian”. They run their lives
with no recourse to Christianity at all. This is pious dishonesty writ small. It is a legacy of the
time when any answer to this question other than “Christian” would have meant a roasting over
burning faggots. Or perhaps, like the Romans, people are chary about offending a god.

 

Religious people will counter me by saying I am being deliberately iconoclastic. I hope I am. I
find it hard to believe that, in the modern world, people still believe fairy tales, but the fact that I
do not believe them makes me a less biased observer than the experts. Christians have over the
years been doing what the modern apologists still do, although with rather greater vigour. Much
of the evidence they did not like, they destroyed and the rest of it they altered or obfuscated. That
makes it hard, today to get at the truth, and the loss of positive evidence makes speculation
essential.

John Bowden, who is an intelligent and liberal Christian, and the chief executive of the SCM,
speaks in his valuable book, Jesus: the Unanswered Questions, SCM, 1988, of his “passionate
concern for the truth of things and what I would dare to call the love of the God of Truth”. It
illustrates something about the psychology of Christians. This one is concerned for truth, but
truth is too abstract for him, and he finds the need to personify it into the “God of Truth” for him
to really love it! Christians have to personify abstractions to make them real to them and
therefore important enough to bother about and they must have the authority of a god behind
something for it to count. Why cannot the Reverend Bowden train his Christian readers to value
virtuous abstractions like truth for their own sake? Without the supernatural floss they might
actually get more of a response in this modern age.

 

Pious Lies 

I was surprised to find the story underlying the Christian religion not hard to discern once it is
read critically and with information from other sources. This latter is the stumbling block for
most people. Few people even read the gospels these days but those that do have no comparative
historical standards to position the tale they are reading. The standards exist and are just the ones
that ought now to be taught whenever the gospel stories are taught—but are not. We have always
had Josephus, the Romano-Jewish historian, Philo, the expatriate Jewish philosopher, the
Christian fathers and the Talmud but now we also have the Dead Sea Scrolls. These have proved
such a severe embarrassment to the biblical experts that accusations have been made that their
translation and publication have been deliberately delayed by Christian and Jewish authorities
scared that their flocks might get skeptical. It is true that it has taken fifty years for the full
corpus of the scroll fragments to be released to the general public, but everyone, Christian and
critic alike, tries to save face by finding excuses for the absurd delay.

Christian experts have others tacks available lest anyone should begin to think the Scrolls have
any meaning for Christian interpretation. While suspending the publication of the Scrolls
themselves, they publish books highlighting the reasons why the sect of the Scrolls has nothing
in common with Christianity other than what would be expected of contemporaries living in the
same place.

Do not believe it! The story of the founder of Christianity can be told in considerable detail from
the New Testament, the traditional sources and the fresh information we have from the Scrolls.
This is history not faith and it fits into the known history of the times. Christians might protest
that we already know all we need to know about Jesus from the gospels. That is just what I was
saying above about Christian experts. They believe they have had the story since the first century
when it happened, and all that needed clearing up were some confusions which had been
accidentally introduced. The truth is that the confusions are not just incidental. They are many
and widespread throughout the story.

History is taken from contemporary written sources or later accounts. The problem immediately
arises that public records are those which the authorities approve. It has been summarized as:
History is written by the victorious. Victors do not give objective accounts of their beaten
enemies. Caesar gives a distorted account of the Druids. For Nixon, the Vietnamese were only
Gooks—sub humans. Official sources often ignore or give distorted images of whatever they do
not like. Yet careful study can reveal what the archivists and official historians have sought to
conceal.

 

The Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament, is not an haphazard compilation of ancient histories
collated by God’s will as many believe. It was the official history of the theocracy of Judaea—
ruled by the second temple priesthood not by God. The Pentateuch, the Jewish Torah, in
particular was produced by Judaean priests sponsored by their Persian masters as the official
law-book of the new Jewish puppet of the Persian Empire. Few Judaeans then were literate but in
illiterate countries the oral tradition is strong. The indigenous Jews would still have been familiar
with the old tales and especially those who followed older non-Yehouist religions for which the
traditional stories had mythological value. For these reasons among others, the priests wanted to
incorporate the essence of the old tales, albeit suitably altered to fit new notions brought from
Babylon. The old story of Israel’s liberation from bondage in Egypt was rewritten to climax in
the unification of Israel under David and then Solomon who set up the priesthood which, blessed
by God, continued to the time of the founders of the second temple—descendants of Zadok,
would you believe? Today historians doubt that the glorious kingdom of Solomon ever existed.

The New Testament is similar. Central to the ideas herein is that the gentile Christian bishops did
not tell the truth but deliberately obscured it. Pious lying is not simply an “aberration” of
Christianity, it is its very foundation. These original pious lies were not merely whims of over
enthusiastic converts but were deliberate deceptions needed to refute the stories about the real
Jesus that people were bringing back from Palestine. There never was a Jesus of faith until the
first Christians invented him by telling pious lies about another Jesus—the Jesus of history.
Again the oral tradition was strong and could neither be ignored nor denied because too many
people were telling the truth. In the lead up to the Jewish War and its aftermath, many Jews left
Palestine to join their brothers in the wider empire. They knew the story of Jesus the Nazarene
and told it freely. It was a different story from that of the first gentile bishops. The bishops had a
problem.

They could not simply deny the stories because there were too many of them and they came from
different people. Simple denial would have seemed unreasonable, making liars of everyone
ariving from the east. They had to refute them by pious lying. The tack of the bishops was to
claim that the storytellers were confused and mistaken. Their stories were true but in the context
of the War and the jealousies of the Jewish Pharisees, they had been garbled. Of course, they had
not, but the bishops then deliberately garbled them! They simply changed a few details of the
stories and recast them in a more favourable light.

The flocks were reassured. Such distortions would arise as stories were passed on. They probably
played games like the game of consequences just as we do, and could accept that the stories had
been given the wrong interpretation in the light of bad feeling. The enemies of Jesus had
propagated these tales in the first place to mislead the innocent storytellers.

 

Old habits die hard. Once the habit of pious lying had started it spread rapidly. Eventually the
church had to call a halt to the burgeoning number of increasingly fantastic gospels that were
being written under the name of Gnosticism. They picked out the versions that they preferred and
started the New Testament canon. All other pious works were rejected. The point of gospel
interpretation therefore is to see how a gospel pericope could be reconstructed into something
feasible rather than the fantasies invented by the bishops to make Jesus into a superman or even a
god.

Jewish Myth 

Christians are told by their lying tutors and priests that the bible tells a story that goes back to the
beginning of time and was first set down by Moses around 1400 BC. No one now believes it.
Moses is supposed to have written the five books of the Pentateuch but they consistently refer to
him in the third person and include an account of his own death. Was Moses resurrected so that
he could write or finish his books? Scholars hold that the Pentateuch did not achieve its final
form until well after the “exile”, though it was based on some earlier sources. It was created from
a number of different sources by unknown editors. The bible is therefore not as ancient a book as
the preachers make out. Though it draws upon older material, it was written in its present form
around 100 BC.

Among the earliest parts of the Old Testament are the creation and flood myths, of which two of
each are present in Genesis. They have their origins in earlier Babylonian and Sumerian myths,
as everyone now knows except Christian teachers. These older myths did not relate to the
Hebrew God, Yehouah, now considered to be God, but to other gods now considered to be
devils. So why is God, the Hebrew god, Yehouah, taking stories from earlier idols. Idolatry is or
was a sin, according to Jews and Christians.

The content of the books of Kings and Chronicles goes back to about 1000 BC, although again it
was re-written around the second century BC. The best that can be said is that the bible contains
material that is ascribable to Hebrew tradition and no other going back to about 1000 BC. Not
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counting apocryphal books, Daniel, written during the reign of the Greek king Antiochus IV,
around 167 BC, is the latest.

Christian Sunday school types also like to impress their impressionable charges by claiming the
bible was written by over 40 authors including kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, poets,
statesmen, scholars and so on. The truth—which is known to any Christian preacher unless he is
a Martian—is that no one knows who the authors of these books were. The books of the Bible
are anonymous, being named simply after the main character and even when the author is
named, any honest person would have to consider the practice that was common in those days of
writing pseudepigraphs, or books under the name of a famous person to give them credibility.
Certainly Christian scholars are well aware of the practice and even earn their living looking into
the practice financed by famous US universities willing to endow such relatively pointless work.

The book of Daniel is a pseudepigraph. The author pretends he is the Daniel of Ezekiel 14:14,
14:20 and 28:3, writing about 550 BC, but scholars, including Christian ones, are agreed it was
written in 167 BC, 400 years later. Parts of it were written in Aramaic not Hebrew suggesting a
time when Aramaic was being used instead of Hebrew and therefore a late date. We cannot apply
modern standards to the author of Daniel and say he forged the book, because it was quite
acceptable to do this, but modern Christians who still pretend that the book was written in the
Babylonian exile and tell their Sunday school classes so, are just lying to little children who have
no way of judging.

Moses, Peter, Amos, Joshua, Nehemiah, Daniel, Luke, Solomon, Matthew and Paul are claimed
by some Christian liars as as authors of the Biblical books. None of these can be substantiated.
Some of Paul’s epistles might have been written by him but they might have been
pseudepigraphs written a hundred years later. Nehemiah was long thought to have been genuine
but not now. The gospels are anonymous. Their ascription to Jesus’s disciples and their aides is a
later Church tradition. There is no hard evidence that Moses, Joshua or Solomon are even real
people.

While the later reigns of the kings, from the Assyrian captivity of the Northern Kingdom, down
to the Babylonian captivity of the Southern Kingdom, are fairly well attested by external sources,
the earlier Kings are not. Obscure references possibly to David have been found but their
interpretation is doubtful, and Solomon and Saul are not mentioned in any archaeological
monuments yet found. Most scholars are concluding that Saul, David and Solomon are
mythological figures, not historical ones.

There are religious texts written before the earliest parts of the Old Testament. The Rig Veda
dates from before 1000 BC, possibly as early as 1500 BC, making it probably older than the
surmised Old Testament sources. Likewise, the Hindu Upanishads date from sometime between
1400 and 800 BC, again as old as the Old Testament sources. The Hindu scriptures are a vast
body of literature, which include such epic poems as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata,
including the Bhagavad-Gita as a later insertion.

The collection and writing of the Hindu scriptures continued well into the Christian era, about
500 AD, giving them a span longer than the bible. If Christian preachers want to make something
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of ancient works collected over a long time, why do they chose the bible rather than the holy
books of the Indian sub-continent? The answer, in case anyone remains puzzled, is that Christian
priests and preachers will use any ploy to impress children and the gullible, and persuade them
that their particular choice of god is the only one worth reading. To do this, they have always felt
that any deception and any lie is forgivable as long as it is to enlarge their own god’s empire of
captives.

New Testament 

The books of the New Testament range from about 50 AD for the letters of Paul, to 150 AD for
some of the other letters. So, the Christian bible covers works from about 1100 years of history,
though the Old Testament was really written in the second century BC and the New Testament
from about 50 to 150 AD. It is false, therefore, as Christian teachers persistently do, to claim that
the bible was written over a period of thousands of years prior to the gospel evangelists
completing the message.

Christian schoolteachers also tell their little ones that the bible is full of harmony despite its
many authors over thousands of years and the difficult matters they had to deal with. It is another
outright lie. That the ideas in the bible evolved is plain from the bible itself, although the
chronology has been mixed up. The Hebrew idea of death originally had no concept of heaven
and hell. This is plain in the scriptures. Sexual promiscuity is another example. The patriarchs
and kings David and Solomon were outrageous in their promiscuity, and the law of Moses even
contained provisions relating to inheritance for the children of multiple wives (Dt 21:15-17), but
Jesus says that a man and a woman should cleave together as one (Mk 10:6-12). How is this
harmonious?

Even more damning of this lie is that Jesus supposedly abrogated part of the law of Moses (Mk
7:5-9) all of which had been obligatory for the whole of the Jewish scripture. Paul the apostle
makes it clear that the whole of the law is abrogated (Gal 2:16) for Christians. And even more so
yet, the just and loving God of the New Testament (1 Jn 4:8, 2 Peter 3:9, Jas 1:17) commanding
the Israelites to massacre men, women, children and infants of the Amelekites. There are so
many more that a great part of Christian “scholarship” is trying to find ingenious ways of
harmonizing these discrepancies:

• 2 Kings 4:32‐37—A dead child is raised (well before the time of Jesus).  
• Matthew 9:18‐25, John 11:38‐44—Two dead persons are raised (by Jesus himself).  
• Acts 26:23—Jesus was the first to rise from the dead.  

• Matthew 7:21—Not everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  
• Acts 2:21, Romans 10:13—Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  
• Acts—2:39 Those God calls to himself will be saved.  

• Matthew 7:24, Luke 10:36‐37, Romans 2:6, 13, James 2:24—We are justified by works, not by 
faith.  
• John 3:16, Romans 3:20‐26, Ephesians 2:8‐9, Galatians 2:16—We are justified by faith, not by 
works.  
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It is not surprising that Christianity is composed of over thirty thousand sects, all of which can
affirm their particular interpretation of Faith with explicit biblical proof texts, precisely because
the bible is such a mass of contradictions, any of which can be quoted to establish different
points of view.

The Book of Mormon is studied, read and believed by millions of people despite being known as
an amateurish fake. Mormons accept it as true despite evidence it is a fake. Mormons plainly
lack the capacity of rational thought, but they are only unusual in that they believe a recent fake.
Christians believe a fraudulent book completed almost 2000 years ago but known to be a hotch-
potch of incompatible ideas. It does not matter. They just take what they want or what they are
taught to take from it and ignore the rest, inconsistencies and all. Christians too lack the capacity
for rational thought, but most of them are badly educated, simple and superstitious peasants.
What does that make their sophisticated preachers and ministers with their university educations
or their radio stations?

The Fashion for Dying Gods 

So, pious lying was the foundation of Christianity, going back to its origins in the Roman Empire
and explaining many of the puzzles of the New Testament. Why though did this strange new
religion, built on a supposedly real figure who had to be hidden to be acceptable, spread at all?
The answer was that there was a religious vacuum in the Roman Empire. When the Roman
Republic became an Empire, the people became absorbed with unusual events, with the
supernatural and with mysteries. Even sophisticated people became less rational. The native
Romans did not build mythologies like the Greeks and the Egyptians but instead had the simple
idea of spirits—everything had its spirit or “numen”, a power for good or ill. A man had a spirit
called his “genius” and a woman’s was called her “juno”. The home and the hearth had their own
spirits, important to the happiness of family life.

The spirits of men or women of power and influence were favoured by Greeks and later by
Romans in the cult of heroes. They said Orpheus and Hercules were once living men just as the
Egyptians thought that Osiris and Isis were the original rulers of Egypt. If they were, a complex
of myths and legends were attributed to them after they died until they became fully-fledged
gods.

But Romans were open minded about religion in a way which we cannot understand, partly
because they were indifferent to blasphemy. They were tolerant of religious differences and
came to enjoy novelty. Those who derided a god were foolish but Romans did not take personal
offence if the god was their own—gods could look after themselves. They did not need a feeble
mortal to defend them, indeed it was absurd for a mortal to take up cudgels to defend a god.
Romans sincerely believed that the gods were sensitive, petulant, and ready to intervene in
human lives. If a man offended a god then the poor fellow had better watch out—he’d find his
luck was out, or worse. Romans did worry that angry gods might respond indiscriminately and
innocent bystanders might suffer. If a republican Roman thought he had angered a god, he would
often commit suicide rather than invite a divine response that might destroy his city or ravage it
with plague. A general fear of divine anger not blasphemy invited Roman displeasure with those
who taunted gods.
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Religious tolerance meant they could freely admit and copy other people’s religions. They were
impressed by ancient history, and first adopted the Greek gods and then Oriental ones. Native
Roman religion was worthy and pious but totally this worldly. It paid no attention to an after life
because Romans at first had no thoughts of survival of the personality. On death, Romans simply
joined the “Good People” (no singular). By the end of the republic Roman religion had ceased to
be a religion. Its festivals had become occasions of state ceremony. Augustus, the adopted son of
Julius Caesar, had formed the Empire. The population was getting more cosmopolitan, culture
more varied and the old religion less attuned to the needs of worshippers. People felt dissatisfied
and sought novelty in eastern ceremonial, the spectacular and the supernatural. In our
chronological reckoning, it was a millennium and similar madnesses have followed each
thousand years ever since.

Foreign gods interested the Romans because they had powerful spirits and a long history. The
worshippers wanted to improve their fortune by having a god walking beside them. Astrology
became increasingly popular and the idea that gods lived beyond the stars, probably introduced
from the Persians via Babylonia and developed by Plato. The stars reflected the actions of the
gods and enabled diviners to tell the future, but people sought a way of compelling the gods to
help them. Theurgy, magic that made the gods to do the will of the practitioner, became
fashionable. Meticulous observation of ritual had always been essential to getting the gods’
favour. Eventually the popular imagination was captured by the idea that the gods loved mankind
and sought only to help them—they were saviours!

The idea was not new. It had begun beyond the Roman Empire in the countries of the Middle
East. Dying and rising gods were known in Egypt, Babylonia, Syria, Phoenicia, Persia, India.
Marduk or Tammuz, the Babylonian God, was to come to earth as a saviour. Saoshyant was the
saviour of the Persian religion and Krishna in India had the same role. The Egyptians as early as
2200 BC expected Osiris, a saviour described as the “shepherd of his people who shall gather
together his scattered flocks and in whom there is no sin”. Most often these were dying gods who
had originally signified the annual death and revival of vegetation with the seasons. Like the
withering vegetation they disappeared into the underworld where dwelt the dead—they died—
then when the onset of summer was signalled at the spring equinox, the god was born again to
fertilise the crops and stimulate the reproductive cycle. In Crete, an empty tomb was displayed as
the “Tomb of Zeus”. Epimenides, the Cretan philosopher wrote in the sixth century BC:

A grave have they fashioned for thee, O Zeus, highest and greatest—the Cretans, always liars, evil 
beasts, idle gluttons. But thou art not dead, for to eternity thou livest and standest, for in thee we live 
and move and have our being.  

This poem is cited twice in the New Testament by Paul, in Titus 1:12 and Acts 17:28. The site
was latterly marked by a chapel to the Lord Christ!

Professor H Gunkel traced Babylonian myths in the imagery of Genesis and Revelationin his
book Creation and Chaos. Gunkel sees in the background of the “Servant of the Lord” in
Deutero-Isaiah, the figure of the dying and the rising god, adopted for Judaism.
14 
 

Arriving from the east, these religions became common in the east of the Empire then spread
west to become popular throughout. Today in an equivalent desire for novelty, we find people
taking to Buddhism, Druidism, Wicca, Taoism and even extra-terrestrial religions like Raelism
and the disastrous Heaven’s Gate. Then Attis, Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, Dionysus and
Prometheus all were introduced to Rome as new gods and worshipped as divine victims whose
resurrection offered salvation for their mourning followers.

It is no coincidence that, at this very time of change, yet another religion arose in the east in
which a god died for the sins of mankind. Pious lying added a sense of realism to the event
because, the confused travellers who told the true story confirmed that it had really happened
even though they had mixed up the details. The new religion was therefore a religion of a god
who really had died and there were people who confirmed it—the story told until this day by
Christians. Furthermore, it was a religion that began with an ancient book of prophecy which
proved that the god, called the Messiah, was expected. This was the holy book of the Jews—the
Jewish scriptures—purloined from them by the first bishops to give their new religion a bogus
history.

Finally, Christianity sprouted out of the Jewish community in the Roman world. The bishops had
a ready made market for their new religion in the many Romans who had attached themselves to
the Jewish religion but were scared to be circumcised—a serious operation for a grown man—as
the Jewish religion required. Even more Roman women had attached themselves to the Jewish
faith because they had no such worry. At the time of Jesus, Jews constituted as many as ten
percent of the population of the eastern part of the Roman Empire—the part that had been part of
the earlier Persian empire. Jesus confined his mission in Judaea to Jews, and the first Christians
were Jewish. The new religion offered itself as Judaism for gentiles and inevitably had early
success.

Gospels 

There is no need to suppose that the original followers of Jesus were other than sincere in their
belief that he had risen from the dead. They did not tell lies themselves. The lies were told by the
gentile bishops a few decades later when the Hellenized Jewish believers in Jesus had told some
aspects of the story in the Roman empire away from Judaea.

All scholars, Christians and critics, accept that the gospels were not written as history but to
persuade their readers to believe the claims of the church. They are admitting the gospels are not
necessarily true. Put bluntly, they contain lies, but they are lies intended to convince people Jesus
was the divine saviour, so Christians believe they are acceptable lies. Let the question of the
historicity of the gospels be asked and Christians admit to pious lying.

The gospels were not all written at the same time and by independent authors. Few experts
disagree that Mark was written first and John last. Matthew and Luke both used Mark
extensively, but had other sources too, one at least of which was a collection of wise sayings
attributed to Jesus called the Logia—or sometimes just Q. The later these works are, the more
suspect they are. The Logia is probably the earliest constituent of the gospels but we do not have
15 
 

it. We have to deduce it from Matthew, Mark and Luke. The earliest text we have in its own right
is Mark. Mark is therefore likely to contain the gospel message in its least elaborated form.

Where the other gospels expanded upon Mark, they might be drawing on the same tradition and
adding to our understanding of it, but such elaborations have to be considered with care. John’s
gospel is too late and elaborated to be a reliable source. Christians refer to the author of John as
the “Theologian”, which should be sufficient for us to distrust it. Theologians invented pious lies
and have made a profession out of elaborating them. If we infer something from Mark or other
sources like Josephus or the Dead Sea Scrolls and find support in John’s gospel all well and
good.

One more point. No scholar will deny that the books of the New Testament have been repeatedly
edited. The aim of each editor was to make the story more convincing for potential believers—to
add more pious lies to the glory of God. When additions have been made, sometimes it is
obvious because the theology or Christology is too advanced for the time being described and the
passage can be disregarded. Often we notice a phrase or a whole passage that puzzles us because
it does not fit the character of the Christian Jesus. Such passages must be due to editors failing to
rewrite or to scratch out the original. No editor would add in a passage that contradicts the Christ
of Faith. It follows that they must apply to the Jesus of History.

The narratives of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were a sort of anti-history—expressions of
faith in the crucified and resurrected Christ. The gullible gentile converts had been persuaded
that a god had died and been resurrected because the world was soon to be renewed under the
direct rule of God. They believed it, converted and waited for the angelic host. Nothing happened
but stories began to emerge that their dying and resurrected god was really a Jewish bandit. The
bishops suddenly found themselves with a large number of cracks to paper over. They invented
excuse after excuse, explanation after explanation, and must have been amazed that many of
their flocks believed their excuses.

Previously the new god had had no history. It did not matter because his return would explain all.
The need to explain the stories that came from Palestine rapidly gave the new god a history, and
beginning with Mark, it was written down as the gospels. Though they are not historically true,
Christian scholars suspended their reason and, taking Jesus to be divine, accepted the New
Testament accounts as God’s Truth. They were false historically but nevertheless true! Some
scholars were more honest and rejected all the supernatural events as embellishments. They used
the form critical method to judge what was true and what not. Eventually scholars like Bultman
and the more recent Jesus Seminar almost totally rejected the gospels as history. They left
themselves with only a few of the sayings of Jesus as genuine tradition but the actual context of
the sayings was considered irretrievably lost, thus leaving huge gaps for scholarly speculative
theses—provided they did not threaten the Christian consensus.

Now, Christian punters mainly believe the Christian bible is infallibly true but biblical scholars
think most of it is not true even if they are Christian biblical scholars! They threw out the baby
with the bath water, which is perhaps what they intended, because they knew or suspected that
Jesus was not really what Christians are taught. Better eliminate Jesus all together as a historical
16 
 

figure and thereby make him impregnable as a religious symbol than to risk it being proved from
some alien source that he was not what Christians have always claimed.

Not until Albert Schweitzer (1906) did scholars generally recognised that the obvious was true.
If the gospels had any historical value at all, their central figure was in the apocalyptic Jewish
tradition. Christians were never pleased with this revelation. After all over a hundred years
before Schweitzer, Reimarus had declared Jesus a revolutionary, but that had been ignored. After
limply acknowledging Schweitzer for a hundred years they wanted to return to the sagacious old
mendicant teacher, kind to children, that they preferred. They are now carrying on in this vein
even though the main background to Jewish apocalyptism has been found in the Scrolls of the
Dead Sea. Yet simple mendicant country teachers are not the stuff of history. Sages have to have
a political role of some sort to be noticed. Scholars failed to consider the political factors of the
time that necessitated the involvement of Jesus. Once the political circumstances are understood,
the reason for pious lying becomes obvious and the gospels can be explained.

I offer the hypothesis presented here knowing that no Christian will take any notice. There is no
persuading irrational people as we can tell increasingly at the millennium when bizarre beliefs of
all kinds multiply. Those willing to examine a non-mystical explanation of the formation of
Christianity through pious lying might find this book satisfying. There is not the least doubt that
some Christian scholars know Christianity was built on lies and would willingly allow the Jesus
of History to be exposed so that God’s ministers can concentrate on the Jesus of Faith. Perhaps I
can be of some assistance.

An Honest Religion 

Faith, Tillich argued, is not belief, it is struggling with the questions. Christianity promises joy
and peace of mind, and troublesome questions are not part of the Christian prescription.
Christians are relieved of mental wrestling by being taught unquestioning belief, and being given
ready made answers. Does not the Holy Book say, “Unless you become as little children, you
shall not enter the kingdom of heaven?” Goodness is equated with innocence, and Christ himself
is depicted as a bemused child, innocently trying to be good in a wicked world. This stereotype is
urged on believers. As children, their minds are made up for them, and ministers supply pre-
packaged values and opinions to do it. Christianity aims to keep its lambs child-like, immature
and dependent, the better to shepherd them and fleece them.

Christians are taught to see the guiding hand of God in every circumstance. God teaches them
lessons through their fate. He punishes them for wrongdoing and rewards them for doing good.
No wonder so many people today are criminals—it is rewarding so cannot be wrong!
Christianity, for all its concern with free-will, sees people as puppets, and God is the puppet
master. Society and ultimately Nature, not God, punishes people for doing wrong, otherwise
peoples’ fates fall within the normal distribution of events—some are fortunate and some are not,
but most lives are neither one nor the other.

The bible is mythical, and when that is accepted its values can be examined with more
objectivity and relevance to today. Myths giving people ways of living 3000 years ago are not
necessarily any good today, and in practice much of the bible, Old and New Testaments, is
17 
 

ignored while other parts are arbitrarily considered unviolable. Jesus plainly tells us as
graphically as possible that there would be far more camels than rich men in heaven. Though
Jesus related mainly to men and could see no merit in being rich, for Christians it is far more
important not to be homosexual than it is not to be rich.

Religion is a kind of aesthetic experience. Worship is the awe we feel at wondrous things like
natural vistas, a storm, beauty, great art or the night sky. Religion exploited these emotions,
captured natural awe for its unnatural purpose of propagating falsehood. The mystical and
numinous were divorced from their source and presented as evidence of a phantasm instead of
our feeling of oneness with Nature. Religion is a creation of human imagination, using human
experience of the real world not an imaginary world. Our instinct to be awestruck at natural
experience has been hijacked by mental vampires called Christian priests and ministers.

Ministers tell us we can have eternal life, and we imagine it is foolish to refuse such an offer. But
we pay now and get the goods after we die, when we are in no way fit to complain that we’ve
been had. We are persuaded that death is life, and attend God’s house regularly as insurance.
Yet, if any minister assures us he is certain of eternal life, he is either deluded or he thinks we
are. How can something beyond the reach of the senses be certain? Meanwhile life is a bed of
nails for us to endure to prove we merit the reward of eternal life.

An honest religion is needed that emphasises the life we have, not some pig-in-a-poke of a life
when life is impossible. Any decent religion should emphasise our human potential here and
now, the protection of our world for the future of our children and their children, and whatever of
the natural world we can still protect for them! Our purpose is not to hope for some selfish if
deluded personal salvation of nuzzling up to Jesus when we are dead, but to promote our own
role as saviours—salvation of life here on earth while we are alive as our duty not some empty
right because we have been foolish enough to believe impossible stories. We should be the
saviours, saving our world for our descendants when we die. Most of all, we get one chance
only!

• More about Christian Mythology  
• More about Jewish Mythology  
• More about Pious Lying  
• Questioning belief  
• More about science  
• More about Mike Magee  

Before you go, think about this… 
Ian Musgrave emphasises that ID is a political, not scientific movement. In many ways, it is an anti‐
science movement. People who are interested in knowing more about the ID movement should consult 
the US National Center for Science Education’s web site. A detailed examination of the ID movement 
and its claims can be found in the book Why Intelligent Design Fails 

Examining the Bible Objectively


18 
 

A fool and his money are an evangelist’s best friends. 

2. A Religion of Puzzlement
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, May 14, 1999

• A Religion of Puzzlement  
• Criticising Christianity  
• Life after Death  
• The Existence of a God  
• Revelation  
• Christian History  
• Religious Instinct  
• Holy Book  
• Christ or Anti‐Christ?  
• Truth and Dogma  

Abstract 
Occasionally, religious people feel the awe everyone used to feel, and, because it is now so unusual, 
think it is supernatural. Yet, it is the exact opposite—it is entirely natural, although it signals to us the 
‘superness’ of Nature. A belief in God is not necessary for people to be religious. Are Buddhism and 
Confucianism religions? They are so described, but Buddha and Confucius were agnostics, and 
Confucianism has been faithful to its founder’s agnosticism. Was Stoicism, one of the greatest of moral 
systems, a religion? Stoics were indifferent to gods and were concerned only with the life of people here 
on earth.  

A Religion of Puzzlement 

What is religion? It is a puzzle. Henri Bergson wrote:

How is it that beliefs and practices that are anything but reasonable could have been, and still are, 
accepted by reasonable beings.  

Quite! Today not everyone means the same thing by religion. Many people use the word as
meaning any set of personal ideals or beliefs. Thus communism, though atheistic, is called a
religion. In its early stages, religion did not have this broad meaning.
19 
 

Religious thinking is the simplest kind of thinking. It is the thinking of puzzled people trying to
comprehend things that they do not understand. Left to themselves, as they learnt more about the
world and explained the puzzles of yore, religious thinking ought to disappear and be replaced,
first by common sense or intuitive explanations, then by reasoned and ultimately scientific
explanations of the world.

Unfortunately, people were not left to follow this natural development. Early in history a caste of
them saw the value of puzzlement and set out to keep the others—the unsophisticated ones—
puzzled. They called themselves priests and they invented gods so that they could control
people’s lives. They are still with us doing the same things, and modern people still let them,
though they have no proper excuse for doing so—they are mainly not now unsophisticated.

Today we are able to choose between facts and rhetoric, between history and mythology,
between common sense and religion, between science and obfuscation, and between free thought
and enslaving creeds. Unlike other animals we have the power of abstract thought. Why do most
of us not use it on the religions which still exist in the West notably “our religion”, Christianity?

It is because people are normally brought up conditioned by some religious superstition imposed
upon them by their parents through their sense of duty. For centuries, in the West, the
superstition that has fettered the human mind has been that of the Christian priesthood. The priest
historically claimed a person’s whole life. Scarcely had children entered the world than their will
was made captive:

• they lost their freedom in the rite of baptism;  
• they were taught incredible fairy stories to increase their gullibility;  
• they were then taught that their personality lived independently of their body in something 
called the soul;  
• this soul could live on after death, but only if they obeyed the priests.  

And so, believing they were to be rewarded for it, they happily accepted the priest’s dogmas as
being divine and revealed supernaturally. The majority of people in the western world in the last
20 
 

two thousand years have thus made themselves slaves to the clerics and the bogus authority of
the church.

But nobody is forever committed to their parents’ prejudices. If this were so, humans would
always have remained in ignorance. Knowledge progresses by each generation adding to the
knowledge of the preceding one. Each of us must test our knowledge to determine what we must
reject and what we should retain and to dispose of superstitions instilled into us from infancy.

Most believers hold to their Christian opinions without so much as an hour’s genuine reflexion
on them. The reason is that they dare not. The priests have told them it shows lack of faith and
the salvation of their soul depends upon them having faith. There could not be a better
confidence trick. The tricked party dare not even start to think it has been tricked.

Well it has, and no Christian should worry that their God has forbidden them, on pain of
everlasting death, from using the brain that evidently He gave them. Do facts, like natural facts
and historical facts, mean anything at all? They do? Then we must apply them to Christianity as
to the natural world. Christianity must stand or fall by the facts. Unless the Christian god is the
Devil in disguise, no Christian could think God would trick them.

We treat Christianity differently from other matters of study in the world because the priests,
who want to guard their sinecures, tell us Christianity is different. Christianity should be treated
like any other subject—in a strictly realistic manner. We should weigh Christianity critically in
the scales of knowledge and the priesthood in the scales of justice.

Criticising Christianity 

A theist is not a deist. Theists believe in God for personal and quite irrational reasons, often an
unproven belief in revelation. A Christian is a theist. A deist believes in something divine, but
regards all religions as human constructs or frauds. Deists are often labelled infidels, unbelievers,
skeptics or Rationalists because they are people who follow reason and good sense rather than
tradition or some authority declaring the supernatural exists and effects us all daily.

In the last two hundred years, there has been an increasing body of people questioning this
authority and its ethical basis, since it is manifestly untrue! A similar thing happened two and a
half thousand years ago, in Asia, when beliefs in supernatural entities were getting so convoluted
that Buddha in India and Confucius in China urged men to concentrate on human problems and
“ignore spiritual beings, if there are any”. The mass of the people took no notice. It was the same
in ancient Greece and Rome.

The poet Dante tells us that many intellectuals were skeptics at Florence in his day. But they
were dangerous times. The stench of burning human flesh pervaded Europe. The Papacy could
stand no opposition. The noble Giordano Bruno was burned alive as late as 1600 for teaching an
enlightened philosophy of the universe.

How many in the seventeenth century knew of the work of Copernicus or Galileo? Few. After a
thousand years of absolute domination of Christianity—”the greatest patron learning ever had”,
21 
 

Christians tell us—ninety per cent of the people of Europe were unable to read. Persistent
attempts to stem the tide of disbelief by banning evolution from schools is only the latest
example of how the church has forced ignorance upon the world. The old creed was based on a
conception of the universe which was objectively wrong but right for the church.

Skepticism increases as knowledge grows because Christianity cannot be reconciled with recent
discoveries. When only the clergy could read, no one was in a position to question their lies, and
the few books available were full of clerical mendacity. The church’s lies were questioned in
proportion to the degree of universality of education and of printed books. Today, there is again
healthy skepticism toward religion.

Only charlatans today pronounce the most distinctive dogma of Christianity—eternal torment.
Who but rogues or fools can accept God’s primitive curse on mankind and the necessity of the
atoning death of Christ. Adelphiasophists deplore blood, bloody sacrifices and bells obliging
people to make their due attendance at church. Adelphiasophists refuse to worship, because
worship was the oriental flattery of potentates, sultans and czars.

Protestant Americans were among those who broke the tyranny of the Papacy and laughed at its
divine claims. They maintained that the Church had lied about religion for a thousand years and
the world had acquiesced in the deception. The proper human situation was the republic of of the
pagan Greeks and Romans, so the Protestant Americans smashed the divine right of kings. They
broke the chains of the slave, which the church had blessed since it began. They tore up all the
ancient deceptions. Yet now many accept the same lies from their weeping, money-grubbing
protestant ministers.

At the same time, largely in Germany, biblical criticism became more scientific—Higher
Criticism—a careful study and analysis of original Hebrew and Greek texts. At once the Hebrew
text of the Old Testament was shown to be a compilation of fragments of books of very different
ages, all put together, and very considerably altered, by the Jewish priests a few centuries before
Christ.

Just as we can easily tell the English of the tenth century from that of the fifteenth or the
nineteenth, so we ought to see marked differences in the Hebrew text of the different biblical
stories, if they were genuinely old books. The books are quite uniform in style, differences
signifying only a few hundred years at the most in the different redactions. There is some
genuine history in them, showing that the priestly editors used legends but the vast range of
history the books purposrt to cover is not there. This is one of the very important points
overlooked by the Fundamentalists. The authority of the Bible they accept evaporates without
any assistance from evolution. Genesis is historically untrue as well as scientifically untrue.

Science and history are one. History is the scientific investigation of the story of man. Proper
historical investigation requires as much skepticism as science to operate successfully. Species
can be seen evolving, so how are they created by God? Modern history equally cuts out the hand
of God from the human record and dispenses with the miraculous, and supernatural revelations.
22 
 

One of the untruthful and unsound aspects of church propaganda was a contempt of all things
Pagan. Every fine sentiment in the New Testament has a parallel in the words of Plato or the
Stoics, yet the churches prescribed that all the world was in darkness until Christ, a myth so
widely accepted that few people, even non-Christians today, would demur. Protestants took to
this myth even more than the Roman church, which they regarded, quite rightly, as being largely
pagan anyway. Dante recognized the greatness of ancient Greece and Rome, basing his famous
Christian epic on the pagan poet Virgil.

The first scholars to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs were astonished to find that the ancient
pagan kingdom had been deeply religious and proper in moral terms. Egypt’s many gods and
goddesses had even evolved into ethical monotheism in which the god Aten or, later, Amun-Ra
was thought of precisely as people today think of God.

In ancient Babylon, archaeologists found an immense literature and the Babylonians’ code of
laws. They are not “mere hypotheses”, the typical Fundamentalist dismissal. They were biblical
so-called revelations written in tablets of clay! And the rulers of this “primitive immoral pagan”
country drowned people in the river for adultery and burned men alive for rape!

Their account of the origin of the universe and of man emerged from the mud and astonishingly
showed that Genesis is a collection—altered to suit Jewish monotheism—of legends going back
several thousand years. The story of creation, of the first human pair, of the garden and the fall,
and of the deluge, correspond perfectly with the stories reproduced in Genesis.

No Fundamentalist admits to the dimmest notion of what scholars have long known about
Babylonian stories being in Genesis. Many are not stupid. They know of these discoveries but
pretend to their distinctly stupid followers that they do not exist. They are not concerned to
preserve souls but to preserve the weight of their wallets. So, all of them speak about “the Word
of God” as if ancient Babylon had never been uncovered, and the stories of creation, fall and
deluge were not just ancient legends. Even if the evidence was dropped into their laps, most of
these fundamentalist believers would stick to Genesis as God’s revelation.

Nothing was more damaging to biblical revelation than the discoveries of the same legends in
pre-biblical Babylon. Yet the implications of evolutionary theory were greater. If people evolve
from an earlier form, when does the soul evolve?

The tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues offered another ground for disputing the
biblical explanation of things. One of the earliest branches of science in the nineteenth century
was the science of languages, philology. Scientists found that the languages of widely different
nations—such as most Europeans, Hindus and Persians—were related to each other. Before
species were known to have evolved, language was known to have evolved. The biblical myth of
the Tower of Babel was therefore... just a myth.

Experts on the science of comparative religion arranged all the religions of the world, including
Christianity, in a series and realised that even Christianity evolved.
23 
 

Modern Christians take the Bible as an inspired book or a revelation only in a dilute sense. The
early chapters of the Old Testament consist of legends taken from the Babylonians. The history
recorded in Deuteronomy, Kings, Judges, Chronicles and the prophets is full of errors. The Old
Testament was compiled and conflated with pious fiction a few centuries before the birth of
Christ. The prophecies were not prophecies, the miracles were not miracles, and the New
Testament was written so many decades after the death of Christ that an historian would not
regard it as a reliable biography. The reason is that the Bible is not a science or history book. It
was written to make people believe in God.

A few preachers say that they surrender all these things. These men who tell us to be honest must
be honest to us. They retain a book known to be full of pious forgeries—lies in truth—to make
us believe in God. In so doing, they surrender Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, the fall and
the flood. What then is original sin and the need for atonement?

Christianity is an ethic, they say, but it does not look much like old Christianity, so why keep the
name? Not pure opportunism, surely! Because Christ remains as the prophet. Yet nothing in this
ethical code seems originally and peculiarly Christian, and how can twentieth century society
benefit from pasoral oracles of two thousand years ago? Why should anyone look for social
guidance to a prophet who thought that the end of the world was at hand?

The third and chief element of the new Christianity is God, and it is the most disputed and
disputable of the three. God is the most disputed element of all religion. Philosophers, the men
who ought to know most about it, are hopelessly divided as to what kind of a God we may
believe in and the reasons why we should believe. The majority of them refuse to believe in a
personal God.

Some scientific men throw as much dust in the eyes of people as Fundamentalist preachers do.
“Science is not opposed to religion”, they pronounce. When they say science is not opposed to
religion, they mislead, because they use their authority as scientists to give what is no more than
their personal belief that the facts brought to light by science are consistent with religious beliefs.
On that they have no authority at all.

Science is not concerned with God and immortality. These are supernatural phenomena and
science studies phenomena in nature. It is idle therefore to consider whether science is consistent
with God. Instead of wasting their time asking fatuous questions about God, people should be
asking sensible questions about how we are treating the world and its creatures, including
ourselves.

Shallow thinkers, who mistake insincere sentimentality for natural love and concern, cling to
traditional belief. Clear, inquisitive thinkers, who constantly ask why, demand proof and live in
the real world not a fantasy world, inevitably reject Christianity. History, science, philosophy,
common sense—all that we know and the best that we have thought—will tell us that priests
have been lying for centuries.
24 
 

Life after Death 

Take the idea of immortality. The way of all life is toward death. Not so much as a pin-point of
reproducible evidence in proof of any life after death has been presented. Supposed evidence is
all anecdotal and invokes the most primitive ideas of superstition, ghosts and portents. If we
concede for the sake of argument that this “evidence” can be weighed in the balance, it has to
weigh heavily in the face of the remaining 95 percent of evidence that tells us that our
personality ceases when we die. Death is the irrefragable ultimate fact.

There is no reason in nature for immortality, and indeed it becomes more unreasonable the more
one reflects upon it. The wish for immortality is nothing more than the other vain wishes that
men have. Can anyone figure out any form of immortality that might be plausible? The “soul”
which is supposed to be immortal is itself nothing more than a myth.

Why do so many people stake their happiness on a transcendental future which might not exist
instead of fulfilling the possibilities of this life which we know exists because we experience it
daily?

Asked to reject future life—the idea of the extension of the personality into the future—some
people find it hard to accept they will not meet again those they have loved in the present life.
They assume too much and should think again. What happiness is there in the doubt that their
departed lovers, children and friends—good as they seemed—might have finished up in the
eternal fires of hell? Can they be happy to imagine their loved ones minute by minute burning in
hell, having lapsed in the standards of the Almighty and incurred his displeasure, rather than
enjoying the balmy plains of heaven where we hope to meet them again. We are entitled to
wonder why, if God is good, merciful and omnipotent, he could not have made mankind
incapable of sin, for, then, the necessity for a hell would not have arisen.

Why not accept that the personality dies with the body just as the original loss of the loved one
when they died had to be accepted. Those who accept the belief in immortality do so simply on
the word of others, who know no more about the mystery than they themselves. Should we
believe in the supernatural because it gives us comfort in bereavement or because charlatans
preying upon our grief assure us it is so?

The Existence of a God 

By reason alone, one might find plausible arguments for the existence of a God— the need for a
creator, design in nature, a legislator to decree the “laws of nature”, and the like. Anyone of a
skeptical bent would still not be satisfied, however, because the creation of the god has then to be
explained. Postulationg a creator only suggests a greater mystery. It is not parsimonious and it is
not an explanation.

Science gives natural explanations of these things and supernatural explanations have become
pointless except as moral tales. Naturally, unsolved questions remain but so far there is no need
to imagine that the methods of natural investigation will not produce answers. But as we satisfy
ourselves with nuggets from the goldmine of knowledge, we constantly reveal new lodes
25 
 

beyond, yet to be mined. Meanwhile, not one tenable argument for belief in God has yet been
dug up.

If you ask a clergyman where this Almighty exists, you will get no meaningful answer, or rather
you will get as many answers as people you ask. Yet we can see Nature all around us and marvel
in awe at her beauty and complexity. Since the Renaissance, the growth of science has led to a
new appreciation of Nature and a growing rejection of the view that a supernatural king,
ensconced somewhere in a transcendent dimension can, willy-nilly alter her laws. No divine
whim can change the local laws of mechanics.

Instead of wasting our time and energy in contemplating and appeasing a fictitious deity, and
obeying the selfish motive of desire for future salvation in a transcendental heaven, let us
dedicate our lives to the interests of this world, to the study of natural science so that we can
understand how we are affecting our environment and preserve it, to social cooperation and
cooperation with the other species which share the planet with us, to the development of the
neglected intuitive and creative aspects of our being rather than only seeking knowledge through
destruction, to the spread of knowledge of our situation that we might enjoy future happiness not
misery or extinction.

We must transfer our allegiance from God to Goddess. We regard Nature as a goddess, not
because we belief that she is a sentient giantess living somewhere in the sky or in another
dimension, but because she gives birth and succours—her primary attributes are motherly. We
can treasure her as the womb within which all living things are developing. We can resolve to
preserve her for others and not neglect her as unimportant or even destroy her because she is
derogated as a “Vale of Woe”, the only true life coming after death.

Only from a careful study of the Goddess in her many ramifications has a coherent, convincing
picture of the universe and the evolution of life emerged. A mature, intelligible view of things
has replaced theology, the infantile game of inventing whatever explanation is convenient,
untramelled by having to root it in reality.

The defenders of Christianity have had to rely upon glaring falsifications of Pagan beliefs, and
hold up their hands in sanctimonious horror at the worship of natural objects. But it is no more
foolish to adore the glorious and beneficent sun than to adore a being who exists only in the
human imagination. Is it more foolish to worship a tyrant of a father consciously judging and
punishing, or Nature personified as a mother because she constantly gives birth to the beauty of
our world and rewards us with all the joys of it?

To this day in familiar Christian rhetoric the term “Pagan” connotes immorality, impiety and a
low, unblessed state of being. This false picture is innocently or, more truthfully, ignorantly
stressed by some preachers but there is also a lot of deliberate misrepresentation.

Even a moderately intelligent priest must learn enough about the Classical and Hellenistic
periods to briefly glimpse their art, philosophy, culture and orderly social life. Why then do they
insist on libelling Paganism. Two of the loftiest ethical systems in history—the Stoic and the
26 
 

Epicurean—were Pagan. Morals were far higher in the Greek-Roman world than they were in
Christian Europe for centuries after the fall of ancient civilization—as high as morals are today.

As for culture, and all the fine and interesting and orderly things that make a civilization, the
Pagan world was brilliantly superior to Christian times throughout the weary, wretched rule of
faith. By the middle of the nineteenth century the world had only reached once more the level of
civilization at which the Pagan world stood when Christianity came, bringing not light but
darkness.

Revelation 

We want a comprehensible, realistic picture of the religious past, a knowledge of the genuine
character and influence of institutions, an understanding of the way men lived and what their
ideas meant to them. We want complete living history (as nearly complete as scholarship can
make it) and not an imperfect skeleton made up partly of invisible bones called “spiritual”. We
want the truth, even if it exposes Christianity in a bad light, shows it to have been an influence
hostile to civilized aims and contradicts the false history with which Christianity has sought to
justify itself. It does!

The simple idea of the average Christian is that Jesus gave the gospel truth to the world, that with
speedy and singular unanimity the world accepted this truth, that it burst suddenly as a brilliant,
beautiful light upon a world all in darkness, and that Christianity, as a system of doctrine, stems
directly in an unbroken and uncorrupted line from these divinely inspired, self-evident and
undisputed teachings of Jesus.

Is there any truth in Christian revelation? And, further, has any revelation of a supernatural
character ever taken place? On examining the alleged revelation, we find that the Christian myth
is based on no valid evidence. It rests only on the inspiration of the bible—a collection of Jewish
legends. The divinity worshipped by the churches is an imaginary figure, an invisible fetish
established for the benefit of the Jewish clerical caste returning from bondage in Babylon, and
subsequently maintained by the Christian priesthood for the same ends—subtle control of people
and the wealth it brings.

If a revelation had been made to the human race by a divine and almighty being, would it be
expecting too much that it should be done in a sufficiently clear and unmistakable way that it
would seriously challenge our disbelief? That has not happened. Instead of being furnished with
proofs, we are required to accept whatever the priests say, however much it is opposed to reason,
Nature, and science. We are bid to ask no questions because doubt is sin and so we must believe
to be saved.

It is time to cast off the bondage so long imposed upon us, and snap the rod of hell so long laid
across our backs. Faiths and dogma is not inspired. Nothing has been supernaturally revealed to
Christian bishops. Miracles add as much to the wonder of nature as a plastic doll does to
motherhood. No bad spirits make anyone ill or wicked and no pious appeals to good ones will
make the least difference. Christianity was the work of men, and it was worked into something
27 
 

quite different from the Jewish message of Jesus. Moral ideas which Christians suppose to have
been revealed through Jesus are of far greater antiquity than they suppose.

Some people fear lest, if the Christian myth were discarded, people would choose to do as they
liked giving way to debauchery. But this fear suggests improper motives for goodness—people’s
fear of offending a god who is cruel, vindictive, jealous and liable to cast them into the pains of
hell, and their dread of losing heaven and life everlasting. Such purely selfish motives to right
conduct ignores the welfare of our fellow creatures, the desire to please our fellow-men and
make others happy, and the preservation of the beauty and diversity of our world.

The doctrines and practices of the old religions of the Roman world, in the first few centuries
AD, were suppressed by law after the Christian victory in the time of Constantine. Christian
writers do not tell us much about them except for Firmicus Maternus, a Father of the Church,
who wrote down all he knew about the pagan religions in The Errors of the Profane Religions.

Christians would be upset if they read Firmicus’s book. Many of the pagan religions of the
Roman world had saviours or redeemers, whose birth was celebrated every year, often in mid-
winter, and every year, often about the time of our Easter, the death and resurrection of the gods
were celebrated. “The devil has his Christs!” Fermicus pronounced.

In some of these religions, bread and wine were used at the altar, and candles, incense and sacred
water were part of the ritual. Like other Christians, Firmicus concluded that the devil had
inspired these things to pagans before Christ was born to show that Christianity was not unique,
not revealed by God.

Until evolution was discovered in the nineteenth century, creation was divided between God and
the devil. All good things, especially all true religion, came from God. All evil things, especially
false beliefs, came from the devil. Firmicus gives us evidence otherwise destroyed by Christians,
that creeds, religious myth and rituals evolved just as species, and indeed the whole cosmos,
evolved.

There is a science of religion. Science is the accurate and critical study of anything that exists.
Religion has for so many years commanded such a part of human life that it is a valid subject for
scientific study, and some experts, like Frazer, have devoted their life to studying the origin and
development of religion. Unfortunately Christian “scholars” all too often enter the field to create
as much fog and obfuscation as they can in an attempt to preserve an illusion that evolution is
mistaken and revelation is a fact.

Most writers on the science of religion, or comparative religion, are too timid. They apologize
for applying the scientific spirit to so sacred a thing as religion! They beg us to understand that
they have no opinion on the truth or value of religious beliefs, but merely study it
dispassionately. They bend over backwards to placte the mullahs of the world whether they are
Moslem or Christian.

It is ridiculous to say discoveries in religious history have no bearing on the truth of religion.
Why should beliefs be considered independent of the reasons that they arose? If we discover that
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a belief is based on an error or a fraud, why should those, who continue, despite this knowledge,
to propagate the error or fraud, command our respect? Our beliefs are worth no more than our
reasons for believing them.

Christians will tell us that the scientist knows no more about God than a believer, but that is not
true and shows that the believer hasn’t the least idea about science! Science happily begins with
ignorance and demands proof. Priests and their acolytes begin with knowledge and demand that
it should be falsified. It is the priest that is on firm ground to the ignorant observer, because a
general philosophical principle is that it is impossible to prove a negative. Proofs have to be
positive. Thus science can build up an edifice of knowledge but it is impossible to demolish a
mirage or illusion.

Dealing with facts, the scientist can show that they are or are not consistent with certain beliefs,
but if the reprobate is happy to believe despite the facts then science can do nothing more.
Anyone coming freah to religion should be aware of these simplicities. though they might find
emotional satisfaction on the thought that they have been saved by Jesus, or whatever, it is
merely a form of hypnosis and the real benefactors are the evangelical sellers of this salvation,
who always get rich faster than anyone else, despite their salvation.

Tens of thousands of years ago people began to carve figures, in ivory and stone, often of
pregnant females, and these might have been religious in purpose. They buried their dead,
sometimes with stone implements and ornaments round the body, suggesting that their friends
and relatives thought they would have need of them or would appreciate them after death. The
implication is that these people believed in an after life.

Evolution does not mean that every living thing continues to evolve. Animals or plants need to
change only when their conditions change. That is true too of human beings. However, animals
can change their own environment just by being there and that is what humans have done. Small
numbers moving around large land masses hunting and gathering, lived in a stable and
essentially unchanging environment. The hunter-gatherers also changed little. However, as
populations slowly grew and seasonal patterns of living evolved, humans began to change the
world in which they lived and they had to respond to that. Ultimately they had to respond to each
other and history as opposed to natural history began.

it is not a question of intelligence because there is little or no evidence that the intelligence of
humans has altered significantly in the few thousand years of history, or even in the few tens of
thousands of years of pre-history. Physical evolution is not that fast. Knowledge was the key.
Successive waves of conquerors were not superior human beings, in general, but were human
beings with superior weaponry or better organisation. It often seems that conquered pwople are
inferior because they finish up abject. But that is the psychological result of the conquest, not its
cause. The South American Inca people seem abject today, yet 500 years ago they were a noble
race of conquerors themselves.

And, it seems that this breed of Indians that entered America from Asia, pushed an earlier breed
into marginal lands. It is common to call each conquering people superior because, we are the
outcome and so we must be the top of the tree. We are flattering ourselves, but it is safe to say
29 
 

that we are superior only in technology not in mental power, and that simply because we are later
and evolved in circumstances favourable to developing an aggressive and highly co-ordinated
culture.

We can play games at categorising people according to the degree of development of their
culture, but all we are doing really is arranging human cultures in relation to ourselves, presumed
to be the best, and not on any objective grounds. The study of the evolution of moral ideas shows
no particular progress. The development of weapons, from stone to bronze and iron, of art, of
clothing, of houses, and so on is not particularly accompanied by any better practicing of rules
forbidding murder, for example. Moralists freely condemn tribal cultures for being cruel and
warlike, quite ignoring the scale, severity and barbarism of the wars that we wage.

Christian History 

Has the Church been friendly or inimical to truth, justice and liberty? If investigation proved, or
even suggested, it was not, does the Christian want to suppress it? No Christian in these liberal
and liberated times will admit to wanting to suppress or alter history, yet the churches did and
still do. Christianity has been at war with Nature and humanity throughout most of its history.
Give us history truly and unsparingly and let Christians respond. They will say that the wolves
came among the sheep, yet will learn no lessons and take no actions. No doubt, it is God’s will.

Mere argument offers the possibility of endless slippery evasions and distortions, but the facts of
history are commanding and unanswerable. Not all the theological solemnity and dexterity in the
world, not the best (and poor enough) arguments for God and faith and “the religious sense” of
mankind, can stand defensibly against the actual record of the Church and the working of
Christian policy. On its record, the Church is condemned. On its record, Christianity is the
enemy of the Goddess. And the fine claims made of Christianity are false.

What has the church contributed to civilization? In what field of life does the church usefully
instruct or guide us? The church is the enemy of knowledge. History vividly exposes the
intellectual obscurantism and tyranny of the church. Church antagonism to knowledge operates
still, especially in the USA where right wing churches still have political influence. It continues
to attack the teaching of evolution, and still grafts for laws to be passed in its favour by
governments. It shows that the church thinks knowledge is bad for religion! The church is the
enemy of learning.

Knowledge has been gained through secular agencies—unsurprisingly because the church has
never been concerned about discovering knowledge, but rather the opposite, regarding
knowledge as having the potential to undermine its authority. The church is of no benefit to the
educational life of humanity. Science, history, ethics, literature, politics—it obscures, corrupts
and reduces to nonsense any subject it touches. The church promotes and shores up decadent,
empty, and absurdly unscientific notions.

In morality, the church has supported every social evil—monarchy, slavery, racism, nationalism,
the oppression of women and the exploitation of child labour. Some indeed have been the
church’s own—the imposition of bigotry, and the burning of dissenters. Had it not been for the
30 
 

onerous influence of the church, humanity would today be farther advanced towards a civilised
way of behaving. The church’s pronouncements on morality have always been weakened and
made futile by its refusal to accept that morality is human—a worldly concern—not one of any
supernatural father, obsessed with “sin”, which merely means whatever his priests decide is
disadvantage to his worship—or rather theirs.

The church has contributed nothing except harm to civilization. If it has improved its own
outlook compared with its worst days, it is through movements outside of the church, indeed
usually facing the opposition of the church. The church has always resisted movements for
freedom and consideration. Even today, it struggles to preserve the vestiges of primitive
theology, with its harsh customs introduced for a long forgotten purpose.

Gains in culture, humanity, social law, scientific achievement—in almost anything that has
improved living—have been the efforts of people who have been wise enough and strong enough
to throw off the medieval yoke of the priesthood and their supernatural threats—priests like
street corner beggars who demand money for supposedly cleaning your windscreen, but really
for not trashing your car. The church has been a burden to humanity. It has negligible social use
except for keeping some bigots wasting their time on ritual matters rather than torching people
they do not like.

This record is not uncertain. Some, who have not studied extensively, know it but, knowing the
truth only in outline, they shrug it off. Some, perhaps many, vaguely know that the history of the
Church is superstitious, cruel and intolerant. The average man knows, vaguely, that monstrous
crimes have flourished in the name of Christianity. That the struggle for freedom has been a
struggle against Church and State is known vaguely. It is time the mythology about churches was
exposed.

Yet omission, commision, polite excuses, evasive replies, and insincere apologies have obscured
the force of the historical truth. Nothing could be more grotesque than the effort to make the
Church appear today as liberal, humanizing and uplifting when in history the sharp and terrible
contrary was the truth. Think of the astonishing effrontery of this claim when we commonly and
correctly identify by the name “Dark Ages” the dismal, bloody and ignorant centuries of
Christian supremacy!

If the Church ever tried to help progress, then it was strangely incompetent and ineffective,
considering its enormous power. But we know that the Church was not progressive. Priests
supported kings in keeping men bound to tyranny and superstition. Freedom of thought and life
was incompatible with every dogma of the Church.

In recent centuries, with the growing strength of the merchants, the powers of kings have been
taken from them, giving us democracy whereby the authority to make and execute laws proceeds
from the will of the governed not from the king of kings in heaven. Liberation is not the reward
of the humble. Though slaves were freely accepted into the congregations of the first gentile
Christians, slaves in the mightiest country in the world were not freed until a hundred or so years
ago and had no rights until only decades ago. Nor is prosperity the child of prayer. Only priests
and evangelists ever got rich through worship of a supernatural being. If God has fed the hungry,
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again it is little more than a hundred years ago that millions died of starvation in the lesser but
more Christian of the two British Isles while Christian bishops, eating bread made of flour
exported by the starving Irish, resisted calls for poor relief in the House of Lords.

Modern Christians say this is only history—a reflexion of general ignorance. Protestants place
the burden of guilt wholly upon Catholicism, believing the Reformation successfully
distinguished sheep and wolves. Evidently it did not since some of the most represive and
superstitious of churches now are Protestant. Protestantism is as illiberal, dogmatic and punitive
as Catholicism and only arose because of a wide movement for liberty of which it was one of the
effects. Such men as Calvin and Luther and Knox were not interested in liberty, they wanted to
assert their own dogmas. It was dogma eat dogma until, eventually they settled on a truce and let
bigots be bigots.

None of them believed in free thought, in free institutions or in free progress. Protestantism as a
purely religious phenomenon would have disappeared but it was a reflexion of a much wider
movement of trade, exploration, invention and the growth of secular life. Protestants were pawns
in the easing of the bonds of Christianity. The Reformation of church ritual and livery was only
the outward challenge to its bigotry and superstition that had held Europe in check for a
millennium.

The Church today is reformed because it is weaker—it cannot compel belief, or even a judicious
silence to give the appearance of belief. In a liberal world, the Church cannot enforce its dogmas
with dire threats and penalties that were once all too common and deadly real. Yet, Christian
fanaticism still has political power in moralistic legislation such as the illegal acts of opposition
to abortion laws.

Christianity in the modern world has not reformed but has been restrained. The Church deserves
few thanks for the brighter, freer, richer age we live in today compared with the height of
ecclesiastical power in the Middle Ages. The struggle for human rights was fought by skeptics
and liberals, against the bitter opposition of the Church, which allied itself stubbornly with the
forces of reaction. Christianity is less evil today only because it has been hobbled.

The historical indictment of the Christian religion is clear and forcible. When Christianity
flourished people were abject. As Christianity declined, the status of people improved in inverse
proportion. Christianity in its heyday exceeded other religions in intolerance and psychological
tyranny over society. It has been the most hostile to culture.

Hellenistic civilization was not dominated by an absolute religion as was medieval Europe by
Christianity. Tolerance, avowed skepticism, humanistic culture and a power of free speculation
flourished under Paganism that was only matched in the modern age. Pre-Christian Pagans were
fortunate in having a number of gods instead of one terrible, dogmatic, jealous God manipulated
by a single caste of priests. Better have many gods and many priesthoods all vying with each
other, then poor humanity has a chance of seeing them all as the fakes they are.
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Religious Instinct 

We have outgrown every excuse for superstition, even the superstitions of classical Paganism
that allowed such an astonishing civilisation to grow as that of the Greeks. Even so, Pagan
culture has given us more useful things than “Christian culture”. During the long medieval night
there was no “Christian culture” worthy of the name.

Progress was made in liberating the human mind from misty, confused dogmas when people
began to examine the evolution of Christianity—the actual way religious policies worked, the
true relations of Christianity and morality, Christianity and government and Christianity and
culture. Intelligent examination of a subject can only begin by tracing how it evolved. Nature
sets us in time and nothing can happen in an instance. All thought is a recollection of moments.
Thinking can hardly begin without the history of an idea. How did man come to be religious?
Was be always religious? What forms of religion have appealed to him and why?

There is nothing mystical about it. One sees that religion, like morals and government and war
and industry, like all things good and bad, has been produced by natural conditions. It has
evolved, and we should certainly expect that as humans grow in knowledge their ideas would,
become less crude, more refined, and finally more enlightened. At one time humans had no
religion. Religion is an abstract conception and early people had to begin thinking concretely
before they began abstract thinking.

Do we have a “religious instinct”? From the beginning, religion grew by people drawing wrong
inferences from observed facts�the shadow, the dream, the nightmare, disease, death, memory
of ancestors, the movements of wind and river, the rain, the sun and moon, the annual birth and
death of vegetation. As human beings developed their powers of observation and their ways of
thinking, they longed to make sense of the world. From beginning to end religion is an
explanation or interpretation of obscure and dark things. It was a form of primitive science until
the priests got hold of it and set these naieve and fearful explanations on tablets of stone, to last
forever, irrespective of whatever new is meanwhile discovered. That people still adhere to these
simplistic ideas when they have plainly been long superseded only proves one thing—most
humans are mentally still extremely primitive animals.

People have a natural awe of the world we live in, but is it a requirement of the religious?
Spiritualists are religious but they are not in awe of the spirits they claim to contact. Awe is
essential to “religious” people but not foremost in a Christians’ characterisation of religion. Ask
most Christians what religion is, and they will answer, correct belief, occasional attendance at
church, and a theoretical acceptance of certain moral obligations. For most Christians, religion is
no longer an emotional reaction to the world or the phenomena of nature. They are not religious
but have become time servers or pretenders.

Admittedly, the reduction of people to cogs in the social machine has taken away much of the
awe we used to feel, but nevertheless it must be there for the truly religious, even if only
incipiently. Occasionally they feel it and, because it is now so unusual, think it is supernatural.
Yet, it is the exact opposite—it is entirely natural although it signals to us the superness of
Nature. Certainly a belief in God is not necessary for people to be religious. Are Buddhism and
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Confucianism religions? They are described as such, but Buddha and Confucius were agnostics,
and Confucianism has been faithful to its founder’s agnosticism. Was Stoicism, one of the
greatest of moral systems, a religion? Stoics were indifferent to gods and were concerned only
with the life of people here on earth.

Yet, from the earliest ages humans have believed in the supernatural. Though primitive people
had more experience of Nature than do modern people, they did not understand it. Nevertheless
they respected it and, hoping to win it over to their benefit, personified it as a variety of spirits
guarding each feature that impressed them. Often these spirits were considered as female and
ultimately the whole of Nature was conceived of as a goddess. This was when human societies
were in awe at the wonder of childbirth and valued the contribution of women to society as
gatherers, child rearers and a source of intuitive wisdom.

Nature itself was supernatural—in the sense that it was inexplicable—to primitive people, and
humans were careful not to offend the goddess through their actions. When physical and mental
bullies, called warriors and priests, realized that they could take what they wanted by force or
superstition, the goddess was doomed. The new rulers wanted to justify their actions and
introduced gods after their own image—warlike, cunning and vengeful. Morality was expressed
as total obedience, not now to the requirements of Nature, but to the supposed commands of the
absolute Lord, superior to Nature.

When warlords conquered other peoples they subjected their gods to their own, leading to
pantheons and hierarchies and ultimately to the ideal god as an absolute monarch over lesser
gods, angels, demons, men and Nature. Monotheism was never really that but the elevation of
one god to the supreme throne accompanied by the relegation of rival gods to demons or angels
or, nowadays, saints, as his royal court.

This inherent reaction to the wonder of life is praised by priests as the human “instinct” for
religion, an instinct they used to lead us into emotional tarpits like the foolish and contradictory
notions of Christianity. From this original feeling, humanity came to patriarchal religion,
priestcraft and creed, through animism and ancestor worship, from the idea of many gods to the
idea of one God.

Priests tell us that a virtue of Christianity, inspired from heaven, is that it gave monotheism to the
world. Yet the Egyptians under Akhenaten, father or brother of king Tut, introduced monotheism
1500 years earlier. Indeed most ancient civilisations were effectively monotheistic because each
race of people thought their own god was the God.

Holy Book 

Defenders of Christianity have most cherished, as “proofs” of its divine origin and sanction, the
Bible’s originality, singularity and virtue. Yet its originality is non-existent, a myth, along with
the other myths, cribbed and fibbed to make the biblical melange. Nor is its divine origin attested
by any reliable evidence and indeed its purely human development can be clearly traced in the
older religions of Babylonia, Persia, Egypt and the mystery religions of the Roman Empire. The
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Christian Bible is largely a collection of conceptions, legends and moral codes, sometimes crude
and sometimes poetic, assimilated from older religions.

The Old Testament is a work of “priestly forgery”. These may seem indelicate words but, if they
do, then they prove how hidden the truth remains for far too many people, for few scholars
would disagree. Knowledge that is commonplace among scholars hardly touches members of the
Christian congregations, even educated ones. Even educated Christians consider ignorance as
bliss when it comes to the sources of their beliefs. These “holy” books are spurious, they were
meant to deceive and that is why they were fabricated.

If we received a message said to be divinely revealed which came in bits not as a unity, that was
contradictory in its different parts, that was unscientific and that featured horrible people as role-
models, could we believe that it was really divine? Yet these are just the characteristics of the
Holy Bible.

Humanity has consistently found Christianity a dragging rather than a lifting and liberating force.
The last and most stubborn claim of Christianity is that, whatever its errors of doctrine and its
mistakes in this or that sphere of policy, it has been a great purifying, instructing and
emancipating agency. Christianity supposedly brought relief for the workers, respect for women,
and regard for education—precisely what it did not. The Church was indifferent when not
actively opposed to such reforms.

The broad picture ought to be familiar to even a casual student of history. Medievalism is
synonymous with ignorance, poverty and degradation. Sodden serfdom was the rule. Women had
a lower status than in Greece and Rome—indeed, Christianity was reluctant to grant them the
useless bauble that it peculiarly valued, a “soul”. To speak of Christianity and education in the
same breath is risable, or, rather, it is in itself an indictment, when one reflects that illiteracy
prevailed almost entirely during centuries of Christian power.

Today freedom, education and equality of sex in social life have all improved but, far from
owing this to Christianity, the agencies of liberation responsible did it against the opposition of
Christianity. To fight for freedom was—and to how great an extent it still is!—to fight against
the Church.

Christ or Anti­Christ? 

The Greeks, according to Plato, thought religion was invented to help rulers to rule by stabilising
society. The rulers of a society enact laws, but laws depend upon people actively obeying them.
People have to see that they are for everyone’s benefit or they will not obey them, but will find
every possible way of evading them. Hoi polloi might not be too intelligent and so they need to
have a simple reason to accept law as being unbreakable. It is gods or God.

Gods were supernatural spirits who floated around everywhere unseen by people, except
unusually, but seeing everything that went on. Moreover, gods were immortal so whatever they
saw could not be forgotten, and even if justice could not be done in this world, it would come in
the next! When people were taught this myth from an early age, they were more predisposed to
35 
 

be lawful. Cardinal Dubois’s dictum was that God is a bogeyman uncaged to scare people into
obedience.

The modern day neocons of the USA have the same philosophy, taken from their mentor Leo
Strauss, a classicist and a philosopher who decided what was good enough for hoi polloi of
Greece is good enough for hoi polloi redneck American believers in the great god Jarvay. The
neocons think they will believe anything, and, accordingly, lying has become a Republican
political norm. Lies told by Republican leaders are described as and serve as modern myths to
keep the rednecks happy.

Modern Christians claim to have a personal relationship with their God but it is a relationship in
which the God apparently wants the believer to pester everyone else in the world to believe too,
and so it ceases to be personal. In classical times, attendance at and participation in religious
ceremonies was a political act affirming loyalty to the state. The ceremony did not require and
protocol did not expect those taking part to believe in the gods being honoured, let alone to
worship them. People were truly personally responsible to their god and that relationship did not
and could not involve anyone else. In the state religions of Greece and Rome, the disloyalty
shown by refusing to participate was to the state not to the god. The god not the state would deal
with anyone being personally offensive to the god, but the state demanded loyalty by its citizens
for what it provided them.

The Christians brag in their own mythical history that they would not worship Pagan gods,
preferring to be thrown to the lions, but the crime was not that of refusing to worship a god, but
that of refusing their loyalty to the state and to serve it in return for its benefits. Christians were
considerd as ingrates. They refused to offer even token service to the state. But, despite their
supposed inalienable principles, before they ever came to power in Rome, Christians were
serving the state in normal ways, as soldiers, consuls with their “Pagan” state duties, and so on.
They obviously came to realise that being eaten by a lion was an unnecessary sacrifice, and they
forgot about it. That would have been the sensible thing to do from the beginning, but Christians
like their myths of ravished virgins just as much as heathens did. Nor was it a principle that was
maintained in Britain when Christianity was at its most fervant. Scholars at Oxford and
Cambridge had to swear to affirm the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles, but for
centuries, everyone knew many of the scholars did not accept them. The aim was not to please
the Anglican god but, like the Roman required to burn incense to Caesar, it was to expose
religious fanatics dogmatically attached to matters incapable of rational determination. In Rome,
it exposed Christians.

When a god’s impotence is shown, he ceases to inspire awe and worship. When Christianity led
by the Fathers of the Church acquired control over the Roman empire, Christian mobs began to
plunder wealthy homes and to pillage the shrines of gods whom the Christians hated. Pagans
thought, if their gods could not protect their own beautiful temples adorned by pious Pagans with
the masterpieces of the Pagan world, their gods must have been displaced by the new and vulgar
one. Symmachus blamed the disasters of the dying empire on to the impiety of the new believers
to the old gods, but it was the bad example they offered in their refusal to defend Roman culture
against the barbarians incursions. Though many Christians used their religion as an excuse not to
serve in the military, before they had control of the state, afterwards they had no reservations
36 
 

about using the army to persecute the worshippers of the Pagan gods. That they were able to do it
was proof that the Christian god approved!

Centuries of internecine Christian warfare at the end of the Middle Ages and in the first centuries
of the modern era left many people in utter disbelief in the Christian gods—God Himself, His
Son, His Holy Ghost, His ever virgin spouse, and His myriads of holy saints and angels. God had
not come down unequivocally on either side in the centuries of warfare, and the people of
Europe were exhausted by the mania of continuously brutal religious conflict. Many concluded
there were no gods and religion was only a grand hoax. Atheism spread everywhere. The French
led the reaction and swept away the ruling ancien régime, the coalition of church and nobility.

It was considered a democratic advance, and was taken up by modern states like the embryonic
USA. The principle of the separation of church and state was one of the bases of the US Federal
Constitution. These days it has been nullified by various states, and the Federal government
itself, exempting religious organizations from taxation. The separation of church and state has
proved temporary in practice in the United States now that Christian organizations have become
privileged political parties engaged in subverting national cohesion. The Republican Party is now
a political front for the evangelical movement which has succeeded in placing a worshipper of
Mammon (disguised as Yehouah) in the White House. The USA is now a theocracy, with all the
dangers it offers to liberal values, including democracy itself.

Seaparation of church and state is fundamental to democracy. Even intelligent people, subjected
in their early years, before their rational faculties developed, to conditioning by teachers and
parents to accept certain beliefs, can never throw them off. Children instinctively take pleasure in
fairy stories, tales of the marvellous and impossible, but naturally outgrow serious belief in such
things as they grow up. But if childish belief in some fairy tales is enforced, implanting a
physical and mental habit, the psyche remains permanently disfigured by the habits forced upon
it. So, some people might achieve academic distinction in non-religious, and even anti-religious
subjects while hanging on to religious bad habits formed in childhood. “Give me the child until
the age of seven, and I shall give you the man”, said Ignatius Loyola.

Psychologists reject religion unless they are Christian psychologists when they find Christianity
in psychology! Psychology is the measurement of human behaviour, of the human psyche, and
inevitably it leads to wondering why some people are susceptible to the orgnised superstition
called religion. Psyche to the Greeks was the life-force that distinguished what was living. All
living things had an appropriate psyche. But Aristotle had no thought that human psyche could
live after death. Mortals could not be immortal. The psyche of any living thing dies when the
organism dies because the psyche was a property of life. Indeed, it was the property of life, and
death was the sign of its death.

Failure to accept the importance of science by most people, not least those who ought to, such as
politicians, journalists and media moguls, is leading to increasing belief in impossible things.
The people are being reduced to the level of giddy dolts interested only in trivia, and
manipulable by fashions, fancy phrases, and faddiness. It might seem ideal for the neocon
Evangelical Christian ruling class, but taken too far, people will be too idiotic to think, too
ignorant to be useful in society, and too easily persuaded by demagogues to rule.
37 
 

Truth and Dogma 

Christianity is a backwards, selfish, exploitative religion which has condoned—indeed


impressed—suffering. It is too late to be squemish. People must find their own salvation, that is
true, but when that outlook leads, as it inevitably does, to an overwhelming selfishness that
threatens to destroy the present world then critical words have to be blunt.

This sounds dogmatic, no doubt, but so it must be. All erudition, whether material or spiritual,
fact or fiction, true or false does not have to be found anew by each generation. Otherwise why
would we need an extended childhood? Nature would have thrown us in at the deep end to learn
everything fresh from daily struggle just as our ancestors did. Humans have evolved to be taught
and their long childhood offers the time for them to be taught. Teaching at all but the highest
level demands facts, principles and methods to be asserted, but these must have been firmly
established in truth.

Each generation benefits from receiving from its parents and elders the knowledge they have
accumulated, but knowledge is not that which cannot be tested—like superstitions. Knowledge
can be obtained in different ways, rational and intuitive, but whichever is used, it is not
knowledge until it has been proved. Then it can be passed on dogmatically, though each
successive generation will prove it by its own experience, or reject it.

Properly dogmatism is the assertion of “dogmas”, unverified or unverifiable beliefs which must
not be questioned but be held on faith. It is not dogmatic, however assertive you might be, to
insist that the sun will rise tomorrow. Not only have we our own long experience of this daily
event, many others in history confirm it and we have a sound scientific explanation of why it
happens. If dogmatism can bear examination, be proved by evidence and be explained by human
reason, then it becomes truth.

It would not be true to imagine that the sun is a sentient being leaning towards us to hear our
prayers. People might have once believed that but today few do because there is no evidence for
it and it defies all human reason. Nevertheless people will happily believe that a similar being,
though invisible, occupies the whole of the universe, hears our every prayer and answers them
despite the fact that this is even more fanciful than a belief in the sun god.

But false doctrines cannot just be banned. In the place of false beliefs, we must offer true
beliefs—a philosophy of life which is convincing and acceptable but sounder than the beliefs
which are now held and which are blind to today’s crises.

Most devout Christians will be shocked and frightened by all this. Some will be offended and
will refuse to read it. They will not want to submit to any chance that their faith might be
undercut. Others will read it and emerge with unshaken faith. A few might be influenced. They
are the ones who will look back and realise why we are so desparaging about Christianity and
other patriarchal religions. It is always chastening to have to accept an error, but having accepted
it, the magnitude of the task of saving the world for posterity faces them. This is a selfless task
not like the “task” of saving one’s own soul. It is, for a start, a real task not a fancied one, and it
38 
 

has real rewards in that one can face death knowing that you have tried to make the world a
better place—literally!

Before you go, think about this… 
You may ban the expression of wrong ideas, but the ideas will still be there. On the other hand, correct 
ideas, if pampered in hot‐houses without being exposed to the elements or immunised against disease, 
will not win out against wrong ones. That is why it is only by employing methods of discussion, criticism 
and reasoning that we can really correct ideas, overcome wrong ideas and really settle issues.  

Mau Tse Dong 

Studying Belief in the Bible


Will we succeed in throwing off the shadow of the serpent and disown the dinosaur heritage?  

Who Lies Sleeping? 

3. The Bible
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, May 14, 1999
Saturday, 01 April 2006

• Inspiration  
• Origin  
• Scriptural Mistranslation  
• Forgery  
• The Priestly Forgers  
• The Mistake of Moses  
• The Mythical History of the Jews  
• The Truth about the Prophets  
• Pious Fiction  
• God and Man?  
• New Testament Mistranslation  
• Moral Lessons of Religious History  

Abstract 
The most important theme of the Old Testament is the fall of man. That of the New Testament is the 
career of the Christian saviour, Jesus. In the Old Testament, the first man, Adam, disobeyed God, who 
cursed him and his offspring, introducing sin—original sin—into the world. To lift the curse, that He 
Himself placed on mankind, God had to manifest Himself on earth as the Son and be sacrificed, thus 
propitiating the sin committed at the beginning of human history—though not everyone’s but only 
those who believe unquestioningly the fancies of the Christians. Christians need these Jewish legends to 
39 
 

justify their God’s sacrifice, which otherwise is inexplicable. So they say the bible is the inspired or even 
infallible word of God.  

Inspiration 

The Bible comprises a Hebrew portion—the Old Testament, called by the Jews, the scriptures—
and a Christian portion—the New Testament—both of which are accepted by Christians as
inspired, it being popularly supposed that the New Testament contains the fulfilment of the
prophecies of the Old.

The most important theme of the Old Testament is that of the creation and the fall of man, and
the leading topic of the New is the career of the Christian saviour. In the creation stories of the
Old Testament, the first man, Adam, disobeyed God, who cursed him and his offspring in His
anger, introducing sin into the world—called original sin. To lift the curse, that He Himself
placed on mankind, God had to manifest himself on earth in His aspect of the Son and be
sacrificed, thereby propitiating the sin committed at the beginning of human history—though not
everyone’s but only those who believe unquestioningly the fancies of the Christians. Christians
have to hang on to these interesting but primitive Jewish legends to justify their God’s sacrifice,
which otherwise is inexplicable. To do so they assert that the whole of the bible is the infallible
or, at least, the inspired word of God.

Yet, the idea that the bible is inspired by an almighty god does not bear examination. How can
any writing claim to be the infallible word of God and yet contain false statements and be self-
contradictory, yet the bible suffers both these errors of fallibility. When errors occur in any one
particular, they cannot be discounted elsewhere and everything must be verified. Then our
confidence has evaporated and the whole theory of inspiration is vitiated. The bible not only
makes mistakes in matters of Nature but it puts forward, in the first and second chapters of
Genesis, two contradictory accounts of the creation which disagree in nearly every detail. The
more one reads the bible critically, the more convinced one is of its lack of authority and
educational value. To be divinely inspired, the reader had a right to be sure it was unimpeachable
in history and logic, so that no doubt could have arisen.

Every sane person today accepts the theory of Copernicus that the sun is the centre of our
planetary system. But until only a few hundred years ago Christianity taught that the earth was
the centre of our system of planets, and that the sun rose and set daily over it. The Catholic
Church, by order of its “Congregation of the Holy Office” (Inquisition), burned Giordano Bruno
at the stake in 1600 for supporting the Copernican theory, the reason being that it was “contrary
to the bible” and for suggesting that the bible did not contain the whole of science. In 1616,
Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition, and silenced by threats. At the age of seventy, he
40 
 

wrote a book in which he proved the truth of the Copernican theory. Clerics made him kneel and
swear with his hands on the gospels that the earth did not move round the sun, and that he would
never again spread this “damnable heresy”. The church made the mistake of condemning and
even murdering men who proposed what is now known to be true. In so doing it asserted that the
Copernican theory ran counter to the science of the bible. In short the bible is wrong! Plainly, in
this instant, it was not inspired.

If we are born tainted with original sin and it is removable, any just god would have given us all
unequivocal instructions on its removal, instructions so clear that defiance of them would be the
wilful act of those who chose a sinful life. Instead, we have stories of miracles performed where
they were not needed and not performed where they would have helped. If a miracle was worked
for the trifle of providing wine for a wedding, surely we could expect a miracle which would
clearly delineate the path of salvation for people innocent of the sin of Adam. We do not get one,
and are returned to the arbitrary salvation offered by Paul—those are saved who believe! Thus
we are left to gamble on the mode of our redemption from a sin which we did not commit, but
might yet incur the penalty for.

Books once included in the sacred collections of the early churches are now cast into outer
darkness. Is this God’s doing? The divine message has been inscribed on old skins from which
Pagan writings had been partly erased so that the “Word of God” could be written on them by
Christian pens. If Paganism was wrong, did God allow mankind to be misled? If it was all that
wrong, why is much of it adapted for use in Christianity and not treated with disgust? None of
this reflects divine behaviour, unless God is as indecisive and sadistic as men. All of it cries out
that one set of priests seeking power over people’s destinies have succeeded in ousting an earlier
group.

Look at the attitude which God adopts towards the human race which he created! On the day of
vengeance Jesus would return on clouds of glory and supervise the judgement of God.
Judgement! Vengeance! A revengeful God will administer justice upon the hapless creatures
because of the guilt of Adam and Eve. Why? God could have mercifully prevented the birth of
any of us, we are told, to save us this punishment. It is just as well that His watch is not too
accurate because Jesus promised the day of vengeance would dawn before some of his followers
tasted death. Two thousand years later we still wait, but two billion Christians seem happy that
God has a faulty timepiece.

Origin 

Pre-“exilic” Jews did not have their bibles as Christians now have. In the reign of Josiah, about
100 years before the captivity, the bible suggests there was only one copy of the Law of Moses in
the whole of Judah. It was neither read nor even consulted by them, for when Hilkiah the priest
accidentally found a copy in a the builders rubbish of the temple (2 Kings 22:8), it was
announced as a wonderful discovery, but it was afterwards destroyed by fire. All that the Jews
knew about Moses and his religion they learnt from hearsay, just as the Greeks and Romans
knew about their mythology.
41 
 

It was a system practised by their priests. Ezra, in the apocryphal 2 Esdras 14, was the only man
who knew the books of the law by heart. After the mythical “return from captivity” in Babylon,
he had to retire to a field for forty days to dictate the five books of Moses and other books
totalling over 200, aided by five scribes and by drinking a cup of some strong liquor, of the
substance of water and the colour of fire! Sounds like whiskey. Moses and Joshua could not have
been the authors of the books attributed to them, for they describe their own deaths. Here it is
being admitted that the books of the scriptures were re-written by the Persian colonists sent from
Babylon, Ezra being the head of a priestly school, or even a Persian ministry.

When the literate class of Jews were taken away by the Babylonian conquerors, the reamining
Jews must have lost much of any tradition they had peculiar to themselves, as opposed to
Canaanites generally. The ones left behind were poor and illiterate and were called the Am ha
Eretz and the Samaritians by the sophisticated colonists. Ezra must have been born in in Babylon
or Persia and he supervised the setting up of a “restored” Judaism meant to suit the Persian
rulers. The colonists had the duty of setting up a temple as significant for the nations of Syria and
the Levant as the Tower of Babel was to the Eastern Semites, a Persian Fort Knox, and a
sinecure for themselves and their descendants that would last for millennia, far longer than the
Persians who set it all in place. They therefore wrote the stories emphasizing God’s messiah, the
Persian king, and his priesthood in Jerusalem.

The Old Testament was written in ancient Hebrew, like modern Hebrew, written from right to
left, on rough skins in ink. It was glossed in different inks and languages and eventually became
almost obliterated by age. The writing consisted of badly formed capital letters only, with no
vowels, stops or division into words by spaces. There were originally about 150 books like this,
supposed to have been inspired by the spirit of God. Fifty-three, including the Pentateuch or five
books of Moses, were formerly considered by the Christian church as canonical. In 1380 AD,
fourteen were deemed as uncanonical and classed as “apocryphal” by Wycliffe—the Reformer
and bible translator. These fourteen books were omitted from the Protestant bibles, though
considered useful “for example of life and instruction of manners”. Many of the other old
writings are now lost.

The books of the New Testament were written on papyrus in Greek, also in capital letters with no
divisions between words, though the original Matthew was possibly written in Aramaic. Twenty-
seven books are now considered to be canonical, but there were sixty-one others now classed as
apocryphal. Twelve were excluded at first, but afterwards received as canonical.

Out of 182 works accepted for centuries as the genuine writings of Christians during the first 180
years of the present era, only twelve are now accepted by theologians as genuine. The other 170
books were not noticed as forgeries by the Holy Ghost, and yet were believed by poor,
undiscerning Christians. The manufacture of some of these manuscripts probably took place at
the great monastery at Mount Athos, in Salonica, where about 60,000 monks were employed in
religious composition. Christians today are even more prolific, writing vast numbers of tomes all
professing to clarify something, but most of it tosh.

The first that we know of the four Christian gospels is in the time of Irenaeus, who, in the second
century, intimates that he has “received four gospels as authentic scriptures”. Irenaeus was
42 
 

himself a pious forger and possibly the editor of John. Three accounts are given of how the
books which now appear in the New Testament were chosen.

1. That by Popius, in his Synodicon to the Council of Nicaea, says that 200 versions of the gospel 
were placed under a communion table and, while the council prayed, the inspired books jumped 
on the slab but the rest remained under it.  
2. That by Irenaeus says the church selected the four most popular of the gospels.  
3. That by the Council of Laodicea (366 AD) says that each book was decided by ballot. Luke 
escaped by one vote, while the Acts of the Apostles and Revelation, the apocalypse, were 
rejected as forgeries.  

Scriptural Mistranslation 

The Jewish scriptures have been manipulated to induce the reader to believe that the Jews were
always monotheists or worshippers of one God only and Christians have naturally, as
monotheists, carried on the tradition. The Jews came to call their god Yehouah, usually written
YHWH, which does not convey any idea of the Hebrew pronunciation, though Jews were not
allowed to say the ineffable name and used other words instead. Christian bibles consider no
name necessary for God because they have no need to distinguish Him from any other god and
prefer to translate YHWH as the Lord or simply God.

Other Semites worshipped Yehouah pronouncing it as Yahu, or Yeho, but Yehouah held only a
subordinate position in the general mythology of the Semites and is famous only because he was
the father god of the Children of Israel and therefore of the Christians.

In the reign of the Assyrian King Sargon II. the throne of Hamath was occupied by Yahou-
Behdi, which name literally means the “Servant of Yehouah”. The Phœnicians venerated this
deity also, for in the inscriptions of Assurbanipal, another Assyrian King, the name of the crown-
prince of Tyrenus is given as Yahu-melek—“Yehouah is my King”. On a coin from Gaza of the
fourth century BC is a figure of a deity in a chariot of fire, over whose head is written Yho in old
Phœnician characters.

Any honest translation makes it glaringly plain that Jews were not always monotheistic—if they
actually are now since they, and Christians believe in Angels and Demons and what are they if
not gods? Indeed the “two angels”, who appeared to Lot in the city of Sodom, are, in the original
text, gods. Elohim, literally the gods, is deliberately mistranslated “God”, and YHWH Elohim is
given as “Lord God” when “Yehouah of the gods” would be more precise. Adam’s demon-wife,
Lilith, has been suppressed in Isaiah 34:14, where she is reduced to “the night monster”.
Jephthah, who sacrificed his daughter because she came to greet him, confirms that the Israelites
accepted the existence of other gods, arguing with the Amorites in Judges 11:24 that every
nation is entitled to what its national God bestows upon it.

Psalms 68 is positively a song to the Sun-God! It begins, “Let the Mighty One arise”
(misleadingly rendered “Let God arise”), and bids all inferior creatures “cast up a highway for
him that rideth through the heavens (not deserts) by his name Jah”. The frequent references to
sun gods under various names are all disguised by the bible. Names used for the Hebrew sun god
43 
 

are Shaddai, sometimes preceded with the prefix El, Bel, the Babylonian sun god and Baal, the
Syrian sun god. The title Adonai, the Phœnician name for the sun god, when it occurs singly, is
translated “the Lord” but, when it is met with in conjunction with YHWH or Elohim, it is given
as “the Lord God”. Psalms 110:1 says, “YHWH said to Adonai”—which should be translated,
“Yehouah said to our Lord (the Sun-God)—Sit at my right hand”. The popular deity of Thebes,
Amun-Ra (or Ammon, Amen, the hidden sun), is met frequently. It is often translated as “The
God of Truth” as in Isaiah 65:16 or as “Amen” (Truly) as in Psalms 89:46. In Revelation written,
of course, in Greek the word is written with Ho prefixed, yielding “The Amen”, a senseless
expression if “truly” is meant, but not if the meaning is “by the God Amun”. In Revelation 3:14
we ought to read, “These things, saith Amun, the true and faithful witness”.

The translators of the revised bible admit the word Ashera or Asherah to be consistently wrongly
rendered “grove” in the Authorized Version. Why? Because the Ashera was an upright stone
used as a phallic symbol in some fertility rite. The idea connected with the word Jesus in its
Semitic original, as in the Arabian fertility god Isa, was phallic vigour.

Of course sensible people will see that in ancient times the Jews worshipped the sun god and
other gods and then later used various of their names for their adopted single God. But that is
accepting that earlier Jews did not have this monotheistic God as their god and so the long
history of His plan for His chosen people is shown to be false.

Forgery 

Almost all of the stories of saints and martyrs which are treasured in the Roman Church are
forgeries. Even some Roman Catholic scholars concur. Most non-Catholic historians agree that
the documents on which the power of Rome is based are forgeries. Christians and Jews say these
martyrs were religious men and the charge insults them. But even Protestant preachers accuse,
not merely religious men, but ministers of the Christian gospel of hundreds of forgeries. From
the sixth to the twelfth century Roman priests poured upon Europe a flood of forgeries, much to
their own profit.

The Jewish priests had done the same thing a thousand years before. The “Word of God” a
forgery? God cannot forge books. Men forged a book in God’s name. Many books of the Jewish
scriptures pretend to be written by men who did not write them. Many books were deliberately
written as history when the writers knew that they were not history. The present Old Testament
as a whole is a deliberate attempt to convey an historical belief which the writers knew to be
false. A Christian professor diplomatically admitted that the writers of the Old Testament
displayed “the workings of a primitive nature” in their “mode of regarding the facts.” He means
they were lying. Consequently the historian has a hard job “to remove the materials of his story
out of the false light in which he finds them”. He means it is hard to separate any truth in it from
the fiction. He must “constantly bear in mind the peculiarities of the narrative, their legendary
character, their conformity to a scheme, and their didactic purpose”. He means that these polite
paraphrases must serve to excuse what plain men call forgery or lies.

Another Christian says that “the imaginative element in the story of David is but the vesture
which half conceals, half discloses, certain facts treasured in popular tradition”. He means the
44 
 

history of David is a myth. A similar circumlocution by a Christian dignitary regarding the story
of Abraham is that the biblical history of the patriarch is a tissue of “legends purified both by
abridgement and expansion”.

Another Christian excuse for the scriptural lies is that the early historical writers of the Old
Testament were honest collectors of stories, but that later books were put together by the “mere
literary process of conflation and contamination”. The “scribes combined different copies
according to their own judgement and interests”, to give us “a different religious point of
view”—a view which is false—but the scribes merely acted “in a prophetic spirit”.

In the end, another set of writers recast the whole of these honest legends and dishonest
“contaminations”, and added a vast amount of new matter, expressly ascribing it to Moses, for
which they probably had no sources except their imagination and “interests”. The result is our
Old Testament.

A Cambridge professor writing about Jews says, “Written by Oriental people, clothed in an
Oriental dress, the Old Testament does not contain objective records,” but “subjective history for
specific purposes”. Would a court accept that a witness’s statements were sound “subjective
history for a specific purpose” as a defence against perjury? He assures us, “Scholars are now
almost unanimously agreed” on these manipulations.

The higher criticism has brought into relief certain essentials. The Old Testament did not slowly
evolve from Moses to Ben Sirach but was started towards the end of the fifth century and had a
turbulent history of rewiting and additions until the second century. In its present form it was
mainly composed in the third century and re-assembled after partial destruction in the second
century by the Maccabees. After a hundred and fifty years of highrer criticism the scholars have
yet to get the facts straight.

The Book of Daniel claims throughout that it was written by Daniel himself. “I Daniel” occurs in
every chapter. The Protestant Reverend Professor Sayce, a vigorous opponent of higher
criticism, declared that Daniel is “not historical in the modern sense of the word history!” The
only sense of the word history he could mean is that it is myth. The Persians had adopted the
Babylonian custom of writing on clay, then baking the brick or tablet, and such documents last
forever. Recovered tablets of the great Persian king Cyrus can be compared with the words of
Daniel:

In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain, and Darius the Median took the kingdom. 

The tablets of Cyrus describe the taking of Babylon and show:

1. That Belshazzar was not king of Babylon.  
2. That the name of the last king was Nabonidas.  
3. That the city was taken peacefully, by guile, not by bloodshed.  
4. That it was Cyrus, not Darius the Median, who took it.  
5. That Darius, who is said (11:1) by Daniel to have been the son of Ahasuerus (Xerxes), was really 
his father.  
45 
 

6. That all the Babylonian names in Daniel are absurdly misspelled and quite strange to the writer.  
7. That the writer describes the Chaldeans in a way that no writer could have done before the time 
of Alexander the Great.  

The man who wrote Daniel, and pretended to be alive in 539 BC when Babylon fell, did not live
until three or four centuries later. The book is full of errors, as we find by authentic documents
and by reading the real Babylonian names on the tablets.

Now why did the writer do it, and what was his object? Quite clearly he wanted to convince the
Jews that Yehouah would miraculously protect any Jews who refused to obey a sacrilegious
king. And this gives us the clue to the date. It was in the second century BC, when the Greek
king, Antiochus Epiphanes, tried to compel the Jews to break their law. A pious Jew, probably a
priest, then wrote this book, clumsily, for in the course of three centuries the facts and names had
been forgotten. Now we have recovered the real contemporary documents, and there is no room
for dispute.

Christians say those who talk of forgery do not know the oriental mind which is different from
ours today. It was “a work of edification”, one of the “hagiographs” or “holy writings”. The
Oriental loves stories, but has as keen a sense as any of the difference between stories and sacred
history. Tell an Oriental Moslem that the things said about the Prophet in the Quran were
“subjective history with a specific purpose”, he would be insulted. Moslems believe it to be
Allah’s exact word. The same is true here. Daniel pretended to be history. Otherwise it would
have had no effect. It is a forgery.

Esther, Tobit and Judith are the same.

The decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions has finally destroyed all claim on the part of the Books 
of Tobit and Judith to be considered as history. 

They too are ancient Jewish forgeries. Susanna and Bel and the Dragon are also the same. Sayce
also decisively proved that Genesis is a compilation of Babylonian legends ascribed to Moses, an
Egyptian!

There are two chief ways of detecting these forgeries—the style of the documents and the
testimony of other and undisputed documents. The first method has been much ridiculed by
pious people. On the orthodox theory, the Old Testament was written at different periods over
more than a thousand years. Yet there is no language that does not change in the course of
centuries. People today find it almost impossible to read the earliest English literature and most
can see that English as late as the eighteenth century is different from the way in which we write
it today. Literary experts have learnt how to date books easily from their style.

So we can with Hebrew. The writing of the Old Testament is believed by Christians and Jews to
cover at least seven hundred years. And this is the simple method of the higher critics, which
preachers who do not know a word of Hebrew and could not even themselves read the English of
Chaucer, ridicule. This method shows us fragments of different ages in the Old Testament put
together at a far later date. Further, we find inconsistencies, contradictions, and duplications
46 
 

which cannot otherwise be explained. Now, in addition, we have a very great deal of history and
archaeology by which we can check the Old Testament.

The Priestly Forgers 

Whole books of the Old Testament like Daniel are in modern terms forgeries. Jews twenty
centuries ago believed the events they described had actually happened—they believed they were
historical! If they had known they were not written by the prophets they revered, they also would
have called them forgeries. Why should anyone, oriental or otherwise, be impressed that a god
could do wonderful things in a work of fiction. Fiction was represented as fact—as a
speudepigraph.

The orthodox believe the Old Testament to be, and it professes to be, a set of books which
appeared at intervals, with divine inspiration, over a thousand years of Jewish history. Moses
wrote the Pentateuch. Judges, Kings, Psalms and Chronicles go back to the times they describe.
The Prophets were added from the ninth century onward. Yet no part of the Old Testament, as
we have it, is older than the fifth century except for odd lines and verses of possibly older poems
and blessings. After the arrival of the Ezra school in the fifth century, Assyrian and Babylonian
annals were combined together into a sacred history, now called by Christians their Old
Testament. Drastically re-written in the time of the Egyptian Ptolemies and the Maccabees it
yielded a Jewish “history” which is mainly untrue.

The Jewish priests did it. Their aim was to represent the Jewish priesthood and its rights and
customs to have been established in the days of Moses. Few scholars dissent. So the priests were
forgers.

A priestly group now free of Persian control in Jerusalem and keen to line their own pockets and
curry favour with the scholarly Greek kings of Egypt, using the law given by Darius, ded new
clauses, made a priestly code, and perverted the entire history of the cult and the priesthood to
link the people with their allies, and so ascribed it to Moses, a semi-Egyptian. Is that forgery?
The standard opinion is that the Septuagint published by the Ptolemies for the library of
Alexandria was written by Jerusalem priests in collaboration with Egyptians. What they
composed and published was most of the Pentateuch as we hove it now.

The Mistake Of Moses 

Now let us examine the Pentateuch, or the Five Books of Moses with which the Old Testament
opens. The belief that Moses wrote them is a statement in Kings, Chronicles and Ezra—all very
late books—that Moses wrote them.

The first page of the bible is in flat contradiction to what every educated person now knows, and
even Christian scholars admit that the early chapters of Genesis are modifications of Babylonian
legends. No one sensible now attempts to reconcile Genesis and science. The Hebrew text is
poetic in an anciently ritual sense, but not accurate.
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There is first a dark chaos, created by God. Apologists tell us that science has come to a similar
conclusion—everything in the universe began as chaos. It is not so, but whether Genesis reflects
science or not, to a non-believer it is a puzzle why God should have created matter in a chaotic
state, and then, in six days, put it in order. The creative word could have made the universe
orderly in the first place. The Hebrew for the chaos is “tohu wah tohu”, which is a primitive
people’s corruption of the Babylonian “tiamat”, the original chaos. To the learned Babylonian,
the first state of things was a watery waste, land and water mixed up together, and the gods had
first to separate them. The Hebrew follows the Babylonian legend in all that it says.

In fact science is not in harmony with Genesis. The order of creation: (1) light, (2) division of
water from the sky or firmament, (3) division of land from water and creation of plants
(including fruit trees), (4) appearance of the sun and moon, (5) production of birds from the
water and (6) production of reptiles (after birds) and mammals and man is quite silly. The second
chapter of Genesis is worse, contradicting the first by creating man, then trees, then mammals,
and finally woman. The only agreement with science, and this is undone by the second chapter,
is that the grass was created before the cattle, which eat it, and the cattle before the man, who
eats them. Does one need inspiration to guess that?

The bible puts creation about 4000 BC. Some Christians admit that, as science claims, the
universe is more than ten billion years old. Why then are they contradicting God’s word? Go
through the bible noting the age of each patriarch and trace through the generations—the bible
does date creation about 6000 years ago!

There is the lovely Garden of Eden—the Babylonian “edin” or plain—and the madly unjust story
of the curse of the whole human race for the sin of two people. It is a Babylonian story, but the
Hindus, Egyptians, and others had essentially the same story. As to Noah and the flood, every
theologian in the world has thrown up the sponge on this early idea of divine justice. It is all in
the Babylonian tablets, even down to such details as the sending out of the dove and the raven,
and the resting of the ark on a high mountain.

The story of Babel also is a legend of which we have traces in Babylonia. God gets jealous of
man’s progress in civilization. Man has built a city, which is clearly Babylon, as Christians
admit, and a tower which means one of the stepped temples of Babylonia—the ziggurats. The
story is a primitive attempt to explain how men came to speak different languages.

No scholar questions the Babylonian origin of the Genesis legends. The Persian colonists into
Yehud probably brought these legends from their homelands in the upper reaches of the
Euphrates river. No one can read the Babylonian originals and doubt the source of the early
chapters of Genesis.

Clergymen say that their inspiration is the change from polytheism to monotheism. “In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, is said to rise high above all ancient literature.
Yet in the Babylonian legend, one god also puts chaos in order and creates the world—Marduk.
Moreover, monotheism was established in Egypt centuries before a line of the Old Testament
was written. And ethical monotheism was effectively invented by Zoroaster somewhere in
Afghanistan hundreds of years before the Persian colonists ever got to Judah.
48 
 

The Mythical History Of The Jews 

The story of Abraham is very simple. His original name was Abram and he lived in “Ur of the
Chaldees” but God called him and changed his name to Ab-ra-ham, which is the Hebrew for
“Father of many peoples”. In fact, no Hebrew scholar can make Abraham mean anything, except
with difficulty. It has no meaning in Hebrew. It therefore does not mean “Father of many
peoples”. Abram may have come from Ur but it was not a city of the Chaldees until about
1000 BC which proves that the legend was written at a later date by the priests.

If Abram means anything it is something like “great father”. Late in Jewish history, he began to
be regarded as the ancestor of the people, but Christians say this grew out of genuine tradition
about him. This is proved, they say, by archaeological discoveries which have confirmed the
names of certain kings in the story of Abraham.

This illustrates why critics of the clergy call them dishonest. Of the entire story of Abram, only
the fact that three or four kings mentioned are now known to have really existed is confirmed. It
would follow only that there was an ancient legend about Abram, but of the whole supernatural
story about him there is not a tittle of confirmation. A few names of kings, or alliances, or battles
in many centuries are confirmed, a vast amount is disproved. In honesty, only the view of the
Old Testament as a fabrication in the fifth century which included some older writings based on
tribal traditions is confirmed.

One of the royal names discovered is King Hammurabi of Babylon. Christians tell us Amraphel
in the Abram story is obviously the same person! Well, actually, it is not obvious. It is an ancient
northern Canaanitish or Syrian narrative which shows us Abram as a valiant chieftain, perhaps
originally a god. The Jews, who came later to Canaan, probably brought the legend with them
from Beth eden where they had previously lived. This Abram was possibly an ancestor of their
race, and the priests incorporated this scanty story into the sacred history of the mixed people of
Abarnahara, the Persian satrapy that had Jerusalem as its temple.

Joseph is the next outstanding historical character in the Jewish scriptures. Joseph retires with
the Khabiri chieftain into the very dim mists of ancient legend. In Genesis 41:43, Joseph was set
high and the Egyptian people called before him, “Bow the knee”. This is a fanciful rendering of a
word which the translators did not understand. Sayce tells us the word is a Babylonian title of
honour! Strange, isn’t it, to find an Egyptian crowd talking Babylonian?

It takes a long time for discoveries to reach the faithful. The story of Potiphar’s wife has so close
a parallel in an Egyptian story that it is, according to Sayce, writing a century ago, “impossible
not to see the connexion”. Scholars found the Orbiney Papyrus, now in the British Museum at
London, in 1852 AD. In it two brothers lived together. They were working together in the field
one day, and the elder, who was married, sent the younger back to the house for some seed. The
elder’s wife, had had her eye on the younger for some time, said, “Come let us lie together for an
hour. That will be pleasant for you, and I will make fine clothes for you.” The blushing youth
indignantly refused, and fled, saying much for the morals of ancient Egyptian youth. So the wife,
to protect herself, told people he had tried to seduce her, and when her husband came home, she
accused the younger brother of saying to her, “Let down thy hair, and let us lie together for an
49 
 

hour.” And the elder slew the younger brother. Compare Genesis 39 with this. Joseph went to his
master’s house to do his business, and, as there was no one else there but the wife, she caught
him by his garment, saying, “Lie with me”. He refused, and she turned the tables on him, as in
the Egyptian tale.

The Pentateuch is supposed to have been written by Moses, before the Israelites had entered
Canaan. Yet it contains phrases like “the Canaanite dwelled then in the land” (Gen 12:6;13:7),
and “before there reigned any king over the children of Israel” (Gen 36:31), which must have
been written after Moses’s death when the land had been entered, the Canaanites had been
evicted, and there were even kings in Israel. Moreover, nearly every occurrence from the
creation of the world to the death of Moses is related to us twice, and in some cases three times.

The writer of Joshua, who never pretends to be Joshua, often says that a thing goes on “unto this
day” (Josh 9:27;15:63). In Joshua 24:31, the author intimates that he is writing at least after the
death of the eldest person who had known Joshua. There are the same doubles and
contradictions. The Samaritans did not accept the book, so it is a priestly third century forgery.

Judges, Samuel and Kings have all the same faults. The plain truth is that we cannot by
independent authority prove a single statement of any importance in the history of the Jews until
their history is no longer miraculous. Even the latest historical works are a series of forgeries
including, in a changed form, ancient otherwise lost traditions.

In 1 Chronicles 24:7, money is paid or valued in darics, coins of the Persian Darius. It must have
been written after 520 BC, the first year of Darius I. In 1 Chronicles 3:19, six generations had
elapsed since Zerubbabel, so the book must have been written about 400 BC. In Nehemiah 12:1-
26 is a list of names to the time of Alexander the Great (d 323 BC). Chronicles, Ezra and
Nehemiah must be forgeries of the fourth century, possibly using older Assyrian and Babylonian
royal annals but giving a revised version of the events.

Even the most contemporary prophets of the setting up of the temple state, Haggai and
Zechariah, Ezra and Nehemiah are full of purposive misstatements. Their editors' contributions
are agreed to be often inventions, especially what they say about the “return of the Jews” from
Babylon and the rebuilding of the temple. Zechariah says the exiles were still in Babylonia when
the temple was rebuilt, yet the author of Ezra gives us a glowing description of 42,360 Jews,
with 7,337 servants, two hundred singing men and women, and great troops of horses and
treasures of gold returning. Only about 4,000 men had been deported.

We are asked to believe that in two generations they grew, on the fertile plains of Babylon, to
42,360 plus the thousands more who never returned. In those days a population took several
centuries to double! In fact, the total population of Yehud, after the colonization, was only about
two myriads, and that includes the native Am ha Eretz who never left. This extended list is
centuries older, probably from the time of the Maccabees, and was written to give certain
families kudos. The value of the history of Ezra, was bringing out the real author of the law of
Moses. No serious scholar doubts that it was written in Babylon by Persian ministers.
50 
 

Experts assure us that much of the Old Testament history has been discredited. The books are a
tissue of inventions, expansions, conflations, or recensions dating centuries after the events.

The Truth About The Prophets 

A prophet in those olden days was not a man who in particular predicted events, but, in the
Greek and Hebrew understanding of the word (respectively, “prophetes”, “nabi”), was a man
who was believed to speak for and interpret the words of the gods. In the Jewish scriptures, they
were men who spoke out, as Jeremiah did about Hilkiah’s pious fraud. They called a whore a
whore. The modern interest in the prophets is the supposition that they made remarkable
predictions. These supposed predictions are quite simply false, unless you are a Christian.

In reality, prophets were the messengers of the king, but the king spoke for the gods, or God.
They were also propagandists for enemies of the king, or even for foreign kings wanting to
interfere in the affairs of foreign countries. By claiming to be speaking for God, and usually
having a king's authority to do so, they had a certain amount of security. Even so, it must have
been a dangerous job sometimes, though most of them were more like the medieval town criers,
simply spreading news that the king wanted to be spread.

The works of the original prophets, if they existed in written form, were edited like all the other
scriptural literature, but most of the biblical prophecies were written long after the events they
described, so, they were easy to get right. Sometimes the “prophecy” was in any case a reference
to past events as when Isaiah wrote descriptions of the “Servant of God”, regarded as predictions
about Christ, and are really of Moses, or are a personification of Israel.

Only occasionally are the predictions shrewd forecasts, and they have been emphasized, while
failed ones have been ignored. Correct ones are when the fulfilment of some dire warning from
the prophet of a foreign king comes true because it was meant to intimidate the local people. The
king then followed up with an invasion, and the people were meant to expect it and willingly
surrender. Sometimes supposed biblical prophecies of Jesus are wrongly translated, as in the
famous “Behold a virgin will conceive”, a prophecy that came true even though it is wrongly
expressed. The Hebrew word means not “virgin” but a pre-menstrual girl, and conception by
such a girl was not miraculous, even in ancient Judaea.

Biblical prophets regarded themselves as superior people because often they spoke for very
superior people. They wanted to be striking in appearance so that people would hear them, and,
apparently, dressed in a sort of uniform of a mantle of goat’s hair. They also like to have mystic
marks on their foreheads, possibly official tattoos to show their authority. Some had schools of
prophets, again suggesting their official role. Such was Elijah. There is, the experts say probably
a basis of fact in the story of Elijah and Elisha, but we can’t disentangle it, as “the interests of
prophetic orders led to unhistoric fictions and exaggerations” besides valid warnings.

They were not forgeries, though! Amos and Hosea were supposed to be the first and, naturally
enough, they are the crudest and most poetic. Memory is assisted by poetry, and so messages
will have been committed to memory in poetic form. But Amos and Hosea are morally crude.
Amos, whose story makes him active about 750 BC, was a sheep trader. The great sin is what the
51 
 

translators honestly call whoredom. Judaea was full of whores, in spite of polygamy and
concubinage. And, figuratively, the great collective sin of the nation was whoredom—a courting
of false gods, whose existence is not denied.

Hosea, who purports to have been active in the northern kingdom about the same time, or about
750 to 725, is a shade worse. The call of Yehouah to him was, “Take unto thee a wife of
whoredom and children of whoredom, for the land doth commit great whoredom”. He literally
obeyed the divine command, and learned to love the girl, a metaphor for Israel and her sins. For
centuries Christians have taken it that all ancient people were thoroughly immoral, even God’s
own people needing stern lessons from time to time. Yet Egypt was then as moral as the bible
belt is today, and, in Babylon, they drowned people for adultery.

However, the Book of Isaiah is, apart from later manipulations, the work of several totally
different writers, separated from each other by two centuries. The real Isaiah seems to have been
a man of good social position and education, and keenly interested in politics. He was pro-
Assyrian—though Assyria in these pseudepigraphs probably stands for Persia—and he was
opposed by the pro-Egyptians at court. His opponents won, and Judaea cast off its allegiance to
Assyria and turned to Egypt. Isaiah gave a reasonable forecast of the punishment of Judaea by
the Assyrians. These “prophecies” made after the event are really warnings that it will happen
again unless the people co-operate with the conqueror.

When the Persian colonists came from Babylonia, some other prophet or prophets gave other
warnings that also were incorporated into Isaiah. The colonists had been told they were being
returned to Yehud from a previous exile, whether this exile had actually happened or not. So, this
“prophet” “predicted” “the exile”, and it was attributed to Isaiah. He also predicts a terrible
destruction of Babylon, which the Persians actually took peacefully, and he says it was taken by
the Medes, though they did not. It shows that the prophecy was false , and that it was actually
written sufficiently later that the truth had been forgotten. Babylon was in the time Isaiah
pretends to be writing was not the enemy of Judaea, and the city was actually destroyed by
Xerxes in a much later punitive action after an act of rebellion. So, the prophecy was added after
the time of Xerxes. The later Isaiah's language and religious ideas are quite different from those
of the earlier one, but the two have been pieced together in one book together with a third one.
The scholars call them Second Isaiah, amd Third Isaiah. Why would God want to do this sort of
thing?

The second major prophet is Jeremiah. He is described as one “of the gentlest of men” though he
told Hilkiah in very good Hebrew, and us also, that his new book was a lie. Judaea was so
wicked and perverse, according to these propagandists, and the pessimism of the prophets
reaches its deepest in Jeremiah. The prophecies took the same general shape. The Jews were
going to be fearfully punished—rebels generally were in those days—but the Lord would some
day rehabilitate them. Jeremiah was the son of a priest, and was called in the year 626 BC in his
pseudepigraph, but probably lived in the fifth century in fact.

Micah is supposed to have been a contemporary of Isaiah but his work is hopelessly adulterated.
Ezekiel was a priest, of the sterner type, and was shown as deported to Babylonia, but the whole
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book has been massively edited in Hellenistic times, perhaps by the Hasids. Joel, Malachi and
Obadiah are Persian forgeries of the fourth century.

The Psalms are called The Psalms of David and Christians believe or pretend they really were
written by king David, as in the close of Psalms 72. There is not a scholar in the world who now
believes that any of them were composed by David. Internal evidence and the language itself
show that they are a collection of songs or chants composed mainly seven hundred or more years
after the mythical David is supposed to have lived. In the second century BC, it was a much
disputed question amongst the Jews whether David was really the author. Now every
fundamentalist Christian in the USA is sure that he was. He was not.

The psaltery was a Jewish stringed instrument and a song or hymn sung played on it was a
psalm. So, Psalms is an anthology of Jewish religious songs and poetry. Some psalms are written
word for word in Samuel. Others (such as 20, 21, 61, 63, etc.) are actually addressed to the king,
and it was always quite absurd to suggest that the author of these was David or Solomon. Psalms
104, taken bodily from the Egyptian liturgy, is one that could possibly go back in parts to the
tenth century BC. Songs composed for wedding feasts were sung to the psaltery and some of the
psalms (such as 45) were poems to be sung at a marriage festival, supposed to have been royal,
but actually divine. It was the “hierogamos”, the popular festival of marriage in the ancient near
east.

Some of the psalms are so crude and bloody in their sentiments that the Church of England has
debated in solemn conferences whether it ought not to omit them from its services.

Pious Fiction 

Ecclesiastes is a strange book to include in a Jewish sacred collection. The author is an


Epicurean philosopher. He believes in God, but is an agnostic about a future life. Over and over
again he expresses his skepticism, so that the one verse which does profess belief in a future life
is palpably part of the retouching which the book suffered later at orthodox hands. The writer
disdains the temple sacrifices (5:1) and constantly urges his readers to eat and drink and be merry
while the sun shines. He was probably a Jew living in the new Greco-Egyptian city of
Alexandria about 200 BC.

Proverbs is much earlier, probably going back to the fourth century, but the Wisdom of Solomon,
and Ecclesiasticus, are written in Greek in the first century before Christ. They had nothing to do
with Solomon.

The Song of Solomon, full of thighs, breasts and bellies, is openly erotic. It was used as a symbol
of the union of Christ and his Church, or the union of Yehouah and the synagogue. As a whole it
is a collection of marriage songs. There might be a mythological element in parts of it, which
seem to celebrate the union of the sun god and a goddess (Shelamith) in the hierogamos. In the
east, a marriage festival lasts a week, and songs about the charms of the bride and the
bridegroom’s particular interest in her are features of the celebration. Some of these songs may
be quite old, but others include Persian, and even Greek, words, so that the collection must
belong to about the fourth century. By that time the forged historical works had made Solomon
53 
 

and all his glory and his wives very popular amongst the Jews, and an aspiring author could not
do better than borrow his name.

Solomon was at best a petty king living in a third-rate oriental mansion who did not build the
first temple even. The builder was probably Ahab. Solomon was not wealthy, as in the legend,
but Ahab was. Indeed, Solomon most probably never existed.

God and Man? 

Imagine the mighty creator of the universe lying in a crib wailing to be fed or to have his bottom
wiped. Now has this god really come to earth as an infant, or is he a god just giving the illusion
of it? Does it really like being tickled with a straw or is he really looking on from another
dimension, pretending. The idea of the creator of the universe experiencing the role of a human
baby, genuinely, while still looking upon his works from beyond is manifestly impossible. If the
god is a baby then he has left his heavenly throne for a tadge while he grows up as a human.
Omnipotence shorn of all power but to breathe, and cry, and smile! Why then did the devil not
use these few years of God’s weakness to take control of the universe? How do Christians know
he didn’t? Or, if God is simultaneously looking after everything whilst being a human baby, how
can he truly experience what it is to be human?

Then again if God (Ex 33:20) was not kidding that “no man can see me and live”, how could it
be that God could live as a human on earth for some thirty years meeting many people plainly,
all of whom did not immediately shrivel up. Knowing their scripture, could they be expected to
believe this man to be God? And if Jesus’s companions could not be expected to believe it, why
should God expect other people who never saw him in this spectacular incarnation to believe it
on the say so of men who might be devils in disguise for all anyone knows?

Can an infinite being, absolutely and eternally unchangeable, hunger and thirst as did Jesus? Can
an unceasingly watchful omnipotent God, whose eye “never slumbers”, sink into unconscious
sleep night after night for thirty years, unconscious of the world around him? Truly? Anyone can
play an arcade game and finish up being killed by the aliens. Is that what it is like for God
pretending to be human? He can die on the machine but if he lost his temper he could take up an
axe and smash it into smithereens. He could suffer a blow from an insulting priest but if he’d got
annoyed could have squashed him like a greenfly.

Can anyone believe that God could have been really tempted by demons, devils and crawling
serpents? When God who owns “the cattle upon a thousand hills” (Psalms 1:10) said he had not
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“where to lay his head”, was he just kidding? Why bother suffering as he supposedly had to
when other, more effective, means must have been open to him? If he had “power to lay down
his life, and take it up again” (John 10:17), how could he have suffered like a man on the cross
knowing that his end was not final? Why could he not cause that all of these Chosen People of
his should love him as the saviour, instead of hating him? It is all totally incomprehensible and
the only way it can be accepted is by suspending the faculties that the Creator gave us.

We have a bleeding god, an infant god and a vengeful god appeased by murder and streams of
blood.

Christians tell us that the human and the divine were united in Christ Jesus. Human foibles were
mingled with divine perfection. Mortal weakness was wedded to omnipotent power. Impossible.
The incarnation of an infinite god is a shocking absurdity, and an infinite impossibility.

The supposed omnipotence and omnipresence of God is based on the idea that he is everywhere
and can act everywhere in the universe. His extent is infinite. If the description infinite means
that every cranny of the universe, whatever its nature and throughout time, is taken up by an
infinite being, it follows that there can be only one such being. The word infinite comprehends
all; it covers the whole ground; it fills the immensity of the universe, and fills it to repletion, so
that there is no room left for any other being to exist. And whoever and whatever does exist must
constitute a part of this infinite whole.

For Christians the Father is God and is all we can conceive of as constituting God and was such
from all eternity, before Jesus Christ was born into the world. Paul cuts through the sophistry of
Christendom (1 Cor 8:6) by declaring: “To us there is but one God, the Father”.

The Father alone is God. But we saw above that only the father therefore can be God. All other
beings in the universe are cut off from any participation in the Godhead with the Father. The
moment you try to make Christ God, or any part of the Godhead, you declare God not to be
infinite or you are dishonest in elevating another to join him in his place. You cannot introduce
another being as God in the infinite sense until the first-named infinite God is dethroned and put
out of existence. Otherwise we should have two Gods, both absolute and infinite.

If Christ was a mewling helpless infant with a dirty bottom, then how could he have been an
infinite god? As an infinite being God must necessarily constitute the child, and not just the
infant Jesus but every child, but God is not being a real human child because no human child has
the powers of a god and God must be simultaneously retaining his powers. The omnipresence of
the Father does and must exclude that of the Son, or any other being, and thus exclude the
possibility of his apotheosis or incarnated deityship.

An axiom in philosophy is that the less cannot contain the greater. How then can a finite body
contain an infinite body? If Jesus Christ is only a part of the infinite God, then it is evident that
he is not God! No philosopher does or can believe in the absolute divinity of Jesus Christ.

If God has appeared on earth in the form of a man, how can He expect other men to be able to
distinguish men from God? How is anyone to know that a certain man, who acts peculiarly, is
55 
 

not a God? If everyone knew that God never appeared as a man then there would be no
confusion and one source of error would have been removed from human behaviour. Now we
only know from professional Christians, all human, that God took the form of a man. Only
professional Christians who get a living—often a substantial one—from persuading people of the
truth of the story, tell people that God appeared on earth as a man. Common sense tells you that
God was inviting trouble among his flocks by doing this. It is easier to believe that Christian
ministers are frauds than to believe that God is a fool.

The New Testament itself illustrates the difficulties created by God appearing as a man. Twice,
the author of Revelation, supposedly John the beloved disciple, (Rev 19:10; 22:9) fell down to
worship a man whom he mistook for God.

If Christ’s own disciples could be betrayed into the sin of idolatry by the abolition of the
distinction between the divine and the human, we surely have a strong argument against such a
doctrine. Nothing could favour false worship better than to obliterate the demarcation between
God and man. Isn’t this the origin of idolatry in pagan countries? They failed to maintain a
distinction between a God of infinite attributes, and a being wrapped in human form.

Since they have accepted it, how can Christians condemn any people for worshipping a fellow
human as a god? Anyone who could believe that God was Jesus, cannot criticise those who
believe that the Emperor of Japan or the Grand Lama of Tibet is God. Only the name differs.
Substitute the Grand Lama for that of Jesus Christ, and the thing is done.

Such is Christian logic.

New Testament Mistranslation 

The current translations of the bible are marred by many faulty readings, and interpolations
known by the translators are allowed to remain. An example is the whole of the end of Mark’s
gospel from Mark 16:9 to the end. A few recent bibles have a note that it is a false ending but
older ones and most modern ones do not. Since it contains the earliest gospel account of the
appearances, its absence is more than slightly important. Christianity depends upon the
appearances as historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, something that only a god could
do. Another is the word “repent” which has been in the Douay version wrongly rendered through
the Latin “do penance”, which suits the Catholic priesthood.

Let us look now at some of the many renderings of the Hebrew word “ruach”, and shall see how
they illustrate ecclesiastical ingenuity in building up a system of ghosts, and even a theory of
apostolic succession!

The word rendered Ghost, Holy Ghost, and Spirit in the New Testament is the Greek word
“pneuma”, which is the equivalent of “ruach” in the Hebrew of the Old Testament. Both words
mean “air in motion” or “breath”. “ruach” is rendered in Genesis 3:8 as “the cool” of the evening
where “breeze” would be better and, in Genesis 8:1, appropriately as wind. In Genesis 1:2,
“ruach Elohim” is translated “the spirit” of God, but it should be “the breath” of the gods. In the
Latin Vulgate, “pneuma” is rendered “spiritus”, from “spiro” meaning “I breathe”. Translated
56 
 

into Anglo-Saxon, “spiritus” became “gast”, whence “ghost”. The Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost
really means “the breath of God”.

“Jesus gave up the Ghost”, “the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee”, and “receive ye the Holy
Ghost”, are all mistranslations. In Luke 4:1, the same word “pneuma” is translated in two
different ways:

And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost (“pneuma”) returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit 
(“pneuma”) into the wilderness. 

In Luke 8:55, when Jair’s daughter is brought back to life, we read:

And her spirit (“pneuma”) came again, and she arose straightway: and he commanded to give her meat. 

The translation implies that a supernatural spirit or soul re-entered the girl when it simply means
she began to breathe after seeming to be dead.

These are only a few of the inaccuracies to be found. Translations of the bible maintain a
disgraceful and dishonest bias to the views preferred by the theologians rather than the truth. It is
known in the narrow circles of Christian and Jewish scholars, and some—a very small circle—
are honest enough to reject all of this nonsense when they find it out. The rest realize that, if it
were accepted by worshippers, they would be out of a comfortable job and probably out of the
tied cottage as well. They keep it quiet.

Moral Lessons of Religious History 

The fault with any religious or sacred text, as Paul Carus has pointed out, is that eventually it
looks less and less divine, and more and more fallible. Sacred texts are fixed, but the world
moves on leaving them behind. What do the faithful do then? They have to claim there is more to
the sacred text than meets the eye. It has within it arcane mysteries, and these are said to be
encoded in the text, present in it as allegories or otherwise present as enigmas. It then permits a
whole industry among those with time to waste “deciphering” the mysteries, and selling
worthless books about their endeavours. Actually to reveal the mystery is to put an end to the
mystery business, but all the mystery floggers know that will never happen, and they will always
be in business for the credulous types who pay for it. It never ends, just as the interpretation of
prophecy goes on, undaunted, from failure to failure, always commanding an audience of those
willing to ignore the long history of false prophets and readings in the certain knowledge that this
latest one is right! Followers of the prophets always have to claim they have the extra hidden
elements of the teaching, known only to an inner circle, but just those elements that make an
obviously flawed teaching into a one of divine perfection. Ho hum!

Bibles are considered the words of God himself and therefore forever true, not the admirable but
faulty attempts of primitive people to account for their world. As bibles represent only the morals
and state of society in the age in which they are written, and are not allowed to be altered or
transcended, they hold their disciples back in all coming time, and compel them to teach and
practice the morals of the age found in their bibles. bibles prevent the moral growth of the people
57 
 

just as the growth of the feet of Chinese girls were prevented by their being permanently bound
into wooden shoes. Morals can be taught without spiritual bindings on the mind.

No advancement has often been made in morals or civilization in any country by the introduction
of the Christian bible or the Christian religion. India became corrupted and economically sunk in
morals largely after the introduction of the Christian bible. Christian gentlemen tried to make the
Chinese into a nation of opium eaters. It evolved from Confucianism into atheistic communism,
as spotless Christians like to call it, and now is growing faster than the US ever did, all without
the assistance of the bible. Nations without bibles advance faster than those well supplied with
them. Japan has advanced into one of the most advanced civilisations in only a century without
any Christian bible. Even now, imbued with the cultural imperialism of the USA, it is still a
refined and orderly country, relatively free of the crimes and vulgarity that plague middle
America.

Ethiopia is Christian, despite the recent interlude of communism. Bibles and churches are
numerous. Preaching and praying are heard every day, and crimes of all kinds are commonplace.
The people are abject and starving. The daily practice of reading their bible has not benefited
these poor people. Where then are its practical and spiritual benefits in the instances of these
quite different people? Christians claims to defend the world against excessive materialism and
instead to be defending spiritual things. Yet modern Christians are thoroughly materialistic and
reject every teaching of their god, especially those advocating the spiritual benefits of poverty.
Christians are and have always been hypocrites.

All religious conceptions, whether doctrine, precept, prophecy, prayer, religious devotion, or a
belief in miracles, are an outgrowth of the moral and religious elements of the human mind. They
have no supernatural origin. Common features can be seen in all religious systems, explicable by
the common features of human psychology. There is no basis in these hypotheses for any claim
to a divine origin of anything in any religion.

Many stories regarded by Christians as miraculous were distortions of real events which could
not be told by Christian converts within the Roman Empire. They are not supernatural violations
of nature or feats of God in violation of his own laws. Other miraculous stories, easily identified,
are the supernatural acts of pagan gods attached to the Jewish martyr to make him also into a
god. Various heathen gods had, long before Christ’s advent, filled the same chapter in history
reserved for saviours now granted to him in the Christian New Testament. This type of story
related of Jesus Christ have no other foundation than that of heathen tradition.

The Christian bible does not approve of the words “science” and “arts”. Paul uses the word
“science” only once, and then to condemn it, and Jesus omits any allusion to science, philosophy,
or natural law. The early disciples of the Christian faith were so thoroughly convinced that the
teachings of their bible were inimical to the arts and sciences that they destroyed works of art
wherever they could find them, and regularly opposed every new discovery in social science and
the sciences.

In the early days of the USA, reports were published of the judgement of God manifest as
showers of blood. Subsequently science proved the blood was the ordure of butterflies migrating
58 
 

in vast swarms. Yet, Christian children continued to hear that these bloody showers came from
God out of heaven to show his displeasure at the sins of the people. The Christian has always had
a faith which was proof against science and reason and would not give up the story of falls of
blood. How long will Christians continue to tell their children lies like this when the true
explanation is known? Facts, proofs, demonstrations the reasoning of science can rarely eradicate
dogma from the stubbornness of the religious mind once it is instilled in early life. Ignorance is
the business of the bible, and the US creationists continue to prove it.

Before you go, think about this… 
A major exchange of bombs on the scale we have them at present could release the same energy as the 
fall of a 1000 yard wide asteroid. The asteroid would concentrate all the impact in one spot and be 
capable of blowing chunks of terrestrial matter high into the atmosphere, even out into space. A nuclear 
exchange would not put as much matter into the high stratosphere, but what did go up would be more 
evenly distributed geographically, and might also be spread out over a period of time.  

Who Lies Sleeping? 

Analyzing the Bible Scientifically


Hey you Christians, it’s your hell, you burn in it! 

4. The Bible—Absurdities and


Contradictions
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, May 14, 1999
Saturday, 01 April 2006

• Absurdities of the Bible  
• 28 of the Contradictions in the Bible  

Abstract 
The absurdities of the bible are used to indoctrinate children still. It all began with Adam and Eve who 
led the human race into sin! When God made woman in the Yehouistic creation story, he cut out one of 
Adam’s ribs and made it into a woman. So, women are inferior beings, only made as an afterthought. 
Few preachers would say it was a myth, but the truth is the exact opposite. Males are the 
afterthought—the first sex was the female. Everyone begins life as a female but by birth about half 
develop features of maleness. Here a few biblical absurdities and contradictions are considered.  
59 
 

Absurdities of the Bible 

It would take a long time to go through all the absurdities of the bible, absurdities which are used
to indoctrinate children still. Here are a few. Of course, it all began with Adam and Eve who led
the human race into sin! When God made woman in the Yahwistic creation story, he took one of
Adam’s ribs and cut it out and made it into a woman. Naturally, then, women are inferior beings,
only being made as an afterthought. How many Baptist preachers would say it was a myth?
None! There are some people who still occupy Christian pulpits who say it is, but many
Christians would say by so doing the vicar is putting his immortal soul in danger, and not long
ago they would have sent them to the stake to prove it. The truth is the exact opposite. Males are
the afterthought because the first sex was the female sex. Everyone begins life as a female but by
birth about half have developed secondary features of maleness.

Actually, Genesis has two different accounts of the creation of man, one of them mentioned
twice:

God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he 
created them.  

Genesis 1:27 

Male and female he created them and blessed them and called their name man on the day of their 
creation.  

Genesis 5:2 

It is obvious that these statements—in which men and women were created in one act, both sexes
together, equally and at the same time—contradict the second story of the creation of mankind—
that of Adam and Eve, in which the two were made separately, Adam first, then Eve from one of
Adam’s ribs, and at different times—the story that is biologically untrue. Whence did this
curious and mistaken story arise? In ancient Babylonia, the Sumerian word “ti” meant both “rib”
and “to make alive”. The goddess, Ninti, is the Lady of the Rib, and the Lady who makes Alive.
She was made by Nimhursag to heal Enki’s sick rib. Plainly a memory of the Sumerian myth has
been recast in Genesis with Eve not being beneficial to Adam as Ninti was to Enki, but
dependent on the male figure to suit the Jewish priesthood. The message of Genesis is that
women are secondary and inferior to men, and are not to be trusted. Even so, Eve is the “Lady
who makes Alive”, just as Ninti was, and is called “mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20).

In the biblical story, the woman turned out to be a bad lot, which an omniscient God ought to
have known anyway, and she got Adam to disobey God’s instructions. God wanted Adam and
60 
 

Eve to stay ignorant, so they were not allowed to eat of the fruit of a certain tree which would
give them knowledge. Eve learnt about this from the Serpent and persuaded Adam to have a bite.
God has punished people ever since. Nice God!

What has the human race done that was so bad? Why should eating the fruit of the tree of
knowledge bring sin into the world? What are these sins? Did anyone really have to save
mankind from their sins in a miraculous way? It is an absurd piece of theology which priests say
people must accept on faith. Why? Because reason won’t confirm it.

The bible says the Tower of Babel was so named:

because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth, 

the name “Babel” supposedly deriving from “balal”, “confound”. The Holy Ghost was kidding
us again! The cuneiform tablets found in the ruins of Babylon tell us exactly what the
Babylonians called it—Bab-ilu, “the gate of God”, sometimes written with two signs, a gate and
god, so there can be no doubt about it. Now the obvious etymology of Babel in Hebrew is
precisely the same, “the gate of God”, so it has nothing to do with confounding. The place was a
temple of seven platforms, each tinted a different colour, and each dedicated to one of the seven
planets. The story of the confusion of languages was a reflexion of the cosmopolitan nature of
the country that Babel represented.

In the story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den (Daniel 6) the God-fearing and divinely- protected
Daniel is saved by the power of God. The same God allowed a gross injustice for a fault they did
not commit to the royal officers, who were simply carrying out their orders, and to their innocent
wives and families, though God’s supernatural power could have prevented it.

In the exodus from Egypt (Exodus 7) we find the story of Moses who led the Israelites from
Egypt into the Promised Land. Moses had a miraculous rod which could change into a serpent
and draw water from a rock. The story is supposed to be set about 1400 BC but was not written
down until over a thousand years later. The author of the story therefore had knowledge of the
identical story of Bacchus or Orpheus who had a rod with the same miraculous properties and
who also passed through the Red Sea dry shod at the head of his army. Nothing of either story is
recorded by any historian and it is likely to be purely mythical. Alexander the Great experienced
the nearest to it when crossing a tidal estuary in asia Minor, and this might have been the source
of the myth.
61 
 

Almost every nation of antiquity had a legend of their holy men ascending a mountain to ask
counsel of their gods. Minos, the Cretan law-giver, ascended Mount Dicta and received from
Zeus the sacred laws. A similar legend is told of Zoroaster, to whom Ormuzd handed The Book
of the Law—the Zend Avesta. When the Old Testament was being written down by priests after
the Persian colonization, they used many elements of the myths of the country in which they had
previously lived before they were captive. Their saviour, the warrior king Cyrus, the Persian, was
almost certainly a follower of Zoroaster, and post-exilic Judaism is constructed from the Persian
religion.

Joshua was very righteous in the sight of God and the great Israelite general who led them into
the land of Canaan after the death of Moses. He was busy killing the people he found there to
make room for God’s people, but found himself short of time at the battle of Jericho. He turned
to the mountain top and said to the sun, “Stand still till I finish this job”, and it stood still for a
day! Joshua said to the sun, “Stand still”, and it stood still? Are Christians seriously expected to
believe this to gain salvation? It is a greater miracle than the world wide flood, and arguably than
the resurrection of a dead man, since that could have been a mistake.

Ancient Jewish authors thought that if the sun stood still, the night would not come on. But the
motion of the sun through the heavens is only apparent, being caused really by the rotation of the
earth on its axis. The earth would have had to have stopped rotating! So if Christians reject this
story because it defies all reason, are they wicked and doomed to hell fire? Have they got to get
rid of all their knowledge and common sense to save their souls? Some Christian preachers say
precisely that!

Samson’s six exploits are from the labours of Hercules. Now Hercules was a sun god and his
twelve labours were an allegorical account of the sun’s journey through the zodiac. The Jews, at
one time in their history worshipped a sun God, as the bible itself bears endless witness to.
Originally, Samson, whose name means the sun, Shamas, also had twelve labours but six have
been lost or deliberately dropped to loosen the connexion.

In Matthew 12:40, Jesus who, the Christians say, is God in human garb guarantees the truth of
the story of Jonah and the big fish. Jonah is swallowed up by a fish within which he lived three
days and nights, praying to God. God answered his prayers by making the fish vomit on to dry
land and among all the contents of the fish’s stomach was Jonah, alive and well! Christians are
fond of miracles but it takes some gullibility to believe this one.

Jesus was born of a virgin. Could anyone get any positive evidence that would compel believe in
this story today? No sensible person could consider it today without artificial insemination but
there were at least four miraculous births recorded in the bible—Sarah’s child, Samson, John the
Baptist and Jesus. Miraculous births were fashionable in those days, especially in Rome, where
most of Christianity developed. Caesar had a miraculous birth, Cicero, Alexander the Great—
great men just had to have miraculous births.

Have the laws of Nature changed since then, or were they all fanciful? Today, such tales would
be rejected, yet Christians, especially born-agains must believe their bibles without a shadow of
doubt. If they do not they are saying that the bible is not true. If it is not true, it must be lying.
62 
 

Proof is that Jesus had brothers and sisters, and his genealogy by Matthew is traced to his father,
Joseph. If he wasn’t Jesus’s father, why was he in the story at all?

There are many curious tales but also many revolting and immoral ones in the Jewish scriptures,
some of which have their equals in other mythologies. The difference is that these, being biblical,
are the infallible word of God which must be believed by anyone not wanting to lose their
immortal soul to the flames of Old Nick:

• Elijah ascending in a whirlwind,  
• the formation of an army out of bones,  
• the talking ass,  
• the talking serpent,  
• the talking cloud,  
• the army which woke up one morning and found themselves all dead men (2 Kings 19:35),  
• the retrograde motion of the sun (2 Kings 20:10‐11),  
• the defeat of 600 Philistines by one man armed only with an ox‐goad,  
• Moses turning the Nile into blood and inducing many plagues.  

And many more! These are the infallible or the inspired word of God—depending upon your
degree of fundamentalism—which God, speaking in his aspect of the Son, advocated
wholeheartedly and which Christians, for that reason, still believe to this day though most of it is
incredible. Can Christianity therefore be sound in its moral teaching? According to the
scriptures, which anyone may freely search, God advised or countenanced:

• adultery (Genesis 12:10);  
• deception (Ezekiel 14:9; Numbers 14:30‐34);  
• stealing (Exodus 3:21‐22);  
• selfishness (Deuteronomy 14:21):  
• conquest by force (Numbers 31 and others);  
• indiscriminate slaughter (Exodus 32:27);  
• violation of virgins (Numbers 31:18);  
• murder (Deuteronomy 7:16, and others};  
• cannibalism (Jeremiah 19:9, and others);  
• killing witches (Exodus 22:18);  
• slavery (Exodus 21:2‐5; Leviticus 25:44‐46);  
• capital punishment for rebellious sons, or for seeking false gods (Deuteronomy 21:18‐21; 13:6‐
9);  
• human sacrifice (Exodus 13:1‐2);  
• sacrifices of animals (Leviticus 1:14‐15);  

and other primitive acts expected of primitive people. It can be argued that these are practices
that were appropriate to their time but, even if this be accepted, we have then to ask why they
remain in the infallible word of God, a justification for human ghouls everywhere in
Christendom.

The absurdity of believing in Yehouah as a kind or logical entity may be exposed with impunity
from the pages of the Holy Book itself. A God who destroyed 70,000 of his chosen people
63 
 

because their king took a census (1 Chronicles 21) is too paranoid for any but the insane, the
gullible and theologians to worship. Indeed it is indicative of the totalitarian power of the
priesthood and the gullibility of the people that this pigs ear of a religion has survived for so
long.

Adam and Eve were put in a garden where everything was lovely and were allowed to stay there
on one condition—that they didn’t eat of the tree of knowledge. That has been the condition of
the Christian church from then until now. Clarence Darrow said:

They haven’t eaten as yet. As a rule they do not!  

28 of the Contradictions in the Bible 

1—God condemns Adam to a sure death if he were to eat the fruit of the tree of life:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest 
thereof thou shalt surely die.  

Genesis 2:17 

Instead Adam lived to produce all the people on earth, and they have to suffer for Adam’s
defiance. The bible even makes a point of telling us how long Adam lived:

And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.  

Genesis 5:5 

2—God is pleased with his work:

And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good.  

Genesis 1:31 

Furthermore, He declares that He does not lie or repent:

God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent.  

Numbers 23:19 

Despite these assertions, we find:

And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.  

Genesis 6:6 

He repents in other places such as:


64 
 

And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that he had 
said that he would do unto them.  

Jonah 3:10 

3—God reserves the right to change His mind:

The Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk 
before me for ever, but now the Lord saith, Be it far from me, for them that honour me I will honour, 
and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days come, that I will cut off thine arm, 
and the arm of thy father’s house, that there shall not be an old man in thine house.  

1 Samuel 2:30 

But elsewhere, once He has made up His mind, He is immovable:

For I am the Lord. I change not.  

Malachi 3:6 

4—The chief apostle of Christianity tells us:

God is not the author of confusion, but of peace.  

1 Corinthians 14:33 

But that is not what Moses thought when he sings in joy that the Egyptian chariots had been
drowned:

The Lord is a man of war.  

Exodus 15:3 

And Matthew has God himself, in His aspect of the Son of God, saying:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace but a sword.  

Matthew 10:34 

5—In Psalms, God is merciful:

The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his work.  

Psalms 145:8 

Elsewhere, He will always be merciful:


65 
 

For his mercy endureth for ever.  

1 Chronicles 16:34 

And the brother of Jesus, James, confirms it for Christians:

The lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.  

James 5:11 

But Joshua believed that God told him not to be merciful:

And Joshua did unto them as the Lord bade him. He houghed their horses, and burnt their chariots with 
fire ... and smote all the souls that were therein, with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them.  

Joshua 11:9 

The prophet, Jeremiah, is certain that God is not merciful:

I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them. For ye have kindled a fire in mine anger that 
shall burn for ever.  

Jeremiah 13:14; 17:4 

Numbers proves that Joshua probably had the right idea because God can be pretty gruesome
when he gets angry:

And the Lord said unto Moses, take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord 
against the Sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel.  

Numbers 25:4 

6—According to many Christian clergy, John is the truly authoritative gospel of the four. But
what did John know? Supposedly recording a speech of John the Baptist, he tells us:

No man hath seen God at any time.  

John 1:18 

Well God did say to Moses:

Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me, and live.  

Exodus 33:20 

It is a bit odd since earlier Moses is supposed to have written:


66 
 

And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend.  

Exodus 23:11 

Furthermore Jacob who God met and renamed Israel thus giving the tribe their name also
claimed:

I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.  

Genesis 32:30 

7—In case we had not noticed it, in the justification of the sabbath day in the creation story in
Genesis, Exodus explains:

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.  

Exodus 31:17 

Nevertheless, such a famous man as Isaiah had evidently not read his Torah because he says:

Hast thou not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth 
not, neither is weary.  

Isaiah 40:28 

8—A characteristic of the earlier stories in the bible is that God is not omnipresent. For example,
in God has to go out to check Sodom and Gomorrah:

And the Lord said, because of the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very 
grievous, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which 
is come unto me, and if not, I will know.  

Genesis 18:20 

By the time the Psalmist was writing Psalms, however, God’s ability to spread himself about had
vastly improved:

Whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in 
hell, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the 
sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.  

Psalms 109:7 

9—The same evolution occurs with God’s omniscience, Adam and Eve finding it easy to hide
from their creator:
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And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God, among the trees of the 
garden.  

Genesis 3:8 

Again though, God was improving with practice because by the time Job was experiencing his
miseries, there was nowhere to hide:

For his eyes are upon the ways of man and he seeth all his goings, there is no darkness nor shadow of 
death, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves.  

Job 34:21 

10—Evidently it all had to do with technology, God managing to stay one step ahead of mankind
usually but, in Judges, God had not yet entered the iron age:

And the Lord was with Judah, and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out 
the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.  

Judges 1:19 

It is remarkable what advances can be made in a thousand years and by the start of the Christian
era we are told in Matthew:

With God all things are possible.  

Matthew 19:26 

11—In the writings of Paul we find:

There is no respect of persons with God.  

Romans 2:11 

But, in Malachi, God says:

Saith the Lord: I loved Jacob, And I hated Esau.  

Malachi 1:2‐3 

And Paul quotes this in his argument in Romans 9:13. So far from being impartial, God makes a
point of being partial.

12—Frequently the Jewish scriptures are keen to depict God as the God of truth, whence the
Christian use of “Amen” as an affirmation of a prayer—it supposedly means “truly”, or today
people might say “right on”. In Deuteronomy 32:4, we read:
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A God of truth he is, and without iniquity.  

Deuteronomy 32:4 

Yet, in 1 Kings, God deliberately sends out a lying spirit:

And there came forth a spirit and stood before the Lord and said… I will go forth, and I will be a lying 
spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And be said… go forth and do so.  

1 Kings 22:21 

13—The Christian idea of the Almighty is that he is a god of love and compassion:

The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and of great mercy.  

Psalms 145:8 

In the Christian part of the bible, it is explicit:

And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love.  

1 John 4:16 

What are we to make then of a large number of citations from the Jewish part of the bible, the
Old Testament, which give quite a different picture? Deuteronomy states:

For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.  

Deuteronomy 4:24 

Nahum has:

God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth, and is furious the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries.  

Nahum 1:2 

The Israelites are struggling through the deserts of Sinai starving except for the manna provided
by God, then apparently there is a blessing. A storm blows in a load of quails and the grateful
Israelites tuck into a feast at last. But watch out, you Israelites! This boon was sent only as a
temptation and He is vengeful:

A wind from the Lord brought forth quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp… and while the 
flesh was between their teeth, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against them, and he smote them with 
a great plague.  

Numbers 11:31 
69 
 

Incidentally, should a good god be tempting people? In the US today people should not be
tempted according to the legal code—it is the crime of entrapment—though in the UK it is legal.
According to James, the brother of Jesus, in his epistle, God does not agree with entrapment:

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted of evil, neither 
tempteth he any man.  

James 1:13 

Well the passage cited above doesn’t actually say that the quails were sent as a temptation,
though they were sent by God and they plainly were a temptation. Nevertheless, in Genesis, we
read:

And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham.  

Genesis 22:1 

James, the brother of the Son of God, must have been wrong.

14—God is not kind but brutal. In an illustration of the true purpose of all priestly religions, God
gives commands for the brutal punishment of those who had stolen booty from Jericho intended
for the treasury of the priesthood:

And the Lord said unto Joshua… he that is taken with the accursed thing [the booty] shall be burnt with 
fire, he and all that he hath;… and Joshua and all Israel with him took action, and his sons, daughters… 
and burnt them with fire and stoned them with stones... so the Lord turned from the firmness of his 
anger.  

Joshua 7:10 

Nor was God averse to killing children to punish the disobedience of their parents:

I will send wild beasts among you that will rob you of your children.  

Leviticus 26:22 

Not only that but, if anyone continued in disobeying the tyrant god, He says He will make them
eat the flesh of their own children:

Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury… and ye shall eat the flesh of your sons and of your 
daughters.  

Leviticus 26:28 

But he wasn’t awful only to the Israelites, he killed off plenty of their enemies too:
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And that night the angel of the Lord smote in the camp of the Assyrians 185,000 men,  

2 Kings 19:35 

this being the occasion when they woke up dead! God deliberately set up all the tribes of Canaan
for destruction by the Israelites:

For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might 
utterly destroy them, and that they might have no favour.  

Joshua 11:20 

He ordered the most brutal savagery by the Israelites on the Midianites, massacring all their
males and, having captured the women and children, butchering the women and male children,
and raping all the female children.

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites… and they slew 
all the males; and the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives… and Moses said unto 
them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Kill every male among the children and every woman that 
hath known man,… but all the female children… keep alive for yourselves.  

Numbers 31:2,17‐18 

It is difficult to believe that children can be brought up with this god as an example but it might
explain a lot of the savagery of the soldiers of supposedly civilised countries. It is, for example,
similar to the behaviour of the American soldiers at Mi Lai in Vietnam, and more recent
examples in Iraq.

15—Perhaps God is right and it is the people’s fault:

The statutes of the Lord are right,  

Psalms 19:8 

so if the people follow them they will live correctly. The trouble is, as we saw at the creation,
that God is peevish and out of spite, confirmed by Ezekiel, he sometimes gives statutes that are
not right:

Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgements whereby they should not live.  

Ezekiel 20:25 

That leaves any Jew or Christian with problems. What are the right statutes and what are the
wrong ones? It seems that Paul the apostle was aware of the same dilemma:

God our saviour —will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of truth.  
71 
 

1 Timothy 2:4 

And God assists with the work of the devil to tempt the unrighteous, accepting that some cannot
be saved:

God shall send them a strong delusion, that they shall believe a lie; that all might be damned who 
believe not the truth.  

2 Thessalonians 2:11‐12 

Evidently this lie is not an easy one to see through—it is a strong delusion. A reasonable guess at
what it is would be the Jewish-Christian religion.

16—Perhaps that is the only way to reconcile the evidence with the claim that God is just in :

He is the Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are judgement, a God of truth and without iniquity, 
just and right is he.  

Deuteronomy 32:4 

And He is a righteous judge:

Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?  

Genesis 18:25 

What, though, is just and right about punishing children for their fathers’ errors? Yet that is the
theme running throughout the Christian theory of redemption. God tells us himself:

For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the 
third and fourth generation.  

Exodus 20:5 

It is repeated:

Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers.  

Isaiah 14:21 

But where did this iniquity come from in the first place? Again He tells us because we would
never guess, especially if we are Christians:

I make peace, and create evil, I the Lord do all these things.  

Isaiah 45:7 
72 
 

There is a curious circularity here which renders God an unsuitable judge but which God doesn’t
seem to notice or doesn’t expect us to notice.

17—Psalms seeks to persuade us His anger endureth but a moment:

For his anger endureth but a moment: in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy 
cometh in the morning.  

Psalms 30:5 

but, when the Israelites were in the wilderness:

The Lord’s anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, 
until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was consumed.  

Numbers 32:13 

18—Christian churches no longer have the ritual sacrifice of animals that the Jewish religion
required. But is that right? Does God want sacrifice or doesn’t he? As usual it depends where
you look. In the Jewish scriptures in many places God commands His people to offer up
sacrifices:

Thou shalt offer every day a bullock for a sin offering for atonement.  

Exodus 34:36 

And the priest shall burn all on the altar to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet 
savour unto the Lord.  

Leviticus 1:9 

That’s clear enough then. But what about Isaiah and Jeremiah, a couple of significant prophets if
ever there were any:

To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord… I delight not in the blood of 
bullocks or of lambs.  

Isaiah 1:11 

Jeremiah says that God never told them to offer sacrifices anyway:

For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land 
of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.  

Jeremiah 7:22 
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It’s all in the Holy Book, so what do you believe? Of course the purpose of sacrifices is to feed
the priesthood, who therefore do not have to work. Only bits of the animal are burnt to offer up a
savour to god. The rest is scoffed by the priests. The priests never had to atone for the sin of
Adam by the sweat of their brow. Nowadays, sacrifices are not needed because priests get their
income from the platter or by special donations from those trying to buy their way into heaven—
altogether more sophisticated!

19—Psalms assures us:

Good and upright is the Lord,  

Psalms 25:8 

but Amos says that whenever evil occurs it is the Lord’s work:

Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?  

Amos 3:6 

20—Any Christian, a follower of the God of love, must expect that their God forbids human
sacrifice. And that is what God seems to command:

Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them… for even their sons and their daughters 
have they burnt in the fire of their gods.  

Deuteronomy 12:30 

So do not look back in your bible, you Christians, because you find in Leviticus that God
commands human sacrifice among the sacrifices that shall be offered to Him:

No devoted thing that a man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man and of beast, 
and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed, every devoted thing is most holy unto the 
Lord. None devoted which shall be devoted of men shall be redeemed, but shall surely be put to death.  

Leviticus 27:28 

21—Christianity depends strongly upon the supposed compassion of the otherwise vengeful
God:

Every man that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth.  

Matthew 7:8 

Let the Christians only read Proverbs:

Then they shall call upon me, but I will not answer. They shall seek me early, but shall not find me.  
74 
 

Proverbs 1:28 

22—The worst crime in our society has always been murder, though now rape perhaps is worse.
Naturally God forbids murder, being adamant that:

Thou shalt not kill.  

Exodus 20:13 

It seems fairly definite. Curious it is then that in God tells people they must murder those close to
him.

Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to 
gate throughout the camp and slay every man his brother… his companion, and… his neighbour.  

Exodus 32:27 

And murder his enemies, man women, infants and babes in arms:

Now, go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man 
and woman, infant and suckling.  

1 Samuel 15:3 

Do Christians really believe this barbarity? Admittedly, in Leviticus there is the crudest evidence
of justice, God liking to have it both ways—an eye for an eye, a murder for a murder:

He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.  

Leviticus 24:17 

23—What of lesser crimes? God firmly forbids stealing:

Thou shalt not steal.  

Exodus 20:15 

Yet the passage when the Israelites are preparing to leave Egypt seems to command stealing,
“spoil” meaning “despoil” or plunder:

When ye go ye shall not go empty; but every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that 
sojourneth in her home, jewels of silver and of gold and raiment; and ye shall put them on your sons and 
your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.  

Exodus 3:21 
75 
 

24—God is certain in Exodus that he forbids adultery:

Thou shalt not commit adultery.  

Exodus 20:14 

But by the time we get to the book of Deuteronomy, things have changed a bit and now He
commands adultery, if the woman is not the wife of anyone you know:

When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thy 
hands… and seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and thou hast a desire unto her that thou 
wouldst have her to thy wife, then shalt thou bring her home to thine home …and she shall be thy wife.  

Deuteronomy 31:10 

25—It might seem surprising that such a vengeful god should command that vengeance is
wrong, but he does:

Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy 
neighbour as thyself.  

Leviticus 19:18 

It almost comes as a relief when we read as far as Psalms to find:

Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the lord and of them that speak evil against my soul… 
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow… Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg; 
let them seek their bread also out of desolate places.  

Psalms 109 

One might argue that in the one case the revenge is against one’s own people and that is wrong,
but it is all right to take revenge on one’s enemies. But is that what turning the other cheek
means?

26—All of this is simply taking advantage of the innocent inconsistencies in an old book, some
might say. The Old Testament is not meant to be the full revelation of God. You have to look to
the New Testament for that. So we hear from Paul the Apostle in his own words:

Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.  

Romans 10:13 

This surely is the epitome of Christianity. Why then does Matthew disagree:
76 
 

Not every one that saith unto me Lord, lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth 
the will of my father which is in heaven.  

Matthew 7:21 

This is the fundamental disagreement between Paul and the Jerusalem church that no Christian
can resolve. Paul says anyone can be saved but James says it depends on what you have done.
Priests and Pastors like to have it both ways. It is easy when you are joining, but, thereafter, it
depends on whether you do what you are told.

27—Who carried the cross upon which Jesus was crucified? Three of the gospels declare that
Simon carried the cross, while the fourth gospel says that Jesus himself carried it. Is John right?
If so, then Matthew, Mark and Luke are wrong. If Simon carried it, Jesus could not have done so,
and if Jesus carried it, then Simon did not. It must be admitted by all that a rational mind could
not have written or inspired both of these stories, and if one is true the other is false.

28—Jesus says:

Therefore go and make disciples of all men, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and 
of the Holy Spirit.  

Matthew 26:19 

Yet, Paul can declare:

For Christ did not send me to baptise.  

1 Corinthians 1:17 

We could go on. Christians put forth the bible as a work which in some way came from God, as a
book which is reliable in its statements, and correct in its narrative of events. Now, it is patent to
everyone that in the gospels there are two distinct accounts of the carrying of the cross. How can
Christians reconcile this fact with their theory that God is the author of the bible?

There are too many gospels, too many stories of Jesus. It would have been better for Christianity
had all but one of these narratives been destroyed. They contradict each other in so many
essential points as to make them totally unreliable as records of facts.

Before you go, think about this… 
The oracles of Delphi were divine to a Greek mind, but they were of diabolical origin according to the 
judgment of Christians. Jesus was a magician in the eyes of the Pagans, while the Christians worshipped 
him as the son of God, and a man who performed miracles. 
77 
 

Understanding the History of the Bible


In tests of 17 year olds across the world, the US ranked last in algebra, US kids averaging 43% (F) and 
Japanese kids 78% (B). 

5. Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?


The Bible, like other areas of Christian theology, has actually failed to stand up to the trust that 
Christians, rightly or wrongly, had put in it.  

John Bowden, SCM 

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, 30 May 2002

• Life or Death?  
• Truth or Lies?  
• Historical Settings  
• House of David?  
• Shishak—Sheshonq?  
• Exodus  
• Ur or Urfa?  
• Belshazzar and Darius  
• Overwhelming Evidence  

Abstract 
The “truth of the bible is of vital importance to all of us”, Christians tell us—a matter of life and death, 
meaning eternal life and eternal death, because it promises believers eternal life. It is the core of the 
Christian scam. Christians therefore claim evidence for the truth of the bible is overwhelming, and one 
offers us over 40 major archaeological discoveries which endorse scripture. Christians are also fond of 
claiming biblical critics have been “roundly defeated by scholars”. The skeptic wants to know what 
position these “scholars” held vis‐a‐vis biblical truth. Were they objective or did they have a biblical axe 
to grind? Here the evidence offered is examined.  

Life or Death? 

 
78 
 

Is the bible fact or fiction? Are the accounts of the bible true? Our answer is a matter of life and
death, according to somebody called Paul Billington. The “truth of the bible is of vital
importance to all of us”, (he means Christians, not anyone with discernment) because, if the bible
is not true, then its promise of life must be false, for “belief and obedience will bring us life,
whereas unbelief and sin will result in death” (Dt 30:19; Mk 16:15-16; Rom 6:23; Jn 5:28-29).
Moreover, says the bible, the nation that turns its back upon the word of God and His teaching
cannot expect His protection or blessing (Gen 12:3; Ps 9:17-20; Jer 18:7-10).

We are back to the heathen hordes who will get no blessing from God, while the Christian
nations will. This sort of racist monoculturalism ought to have been rejected even by Christians,
but it seems it has not.

Billington wants us to consider the integrity of those who wrote the scriptures, as well as of those
who later endorsed them. Of course we should consider their integrity, but there are two
possibilities at least—they had it or they did not—and Christians will consider only one. He adds
that this includes the recorded statement of the Lord Jesus Christ that:

Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his 
writings, how shall ye believe my words?  

John 5:46‐47 

So the question arises as to whether even the words of Christ are to be believed. It is true, but
who knows that these are the words of Christ. It depends on the integrity of the biblical authors,
and their human fallibility. What would it matter if they were indeed false words? It is only
because Christians believe that the bible is true and Jesus was God that they think the words the
New Testament records are true and Jesus could never lie. If he were a man then he could, and if
Christ were himself a Christian we can be sure he would! If he were a plain man, he could have
been mistaken. Christians cannot consider that either, because they are not considering evidence
but only testing their own dogmatism.

“Did Moses really exist?” is a perfectly sensible question, but Billington, locked into Christian
irrationality, says it “echoes the scepticism and the agnosticism that is both fashionable and
respectable with so many leading scholars and academics today”. He is saying that no one should
ask questions like that! Christians do not like to be questioned about their beliefs, ultimately
because they know they are irrational and ill-founded. If no one is allowed to question them, then
they have no need to defend the indefensible. This was the state of Europe for over a thousand
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years before the Enlightenment. Why should the emergence from Christendom be called the
Enlightenment? Christianity always claims to be light. Yet, history shows that Christian control
brought down a profound darkness and it only lifted with the Enlightenment. It proves that even
Christian metaphors are lies.

Billington has no idea of how inquiry works, because Christians have never been encouraged to
inquire. Christians were expected never to ask anything about what they believed. Never to seek
whether it was true, but simply stick to “belief and obedience”. It suited the rulers of society
whether it suited God or not. People had to believe it, and that was it. It is not true now, because
people have passed beyond this backwards and superstitious phase we had in our history, but
backwoodsmen like Billington want to take us back there. He says questioning “reflects the
unbelief which we see in modern society”.

Truth or Lies? 

Billington says evidence for the truth of the bible is overwhelming, and offers us over 40 major
archaeological discoveries (“and this is by no means exhaustive”) which endorse scripture. Well,
we shall look in a moment at the evidence Billington offers, but first let us consider precisely
what he is trying to claim. He speaks of the truth of the bible, but what does he mean by this? Is
he saying he is refuting some such claim as, “The bible is not true”? What does Billington
understand by this, if it is what he is refuting?

Is the film Star Wars true? Is the film Four Weddings and a Funeral true? Is the film Gladiator
true? Is the film The Madness of King George true? Is the film The Longest Day true? Of course,
none of them are true, although they contain various degrees of truth in them. They vary from
purely fantastic science fiction, through everyday fiction set in the modern day to fictional
representations of events, that really happened in history, in a more or less realistic setting. Yet
all of them are fictional! They are not true, and the realism of the setting does not make them
true. It might be that the realism of the setting tells us something about history, but it is only
something we can accept because we have independent historical proof.

Thus, in Gladiator, we might note that there was a Roman emperor called Marcus Aurelius, and
he had a general called Maximus who finished up as a gladiatior. What, in this, is true? We
simply cannot tell from the film alone. In fact, there was an Emperor Marcus Aurelius, but he
had no general Maximus who became a gladiator. The film contains historic truths but from the
film alone, no one knows what they are.

Now Billington, and Christians generally, are so besotted by the book that they have already
been told—in their indoctrination into Christianity—is a holy and therefore infallible book, that
they believe everything in it. It is not a matter of discernment on their part. It is true! That is the
end of it!

Biblical skeptics say no more than that the bible is essentially a devotional literary work, mainly
fiction set in a variety of more or less realist settings in the first millennium BC up until the first
century AD. The fact that the settings are fairly realistic does not mean that the storyline is true.
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What is true can only be determined by external evidence, but when it is found in some cases, it
does not verify the rest.

Billington rightly says that archaeology puts us in direct contact with the past—and in a different
way from written records.

When a stone monument or clay tablet is unearthed bearing the name of a person in scripture, it 
provides physical evidence of bible truth.  

But to say “because Pontius Pilate in the gospels is a real historic figure, the gospels must be
true, and so Jesus really rose from the dead” is obviously absurd, but that is what Christian
tricksters like Billington try to make out.

Historical Settings 

So let us be clear, because much of Billington’s “evidence” is simply that the settings of the
biblical stories actually fit the first millennium BC, that such “evidence” does not prove the bible
stories to be true. At best all it shows is that the authors made some effort to be sure that the
books they were writing for their own political purposes were as historically accurate as they
could make them. Since they were originally written by the Persians who had access to the royal
and diplomatic archives of Assyria and Babylon, it is true that there is genuine history in the
bible, but only verification from outside proves it. All Billington is doing is finding the parts of
the biblical setting for which there is external evidence. Rarely, if ever, is it particular evidence.
It is general evidence that any intelligent person—of the type likely to be writing such a book—
would know at the time, or could find out.

An example of recent battles over historicity has been one concerning the Ebla tablets discovered
in 1976. An Italian archaeologist, professor Giovanni Pettinato, epigrapher of the Italian
excavation team, was discredited for saying that the Ebla tablets referred to Sodom and
Gomorrah and other biblical cities. His successor, Alfonso Archi disagreed. Pettinato identified
as Sodom a city mentioned in the Eblaite tablets as Sidamu, but Archi said another tablet placed
Sidamu in northern Syria, nowhere near the Dead Sea. Using the vilest calumny, Billington
blames the change on to pressure from the Syrian Government, even though he deigns to accept
that “professionals” were involved, and he can hardly deny that even the Syrian government
could not alter baked clay tablets 4000 years old. Billington even says without a blush:

Anti‐Zionist elements did not want to see any evidence brought to light which might support the book of 
Genesis—and therefore Israel’s early claim to the land of Canaan.  

One could claim with equal ease that Billington is doing the opposite. It shows the scandalous
depths that supposed Christians will sink to to defend their so-called faith. It is not isolated.
Scholars with the temerity to question the validity of scriptural ideas have been faced with this
unpleasant and intimidating baloney. The Inquisition is not yet repealed. Let us be clear again. If
scholarship finds that the Passion of Jesus was a mystery play, or that Moses was invented by the
Maccabees, then scholars must say so. Christian “truth” says otherwise, but scholars should
never mix up truth with Christian “truth”. Christian truth is too often pious lying, and even
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Christian scholars should not indulge in it. If they believe in God, why do they think He wants
them to lie for Him? If He has a purpose in exposing Christianity as a scam, do they want to defy
their own God?

Another fierce controversy has raged over the Dead Sea Scrolls, with awkward questions being
asked as to why the scrolls were not being published—and why even fully qualified experts were
not being permitted to see the unpublished material. Evidence has been presented to show how
that the Vatican was at work suppressing scroll material. Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical
Archaeology Review defended the Vatican (Nov/Dec issue 1991). If Rome was involved in
suppressing evidence, then it has been thoroughly suppressed because, although what remains
strongly suggests Jesus was an Essene with an eschatological aim—well outlined on these
pages—not enough alters the essence of Christianity, for believers, to damage it. If any did, then
it has gone for good!

Billington thinks whether Joshua conquered Palestine (as the bible says), or whether Israelites
lived there all the time because they were Canaanites as claimed by bible skeptics is a
controversial question. The question has been settled apart from dyed-in-the-wool rednecks who
will not accept plain evidence because of their faith or politics. Billington deceptively writes:

When experts themselves cannot agree, what are laymen to make of it all?  

Billington wants to use the close examination of experts as part of his argument for biblical truth,
but typically, it has to uphold the bible, otherwise he does not want to hear it, or calls the experts
“skeptics.” Thus he says:

When, as often happens, that evidence is examined, scrutinized and questioned—and yet survives the 
scholarly critics and sceptics—then we know that it is reliable indeed; far more so than if it had not been 
subjected to that process. It is not merely a question of certain discoveries supporting the bible’s record, 
but that those discoveries have been subjected to the most rigorous examination possible by men who 
are often hostile to the concept of bible truth.  

And, on the other hand, will resist anything contrary to the bible, in many cases, whatever the
evidence.

House of David? 

In 1993, in Dan, the first inscription apparently bearing the phrases “House of David” and “King
of Israel” was found. Billington tells us a critic, Philip R Davies, challenged the claim, saying the
inscription had been wrongly translated. “Davies was later roundly defeated by two other
scholars.” The skeptic wants to know what position these “scholars” held vis-a-vis biblical truth.
Were they objective or did they have the biblical truth axe to grind? The fact of the matter does
not need scholars, but can easily be explained for people to make up their own minds.

The inscriptions says “bytdwd”. The debate is over what it means. It seems to say, as Billington
tells us, “House of David”, but it is far from certain. Let us say it does mean that, though. What
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does “House of David” mean? The bible truth crackpots immediately say it refers to the Jewish
founder David, and that house means dynasty. It is nothing less than the line of people that led to
Jesus, Christians like to think. But “house” is more likely to mean a… er, house! Or rather, since
people lived in tents or simple houses, a house really meant something grander, a dwelling for a
god—a temple. Billington actually admits this in his list of examples, hoping that no one will
notice. So, it could imply that David, who has never been mentioned as a king of Judah outside
the bible in any documents, might have been a god with a temple.

He might even have been a god with followers, if house means followers as it often does. The
Assyrians called Israel the House of Khumri, so everyone in the country were of Khumri’s
house. Khumri, apparently the biblical Omri, certainly had a dynasty which ruled Israel for a
short while, but House of Khumri in Assyrian records did not mean the dynasty but the country.
Skeptics are interested in history, not dogma. If David is shown to be a great tenth century
prince, they are glad that the evidence is clear. When it is not, only fools and charlatans pretend
it is, for their own reasons.

Billington turns again to context, seeking to amaze ignorant Christians by citing the kings of
Israel and Judah whose names have been found in Assyrian and Babylonian records. David and
Solomon, supposedly the greatest kings of Israel and Judah, are not among them, but he is
pleased to announce that by 1870, Omri, Ahab, Jehu, Azariah, Menahem, Pekah, Hoshea,
Hezekiah and Manasseh, and several Assyrian kings, several Syrian kings, an Egyptian king, a
Babylonian king and several Persian kings found in the bible had been identified in external
records. Billington desperately seeks to prove that the bible is not science fiction like Star Wars,
but skeptics already accept that it is not!

What he succeeds in doing is showing that the bible was not written until the last of these kings
lived, otherwise he could not have been in it. The last one is probably Darius II of Persia, called
Darius only and wrongly assumed by biblicists to be the Great Darius, Darius I. However, a later
king is alluded to so clearly that he can be identified without a name. Daniel alludes so plainly to
events of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes of Seleucia that the book can be dated within a year
or two of 164 BC. Christians will tell us it was prophecy, but after 164 BC, Daniel suddenly lost
his prophetic skills, because nothing after then can be identified.

Shishak—Sheshonq? 

Billington goes on with his citation of kings, not always honestly, naturally:

In 1799 the discovery of an Egyptian relief depicted Pharaoh Shishak who is mentioned in 1 Kings 14:25‐
26.  

The Egyptian kings, there are five of them, supposed to be Shishak are called Sheshonq or
Shoshenq, not Shishak. The “n” is absent from the Hebrew rendering, but the biblicist
Egyptologist, professor Kenneth Kitchen, says that the “n” was silent in the Egyptian
pronunciation. Others are less convinced and think that Shishak might have referred to
Rameses II, whose popular name was Shisha. The “k” was a diliberate addition by the biblical
authors to make the name sound like “Hooligan” in Hebrew. If the “k” was deliberately added, it
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means that the various Sheshonqs are less likely as Shishak because even if Kitchen is right that
the “n” was silent, the “q” was not as well! Shishak is assumed to have been Sheshonq I because
he lived at the right time for Solomon, but, if the story of Solomon is a romance, any of the
Sheshonqs could have been the model for Shishak.

The best candidate is the last, Sheshonq V who reigned 773-735 BC, and was a contemporary of
a Jeroboam, but not Jeroboam I, but Jeroboam II (794-754 BC). It so happens that
Shalmaneser IV (782-773 BC) was a strong king of Assyria at this same time, and his name is
Solomon (Salimanu-eser, Solomon directs). A king of Phœnicia also at this time was a Hiram. It
looks more likely to the skeptic, in the absence of any evidence of the biblical stories of the tenth
century, that a set of kings from the eighth century have been written backwards in history as the
basis of the biblical romance of the greatness of an Israelite Solomon.

The discovery of the Moabite Stone in 1868 revealed that 2 Kings 3:4‐5 was describing a real event 
involving real people.  

Billington, like all Christian apologists, finds it impossible to tell the truth. The Moabite Stone
tells a different story from the bible, and, indeed, the two cannot be reconciled, according to N P
Lemche. The Moabite Stone tells us that certain things were common between Moab and Israel,
such as that they both had the same attitude to god, but the Moabite god was not Yehouah!

Billington jumps to Hezekiah of Judah. In about 1850 an Assyrian prism was discovered which
described Sennacherib’s invasion of the kingdom of Judah. The Taylor Prism, which refers to
King Hezekiah of Jerusalem by name, is the Assyrian version of the story told in 2 Kings chapter
18 (2 Chr 32:1-23; Isa 36-37). The prism shows that Sennacherib seiged Jerusalem into
submitting and Hezekiah paid a large tribute to be spared. There is no mention of a murderous
angel killing a large body of Assyrians, but the prism and the bible are unanimous that Hezekiah
paid a large tribute.

In 1880 a plaque was discovered in a tunnel in Jerusalem and describes the construction of the
conduit that brought water into the city:

And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and 
brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?  

2 Kgs 20:20 

“Hezekiah’s” tunnel can be seen by visitors to Jerusalem still today. Billington does not stop to
consider that, since it can be seen today, it could be seen by the authors of the bible, who could
have reported with no other knowledge that the tunnel was built by Hezekiah. In no way does the
biblical mention show that the reports in the bible of Hezekiah are contemporary. Indeed, the
single biblical verse is so terse and out of context, some of those skeptics that Billington does not
like to open their mouths think the verse was added because the tunnel was built by the
Maccabees.
84 
 

The same applies to the seige of Lachish by Sennacherib. We are now well into recorded history,
with the Assyrians keeping concise but well publicised records and drawing bas reliefs of their
campaigns. Records like these would certainly have been known by the Persian or Greek authors
of the bible as we know it.

Since the skeptics are not questioning the historical background to the bible after about
850 BC—except perhaps that Judah was never a parallel kingdom with Israel, other than in the
last decade or so of Israel’s existence, when Judah probably seceded from Israel with Assyrian
support—Billington turns to the real points of contention, the history of Israel and Judah before
850 BC—the period of biblical history before the so-called divided monarchy.

Exodus 

Scholars say that there is no proof whatsoever that the exodus took place. William Dever, a
University of Arizona archaeologist and scarcely skeptical, calls Moses a mythical figure. Even
Father Anthony Axe of the Ecole Biblique, Jerusalem, a Vatican institution, admits:

A massive exodus that led to the drowning of Pharaoh’s army would have reverberated politically and 
economically through the entire region.  

Billington resorts to the old Christian fall-back, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence.” He says that those who sensibly think without evidence nothing should be presumed to
exist are on the “dubious ground of having to argue from silence”. When something is believed
despite the silence, it is impossible to argue rationally for it. Billington therefore leaves it at that,
although, he cannot resist returning to it in a few paragraphs.

He does however have a go at British archaeologist, Kathleen Kenyon, a popular pastime for
timewasting believers these days. She found no evidence whatsoever of Joshua’s conquest of the
city of Jericho. The city was deserted during the time of Joshua. Other biblical critics argue that
the Israelites cannot have settled the land of Canaan by conquest because there are no signs of
any such conquest that are not better explained by local wars, and most importantly, there is no
sign of cultural change in the centuries of deposits excavated around the supposed conquest.

Billington, like most apologists, take comfort in the ramblings of Bryant Wood. A singularly
inconsequential man, his only claim to fame is that he contradicts every reputable archaeologist
about Jericho, and so regularly gets cited by crooked apologists like Billington. He simply
contradicts Kenyon. He did find evidence of Joshua’s assault on Jericho and Kenyon was biased
or got it wrong. Archaeolologist, William Dever, is no biblical minimalist but says of Kenyon’s
work at Jericho (emphasis added):

Garstang had dated a massive mudbrick city wall to the fifteenth century BC and thus adduced it as 
evidence of the Israelite destruction claimed in Joshua 6 (relying on the date of c 1446 BC for the exodus 
as typical of the scholarship of the day). Kenyon, however, showed conclusively that this was the city 
wall of the last urban Early Bronze phase, c 2300 BC at latest.  

Lutterworth Dictionary of the bible, sub voce “Jericho” 
85 
 

To believe Wood against these reputable archarologists is like believing Yuri Geller against
Einstein. No one who is sane would do it.

Nor is it strictly true that there is absolutely no evidence of the Exodus—an ancient Egyptian account of 
a series of disasters suspiciously like the famous ten plagues came to light several years ago. This 
evidence was quickly buried…  

Billington often likes to hint at suppressed evidence, implying some sort of conspiracy against
the faithful ones. The conspiracy has always been by professional Christians against those who
want to get at the truth. Needless to say, it would be remarkable if a civilization as long as
Egypt’s did not have plagues and pestilence, and obviously they did, but they did not have the
biblical sequence of plagues, and especially the last one!

Billington’s excuse for the absence of archaeological evidence of Moses and the exodus is that
no one really knows just where to look. “The real historical location of Sinai is still largely
guesswork.” He must mean the mountain, because there is no need to guess where the Israelites
had to go to get from the Nile Delta to Jericho. He even tells us among his set of examples that
maps have been discovered of their journey. Do not expect biblical apologists to be self-
consistent. It is far from being quantum mechanics, but gets pretty hazy from sheer dishonesty.

Billington introduces the same excuse over the conquered city of Ai. “Scholars just aren’t sure if
they have the right spot!” The truth is that Ai means ruin. The biblical authors knew it as a ruin
at best, and otherwise a place called “Ruin” because it had once been a noted ruin, and the name
had stuck. The conquest of it is therefore an attempt to explain aetiologically why it was ruined.

Ur or Urfa? 
Ur of the Chaldees—the native city of Abraham (Gen 11:31) has been identified. 

Has it indeed, or is this more chicanery? In the bible Chaldaea is synonymous with Babylon, but
the scholars consider it was only so in the last millennium BC, not in the previous one when
Abraham is supposed to have founded the patiarchal tradition. The city of Ur is in the very south
of Mesopotamia, and most Christians intelligent or curious enough to know this think that this Ur
is the one meant in the bible. The fact is that the Moslem tradition, supported by many modern
scholars, and implied by the bible is that the city of Ur is really Urfa in modern Turkey, near the
border with Syria. This is a neighbouring town to the city of Haran with which many of the
patriarchs were plainly associated in the bible. Billington is merely stating his beliefs in that the
home of Abraham was the southern Ur rather than the northern one. He simply does not know,
but if the scholars find out, he will not want to know. He asks:

What reason is there then, to doubt that a man called Abram travelled from Ur, to Haran, and from 
there to Canaan?  

Especially if the Ur is Urfa, there is every reason to think that a lot of men and women undertook
the journey, and it is possible that any of the men could have been called Abram. The route was a
regular trade route and was plied with caravans. Haran was famous as a transit and trading city.
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What is impossible is that the detailed adventures of one of these should have been set down
contemporaneously for us all to read 4000 years later. Keeping diaries on tablets of stone was not
practical.

Wanderers like nomads and travellers kept each other entertained at night with tall stories just as
Chaucer told 3000 years later. Possible also, since the bible implies it, is that ancestor worship
developed heroic tales of the ancestors and these became local gods. Abram, Isaac and Jacob
were possibly local gods still remembered when the bible was first set down in the middle of the
first millennium. It is unlikely and unreasonable to believe that the tales told of them are true
history miraculously preserved.

Billington fatuously argues:

Is it reasonable to claim that the bible account of this is a fable, merely because we have not found any 
external evidence to confirm it? To reject the bible on such grounds must, perforce, require pre‐
conceived anti‐bible prejudice.  

Is it reasonable to claim that Humpty-Dumpty is a fable, merely because we have not found any
external evidence to confirm it? To reject Humpty-Dumpty on such grounds must, perforce,
require pre-conceived anti-Humpty prejudice.

Going to desperate extremes, Billington claims now that the fact that the bible contains so many
identifiable early and widespread myths is proof of it!

The creation of man, the role of the serpent, the fruit of the tree, the fall into disgrace and the expulsion 
from paradise, are themes which are found in various forms and in most cultures throughout the 
world—and those themes are found to be as old as the cultures themselves.  

So, those among you Christians who thought the bible was the unique revelation of God will
have to think again. But fear not, Billington notices a potential gaffe here and turns it to his
advantage—all world cultures are derived from a common beginning—Noah and his sons (Gen
9:19; 10:32). Noah already had the bible complete in those just post-diluvian times because
Billington declares the bible “is the original (as this writer believes)”, and other myths must be
“corruptions that have evolved from that source”. This sadly simple man says the mythology of
India has the Nagas which “usually appear in the form of ordinary snakes”, statues of which “are
always placed under a tree”. Buddhism has “the tree of wisdom.”

Such echoes of Genesis are too close to be missed!  

Anything so foolish can hardly be argued against. The plain original of the Genesis Creation
myth has been found in Mesopotamia in more than one version, it seems, and the general set of
myths in Genesis obviously originate as a whole from Mesopotamia as the story of Tower of
Babel plainly shows, if nothing else. Yet their author was supposed to have been an Egyptian! If
the bible preceded all these other myths and they were derived from it, then why were not
equivalent myths from the rest of the bible so derived, and how is it that the bible plainly relates
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historic events up to the second century BC when it was, according to Billington, the original of
myths thousands of years older? Prophecy? Even Christians must have difficulty accepting this,
surely?

Belshazzar and Darius 

Billington tells us that Dr Farrer, in 1895, stated: “There is no Belshazzar.” No such king was
known and indeed, no such king ever existed, so Farrer, the devout Christian scholar and Dean of
Canterbury, thought he was an invention—like Maximus in Gladiator. In fact, Belshazzar was
the son and regent of king Nabonidus, and the offer to Daniel that he would be “third ruler”
meant just that, because Belshazzar was regent (second ruler) to the king and Daniel would be
the next in authority. So, Farrer was proved wrong, and the bible right in this instance, and
Billington concludes hopefully:

The unexpected sometimes shows up!  

What Billington does not want to tell his little luvvies is that Daniel was written 400 years after
all these events, some of which had already become legendary. Belshazzar’s feast was well
known widely. Xenophon refers to it in Persian times. John C H Laughlin in Lutterworth’s
Dictionary, sub voce Belshazzar, says:

The story of Belshazzar has all the hallmark’s of historical fiction and needs to be read in the light of the 
Jewish persecution by Antiochus IV Epiphanes…  

Belshazzar was not the king (Dan 5:1), was not the son of Nebuchadrezzar (Dan 5:2) and
probably died fighting the Persians rather than while feasting, though he evidently did have a
great feast at some point. The conqueror of Babylon was not Darius the Mede (Dan 5:31), like
Belshazzar at the start of this section, an unknown man. The Persian king when Babylon fell was
Cyrus, but the confusion is that Babylon rebelled at the start of the reign of Darius the Great and
he recaptured it in 521 BC. Whoever wrote the romance of Daniel in the time of Antiochus
Epiphanes, 400 years after the events, mixed up these two conquests of Babylon. So, Billington
retrieves the historicity of Belshazzar but omits to tell his admiring clappies the rest of the story.
That is God’s Truth!

The city of Lachish was one of the few remaining cities prior to the complete collapse of the
kingdom of Judea (Jer 34:7). Billington now comes to the Lachish letters, discovered in the
1930s. They mention several names that also appear in Jeremiah—Gemariah (Jer 36:10),
Jaazaniah (Jer 35:3), Neriah and Baruch (Jer 36:4), Mattaniah (who is King Zedekiah, 2 Kings
24:17). These letters also refer to a prophet who was seen to be demoralizing the people and
instigating a policy of non-resistance to the Babylonians (Jer 38:1-4, or Jer 26:20-21). Billington
jumps to the conclusion, with most scholars admittedly, that these are the people mentioned in
the bible and he writes:

The reality of these people and of the situation as described in the bible is thus confirmed for us.  
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Well, the people might have been real, but was the situation the right one, or had Jeremiah done
what the author of Daniel and other biblical authors did—written pseudepigraphs, works set in
the past but really allegories of the then present day? The Persian period is almost absent in
Judah for the simple reason that the bent scholars dated all Persian strata as Babylonian or
Assyrian strata. The destruction found at Lachish among which the letters were found was
assumed from a comparison with Jeremiah to have been the conquest by Babylon in about
587 BC.

The actual situation might have been 100 years later when the Egyptians, assisted by the Jews,
revolted against Persia and had to suffer corrective expeditions which were quite savage. The
author of Jeremiah had written his account dated at the time of the previous conquest by Babylon
to show that the situation was parallel and so would the fate of the Jews be, unless they came to
order!

A number of seals were identified in 1986 which dated to this same time (supposedly 586 BC).
The dating is circular in all of these instances. One of these seals read “Belonging to Baruch son
of Neriah”. Billington says:

Without any doubt this is the man who was Jeremiah’s scribe (Jer 36; 45). A finger print on the seal is 
probably his.  

The seal is dated from Jeremiah, but Jeremiah is dated from its own account. It is like someone
dating the Last Days of Pompeii, by Bulwer Lytton, to the first century AD because that is what
its contents were about! The seal should have been dated independently and the book called
Jeremiah dated from that, if the identities were felt to be secure. One thing is certain, and that is
that many more seals and bullae come from the Persian period than from earlier times in Judah!

Another example is a seal-bulla found in excavations in Jerusalem (1982-1983) which reads


“belonging to Gemariah son of Shaphan”. This man was among the first audience ever to hear
the prophecy (Jer 36:12-13). The seal of Gemariah, together with other seals and bullae, were
discovered in a “thick level of soot” according to The Jerusalem Post. The Babylonians burnt the
great houses of Jerusalem to the ground (Jer 52:13).

Yet in “the burnt remains of a home” were pig bones and other un-Jewish items! A toilet was
also discovered which revealed that the people were infested with tape worms from pork, and
other parasites. The biblicists immediately react that it is proof of “idolatry and wickedness”. If
the archaeologists have dated this layer correctly, it is proof that before the Persian conquest the
religion of the people was not Judaism as it became. If the dating is wrong, and the destruction is
from more than 100 years later in the Persian period, it suggests that the Persians had still not
introduced Judaism, or that people being settled in the area by the Persians did not have the same
taboo against pigs that the Jews had, or were to have.

Biblicists see in it evidence of the Babylonian siege, and note the absence of grain foods and the
presence of pollens. It might indeed be interpreted as a seige, but if one happened in about
450 BC, soon after tha city had started to be rebuilt, that would be the most evident destruction
layer.
89 
 

Some false weights were also discovered, hollowed out to give less than true value. Billington
says it brings to life the picture described in Jeremiah 9:2-6. Inded, it does, but that does not date
the account. The Persians were sticklers for honesty because of the importance of trade to the
empire, and introduced coinage, and fixed weights and measures, to improve trade through
improving trust. The tirade of Jeremiah against deceit is far more appropriate for the Persian
period that any time before.

Overwhelming Evidence 

Let us look at the list Billington gives as his overwhelming evidence of the truth of the bible,
remembering that the realistic setting of a novel does not make its storyline true. A lot of the
evidence is merely commonplace historical information that was well known when the bible was
written, and can not be used as evidence that the events in it actually happened. For this reason,
simple historical facts from the bible that have been shown to be historic are simply listed at the
end. They show the biblical authors were not dunces, but that ought to be clear enough anyway.

1. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of 
Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and 
Calah, And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.  

Genesis 10:10‐12 

Billington says, these cities, the earliest that are mentioned in the bible were uncovered
by archaeologists over a century ago and have been positively identified. So also the
ancient Canaanite and Egyptian civilizations are known. Thus the setting for the Genesis
narrative, the call of Abraham and his journey of faith has a historical basis to it that
cannot be denied.

Typical Christian trickery. The setting is not denied. The argument is not that the
bible is set in an imaginery place. It was written in the ancient near east where
these cities were famous cities of ancient civilizations. Why should anyone
imagine that the ancient authors did not know about them? The fact that it is set
in the ancient near east does not make its content true! Compare the film,
Gladiator. It was convincingly set in the second century Roman empire, and even
had some historic characters in it, but the story and the main characters were still
fictional.

2. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this 
wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: 
The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his 
countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And they shall put my name upon the children of 
Israel; and I will bless them. 

Numbers 6:22‐27 
90 
 

Billington says a silver scroll dating to 600 BC quotes this passage, showing that this
scripture existed before the date admitted by critics.

This is outrageous trickery. The scroll does not quote this passage but only: “May
Yehouah bless and keep you; May Yehouah cause his face to shine upon you
and grant you peace”. The trickster wants his converts to think that Moses, Aaron
and the Children of Israel are all mentioned. They are not. The scroll has a plain
and simple blessing which does not say “the LORD” but Yehouah, a god that no
one doubts was Canaanite, but he was one of the Canaanite pantheon of deities.
The old scroll shows that the authors of the bible wrote into it a simple, and
doubtless well-known blessing.

3. Balaam the son of Beor 

Numbers 22‐24 

Billington says an inscription found in 1967 and published in 1976 refers to Balaam Son
of Beor and records a prophecy similar to that found in scripture.

The inscription was found in the Jordanian village of Deir Alla, which was
Moabite territory in the first millennium BC. This inscription tells of a Balaam ben
Beor, known to the locals as a prophet who would receive his prophecies at
night. The biblical Balaam was a Moabite, but lived in Mesopotamia, not in Moab.
Another minor detail is that there is a 700 year difference between the Balaam in
Numbers, supposedly about 1400 BC and the Balaam in the Ammon inscription,
supposedly about 700 BC. Most scholars would be troubled by a difference of
700 years but not Christians. Balaam might have been famous locally as an
oracle (his donkey talked like Francis, the talking mule) or perhaps even a god
(“Lord of the People”) and was incorporated into the Hebrew bible because
Moabites lived in Abarnahara under the Persians too.

4. Exodus route maps? 

Numbers 33 

Billington says Egyptian maps found at Karnak confirm the geography of the exodus
route taken by the children of Israel as recorded in the bible.

Maps? Most of the cities along the alleged route that the Israelites traveled
immediately before reaching the Jordan River—Iyyim, Divon, Almon-divlatayim,
Nevo, and Avel Shittim (Num 33:45-50)—have not been located, and those that
have been found did not exist at the time the bible reports. Yet Charles
Krahmalkov notes what are apparently the same names on the walls of Egyptian
temples like Karnak, not in any context of exodus. It seems it was part of a
standard highway to Jordan. If the places are marked on the temple walls in
precisely the same order, and are so obviously places on the way from Egypt to
91 
 

Canaan, then that could have been the source of them used by the much later
author.

5. And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim, and 
Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of 
the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the LORD, and served not 
him. And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hands of the 
Philistines, and into the hands of the children of Ammon. And that year they vexed and 
oppressed the children of Israel: eighteen years, all the children of Israel that were on the other 
side Jordan in the land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead. Moreover the children of Ammon 
passed over Jordan to fight also against Judah, and against Benjamin, and against the house of 
Ephraim; so that Israel was sore distressed. 

Judges 10:6‐9 

Billington tells us the earliest known reference to Israelites says that they were “laid
waste”. It appears on the Merneptah Stele dating to 1209 BC.

What dishonesties will these Christians not sink to? The passage in Judges does
not say “laid waste” but “sorely distressed”, and it has nothing to do with the
Merneptah Stele which told us that the Pharaoh, not the Philistines was doing
any “laying waste” to be done. If Merneptah laid Israel waste in the time of the
Judges, the bible does not record it!

6. An inscription discovered by archaeologists refers to “the House of Yehouah”—


Solomon’s Temple at Jerusalem (1 Kg 6).

Billington assumes that the House of Yehouah mentioned on the inscription is


Solomon’s temple. Yehouah was a Canaanite god and will have had more than
one “house”. Solomon’s temple is more likely to have been a temple to the god,
Solomon (Shalim, the sun). The Jewish scriptures are full of names of temples to
gods and goddesses other than Yehouah. They are names like Beth-El (Bethel),
the House (Temple) of El.

7. An inscription found at Tel Dan in 1993, refers to the “House of David” and thus shows
that David is a real historical character. (1 Kg 12:19-20)

Billington repeats what has been noted above. Here his juxtaposition of the
“House of Yehouah” meaning a temple and the “House of David” meaning a
dynasty shows perfectly well why some scholars will not jump to the conclusion
that “bytdwd” refers to a historic David. David and Solomon, in the biblical myths,
could have been popular gods brought down to earth as heroes, to leave
Yehouah as the only “true” god. That would explain the absence of any mention
in external annals of any such astonishingly great men in reality.
92 
 

8. A seal bearing the inscription “Shema servant of Jereboam” is but one confirmation of
this king’s existence in history. (1 Kg 12:20)

There are two Jereboams in the biblical account of Israelite history. One is likely
to be historic and one is likely to be a myth, perhaps based on the historic one
but set 200 years earlier. This seal is obviously of the historic one.

9. Jereboam’s “High Place” was discovered at Dan in 1979. (1 Kg 12:28-31)

Billington assumes the “bamah” is Jeroboam’s. The Canaanites probably set up


their temples in high places, and this one might have been there for centuries.

10. Victory relief of Shishak discovered at Karnak in 1799 shows him with prisoners from
Palestine. (1 Kg 14:25-26)

This has already been discussed above. Christians assume biblical Shishak is
Sheshonq I.

11. The Royal buildings of Omri and Ahab were found by archaeologists in 1933. (1 Kg
16:23-24)

Omri is accepted by biblical critics as the founder of the statelet of Israel. The
historical setting of the bible approximates more closely to the historic from Omri
onwards. The details of Israelite kings will have been taken by the Persian
authors of the scriptures from Assyrian annals.

12. The black basalt Moabite Stone discovered in 1868 describes the battle between Mesha
King of Moab and Ahab son of Omri. (2 Kg 3:4-5)

What is surprising, among other things, about the stone is that it does not
mention Ahab even though it mentions Omri! The attitude of the king of Moab to
his god, Chemosh, is precisely that of the Israelites to their god, Yehouah,
including the savage use of the “ban” (herem) whereby whole populations are
murdered as a promise to the god!

13. An inscription of Shalmanezer II, known as the “Kurkh Monolith” mentions Ahab the
Israelite. (2 Kg 17:3).

The monolith mentions “Akha-Abbu matu Sir-’la-ai”, who, most scholars agree, is
Ahab.

14. The Assyrian Black Obelisk discovered in 1846 depicts king Jehu. (2 Kg 10:31-32)

This is correct and it is the only picture ever found of a contemporary likeness of
a king of Israel. The rubric to the relief describes the king as “Iaua (Yehouah) the
son of Khumri (Omri)”, but the main account around the top and base of the
93 
 

obilisk makes no mention of him. The bible says Jehu was “the son of Nimshi”
(1 Kg 19:16) or he was “the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi” (1 Kg 9:14),
and not of the “House of Omri”, the dynasty founded by Omri, which he rebelled
against!

15. The tomb of the Caiaphas family was discovered in Jerusalem in 1990. Scholars believe
that the tomb of Caiaphas himself is among them. (Mt 26:57)

What is Billington trying to prove? No one doubts that Caiaphas was the High
Priest at least some time during this period. What is in question is what
happened when he was.

16. Two separate inscriptions have been found mentioning the name of the Roman governor
Pontius Pilate. (Mt 27:2)

What is Billington trying to prove? No one doubts that Pontius Pilate was the
Prefect of Judaea. What is in question is what happened when he was.

17. The foundations of Jesus’s synagogue at Capernaum were identified in 1983, it lay
underneath a later construction built by Jews around the third century. (Mk 1:21)

This is quite simply Christian trickery at its most elementary and crudest. The
Franciscans excavated a site which is most unlikely to be Capernaum, and the
foundations are most likely the foundations of the later building, full stop. They
are not earlier. Few of the places mentioned in the exploits of Jesus, like
Capernaum, are identified, and it is likely that they will never be because they are
Essene code names for other places, possibly major cities or possibly simply
their own “camps”.

18. The huge platform upon which the temple was built in the time of Herod is there for all to
see in Jerusalem today. Archaeologists have also uncovered amazing evidence of the
destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, fulfilling the prophecy of Jesus in this chapter. (Lk
21:5)

The platform there today might be part of Herod’s, but since Jerusalem was
completely razed in 135 AD and rebuilt as a Roman city by Hadrian, what we see
now is more likely to be the platform of Hadrian’s temple in Aelia Capitolina, the
name of the new city. As for the earlier destruction of Jerusalem being a
prophecy of Jesus, it was an easy one to write since the gospels were not
completed before the temple was destroyed. The earliest gospel written was
Mark, and few will deny that it was written at the earliest, during the Jewish War,
and so could easily have been revised in the immediate years after it, to include
a prophecy that was already fulfilled. Only drunkards and dunces ignore these
truths.
94 
 

19. In 1947 the now famous Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves. They demonstrate
the accuracy and reliability of the biblical text. (Isa 30:8).

The usual dissimulation. While it is true that the Great Isaiah Scroll, almost the
complete text of Isaiah, is astonishingly similar to the present Masoretic version,
other texts are astonishingly different considering these are sacred books that
are always assumed to be unalterable. The text of Jeremiah from Qumran comes
in two versions, one broadly like the Masoretic and the other broadly in
agreement with the Septuagint. The Septuagint version is about 12 per cent
shorter.

The same observations are true for 1 Samuel which also seems to exist in
different versions equivalent to the Septuagint (33 verses) and the Masoretic (58
verses). One of the Qumran versions supports the Greek over the height of
Goliath (four cubits and a span) but otherwise seems like the Masoretic. A whole
passage missing from all modern recensions but mentioned by Josephus in
Antiquities of the Jews, is found at Qumran. The versions of the Psalms also
differ considerably at Qumran.

Thus, though we can praise the abilities of copyists to copy the ancient texts
correctly most of the time, no one should imagine that there is some divine
perfection in the transmission of these sacred works from a divinely dictated
original. The clear evidence from Qumran is that originally there were different
versions in circulation. Holy Ghost was being slack as it usually is!

The following set of examples have been considered already in the discussion, but were listed
separately by Billington. All are examples of the bible being validated by external sources, but
none are anything that an educated man writing in the latter half of the first millennium BC
would not know. To repeat, biblical skeptics are not saying that the bible is made up in its
entirety. It is set in a historical sequence of kings and major events. What is in question is the
detail, which is a fictional, devotional romance about the intervention of God in human affairs,
and little or nothing has so far detracted from that view. The history before Omri, however,
seems almost total fantasy.

• A Hebrew seal found bearing the inscription: “belonging to Jehoahaz son of the king.”
(2 Kg 10:35)
• A cunieform text discovered about 1850 is the record of Tiglath-pilesar and mentions
kings Pekah and Hosea. (2 Kg 15:29-30; 16:7-9)
• In 1955 a tablet was deciphered which records the captivity of king Jehoiachin and the
appointment of Zedekiah. (2 Kg 24:10,15,17)
• A Babylonian tablet describes the capture of Jerusalem by king Nebuchadnezzar. (2 Kg
24:10-17)
• The Yaukin Tablet found at Babylon (1932/3) mentions king Jehoiachin and the rations
allowed to him. (2 Kg 25:27-30)
• A relief discovered at Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh (about 1850) include the seige of
Lachish. (2 Chr 32:9)
95 
 

• The famous Cyrus Cylinder—a clay cylinder of king Cyrus describes the restoration of
people after the liberation of Babylon. (Ezra 1:1-4)
• A reference to Sanballat, the governor of Jerusalem was found. (Neh 4:1-2)
• In about 1850, the records of Sargon were discovered. (Isa 20:1)
• Evidence of the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah (ie when this king
supposedly lived) found at Gezer and other locations. (Amos 1:1)
• Reliefs found at Nineveh in the 1850s, and which can be viewed in the British Museum
are burnt black by the fires of destruction. (Nahum 3:7,15)

This evidence—which to any reasonable man would be considered overwhelming—still isn’t enough!  

Paul Billington 

This biblical “evidence” is no more convincing that a man rose from the dead than that Bulwer
Lytton was able to write a realistic story about the destruction of Pompeii, 1800 years later.
Certainly, if anyone wanted to persuade people of impossible things then they would try not to
get elementary things wrong. So, it is with the biblical authors. That they knew some battles and
some kings should not easily persuade anyone that the supernatural events in these romances
actually happened. Only a gullible fool would believe it. “Any reasonable man” would remain
skeptical.

• Judaism  
• Pious Liars  

Before you go, think about this… 
An atheist whose life had been blameless, arrived at the Pearly Gates just as a famous televangelist did. 
S Peter asked the atheist what he had done to merit admission to heaven. The atheist said he had 
always treated his fellow humans as he had wanted to be treated by them. S Peter turned to his Book of 
Life and, looking up, said “Pass”, the gates opened, and the atheist entered. The televangelist, asked the 
same question, broke down sobbing, begged to be admitted because, though he knew he was a terrible 
sinner, he always had been a faithful Christian. S Peter frowned, and consulted his Book of Life. “Fail”, he 
called, whereupon, the clouds opened beneath him and he fell all the way to hell. S Peter entered by the 
postern gate and found the atheist waiting inside. “Why did he fail?” he asked. “Simple”, replied S Peter. 
“He is a Christian, Christ never was!” 
96 
 

Exposing Biblicist Falsehoods


Schoolboy sense—Faith is that quality whereby we believe what we should otherwise think is false. 

6. The New Testament—History?


Public domain. Copy freely

• The Saviour Jesus  
• Myths and Miracles  
• Jesus in History  

Abstract 
The New Testament is mystery not history. Christianity is based on myths, miracles and mystery. That is 
why belief is so important to it. Without the supposed God‐required necessity of unquestioning faith, no 
one could possibly believe any of it, except in the same way as anyone believes fairy tales—as 
entertainment. The content of this page is in the public domain and can be freely copied and copied 
wherever you wish, though a link to www.askwhy.co.uk would be appreciated if it is possible. Anyway, 
help yourself! 

The Saviour Jesus 

Many biblical authorities agree that the gospel story of the birth of Jesus is false. Yet it is such an
attractive story, especially to children, that belief in it has become the first test of the Christian.
Angels, wandering stars and virgin births simply do not occur in Nature and the legends can be
explained straightforwardly by reference to the times, yet Christians, especially unscholarly ones,
cannot believe otherwise. A careful examination of the New Testament reveals many
disagreements concerning the details of the life of Jesus. If he was the man of the Synoptics, he
was not the mysterious being of the fourth gospel. He was born, according to Matthew, during
the sovereignty of Herod, who was chosen as Governor of Judaea in the Roman province of
Syria, in 40 BC under Antony, and later was king. In Luke, the birth is said to have taken place in
6 AD when Augustus was Emperor, a decade after the death of Herod. Herod died at Jericho in
4 BC after a period of absence on account of illness from Jerusalem.

Jesus rises again on the third day and ascends in company with Adam and numerous saints into
heaven. Matthew and John do not mention the Ascension. Mark says that “Jesus was received up
into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God,” but the twelve verses in which the account
appears are admitted in the revised edition to be spurious. Luke is the only gospel that gives the
story, He “was carried up into heaven”. Acts says, “He was taken up, and a cloud received him
out of sight”. Both Luke and Acts were written by the same man, so we really have the testimony
of only one man, with no corroborating evidence, to this astonishing spectacle.
97 
 

Matthew recorded that, at the death of Christ, many bodies of the saints, which slept, arose and
came out of their graves and went into the holy city and appeared to many. If such extraordinary
events had really happened, wouldn’t somebody have obtained from the resurrected saints some
account of their experiences in the other world? History records nothing.

The miracles of the primitive church were mere fictions, which the pious and zealous Fathers,
partly from a weak credulity and partly from reasons of policy, were induced to espouse and
propagate for the support of a righteous cause. The primitive Christians were perpetually
reproached for their credulity, and Julian says that “the sum of all their wisdom was comprised in
the single precept—believe”.

Such extraordinary events as earthquakes at the death of a god, feeding thousands of people with
a few small loaves and fishes, raising the dead to life again, must have formed topics of general
conversation and must have found a place in the literature of the day. Nothing. Cures being
wrought must have interested the writers on medicine. Nothing. It is incredible that no one
except the four interested partisans, who are supposed to have written the gospels, should ever
have referred to them.

Myths and Miracles 

Miracles are imaginary deviations from the known laws of Nature—proved by experience to be
firm and unalterable—by the power of a god. The people who lived contemporary with Jesus
tended to believe in anything—it was a credulous age. Faith in miracles comes from ignorance or
a confusion of belief with knowledge. If they could have been present at one of Uri Geller’s
shows, these credulous ancients would have certainly wanted to worship him as a god. But no
intelligent person today could accept such miracles as other than tricks. All accounts of miracles
should be banished altogether to their proper region—that of fiction or legend. Nature does not
allow her laws to be fooled with.

Christians say that Suetonius preserved evidence of Jesus in his book Lives of the
CaesarsSuetonius lived from about 75 to 150 AD and his book was published about 120 AD. In
the section on Claudius, he mentions that the emperor expelled the Jews from Rome (about
49 AD) because they caused continual disturbances at the instigation of a certain “Chrestus”. If
“Chrestus” is Jesus, then what was Jesus doing in Rome in 49 AD when he was supposed have
been crucified under the Prefecture of Pontius Pilate between 26 and 36 AD? “Chrestus” is the
Greek “Chrestos” meaning “good one”, and it is not the same as Christus which is derived from
the Greek “Christos” meaning “anointed one” or “Messiah”.

Miracles were not uncommon among the Jews before and during the time of Jesus. Casting out
devils was an everyday occurrence, and miracles were frequently wrought to confirm the sayings
of the rabbis. One is said to have cried out, when his opinions were disputed, “May this tree
prove that I am right”, and the tree was uncannily torn up by the roots and hurled to a distance.
And when his opponents declared that a tree could prove nothing, he said, “May this stream then
witness for me”, and at once it flowed the opposite way.
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Matthew says that Jesus was born in the days of Herod, while Luke says it was when Cyrenius
was governor of Syria. Herod died in 4 BC, while Cyrenius did not become governor of Syria
until 7 AD. Christ was modest about his miraculous birth. He never mentioned it. The original
evidence for the virgin birth is not in Mark and John. It is found in Matthew and Luke and both
contradict it when they trace the descent of Jesus from David through Joseph, (Mt 1; Lk 3).

Astonishingly, centuries before Jesus, people regarded Adonis, Tammuz, and others as they now
regard Jesus, as a risen saviour and confidently hoped to rise from the grave as did their god.
Krishna rose from the dead, and ascended bodily into heaven and all men saw him. Lao-Tse—
the virgin born—ascended bodily into heaven, since when some have worshipped him as the
god, Lao-Chun, and erected splendid temples to his memory. The saviour, Adonis, after being
put to death, rose from the dead, and the Syrians celebrated the festival of the resurrection of
Adonis in the early spring. The festival was observed in 363 AD during the reign of the Emperor
Julian, at Antioch, the ancient capital of the Greek kings of Syria, where the followers of Christ
were first called Christians, and in 412 AD, in Alexandria, the cradle of Christianity, in the time
of Bishop Cyril. The celebration in honour of the resurrection of Adonis came to be known as a
Christian festival, and the ceremonies held in Catholic countries on Good Friday and Easter
Sunday are the festival of the death and resurrection of Adonis. This god is propitiated as “O
Adonai” in one of the Greater Antiphons of the Roman Catholic church. The coverings of the
body of Buddha, son of the virgin Maya, unrolled themselves, and the lid of his coffin was
opened by superhuman agency, when he ascended bodily into heaven. Examples can be
continued from ancient religious myths. The myth of the messiah or saviour demanded that
something miraculous should happen at his death.

Jesus in History 

If all the wonderful things said about Jesus were true, we should naturally expect to hear
something about him in the writings of the period. Not one of the classic writers in the first
century, writers of the Augustan age of letters, writers in satire, history, natural history,
medicine, astronomy, miracles, fables, not one unequivocally mentions Jesus or his apostles or
his miracles.

Following the failure of Christ to appear at the millennium as promised in Revelation, people
started inquiring into the truth and origin of Christianity. For the church, Christendom was
seriously menaced and it instituted the Inquisition. Large sums of money were offered for the
discovery of ancient manuscripts, which would bear testimony to the divine authority of the
church. Supply meets the demand and monks saw a source of income—they started to
manufacture manuscripts. The mendacious writings of anonymous monks have been exposed
even by Catholic historians. Cardinal Newman, in his Grammar of Assent, says:

Most of our Latin classics are forgeries of the monks of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.  

A learned scholar and a writer high in the Jesuit College in Paris, Father Hardouin, has exposed
the lies of the Patristic Fathers. The lists of popes before 1227 are fictitious. There are no tombs
or sepulchres of any of the popes prior to this date. That leaves a fraudulent list of some 180
popes who never had an existence other than in the imagination of the compilers.
99 
 

Christians claim that one of the younger Pliny’s letters to the emperor Trajan, written before
Pliny’s death in 114 AD but after he was sent to Bithynia in 111 AD, probably in the year
112 AD, is evidence of an historical Jesus (Letters 10:96), but it simply says that Christians had
cursed their “Christ” to avoid being punished, but it does not show this Christ ever existed.

In Annals 15:44, Tacitus describes how Nero blamed the Christians for the fire of Rome in
64 AD. Tacitus says that the name “Christians” originated from “one Christus” who was “put to
death under Pontius Pilate, and had left behind him a sect called after him”. Even if this book is
authentic—as it was never mentioned in history until its late discovery, it has been suspected of
being a papal forgery—it tells us nothing except that some people believed in the death of a man
they revered called Christ. Tacitus merely asserts what he knew from the members of the
Christian sect, the claims being made by the Christians themselves and appearing in the gospels
Mark, Matthew and Luke which had been written before the Annals. The Annals were published
after 115 AD and were certainly not written before 110 AD. Tacitus was not a great historian in
modern terms, being prejudiced and partial. He accused Christians of abominations. Any
historical evidence of the original Jesus that existed anywhere was destroyed by Christians to
hide the truth when they were able. Jesus has been overlaid with mythology taken from
contemporary religious belief, notably the sun gods. Any historical Jesus has been deliberately
disguised to hide him from the historians.

Before you go, think about this… 
Some say that religion is about the existence and power of nonobservable agencies. Then it ought to like 
science. It too has its nonobservable entities. But many religious people despise science. What they 
really like about the nonobservable entities of religion is that they think like us. The scientific ones do 
not. Why do religious people find imaginary conscious agencies so attractive? 

Investigating Biblical History


High Society is for those who have stopped working and no longer have anything important to do.  

Woodrow Wilson 

7. Revising the Jesus of History for the


Future of Faith
Ideology… is… a way of thinking, speaking, experiencing.  

Catherine Belsey 

It is time to start abandoning, as a basic framework for our understanding of Christianity, the “history” 
which Christians have used almost from the start—the Old Testament narrative, the Gospel narrative, 
Acts and the Church History of Eusebius of Caesarea. That is so because it is now possible to see that this 
is an ideology, party history which does not fall within the canons of what is acceptable history for us.  
100 
 

John Bowden 

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Wednesday, September 08, 1999

• A Crisis of Faith  
• Stages of Tradition  
• Faith and Belief  
• Christians should Applaud  

Abstract 
For Christianity, history is more central than in any religion because Christians claim Jesus of Nazareth 
appeared on earth as God incarnate, died and was resurrected, and these are indisputable historical 
facts. Unfortunately, people, some of them Christians, keep disputing these facts of history, and as more 
people note the alternatives, the Christian world experiences a crisis of faith. The plan of some Christian 
revisionists is to discard the Jesus of History.  

A Crisis of Faith 

Historians have become increasingly important in many fields but notably religion. For
Christianity, history is more central than in any religion because Christians claim Jesus of
Nazareth appeared on earth as God incarnate, died and was resurrected, and these are
indisputable historical facts. Unfortunately, people, some of them Christians, keep disputing
these “facts” of history, and as more people note the alternatives, the Christian world experiences
a crisis of faith.

It is not new. Reimarus, the German scholar over two hundred years ago first tried to separate the
“Jesus of History” (the Jesus revealed by sound historical scholarship) from the “Christ of Faith”
(the mythical saviour of Christian belief). Attempts to separate the two were abandoned when
Albert Schweitzer declared the effort hopeless, but in the latter half of the twentieth century,
biblical scholarship has revived the “quest for the Historical Jesus” in a rebirth of interest in the
truth behind the short life that has dominated the ideas of the West in the past two-thousand
years.
101 
 

There are two opposing views. “Historicists”, like the “Jesus Seminar”, seek to to reconstruct the
historical Jesus by separating the words and deeds of the Nazarene from myths, legends, and
beliefs added subsequently.

Most Christians, however, take the gospel accounts as divinely inspired and therefore true. The
idea that these accounts should be scrutinized according to the rules of historical-critical
scholarship, like any ancient writings, challenges their faith. Christians are therefore not subject
to reason about these things. Ministers and preachers defend their dishonest living while the
punters accept any lie they are offered rather than forego the falsehoods they have been taught
and accepted for a lifetime and instead recognise Jesus as a historical figure typical of others in
his time.

Some Christians like to argue that they are not concerned with an historical Jesus because “Jesus
Lives”—he was, after all, resurrected. For them just to consider the historical Jesus is to fail to
take faith in the resurrection seriously. More orthodox ones follow Paul and still see the death on
the cross and the resurrection as the core of Christian belief, but also like Paul, need no details or
proof. William R G Loader says the gospels:

are their own reality and in themselves contain a world where we meet our Jesus.  

It is hard to know what clearer confession could be given that professional Christians promote a
mental fantasy or figment. As long as punters believe something and think that the professionals
have some special power to help them benefit from it, then let the suckers believe anything!
What has such a Christian to gain from more detail about Jesus’s life? The answer is only
embarassment.

Schweitzer concluded that the one historical fact that was certain about Jesus was that he was an
eschatological prophet who saw an imminent end of the world. Since Jesus was manifestly
wrong about this, how could he be correct about anything else? The immoveable Christians, as
they have done for so many other objections to Christian belief, find excuses. No pair of socks or
trousers has ever been as patched as Christianity.

The “Jesus Seminar” says this mistaken apocalypticism was the product not of Jesus but of his
followers, a totally absurd idea that can only discredit democracy, if that is how the decision was
made. Eschatology is thoroughly mingled with the whole concept of the kingdom of God that
every Christian assigns to Jesus as his most important message. And, even if Jesus’s
apocalypticism were to be discarded, the problem remains of which parts of Jesus’s gospel
messages are historically true.
102 
 

Stages of Tradition 

The Vatican distinguished three stages of tradition in the gospels. The first stage was the
recollection of the words and deeds of Jesus. The second stage was the proclamation of the the
“kerygma” or original central message that is the essence of Christian belief—primarily the
resurrection and its significance. Lastly, the third stage was the elaboration of the kerygma by the
different authors and editors.

Is there any criterion by which we might decide to what stage some part of a gospel belongs? If
there is none then the same dilemma pertains: what is historically true? Traditionalists and
fundamentalists use the unproveable artefact—in short, fiction—of the Holy Spirit, in a circular
argument sanctifying all scripture, including those parts that promise the Holy Spirit itself! This
Holy Spirit enables any Christian to say anything that comes into their head and maintain it is
true because inspired. It is the prime Christian justification for their age old habit of pious
lying—and everybody today accepts it without a flinch!

Now it seems strange that a curia of different varieties of professional Christians, like the “Jesus
Seminar” should find it so easy to discard most of their historical god as unhistorical. Robert
Funk, a leading light of the “Jesus Seminar” readily discards 75 per cent of the words of the
gospel Jesus. Rudolph Bultmann, in an earlier time foremost among those who turned aside from
the “quest for the historical Jesus” after Schweitzer recommended giving up the task as hopeless,
was also trying to “demythologize” the scriptures in favour of a return to faith in Christ.

Faith and Belief 

Wilfred C Smith made a distinction between “faith” and “belief”. The first is an unconditional
sense of trust in God. The second is an assent to prescribed doctrines or “beliefs”. Note that
“faith” is unconditional but “belief” can properly demand confirmation in the form of signs,
miracles or persuasion by convincing argument. The two are quite different though confused by
most Christians and Christian critics. Faith is entirely personal and needs no mediators in the
form of priests or ministers, the quacks who sell “belief” as faith to secure themselves a lifetime
of idle sponsorship.

The quacks and mountebanks want to discard the life of Jesus and base Christianity on his faith
instead—his unconditional trust or “faith” in God, shown in his certainty of the resurrection of
the dead—the basis of the Christian belief that death is not the end. They want to replace
103 
 

Christian faith as a belief in the historical accuracy of the stories relating Christ’s post-
resurrection appearances with a faith in God’s promise to Jesus—the promise that Jesus
unconditionally accepted.

Christians like these are trying to demolish the historical Jesus and change the foundation of
Christianity from its hitherto historical basis to a purely metaphysical one. Separation of Jesus of
Nazareth, prince of Israel, from the dying and resurrected saviour god known as Christ would
allow believers to indulge purely in a mystery religion with no embarrassing pretensions to
historicity. The trouble is that believers always like to think that the object of their adoration has
walked among them. By regarding Jesus as “metahistorical” in the sense that Berdayev used, to
describe the resurrection, they can have it how they like without any regard to the facts of
history.

It boils down to a sort of extrapolation backwards in time. Whatever it was that gave rise to
Christianity cannot, if Schweitzer is to be believed, be known, but there is no denying the huge
and lasting phenomena it gave rise to. Their argument is that at some point in the past a spring of
truth spilled into the world and gave rise to the Christian faith. So it can be believed by
committed Christians even if the historical facts of the life of Jesus turn out to be quite different
from former conceptions. The spring of “metahistorical” reality is all that faith requires.

If that is the case, is the resurrection of Jesus itself the product of faith? Indeed it is. Men do not
rise from death in nature, but if some people have an expectation that resurrection is possible and
even probable under some special circumstances, and if they come to believe that the
circumstances have been realised, they can easily come to believe that the circumstances have
given rise to what is in fact impossible.

If the empty tomb stories are true, and the subsequent behaviour of the disciples is unexplainable
except by their belief that a resurrection has occurred, this is still not historical “proof” that it
did. It is proof though that the disciples believed it was possible under the circumstances. And
Schweitzer was correct in stating that the circumstances were that the world was expected to end
and righteous people were to be resurrected into the kingdom of God!

What of the third stage, that of theological expression or beliefs? Were “technical terms” like
“Christ” and the “Son of God”, proclamations of the status of a Jesus who is “raised”. Only later
did these statements become metaphysical statements about a god who “rises” from the dead by
his own divine power. But that is not to say that Jesus did not have these terms applied to him
earlier in his lifetime with non-metaphysical meanings.

All of humanity are children of God, so “Son of God” is a banal title at root. Of course, it was an
honorific title applied to Jesus because he was a priest and a “prince”, both of which were
designated as “Sons of God”. Jesus was also “raised” even before he died and was resurrected,
because it is the root meaning of the word “prince” that was used of him (“nasi”, a prince or a
leader being “one who is raised up!”). “Christ” is the Greek word used to translate the Jewish
word “Messiah” and would have been used of Jesus in his life or immediately on his supposed
resurrection.
104 
 

In its hurry to deify Jesus, Christians dehumanized him from the beginning. Despite the
insistence of the early theologians that Jesus possessed a complete human nature, for he had to
assume human form to redeem humanity, in the early fifth century, Augustine reprimanded a
colleague who suggested Jesus might have been tempted in his faith. Since Jesus was a god, he
could not have been tempted, he knew all the answers and he could do anything, whence the
miracles. In 451 AD, the Council of Chalcedon defined Jesus as both completely human and
fully divine—a fatuous contradiction for how can a fully human entity walk on water? So,
Augustine’s divine Christ prevailed. The human Jesus was all but completely swallowed up by
the divine Christ. Christianity effectively denied the humanity of Jesus and became
“monophysite”—certain he existed as a god.

Christians should Applaud 

Christians should be applauding the work of the “Jesus Seminar” and others who are
demolishing the historical Jesus and seeking to return to the divine monophysite Christ of
Augustine. The closest they want to come to a human Christ is a Jesus whose unconditional faith
committed him unreservedly to carrying out God’s will as he understood it, and whose
missionary call was that others should follow the path of total trust in God.

They hope what will characterize the follower of Jesus most of all is this trusting faith in God—
like that of Jesus himself—not a set of beliefs about who he really was. The “Jesus of History” is
he whose life was lived in the loving trust in God throughout doubt and despair. His
unconditional faith or trust in God revealed him, to Christians, to be the Son who brings a share
in the divine, immortal life, through the power of God’s Spirit.

For those who accept this, it will not matter that the historical Jesus in fact got some things
wrong. Nor does it matter that little of his teaching was original. What matters to the believers in
the “metahistorical” Christ is his call to universal love and service to God and other human
beings confident in the face of suffering, that in God all shall live.

The real conservatives of Christianity can even continue to believe everything they presently
believe, happy that the veil of history might be drawn but can reveal nothing to the believer in
“metahistory” that could dent their faith. We can never be sure about history but “metahistory”
stands before us everywhere in the form of churches, priests, preachers and believers.

The whole plan is a brilliant attempt to discard the aspects of Christianity that are getting more
and more embarassing—the very parts that formerly had been the basis of the religion. The
trouble for these Christian revisionists is that they have been so successful in the past in getting
Christians to believe that black is white and lies are truth that they are finding it no easy task to
make their fellow Christians realise that unsafe branches are best pruned.

The race is on between those who would drop the historical Jesus before proof positive is found
that he was a bandit or a homosexual, or some other unacceptable reality, and Christianity is
thrown into chaos because this Jesus is its core. Far better for these Christians to lop off the limb
that is damaged and attacked by termites and dry rot—even if it was previously the main
105 
 

support—and replace it with an unnassailable metahistorical limb that non-Christian insects can
gnaw and nibble but never damage.

• Based on an article by R W Kropf in issue #6 of Dialogos: An Interactive Journal of the Sciences, 
Philosophy, and Theology, June 5, 1997.  

Before you go, think about this… 
In subconscious atonement for the guilt of our selfishness, are we preparing to sacrifice our lives and 
maintain in death the humanity which we can see we are losing? Do we justify our drive for this 
luxurious existence by subliminally accepting that we are committing gigasuicide, self‐effacingly 
cleansing the earth of the parasite that we have become?  

Who Lies Sleeping? 

Examining the Bible Objectively


If you are against abortion, nobody is making you have one! 

8. The Quest for the Historical Jesus 1


© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, November 14, 1999

• The Slippery Christ  
• Three Quests  
• Historical Evidence  
• First Quest  
• Albert Schweitzer  
• Rudolf Bultmann  
• Ernst Troeltsch  
• A New Quest  

Abstract 
The four gospels are our chief source of direct information about Jesus. These, however, are always 
tendentious, often contradictory and sometimes demonstrably wrong. Moreover, the events Jesus 
prophesied in them did not come to pass. Instead, he endured the ignominy of a Roman crucifixion. 
Within the movement which sprang up after his death, a process or metamorphosis took place by which 
the proclaimer became the proclaimed, the rebel was acclaimed as God, and the Christs of faith began 
to rise, like bad odours, from the corpse of the Jesus of history. In the quest for the historical Jesus there 
are more bad odours generated by Christian scholars than feasible pictures, but Christians do not mind, 
as long as the exasperated doubter gives up the quest and remains within the fold of the believing flock. 
A survey of the quests for the historical Jesus.  
106 
 

The Slippery Christ 

The history of Christianity is remarkable for many things, not least for the resilience of the faith
despite vast historical changes, the “infinite variety” of the forms it can take and the changing
ways in which, over the last 20 centuries men and women have seen Jesus, and worshipped him
as “the Christ”.

The roots for this saga are the four gospels, our chief source of direct information about Jesus.
These, however, are always tendentious, often contradictory and sometimes demonstrably
wrong. According to medieval scholar and Christian, Jaroslav Pelikan (Jesus through the Ages,
Yale University Press, 1985), the Jesus they yield “resembles a set of paintings more closely than
a photograph”. Since people see in them what they want, a mirror might be a more accurate
analogy. Believers always convince themselves that they—and usually they alone—have come
face to face with the “true” Jesus.

People have offered a bewildering variety of pictures of Jesus, including the cosmic Christ,
creator of the universe; the Christ crucified of the medieval world; the mystic “bridegroom of the
soul”; Christ as the prototype of the Renaissance “universal man” or the Enlightenment’s
“teachet of reason” and the modern resurgence of Christ the liberator.

Even so, his story becomes rather thin in the modern era when the Jesus of history began to
dethrone the Christs of faith. A liberal, western European Christian of today is likely to be chary
of the Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, not
because he was an awful tyrant who murdered his wife and was so hated by the population of
Rome he had to move his capital to a different city, but because he obtained the throne with
God’s supposed help in sending the miracle of a cross in the heavens saying “Conquer by this”.

Today’s Christian is certain that the essential message of Jesus was not to go around conquering
in his name but that we should love one another. The biblical scholar, C H Dodd, was less sure.
He pointed out that, in the gospels, Jesus is credited with few sayings about love for one’s fellow
men, and what he does say would have been commonplace among first century Pharisaic Jews.
The urgency of his message was elsewhere.

The Jesus that emerged from the historical work was a Jew of his time—a time when the Jews
were in rebellion against the foreign oppressors, the Romans. Jesus was an Essene who expected
107 
 

from the signs of the times the literal coming of the Kingdom of God in the lifetime of those
whom he addressed. He called upon Jews to repent, and to make ready for this divine
intervention in which, as the signs multiplied, he saw himself as playing the role of liberator or
the earthly saviour of the Jews. If he did his part and the Jews repented, then God would respond
by sending the angel Michael and his heavenly armies to defeat the Satanic Romans and join
heaven and earth together as a home for the righteous.

But the events he prophesied did not come to pass. Instead, he endured the ignominy of the
Roman crucifixion. Within the movement which sprang up after this death a process or
metamorphosis took place by which the proclaimer became the proclaimed, the rebel was
acclaimed as God, and the Christs of faith began to rise, like bad odours, from the corpse of the
Jesus of history. In the quest for the historical Jesus there are more bad odours generated by
Christian scholars than feasible pictures, but Christians do not mind, as long as the exasperated
doubter gives up the quest and remains within the fold of the believing flock.

Three Quests 

It is fashionable these days to speak of three “quests” for the historical Jesus, though, of course,
there has only ever been one quest, and it will continue while the supernatural Jesus is claimed
by Christians to be historical. Honest people, some of them Christians, consider research on the
historical Jesus as demanded by historical inquiry and the need to reach an adequate theology.
But usually Christians say they are concerned with a living Jesus not a historical one. One
apologist argues:

If the expression the real Jesus is used at all, it should not refer to a historically reconstructed Jesus. Such 
a Jesus is not “real” in any sense, except as a product of scholarly imagination. The Christian’s claim to 
experience the “real Jesus” in the present, on the basis of religious experience and conviction, can be 
challenged on a number of fronts (religious, theological, moral), but not historically.  

The quest for the historical Jesus is therefore valueless to evangelical Christians whose beliefs do
not depend on historical facts. Interest in the historical Jesus signifies a failure of faith. For them,
ignorance is bliss.
108 
 

It always has been for most Christians because no priest or preacher wants to spill the gravy boat
and no punter wants to lose the fantasy of their imaginary friend, Jesus. Belief in him is a form of
MPD, and should be treated in the same way—by psychiatry. The reason is that the Christian
Jesus is obviously not historical. It will be impossible ever to get a consensus on what the life of
the historical Jesus was, because no Christian will accept history, so the quest will be an eternal
merry-go-round.

Nevertheless, the quests have led to a good idea of who the historic Jesus was, for rational
historically minded people, and broadly it was the very first Jesus offered by Reimarus, who is
considered to have initiated the “first” quest, the second having been launched by Bultmann and
those of his era, and the third or modern quest having been founded in the seventies with Jewish
scholars and some skeptical Christians prominent, and heavily dependent on the hypothetical
pre-Christian document called “Q”.

The primary sources are still the four gospels. The hypothesis that makes best sense of the
relations among the gospels is that Matthew and Luke independently used Mark and another
source Q. John is seen as essentially independent of the others, of little historical worth and that
overlaid with mythology. No gospel writers witnessed the events they describe. The gospel of
John is not narrative, it is only Christology. The biblical quest for the historical Jesus is confined
to the three synoptic gospels. The narratives, in the three synoptic gospels, add up to only thirty-
one days of Jesus’s life, and his ministry lasted about a year and a half. This is not much of a
base for a history of Jesus.

Historical Evidence 

Little external evidence supports the biblical evidence of the historicity of Jesus, but this is true
of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. No archeological evidence has been
unearthed for the Mount Sinai where Moses was said to have received the Ten Commandments;
none for the flight from Egypt by the Israelites; none for a battle of Jericho where the walls could
109 
 

not have come tumbling down because the town had no walls at that time; none for the military
conquest of Canaan, none for David, Solomon, and so on. The Christian scriptures are equally
unreliable history.

Since the middle of the twentieth century, however, the Dead Sea Scrolls have revealed to
anyone not besotted by the lies of Christian “revelation” the true source of the beliefs of Jesus.
The scrolls not only revealed a diverse Judaism which freely employed dualism more familiar to
us from the language of earlier Mazdaism and later gnosticism, but also they alerted us to
diversities in understanding Torah. They have also stimulated new attention to the works of
Josephus and Philo. Nevertheless, we still have lacunae to fill, and have to make judgements
where there are gaps, and this is where the Christians are able to obfuscate.

An analogy is this. The Romans are on one bank of the Rhine. A little later, they are on the other
bank. How did they get there? The true answer is, if that is all we know, we cannot say for sure
how they got over the river. Nevertheless, if someone said the river parted and they were able to
cross dryshod, we would say they were insane. Yet that would be the Christian answer. The
historian would boringly say that the Romans built a bridge, or used boats, both feasible answers.
That a miracle happened is not.

In the quest for the historical Jesus, the theologians come up with a mass of unfeasible answers
just to leave the faithful saying: “I might as well believe what I’ve always believed, that the
waters parted”. So we get Christian scholars coming up with theories:

• the Germans pretended to be Romans,  
• the Romans walked under the river,  
• they went via the Behring strait,  
• they stood on the backs of whales,  
• they tunnelled under,  
• they did it by mirrors,  
• they flew over,  
• aliens took them over,  
• they were not Romans but were Vikings, and so on.  

Plenty of Jesuses can be imagined but few of them meet the criteria of feasible history and most
can be discounted.

First Quest 

The first historical quest of a Jesus unadulterated by theological mud came out of the eighteenth
century Enlightenment. It aimed to use the Jesus of history as an ally in the struggle against the
tyranny of church dogma and power in setting belief and practice. The first to undertake a
scientific investigation was the German orientalist Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) who
wrote a 4,000 page manuscript titled The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples. Gotthold Lessing
published it posthumously in 1774, Reimarus like Copernicus being worried by the
consequences, but it received little attention until Strauss published his own famous work fifty
years later.
110 
 

Reimarus saw in Jesus of Nazareth a Jewish messianic revolutionary whose failure led his
followers to steal his body and create a new story of Jesus based on aspects of Jewish
messianism. The Christian religion did not grow out of the teaching of Jesus. It emerged new
from these failed expectations.

His major points were:

• We should draw an absolute distinction between the writings of the later church and what Jesus 
might have said.  
• Jesus spoke as a Jew—Christian readings cannot be attributed to him.  
• Jesus performed no miracles.  
• He was a man not a god.  
• His notion of the Kingdom of God was the messianic expectation of Jews at the time.  

Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741-1792) wrote a fictitious life of Jesus but one with clever insights.
Jesus was reared by the Essenes and studied Plato and Aristotle under Greek teachers. He
performed no miracles, and in later life became a senior brother of the Essenes. He learned that
he must die, like Socrates, and Luke and Nicodemus plotted how to bring this about. They
rescued Jesus from the tomb and Luke’s medicine brought Jesus to health. After a few physical
appearances, mentioned in scripture, Jesus retired to the Essene community where he died in old
age.

In 1835, David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) published a two volume life of Jesus, revised in
1839, and again in 1864. Strauss argued that one needed to unravel the historical Jesus from the
overlaid myths and miracle stories of the evangelists. He concluded that:

• None of the gospel writers was a witness of the events they discussed. Their accounts were 
second hand.  
• Every story prior to Jesus’s baptism is a fabrication.  
• The story of Jesus calling twelve disciples is not historical.  
• None of the miracles happened.  
• The gospel of John is a complete fabrication.  

Bruno Bauer (1809-1882) wrote a life of Jesus in which he concluded:

• Matthew and Luke copied from Mark and added nothing new to the story. Jesus’s life rests on 
one person who was not a witness.  
• The gospel of John contains no historical material at all.  
• The birth stories are literary inventions.  
• All the writings of Paul are fictitious.  
• The Jews did not expect a Messiah and Jesus did not claim to be one.  

The Frenchman, Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-1892), followed with his Vie de Jésus in 1860 in
which he romanticised Jesus as a great moral teacher, but no more. His Life of Jesus emphasised
the unhistorical gospel of John which prompted Albert Schweitzer to comment:
111 
 

There is scarcely any other work on the subject which so abounds in lapses of bad taste… It is Christian 
art in the worst sense of the term… There is insincerity in the book from beginning to end.  

Martin Kähler, in The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 1896,
concluded that a biography of Jesus was impossible. He argued that as the Jesus of history was
inseparable from the Christ of faith and yet since the New Testament mainly concerns itself with
the latter as does the church—and it is this Christ that has influenced history, scholars should
only be interested in the Christ of faith. He concluded:

I regard the entire Life of Jesus movement as a blind alley. 

At the turn of the 20th century Heinrich Julius Holtzman developed the theory of Mark’s priority
as the first gospel of the synoptics and argued that we can know the historical Jesus by
unravelling the connexions and borrowings between the gospels. He firmly denied that it was:

…possible to describe the historical figure of the one from whom Christianity derives its very name and 
existence in such a way as to satisfy all just claims of scrupulous historical critical investigation. 

Albert Schweitzer 

Albert Schweitzer published his The Quest of the Historical Jesus in 1906. He reviewed and
exposed the fallibility of the previous lives of Jesus and the problem of whether anything could
be safely known about him. He found previous questors had fashioned Jesus according to their
own worldview. The initial questors were rationalists trying to discredit traditional Christian
teaching. Counter quests were Christian theologians hoping to to fend off the criticism by
building from theological bricks a “real Jesus”. The result of the latter was a Jesus whose
message of a “spiritual kingdom” was that of nineteenth century German Protestantism.

This was a hugely important discovery for Christians who ever since have been able to say that
any historical Jesus is merely a reflexion of its author’s prejudices and can be discounted. It
seems that any Christian version is not a product of prejudice and must be accepted. Schweitzer
concluded:

• Jesus was an eschatological Jewish leader, convinced the world was in the End Time, who tried 
and failed in a mistaken mission to bring in the kingdom of God. No one had properly recognised 
this.  
• The quests had been fruitless.  
• There is no history of Jesus that can be discovered, and:  

“In the last resort this book can only express the misgivings about the historical Jesus as 
depicted by modern theology. There is nothing more negative than the results of the critical 
study of the life of Jesus”. 

Nineteenth century research into the so-called “Pseudepigrapha” of the Hebrew Bible, had
revealed new insights into Palestinian Judaism—a prominent trend had been apocalyptic. The
teachings and activity of Jesus could not be honestly examined without reference to Jewish
112 
 

eschatology. The recognition of Jesus’s “thoroughgoing eschatology” is Schweitzer’s


unassailable contribution to scholarship. He upheld Johannes Weiss who had convincingly
shown, in The Preaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God, that Jesus taught pure
eschatology.

No modern Christian commentator likes to think about it, because it answers too much.
Schweitzer himself hated the idea but, unlike modern Christian “scholars” he did not try to
escape from his honest conclusions. Jesus was a first century Jewish leader intent on seeing in
the cosmic victory of God over evil. This Jesus is foreign to Christians, as Schweitzer knew:

The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma. 

Since Schweitzer recognised that Jesus was an eschatologist, and his words must only have been
an interim ethic which had nothing to offer us, he abandoned devotional for practical
Christianity, as a medical doctor in Africa.

Nineteenth century scholars concluded that a Jesus who would curse fig trees, claim to be the
only begotten Son, and pretend to perform miracles, was psychologically sick. Albert Schweitzer
wrote The Psychiatric Study of Jesus to refute these claims that Jesus was mentally unbalanced
and that if he were alive today, he would be institutionalized.

Eschatology, involving ideas of the last judgment, resurrection, and supernatural deliverance of
the elect from temporal earthly existence, though nominally Christian, has been lost in fairy tale
ideas like that of “the Rapture” based upon Thessalonians. In the first century Jewish milieu, the
concept was one of a cosmic battle. Many features of the early church, whether reconstructed
from the gospels or Paul, only make sense against the background of eschatological expectation:
resurrection, the gift of the Spirit (meals, baptism), and the continuing anticipation of God’s
imminent intervention. The earliest community beliefs also could not be honestly disconnected
entirely from the beliefs of Jesus and his disciples before Easter.

Rudolf Bultmann 

In his treatment of the historical Jesus, Jesus and the Word, in 1920, Rudolf Bultmann thought it
a happy conclusion that:

We can know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian 
sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary. 

What can be known by examining Jewish tradition of the time is Jesus’s message, his “word”,
the coming of the Kingdom of God, a “miraculous eschatological event”, but one that has to be
interpreted existentially: “the Kingdom of God is a power which, although it is entirely future,
wholly determines the present… because it now compels man to decision”. Bultmann concluded:

• The Christian proclamation (kerygma) will never be confirmed by historical investigation.  
• Since the message is in the myth, the gospel of John is the preferred one.  
• The historical quest is impossible, irrelevant, and illegitimate.  
113 
 

For Bultmann, a scholarly “quest of the historical Jesus” is impossible and theologically
illegitimate because it substitutes worldly proof for faith. The simple fact of the Christ event—
that God acted—sufficed. In The New Testament and Mythology he concludes:

The Christian life does not consist in developing the individual personality, in the improvement of 
society, or in making the world a better place. The Christian life means turning away from the world. 

Is it surprising the world is a mess when it is run by people of this teeth grittingly irresponsible
philosophy? Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book, Christ the Center, (1960) concluded that, if we did
find an historical Jesus, it would show that Christian faith had been an illusion. The world
thereby might be saved.

Karl Barth preferred not to participate in the quest for the historical Jesus. Barth with Paul
Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann and others accepted Kähler’s conclusion that faith could not depend on
the historical Christ, about whom nothing could be known. He agreed with Bonhoeffer that
nothing in historical investigation could add anything to faith. At most, such analysis might tell
us what others thought Jesus was like. But Barth was an alien as far as the natural world was
concerned. The natural world was irrelevant to him because only Christ was important and
Christianity was the “end of all religion”. If that is so, it only is because it will be the end of
humanity. We should take this as the severest warning to us, not the ultimate accolade that
Christians suppose it to be.

Ernst Troeltsch 

Ernst Troeltsch saw the historical method of analysis as having three essential features:
probability, analogy and correlation. Historians cannot deal in certainties. They discover events
with a degree of probability attached to their likelihood. The probability of an event has to be
judged by analogy with such a similar event occurring today, in times we know, are familiar with
and have some estimatable degree of attestation. By analogy, it looks impossible that anything
like 600,000 able-bodied men left Egypt in the Exodus.

Correlation is the principle that events influence each other. Nothing occurs in isolation and the
likelihood of an event occurring has to be judged in the knowledge that it can be influenced by
other events. The inhabitants of the hill country of Palestine had no knowledge of an Evil Spirit
until after they had been colonised by the Persians who already had an Evil Spirit in their
cosmogony. From the rule of correlation it is idle for Christian or Jewish theologians to claim
that Jews invented the concept independently.

Troeltsch says it is invalid to place all emphasis on one event to the exclusion of others because
all relevant events have to be judged equally by the same set of rules. Christianity cannot be
judged only on its own claims about itself but in the wider context of human history. The
dogmatic viewpoint of traditional Christianity violates all this, because it divorces a fixed set of
events entirely from their realistic setting. Its pronouncements are absolute, being the Word of
God and so they too are utterly divorced from any historical situation. Christian authority stems
from its very falseness in historical terms—it is separated from history in practice despite the
claimed historical setting of the mythical stories.
114 
 

Its appeal is to the supernatural, the sphere of the human imagination, not history. Salvation
history is supernatural history, and Troeltsch shows that it is therefore not history at all but
romance based upon loyalty to a church or purely subjective inner experiences. Even Rudolf
Bultmann said that it was impossible to believe in demons and spirits, while using electrical
appliances and modern medicines, as Christians are expected to. History is like the fruit of a real
tree but salvation history is like the fruit of a tree drawn on a piece of paper. The latter can be
made to look wonderful but will not feed anyone. Troeltsch’s ideas help us to distinguish the
two, should we have trouble.

The only justification for the doctrinal basis of Christian tradition would seem to be miracle… for only 
such a belief can save it from being a contingent part of the ongoing fabric of history.  

John Bowden  

Critics of Troeltsch accuse him of not knowing what to do with a miracle if one happened
because his method rules them out. The point about a miracle is not that it is unique—all events
are unique, even the most trivial—but that it cannot happen in Nature without God’s
intervention. Spectacular single events, such as someone surviving a severe fire or fall are not
miracles although they are called miracles in popular usage. A miracle simply cannot happen. It
has zero probability of occurring. It is its impossibility that makes it a miracle.

A virgin birth would admittedly be pretty miraculous, though scientists might be able to think of
a peculiar set of natural circumstances that could lead to one. Nevertheless, it is so miraculous
that few scholars and many ordinary Christian believers do not think there ever was a virgin
birth. A genuinely dead and already decaying man being resurrected would certainly be a miracle
by any standards, and it therefore forms the basis of Christian faith, but it is such a poorly
attested miracle that it is much more likely that the witnesses are deluded, mistaken or crooks
than that the event happened. Only by eliminating the likely possibilities can the miracle be
given credence. As it stands, it has none to anyone except those who will believe despite the
evidence.

None of the “miracles” in the bible are well attested unless the miracle of the bible being the very
word of God is true. If it is, then believers have to explain why everything that can be learnt by
scholarship about the bible shows it to be the manufacture and composition of human beings, and
is full of just the errors and contradictions that a human work copied by hand for many
generations would contain. In brief, if God produced a miraculous book, why did he not ensure
that it was miraculously distributed without errors? Christians believe the New Testament
because they are Christians, not the other way around.

A New Quest 

In 1953, one of Bultmann’s students, Ernst Käsemann, in a famous address to the annual
gathering of the “old Marburgers” (the Bultmann school), declared the Lord of the Church could
not have had no historical existence or he would have been completely mythological! Interest in
the historical Jesus was theologically valid, after all, and he set in motion the “New Quest of the
115 
 

Historical Jesus”, based on scholarly investigation, and recognising that the kerygma of the
church emerged from an eschatological message.

Critical analysis such as form criticism would allow information about the historial Jesus to be
found in the gospels, but criteria were needed to settle the authenticity of Jesus’s sayings.
Bultmann had already formulated one such criterion, dubbed by Norman Perrin, “the criterion of
dissimilarity”:

The earliest form of a saying we can reach may be regarded as authentic if it can be shown to be 
dissimilar to characteristic emphases both of ancient Judaism and of the early Church. 

Or, “if we are to seek that which is most characteristic of Jesus”, it will be found in the things
wherein he differs from Judaism, such things as would be “new and startling to Jewish ears”. The
premise that the authentic Jesus was to be found not in his Jewish context but in whatever was
different from it, became a typical Christian confusion of true inquiry. Plainly this criterion begs
the question, because its underlying assumption—that Jesus was deliberately being different
from contemporary Jews—is what Christians want to hear.

About 90 percent of Jesus’s sayings are found in contemporary Jewish teaching, leaving just 10
percent for the real Jesus. Robert W Funk, founded the Jesus Seminar in 1985, calling scholars
together to offer an alternative to the fundamentalist pictures of Jesus in American society.
Around 200 people have participated to discuss, then vote with beads on historicity. Not much
survives and even the Lord’s Prayer goes. The Jesus Seminar agrees that:

…way less than 25 percent of the words attributed to Jesus were his.  

In fact, the scholars of the Jesus seminar concluded that 82 percent of the words ascribed to Jesus
were not actually spoken by him:

1. The only words in the gospel of Mark were 12:17, “Render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar’s”.  
2. The only words in Matthew were: 5:38‐39 “Turn the other cheek”. 13:33 The parable of the 
leaven in the flour. 20:1‐15 The parable of the workers in the vineyard. 22:21 “render unto 
Caesar… “ None of the Sermon on the Mount was accepted, the only part of the Lord’s Prayer 
were the words “Our Father”, and only three of the beatitudes: the hungry, poor and sad. 
Omitted were the references to the meek, merciful, pure in heart and peacemakers.  
3. In Luke, the scholars accepted: 2:20 “Blessed are the poor, hungry, and sad” 6:27 “love your 
enemies” 6:29 “turn the other cheek”, “go the second mile” and “give your shirt”. 10:30 the 
story of the Good Samaritan 11:2 only the word “Father” in the Lord’s prayer. 13:20 the parable 
of the leaven 16:1 the parable of the shrewd manager.  
4. Nothing in the gospel of John was accepted. But the scholars gave credence to the Gospel of 
Thomas and used it to confirm or deny Jesus’s words.  

Donald A Wells explains that the following assumptions were made by the Jesus Seminar to
begin its analysis. An assessment is appended to each:
116 
 

1. The Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke are more reliable than John in separating the 
legendary and the mythical from the historical Jesus. Agreed.  
2. The gospel of Mark is the oldest and Matthew and Luke copied from it. Agreed.  
3. The most likely passages are those consistent with an oral rather than a written tradition. 
Meaningless. All of it is oral tradition.  
4. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are assumed to be literary narratives and not history. Meaningless. 
All writing is literary. He means “fiction” which is too sweeping.  
5. It was assumed that Jesus was not an eschatologist (he did not believe in the imminent end of 
the world). Total nonsense. He plainly was.  
6. Since the oldest gospel manuscripts in our possession were written 175 years after the death of 
Jesus, and since every scholar who copied a manuscript added marginal notes which subsequent 
scholars commonly added to the body of the text, we ought not put much too emphasis on the 
particular words. Far too sweeping.  
7. The Dead Sea Scrolls are of no help since they were written before the birth of Jesus. Nonsense. 
They might as well say the Jewish tradition is no help because it was founded before the birth 
of Jesus. Jesus plainly was an Essene and the Jesus Seminar wants to count the truth out at 
the start.  
8. All the gospels were widely circulated for many years anonymously and were later given 
authorship names by persons unknown to make them more acceptable. The Church Father, 
Eusebius, had stated (300 AD) that Christians would not accept a writing as authentic unless it 
had been written by a famous person. Agreed.  
9. Paul’s writings were in circulation long before the first gospel appeared, Paul never read the 
gospels. Since Paul had never met Jesus, his conjectures cannot be the basis for any facts about 
Jesus. Agreed.  

Before you go, think about this… 
Adelphiasophists surmise, along with others, that the natural state of human beings is to enjoy a feeling 
of oneness with Nature, a feeling of wholeness in the world, and a feeling of identity with our own 
community as an extended family—a kinunity. There was no alienation between the individual and the 
community they lived in, and that whole community saw itself as under the care of the Goddess, Nature, 
so long as they treated her with respect. This system gave people, in the hunter‐gatherer phase, a deep 
sense of security, though, to us their lives seemed precarious. In fact, hunter‐gatherer existence is 
indeed secure so long as the people were not forced to live in marginal land, dessicated, waterlogged or 
frozen. 
117 
 

Investigating Biblical History


Having left the Garden of Eden human females stopped suckling earlier and lost the natural 
contraceptive protection that went with it.  

Who Lies Sleeping? 

9. The Quest for the Historical Jesus 2


© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, November 14, 1999, Friday, 14 November 2003

• The Third Quest  
• Jesus the Jew  
• Eschatology  
• Clever men Speak of Jesus  
• The Spread of Christianity  
• The Hidden Jesus  

Abstract 
The Third Quest has been so named since perhaps the 70s. A distinguishing feature is the involvement of 
Jewish scholars trying to recover the historical Jesus. The heavenly kingdom is about God, not Jesus 
himself, and is on earth. Jesus is a Jew, and the early kingdom movement—the expectation of God’s 
earthly rule and Israel’s liberation from foreign oppression—is not the founding of a religion called 
Christianity but a Jewish phenomenon. The historical Jesus and the Jesus of the early church bear little 
resemblance to one another. The church had to deliberately distort the stories brought by Jews from 
Judaea after the diaspora of 70 AD. Even more tenuous is the connexion between the historical Jesus 
and later Christianity. Continuing surveying the quest for the historical Jesus.  
118 
 

The Third Quest 

The “Third Quest”, has been so named since perhaps the 70s. A distinguishing feature is the
involvement of Jewish scholars trying to recover the historical Jesus. It claims that critical
historical research can lead to who Jesus was by careful sifting of the sources. It places Jesus
squarely within the context of first century Palestine and Second Temple Judaism. Geza
Vermes’s book Jesus the Jew boldly declares this. S G F Brandon and Hyam Maccoby saw
Jesus, like Reimarus, as a Jewish revolutionary, whilst Vermes saw him as a Galilean Hasid,
apparently accepting that Jewish holy men could perform miracles.

Gerd Theissen applies sociological analysis to the “renewal movement within Judaism”, Jesus
founded. Jesus and some of his followers are depicted as “wandering charismatics”, dependent
on sympathizers in the local villages, analogous to wandering Cynic philosophers in the gentile
world. They too led a vagabond existence, renouncing home, families and possessions.

Gerd Theissen’s analogy depicting Jesus as a Cynic spawned an industry of pseudo-scholarship.


F Gerald Downing found that Cynics must have been active in Galilee in Jesus’s day because
Jesus proves it! Jesus can equally be proved to have been an Epicurean, the view of Wolfgang
Kirchbach (Was lehrte Jesus? Zwei Urevangelien), according to Schweitzer, or anything else by
being suitably selective.

Dominic John Crossan, one of the Jesus Seminar’s chairmen, in The Historical Jesus: The Life of
a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, written in 1994 and dedicated to the Jesus Seminar, takes up
the cynical idea, denying Jesus was a teacher of Judaism but saying he was instead a wandering
cynic preacher heavily influenced by Greek thought, a stoic Greek philosopher who gathered
disciples around himself. For Crossan, the eschatological Jesus had been foisted on the tradition
by the early church, and Jesus himself had rejected the eschatological message of John the
Baptist to instead adopt wisdom teaching appropriate to a Jewish peasant.

Crossan concluded that Jesus was a peasant Jewish Cynic, a hippie deriding the yuppies. He
bases his conclusions on a series of fantastic revisions of accepted chronology and a vivid
imagination. For this “analysis”, Crossan places the Gospels of Peter, Hebrews, Egyptians,
119 
 

Nazoreans, Ebionites, Secret Mark, various fragments, dialogue and apocryphon writings,
alongside the four canonical writings and Thomas as having historical worth. That might be true,
but it is a question of to what degree, and adequate identification of the historical bits. All
gospels cannot count equally as sources. Few deny these are late works and later works are less
reliable.

Crossan’s attempt to make the passion narrative of the Gospel of Peter the source of the passion
narratives in the canonical gospels has won little support. In short, no one believes a word of it,
though it impresses publishers, and it reveals the author’s cynicism, not Jesus’s.

The new element in gospel research comes partly from continuing research on Q and from the
Gospel of Thomas. Burton Mack in The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins,
focuses on the lost gospel of Q, and increasingly scholars like H Koster see the Gospel of
Thomas as containing some traditions earlier than the canonical gospels. Thomas and the
collection thought to be Q are remarkably similar. If these are the most authentic traditions and
others are secondary myths, a Jesus emerges who is only just Jewish and not focused on
eschatological hope.

According to Kloppenborg, Q can be divided into three strata, the earliest of which consisted of a
collection of wisdom sayings, expanded secondarily by material with a stronger eschatological
flavour. Kloppenborg himself does not argue that the earlier layer existed in isolation from other
traditions later introduced into Q, but this has been the conclusion of some scholars, notably
Mack.

Mack, by selecting the earliest wisdom layer and supporting it with the Gospel of Thomas,
discounts Mark as a fiction, a rationalisation by Mark of Christian failure. By identifying Jesus
with the wisdom layer of Q and Thomas’s gospel, Mack supports the idea of Jesus as a sage of
the Cynics. He was not interested in eschatology or Jewish law and history but challenged the
establishment, like Diogenes.

The Cynics were itinerant preachers of a philosophy of freedom from every constraint and a life
lived with minimal requirements “according to nature”. Flouting social convention, often in a
way that shocked, they derived their name (kynikoi, “dog-like”) from one of their founders, in the
fourth century BC, “the Dog”, Diogenes of Sinope, who went about Athens doing in public all
that a dog did, while hurling insults on spectators and public figures alike. One time while
behaving like a dog in the market place he said, according to Diogenes Laertius:

Would that it were possible to relieve hunger simply by using the hand.  

He was masturbating! The Jews were quite prudish and one of the complaints of the Maccabees
against Greeks culture was its lack of prudishness. Jesus’s and Paul’s prudery have come to us in
Christianity, so cannot have been absent in the earliest Christians. So, it is absurd to imagine that
the first Christians were anything like as liberal as the Cynics.
120 
 

Marcus Borg, also of the Jesus Seminar, made Jesus a Marxist in that he saw society rather than
personal sin as the cause of evil. Borg’s Jesus is more Jewish but is still the model of sage and
spirit person that Borg likes to appeal to popular religious feelings of our day.

The weakness in Mack, Crossan, Borg and the Jesus Seminar is their dismissal of the
eschatological Jesus though they instead make him into an anarchic and outrageous Greek
dissonant. They accept that Jesus began with the eschatological John the Baptist and was
followed by an eschatological Church, but tell us Jesus had no interest in eschatology! Christians
have always sought to deny Jesus’s eschatological aims because they point too clearly to
historical reality. The charge on the cross was not unjust—it was just and legal under Roman
law!

One wonders whether these “scholars” are putting their ideas forward for serious consideration
or for purely cynical reasons—to obfuscate the truth. Commentators can write off all of these
“historical Jesuses” in favour of the twentieth century religious image Christians have, on the
grounds that Jesus can indeed have been anything, an Essene, a recluse, a Greek philosopher, a
married man with children, an Hillel Jew. Yet all of these proposals are not equal in evidential
content. Jesus was a Jew and he was a particular kind of Jew. The evidence for these facts is
overwhelming. It is scarcely less overwhelming to anyone except a Christian that Jesus was what
he died as—a Jewish rebel. Everything else is a smokescreen.

Jesus the Jew 

Another major trend has been to emphasise Jesus’s Jewishness. Jesus’s Jewishness and Torah
observance are central. Jesus did not stand outside his own religious tradition. He was not a
Christian among Jews—he was a Jew. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary called Jesus
a “Jewish preacher”, causing an outcry. A member of the General Synod of the Anglican Church
said this was “a rather derogatory term”.

The Jewish scholar, Vermes, acclaimed Jesus’s Jewishness, as a holy man, a hasid, like Honi the
circle maker or Hanina ben Dosa. Vermes, was reprimanded by chaplains at an English
University for saying Jesus was a Jew! The problem is that Vermes’s rabbinic sources are late.

Sanders too has urged that Judaism should be re-assessed within New Testament scholarship.
Torah as God’s gift and the priority of God’s grace seems clear in the early writings. Sanders has
made a strong case for understanding Jesus in his Jewish context. Sanders emphasises Jesus’s
faithfulness to Torah and his espousal of restoration eschatology.

At his birth, Jesus’s genealogy shows he was a Jew. He was circumcised the eighth day (Lk
2.21), bore a common Jewish name, Yeshua, “Yehouah saves” (Mt 1.21). Yeshua was the fifth
most common Jewish name, four out of the 28 Jewish High-Priests in Jesus’s time were called
Yeshua. Joseph was the second most common male name and Mary the most common amongst
women, this in itself is sufficient evidence to throw doubt on the recently found tomb of “Jesus,
Mary and Joseph”.
121 
 

Mark portrays a clever Jesus engaging in refutation, by wit and aphorism rather than by
argument, against extreme legalist positions. Yet, he evidently observed the law, interpreted it
defended it wittily, expounded its values all in a way acceptable to Judaism of the time because
we find Jews defending him and his followers. He was conservative in sexuality even by Jewish
standards and his dealings with gentiles reflect a conservative Jewish background. Jesus never
wished to see his fellow Jews change one iota of their traditional faith and remained within the
range of acceptable Jewry to his last moment.

Where do we get the idea from that Jesus was a carpenter? Matthew 13:55 based on manuscripts
of Mark only describes Jesus as “son of the carpenter” not as the “carpenter, son of Mary”. The
early third century church writer Origen writes against Celsus’s assertion that Jesus was a mere
carpenter, that “in none of the Gospels current in the churches is Jesus Himself ever described as
being a carpenter!” Yet, the earlier church writer Justin cites it in his dialogue with Tryppho the
Jew:

He was considered to be the son of Joseph the carpenter; and He appeared without comeliness, as the 
scriptures declared; and He was deemed a carpenter (for He was in the habit of working as a carpenter 
when among men, making ploughs and yokes; by which He taught the symbols of righteousness and an 
active life).  

Jesus had brothers and sisters, according to Mark 6:3, James, Joseph, Juda, and Simeon and two
sisters. One brother, James, was the head of the church in Jerusalem as testified in the book of
Acts. The trouble with this is that if Jesus was a member of a botherhood like the Essenes or the
Therapeuts well then his brothers and sisters were not blood brothers and sisters but other
members of the fellowship. It is fair to ask why particular ones should be picked out and called
his brothers. The main reason is that the gentile church wanted to hide the fact that Jesus was a
member of a brotherhood, and so pretended from the outset that references to brothers and sisters
in this context meant real brothers and sisters. Naturally, this plan pre-dated the virgin birth and
the idea that Mary was a perpetual virgin.

According to the gospel legends, by the age of 12 Jesus was found in the temple precincts “both
listening and asking questions” (Lk 2:46). The Jews of Jesus’s era were imitators of the Greeks in
comprehensive universal education. Most were taught to read and write. The philosopher Seneca
remarked that the Jews were the only people who knew the reasons for their religious faith.

The study of Greek in Palestine in Jesus’s day was not encouraged by pious Jews, although it
was a necessity of daily life in the diaspora lands outside of Palestine. Greek philosophy was
equally deprecated by Jews who were not Hellenistic. Early church theologians were later to
remark “what has Athens to do with Jerusalem” decrying Greek thinking.

Jesus said a blessing at meals (Mt 26:26 and Lk 24:30 which is post resurrection; cf. Didache
10:1). Jewish scholars used to hold that the object of the blessing was not the food but God (Dt
8:10;). When the New Testament inserts “it” or “the bread” in such verses it is not found in the
Greek. A Jew would not bless the object rather than the creator. Many such mistakes are made
based on the assumption that first century Judaism was Rabbinic. Jesus was an Essene and they
122 
 

treated meals as a messianic meal. The Scrolls (1QSa 2:10) tell us that the Priest blessed the
“first fruits of the bread and wine”.

Sanders makes the point that much of Jesus’s teaching makes the law strict. The Essenes had the
stricter view of the law. Our Jewish sources also offer examples of the kind of emphasis on
attitude in relation to sexual behaviour and anger which characterised Jesus’s teaching.

The eschatological focus of much of the Jesus tradition makes good sense in the light of the
diverse eschatological expectations of the day, which crystallised around would-be messiahs or
prophets of hope.

Eschatology 

Jesus’s eschatology is expressed most often with his favorite term: “the kingdom of God”—the
expectation that God would cleanse the land and rule it directly, restoring Israel to wholeness,
liberating her from her oppressors, and bringing righteousness and peace. The hope was an
expectation of changed reality, especially for the people of Israel—Jews not gentiles—for whom
it was Good News. His vision implied a political or military solution, whether God’s alone or
one assisted by the Chosen People. His hope was an urgent one like that of John the Baptist. His
own ministry indicated that the hope was beginning to be realised.

The imagery associated with this hope in the Jesus tradition reflects prophetic hope for Israel’s
restoration, the gathering of the lost and scattered sheep, the eschatological banquet, the renewal
or rebuilding of the temple, the establishment of new leadership in Israel, healing and
deliverance.

John Bowden, SCM Editor, warns New Testament readers to distinguish between symbolism and
history. the darkness at the crucifixion cannot have been an eclipse as interpreters of the stories
have often assumed but even some early commentators realised. The darkness comes from the
prophecies of the cosmic events that would accompany the End Time (Joel). In the same way,
the rising of the saints from their tombs, spoken of in Matthew, symbolises the general
resurrection prophesied for the righteous dead (the saints) at the End Time. Bowden urges us to
see all of this as sensible and reasonable in terms of Jewish beliefs at the time, but why then
cannot the healing of the blind, the deaf and the maimed be seen as equally symbolic rather than
as actual miracles? The driving out of devils might be metaphorical too. None of them need to be
miracles but all relate to beliefs of the time, beliefs that provided for the Essenes a technical code
language based on the Jewish scriptures.
123 
 

Wright’s work, Jesus and the Victory of God on the historical Jesus, takes Sanders’s notion of
restoration eschatology further but, he reassures Christians, Jewish apocalyptic did not imply the
end of the world. Jesus was offering an alternative to the way of being Israel, which, if pursued,
would lead the nation to disaster.

There is virtually no evidence that Jews were expecting the end of the space‐time universe. There is 
abundant evidence that they… knew a good metaphor when they saw one, and used cosmic imagery to 
bring out the full theological significance of cataclysmic socio‐political events.  

It was only warning about Israel’s immediate future. So, all that talk and imagery about a
judgement day, resurrection, being at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the restored Israel,
and so on simply mean that Jews should take care! How could there be such confusion of
understanding of eschatology apparently shared by James, Jesus and John the Baptist, and that of
the early church?

The truth is the Essenes saw the kingdom of God as a renovated world. Heaven and earth joined,
destroying forever the old wicked world but creating a new one that differed only from the old in
being perfect and uncorruptible. The old world ended for the wicked but the righteous were
resurrected in uncorruptible and therefore immortal bodies into the purified world—the
kingdom! If Wright is correct, the wicked world was not meant to end. People just had to start
being good—just what modern Christians want to think.

Christians are preoccupied with titles of authority. They took it as given that Jesus was the
messiah then looked for as many titles as possible that they could give him. References to Jesus
as messiah are few and so ambiguous that, if Jesus saw himself as messiah, he left no indication
of what he understood by it, other than the messiah of Jewish expectation—a leader of god’s
armies. The general was soon made king—as they are—and replaced the kingdom of God as the
centre of Christian preaching.

What of the expression, Son of Man? It is taken by Christians to mean the vision of Daniel 7. But
in Palestine at the time, it was a polite self designation intended to avoid the conceit of using “I”.
If this was a common use, then how was the special meaning given it by Jesus meant to be
distinguished from the everyday use? Most people will have understood it as derekh eretz—
Jewish etiquette.

Clever men Speak of Jesus 

J D Crossan admits Jesus was not preaching himself as John’s gospel seems to make out, but was
preaching God’s kingdom. E P Sanders agrees, but sees Jesus as an eschatological prophet,
preparing the people for the future coming of God’s kingdom. John Meier also agrees except that
Jesus was an eschatological teacher for whom God’s kingly rule was already present but not yet
complete.

Christians like crazy ideas about Jesus because they can then say that Jesus is anything that
people want him to be, so he might as well be the orthodox Jesus Christ of the Christian
churches. These writers cited are however more or less correct. No one other than the
124 
 

deliberately obtuse or those desperate to lie for God, can deny that Jesus was an echatological
figure calling people to repentance in the immediate expectation of the coming kingdom. The
kingdom had not come but was imminent at any moment. The urgency of it was the
characteristic message of Jesus deliberately ignored by Christian commentators because 2000
years have passed since, proving that Jesus was wrong in his expectation. Albert Schweitzer
might have said, “There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the life of
Jesus”, but he was himself certain of one thing—that Jesus thought he was acting in the End
Time.

There is no doubt that Jesus came to believe that he was the messiah, and in the sense that the
messiah was the immediate instigator of the kingdom of God in earth—that his own actions were
initiating the arrival of the kingdom. Borg, Crossan, and Mack were therefore right in thinking
that Jesus believed the kingdom was already present in embryo in his ministry, but it had not yet
arrived. Meier was right that it was both present and future, and Sanders was right that it was still
to come, though soon—very soon!

But Jesus was not preaching any form of reform of society. He saw the kingdom as coming by a
revolution against the rule of Rome and the Jewish apostates who collaborated with the Romans.
Once Jews showed their true desires by military rejection of the Romans then God would act to
secure His bride, Israel. God was forever devoted to Israel as a bride and a groom, whence the
importance of marriage and divorce parables. They were parables of the kingdom, not
suggestions about how couples should behave.

This kingdom is about God, not Jesus himself, and is on earth. Jesus is a Jew, and the early
kingdom movement—the expectation of God’s earthly rule and Israel’s liberation from foreign
oppression—is not the founding of a religion called Christianity but a Jewish phenomenon. The
historical Jesus and the Jesus of the early church bear little resemblance to one another. The
church had to deliberately distort the stories brought by Jews from Judaea after the diaspora of
70 AD. Even more tenuous is the connexion between the historical Jesus and later Christianity.

John the Baptist exerted tremendous influence over Jesus and his message. While contemporary
scholars would acknowledge that the relation with the Baptist is one of the most likely authentic
pieces of the gospel traditions since the evangelists seem embarrassed by it, Meier develops the
idea that Jesus was probably part of the Baptist’s early circle and his fiery apocalyptic theology
was a constant in Jesus’s own ministry. Meier fails to understand that the Baptist was Jesus’s
predecessor in a movement already established. We know them as the Essenes. Meier thinks that
when Jesus left the Baptist to start his own ministry, he took some of the Baptist’s followers with
him. In fact, there is no reason not to believe that the Baptist was jailed and Jesus had to take
over the leadership from him.

The Spread of Christianity 

Jesus’s view of himself differed widely from the early church’s. He came to see himself as the
Messiah, but he did not see himself as divine. Sanders remarks that Jesus may have died a
disappointed man. The earliest gospel reports his final cry from the cross to be one of utter
despair:
125 
 

My God, my God why have you forsaken me?  

It is difficult for a rational mind to see why there should be any doubt about it, except that
Sanders wants to dilute the message to avoid offence to the believing masses. As if to emphasize
the rejection, the earth went dark, symbolically showing that God—who is light—had indeed
forsaken him.

Other apocalyptic leaders have arisen throughout the course of Jewish history—Bar Kosiba and
Sabbatai Sevi drew significant numbers of loyal followers—but their movements did not last.
The reason is ultimately that the spread of Judaism into the gentile world had happened already
and could not happen again. The existing Judaism for gentiles naturally would resist any other.

Moreover, the spread of Christianity depended on a set of circumstances that could not be
repeated. The central fact was that the corpse of Jesus disappeared and the followers decided that
the revolutuion had actually succeeded. Jesus was the first to rise as prophesied into the kingdom
of God. This was obviously the center of Christianity as Paul soon after established without
doubt. It was the belief that Jesus had risen that started Christianity.

Crossan denies this. He thinks the remarkable spread of Christianity was the miracle not the
resurrection—but without the resurrection there would have been no belief to spread! Claudia
Setzer, whose obsevations this is a comment on, concludes that the transformation of some
disappointed messianists into a dynamic movement is one of the fascinating stories of history.
Indeed it is, and we can explain it now with a good deal of probability of being historically
correct.

The Hidden Jesus 

Dr Michael D Magee has stiffened the quest for the historical Jesus with a little realism in his
1997 book The Hidden Jesus: The Secret Testament Revealed. He sticks to the earliest tradition
we have, as agreed by most biblical scholars, that of the gospel of Mark, and interprets it in the
light of the discoveries in the Judaean desert. John is too overlaid with legend to be anything
other than secondary and Matthew and Luke are used only to enlarge upon the skimpier material
in Mark.

Much of Q, the hypothetical document used by some Jesus seminar scholars to reject a
revolutionary Jesus, is considered to be pre-Jesus, being a collection of Essene wisdom sayings
many of which were doubtless used by Jesus but tell us nothing about his career except when
they are linked to the narrative of Mark.

Ancient history, where important elements of a story have been lost or deliberately destroyed, is
a matter of judging probabilities. Dr Magee accepts much of the tradition of Mark, but believes it
is not presented at face value as Christians do. Some things are unlikely to be invented, like
Jesus’s eschatology and his baptism by John the Baptist. What is embarrassing to Christianity is
likely to be genuine because there is no other good reason for it being in the tradition at all. Other
embarrassing elements have been purposely distorted, because tales were emerging that had to be
explained away.
126 
 

Though Mark is the earliest and best tradition, it has been deliberately distorted by the gentile
bishops to make the gospels acceptable to the Romans and the basis of a universal religion. Dr
Magee peels off the pious accretions and interpretative wrappings added by the earliest gentile
bishops to the story of the exploits of Jesus.

The truth is peculiarly transparent, although two thousand years of conditioning and the
invention of spurious translations of Greek words to suit Christian belief in the so-called New
Testament Greek have succeeded in blinding even the most critical of scholars.

The gentile bishops of the embryonic religion were faced with travelers’ tales from Palestine that
Jesus was not what he seemed. This oral tradition was strong because Jews were already
widespread in the Empire and after the defeat of their rebellion in the Jewish War and their
dispersion in 70 AD many more arrived from Palestine.

Pericopes, individual stories about Jesus, kept coming to the bishops and when they did not
match their preferred image of a saintly Son of God, had to be “corrected”. The bishops had to
say to their flocks:

Ho, Ho, Theophilus, how silly you are. It was not quite like that. No, this is what really happened. 

Then they would change a few subjects and objects and retell the tale such that a core remained
but the sense favoured the view they were propagating rather than the truth. It still happens
today. There never was a gate in Jerusalem called “The Eye of a Needle” but it was invented by
clerics to allow the rich to be saved when the plain sense of Jesus’s aside was that he considered
it impossible for the rich to be saved.

The resurrection and appearances that gave rise to Christianity are about the disciples’
perceptions. In the minds of the disciples, Jesus had been vindicated through the disappearance
of his body and this provided not only evidence of his exaltation to God’s presence as the first
fruits of the dead, the first of the Righteous to have been raised up by God in the general
resurrection prophesied in Hosea, but also of the truth of his claim that the kingdom of God was
at hand.

God’s restoration of the world was a restoration of the sinless world before Adam! The
Righteous were resurrected into the world but it was now joined to heaven and was therefore
perfect and incorruptible. That Jesus had been resurrected into this higher order of reality proved,
for them that history had ended. In summary:

1. Was Jesus an Essene? Christians deny it. There are some similarities, they say, but too many 
differences. This book shows Jesus was indeed an Essene, and one of their leaders, and explains 
why there were differences from the Essenes described by Josephus, the Roman historian.  
2. What is the meaning of the word, Nazarene? Does it really refer to a previously unknown 
hamlet, as Christians believe, or was this an invention to hide its real meaning?  
3. Did Jesus really try to tell every Jew in Palestine at the time to love their Roman oppressors? 
Why then do even the gospels contradict this? Was his message intended only for Jews and 
127 
 

meant to be a rallying cry against gentiles? The Christian universal faith depends on this being 
untrue.  
4. Why do demons get driven out of opponents of Jesus when he and his henchmen arrive on the 
scene? Why are these people torn and left for dead? Was it because the disciples were doing 
the tearing and beating to silence the opposition?  
5. Why are Jesus’s main apostles given such thuggish nicknames? Could it be that they really were 
thugs, or zealots as they came to be known? Christians pretend they were pacifists but is that 
because the early church had to paint such a picture to disguise the opposite, and has done so 
ever since?  
6. What did Jesus consider to be God’s when he, according to Christians, agreed to pay the tribute 
money, saying, “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto god what is God’s?” Aren’t the 
only characteristic possessions claimed by God, His Children and the land he promised them? 
Jesus was refusing to pay tribute when he uttered this famous sentence.  
7. What was the unbindable, savage demon that Jesus rendered impotent when it revealed itself 
to be really 2000 Gadarene swine and to have the name Legion? Is Gadarene, an inland town 
the correct name for these swine? What was the Field of Akeldama where guts were spilled, 
gentiles were supposed to have lain asleep and had the nickname the field of blood? Who were 
the Galilaeans whose blood was spilt in the temple?  
8. Why did Jesus curse an innocent fig tree? Could it have had anything to do with the fig tree 
being a symbol of Rome?  

Why have these questions not been adequately answered? Forget the obfuscations of the Jesus
Seminar. All these and many more questions are convincingly and controversially answered in
“The Hidden Jesus” which can be ordered from good booksellers and libraries and is available
by mail order at £14.49 inc p&p (UK) or $30 inc shipping and dollar conversion(US)..

This book is a tour de force. For honest reasoning people, though not those who are irrational or
emotionally dependent on the traditional image of Jesus, gospel stories will never be the same
again-they now make sense. Oddly, the message of many modern Christians is upheld-that God
is not an external supernatural entity ready to interfere with the world at a whim or a prayer.

Jesus believed an external God was ready to intervene—he was forsaken or rather mistaken—but
Christians have made the same mistake ever since, teaching people to blame devils instead of
facing up to their own responsibility for their actions. Our gods and devils are within us and there
we must seek and come to terms with them.

This picture of Christ is the most powerful and original one of our century, but it is negative in
that Christianity is found to be based on a mistake, and that Jesus was not really the Son of God
but merely had that title as a priest and prince. All this is hardly the basis of a religion.

It is because this undesirable but realistic and historic Christ is at the core of the Christian
religion that such a profusion of fanciful alternatives have always been sought. Recent years
have seen the promotion of a gay Christ, a feminist Christ, Christ as a druggie and Christ as an
alien from outer space. The hope of the true believers is that the historic Jesus will turn out to be
just another Christ of his times, no “truer” to the original than the cosmic Christ of the Byzantine
world.
128 
 

Then again, no! Many Christian theologians want to get the historic Christ out in the open so that
the Christian churches can metamorphose themselves into the purely mystical concoction of
mystery beliefs that it rapidly picked up from the religions of the times. For such Christians, the
Christ of history was always likely eventually to be exposed by an Alexander who cared not for
the conventions and respectabilities of his times and unceremoniously cut through the Gordian
knot of lies that Christianity had to be to escape the unpalatable truth. When it happens, they can
gulp, breathe a sigh of relief and then get on with it, declaring that nevertheless there is a
saviour—it is simply that he is a heavenly one. For people ready to believe in Christ the alien, it
will be a great advance.

Before you go, think about this… 
Christians object, quite naturally, to the Islamists saying they want to destroy western values, but the 
previous destruction of western values—Pagan ones—by the Christians themselves, bringing down the 
Roman empire and setting up a thousand year dark age was quite all right! Early Christian 
propagandists, like S Caesarius, Bishop of Arles, who died in 546 AD, preached endlessly, and in a 
popular rabble rousing style, of the need to end Paganism. Rome had collapsed only a few decades 
before and had not yet advanced far in its long decline, but there was no letting up for the Christian 
demolition men. He continued to urge a people whose society was collapsing around them to give it 
every assistance in so doing—temples must be destroyed, altars pushed over, and sacred groves burnt 
along with all the little wayside shrines that dotted the countryside, and all left with no trace. If 
someone disagreed and tried to defend tradition, leniency was misplaced, they must be assaulted and 
chastised by cutting off their hair, and, if they persisted, by flogging them and shackling them in “iron 
fetters” to keep them “from mischief”. 
129 
 

How to Understand the Bible as History


Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.  

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) 

10. Was Christ a Fiction?


© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, September 10, 1999
Thursday, 08 September 2005

• Jesus Never Lived  
• Evangelical Fly Fishing  
• The Fiction of the Gospels  
• Internal Tests and Consistency of the Gospels  
• Jewish And Pagan Witnesses  
• Mythological Hero  
• Crucifixion  
• Mythological Language  
• Forty Years  
• Objective History?  
• A Broad View  

Abstract 
Robert M Price, a former evangelist turned battling skeptic, asks, “Was Christ a Fiction?”. Price declares 
he was in more ways than one. The worst way is that Jesus is really the fly used by evangelists, priests 
and other crooks to catch people to control them. Apologists’ say there was “too little time between the 
death of Jesus and the writing of the gospels for legends to develop”, but 40 years is quite sufficient. In 
any case, apologists cannot face the argument that Jesus never existed because their whole mentality 
presupposes a Jesus who died around 30 AD. That Christ is mythical means there was no Jesus alive in 
Pontius Pilate�s time to give rise to a legend but instead, Pilate�s time was later selected as the time 
when Jesus lived. Orally transmitted legends usually come from the generation before last. 
130 
 

Jesus Never lived.  

The clergy pour scorn on the denial of the historicity of Jesus. Yet, “Did Jesus Ever Live?” is a
serious question. From the time of Bruno Bauer to the end of the twentieth century, scholars
argued that no historical evidence existed to prove that Jesus ever lived at all. Bauer thought
scripture offered no sure evidence that he lived. People whose historical existence was as certain
as the sun to whole ages—Hercules, King Arthur, Homer, William Tell—have proved to be
legendary. Adam is a legend, Samson is a legend, Moses and Abraham are legends. If the
historicity of Jesus is so certain, where are the indisputable witnesses to it? Among the scholars
that thought the life of Jesus was a complete fabrication were the following.

J M Robertson, an English theologian, who argued in The Historical Jesus: A Survey of Positions
(1916) and The Jesus problem: A Restatement of the Myth Theory (1917) that all the elements of
Christianity can be derived from the mystery religions. Christianity was built on the model of the
mysteries because they were fashionable and to combine them with the Jewish scriptures that
were also widely admired. Jesus is, thus, a Jewish Osiris, Mithras or Adonis created for gentile
use.

Arthur Drew, a German Hegelian philosopher, in his books Christ Myth (1924) and Legend of
Peter (1924), argued that first century Christianity was a social ethical movement which needed
no founder to explain its rise. A long standing feature of the Semitic world was an annual
sacrifice of a “Son of the Father”—Barabbas, originally called Jesus Barabbas. This may account
for the myth that an historical person, Jesus, actually lived.

G A Wells, of Birkbeck college, London, in Did Jesus Exist? also concluded that Jesus never
existed. If he had existed, we should have a more detailed description of him. The lack of many
details of him that we could reasonably expect of a historical person leaves us with two options:

• He did exist but made no significant impact.  
• He did not exist but was invented like Osiris to explain Pauline religion.  

Latterly, Earl Doherty has presented similar arguments in The Jesus Puzzle, and on his excellent
website. Former evangelical theologian, Robert Price, thinks there is no convincing historical
evidence that Jesus ever lived.
131 
 

Evangelical Fly Fishing  

Robert M Price is a former evangelist turned battling skeptic who declares Jesus Christ to be a
fiction, in more ways than one. The worst way is that Jesus is really the fly used by evangelists,
priests and other crooks whose real interest is to catch people to control them.

As Price puts it, Christ is shorthand for the institutions on whose behalf he is invoked. When an
evangelist invites you to have faith “in Christ”, they are smuggling in other issues—
Chalcedonian Christology, the doctrine of the Trinity, the Protestant idea of faith and grace, a
particular theory of biblical inspiration and literalism or inerrancy, habits of church attendance,
anti-Darwinism and other questions that theologians have debated for centuries and still have not
agreed.

No evangelist ever invites people to accept Christ by faith and then to start examining all these
other associated issues for themselves. They are non-negotiable, but yet are not taught by the
godly chap the punter signed up for. To be saved they have to toe the party line. So the gullible
or weak punter signs up for Christ and gets a mass of largely conservative political doctrine on
someone else’s say-so.

Christ is a fiction because he is not simply the god-sent saviour of souls but an umbrella for
unquestioning acceptance of what some institution tells us to believe, usually ready made right-
wing politics. This is what Christianity always was as Paul proves when he wants “the taking of
every thought captive to Christ”, and insists on the “obedience” of faith. Christ is a euphemism
for the dogmatic party line of an institution.

Price also shows that Jesus as the personal saviour, with whom people have a “personal
relationship” is fictional—a comfort blanket or Harvey the Rabbit for children and grown ups
alike. If it proves a psychological help, the personal Jesus might be of value, but all the rest of
the package has to be accepted too, as noted above, and that often ends up no longer purely
personal.

It is hard for anyone of a reasonable nature to discredit all this but Price has other ways in which
Jesus is fictional too, and one at least virtually implies that history is bunk! He says Christ might
not be based on any historical individual, not only in the sense that the “Christ of faith” is an
invention of theologians—a Christian lucky rabbit’s foot with lashings of gravitas—but, no Jesus
ever lived in first century Nazareth. There only ever was a Christ of faith and there was no Jesus
of history.

The Fiction of the Gospels 

Christianity perfectly illustrates evolution in religion. Central ideas pass from age to age, but
here and there a refinement is made and occasionally a breakaway gives a novel synthesis of the
central tenets. The chief teachings of Jesus, even his phrases and moral sentiments to a great
extent, were paralleled in the literature of the time and common to priests of Isis, Serapis,
Esmun, Apollo, Mithras, Ormuzd, and Yehouah, as well as wandering Stoic apostles. Not one
point in the teaching of Christ was new to the world. The chief doctrinal features of the Christ of
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the gospels—the birth, death, and resurrection—were familiar myths at the time, and were taken
from Paganism.

Who wrote the gospels? No one knows. They do not claim to be written by any named authors.
They are entitled “According to X”, where X is Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. They do not
claim to be “by Matthew”, etc. Even if they professed to be written by definite people, it would
not follow that they were. And even if Luke was written by a man called Luke, he admits in Luke
1:1-3 that he is not an eyewitness but is writing, as “many” others have done before him, an
account of what they have heard about Jesus.

Historians ask two questions about any reporter, “Did he know the facts?”, and, “Is he truthful?”.
Did the men who wrote the gospels know the facts? Were they truthful? The vampires who foster
superstition in the minds of the young and the simple are categorical that the writers were
eyewitnesses and, as God’s instruments, could be nothing other than honest. Yet, the gospel
writers were doing exactly what the priests and preachers have done since—lying to win over
gullible minds.

It will not do, and is no defence to say, “But we know it is true.” That too is a lie. They do not
know it, however convinced they think they are. Millions of people are convinced they are being
abducted nightly by aliens, but no one else sees them. The proper word for such conviction is
delusion. They are not remotely likely to be true.

The growth of such legends can be seen in fairly recent times. The Persian reformer, Ali
Mohammed, called the “Bab” (Gate), a founder of the religion which became the Bahai faith,
gained adherents in the west and biographies of him were written after his martyrdom at the
hands of the Persian Shah. In 1844 AD, after a series of visions, he set out to reform the Moslem
creed and to bring people back to the worship of a purely spiritual God. He and hundreds of his
followers were put to death, in 1850, by the Persian government with the connivance of the
ayatollahs. The first biographies written about him were simple accounts of the life of a saintly
Moslem, but biographies toward the end of the nineteenth century were embellished with all
sorts of miraculous and unbelievable additions.

Enthusiasm, even innocently, always glorifies its cause with miracles. This magnification of an
exceptional but perfectly human person happened little more than a century ago. Why then
couldn’t it happen in far more gullible and less well recorded times? The gospels were not
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written until some decades after Jesus’s death, and must be read with caution, for even the best
people can be found to be unreliable witnesses with the passage of time. When Spiritualism first
became a fad, an eminent British judge published some such experiences he had earlier had.
Questioned, he was compelled to admit his memory was wrong in every important detail.

So, if the gospels were not written until several decades after the death of Jesus, if the stories
about him passed from mouth to mouth for a generation after his death, absolute faith cannot be
placed in them, and those who urge it are dishonest. In those days, few ordinary people could
read and write. Moreover, the Romans had scattered the Jews over the earth in the year 70 AD,
and the Hebraic Jews had earlier scattered the first Hellenized Christians. The story passed from
mouth to mouth in these confused circumstances for several decades.

Internal Tests and Consistency of the Gospels 

Christian writers try to apply what they call internal tests of the consistency of the New
Testament. They say the description of places, customs and daily life in Judaea is so confident
and precise in the gospels that the writers were evidently familiar with the country at the time.

Consider these. Prescott, the American historian of the conquest of Mexico and Peru, who
vividly portrayed these countries never saw either land—he was blind. Take the book of Daniel,
as vivid and precise and circumstantial in the descriptions of its time and place in ancient
Babylonia as any gospel. It is a known forgery, written centuries after the time it describes. The
same is true of much of the Old Testament. H G Wells minutely and accurately described
Labrador in one of his novels. Few people doubted he had been there. He had not! He read and
researched the place and used his creative imagination. So internal consistency is no guarantee of
authenticity. Such tests are useless. They would break down hopelessly in Homer. They would
prove that Dante had really visited hell. They would make Keats a native of Corinth.

In any case, the Christian claims for these tests are false. The gospels display only a general and
often inaccurate knowledge. Blatant errors in them do not support the idea that their authors lived
in Palestine at the time. The Christian response is to completely change their tack and say that
careless errors are human and prove that the gospel writers did live in Palestine! Mark, the oldest
gospel, is inaccurate in Jewish customs and imprecise in topography.

The appearances, the principal evidence Christians offer, cannot be proved by anybody to have
been in Mark originally—what we now read has been added, as not even Christian scholars
attempt to dispute. A sketch of the life of Jesus, the framework of the first three gospels, is most
purely seen in Mark. Matthew and, to a lesser extent Luke, used a collection of teachings to
augment the sketch. If Christians dismiss this as hypothetical, let them reflect on their own
position. They trust the gospels without any evidence, and without making the least inquiry into
their authority. Preachers dogmatically assert the gospels were inspired, though the opening
verses of Luke declare he used sources, and Christians take their word as simply as a child.

Criticism of the gospels began when Christian clergy tried to prove the historicity of Jesus. It
backfired, casting doubt on the whole myth. The miraculous birth, the resurrection and
ascension, the nature miracles and the healing miracles had to be abandoned by Christians who
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refused to abandon their reason. The response of the other set of Christians was to denigrate the
investigation.

All the gospels were written long after the supposed events. There is no evidence that the gospels
existed much before the end of the first century and much to suggest they did not, except perhaps
Mark. Mark seems to have been written between 65 and 70 AD, Matthew and Luke in the last
decade of the first century, and John in the second century, a hundred years after the hero had
died! Mark knows nothing about the miraculous birth of Christ, the first account of which turns
up at least ninety years after the supposed event! No Christian writer mentions or makes any
clear and certain quotation from any gospel until a hundred years after the death of Jesus. That is
serious, surely.

Clement of Rome wrote an important letter about 96 AD, and a second letter bearing his name,
though probably a Christian forgery, was written later. About the same time was also written the
so-called Epistle of Barnabas and the Teaching of the Apostles. None of them quote from, or
refer to, the gospels. The Shepherd of Hermas, and letters of Bishops Ignatius and Polycarp, in
the second century, do not mention the gospels or makes a clear quotation from them. They
quote certain words which roughly correspond to some gospel expressions but, by the second
century, sayings of Christ circulated in the Church. The Sayings of Our Lord (or Logia), a
second-century fragment containing seven sayings, only two of which are from the gospels,
suggesting the writer did not know the gospels.

A hundred years ago, long before the Jesus Seminar participants were born, a committee of
historians and clergy were appointed to study this question by the Oxford University Society of
Historical Theology. They confirmed that there was no trace of gospels until about the middle of
the second century AD. It never impinged on an active brain cell in the head of the average
Christian punter or deterred the dishonest parasites who read them sermons.

Not until about 140 or 150 AD do Christian writers refer to and quote from the gospels. They are
known to Justin, Marcion and Papias. Papias, the Bishop of Herapolis, is known to us only from
quotations by the fourth century historian Eusebius, a man who freely admitted that lying was
acceptable to the church, if it led to the greater glory of God! This fourth-century quotation by a
lying Christian historian of a second-century obscure bishop is the only serious evidence for the
gospels! Papias says that he learned from older men that Mark and Matthew really wrote gospels.
It is not evidence that any historian would credit, and the clergy do not believe it.

The Christian usually knows nothing about the first century world and so cannot appreciate any
of this. They imagine a loyal group of virtuous men and women meeting secretly here and there,
at Corinth or Ephesus or Thessalonica, to break bread and pray to Jesus. In truth, from about 50
to 150 AD, early Christianity was an intense ferment of contradictory speculations. Greek,
Persian, Jewish, Egyptian, and all kinds of religious ideas were blended to form varieties of
Christianity. A score of these varieties and their intellectual leaders are known. Gradually they
were thrust outside the Church and called Gnosticism but in the first century and the early part of
the second Christian they were Christianity.
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The gospels took shape in this world. Men like Paul went from group to group, much as cheap
evangelicals do today, and preached the new gospel for money. To judge by his epistles, Paul
had little to say about an earthly life of Jesus—his Jesus was Christ, a god, virtually from the
beginning. That someone sat down one day and, under inspiration, wrote a gospel is a childish
belief spread by dishonest manipulators, who themselves know differently. Luke’s gospel admits
the truth.

For decades, stories about a man called Jesus circulated, some describing him as a Jewish bandit
and others as a dying and rising god. The faithful talked about Christ’s impending return and
skeptics decried it. There were too many consistent stories about the bandit for the Christian
bishops to ignore. They could not simply deny them without creating the worse problem of how
the god had got such a bad reputation. They had to explain the tales as misunderstood stories
about the god. They therefore retold them to their flocks, keeping as much of the original as they
could whilst making the tale acceptable. They found an excellent way of doing this was by
converting the original story into some kind of miracle, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Here and there, some of the few who could write put upon parchment what was being said. Our
four gospels are just four that were selected in the fourth century out of a large number of
contradictory stories about Jesus, going about. There was no central authority to check them, so
sometimes contradictory explanations were made and the New Testament now has both. There
was not the slightest approach to what we call standardization.

You may think it probable that Jesus really did this or that, but you cannot call it an historical
fact because it is in the gospels. For forty or more years the faithful waited for the return of their
resurrected god, but it never happened. It was for this reason that the gospels were written, to aid
the cognoscenti of the religion, the bishops and priests, but to judge by their absence in
correspondence, they were kept as apocrypha for almost a century before the church began to
refer to them openly.

Jewish And Pagan Witnesses 

In the way of non-biblical witnesses to Christ, we have only “twenty-four lines” from Jewish and
Pagan writers, four of which are accepted as spurious. Of the twenty genuine lines twelve (which
most people also regard as spurious) are in the Jewish historian, Josephus. The immense Latin
literature of the century after the death of Jesus has only eight lines about him and each of these
is disputed.

While the rebellion of Jesus might have caused a temporary stir in Rome, his crucifixion would
have been heard of with relief and dismissal, and his teachings would have made no impact at all
on any Roman writer. Yet it never strikes the Christian as strange or ironic that God should have
lived on earth, for the salvation of everyone and died as the ultimate sacrifice, dwarfing every
event in human history, without arranging for more publicity than half a dozen disputed lines.

The silence, from the Christian point of view, is blaring. Since Christians were apostates from
Essenism, Jewish writers were hostile to them, both as apostates and as Essenes. Philo and
Josephus spoke about the Essenes but had reason not to give any publicity to the Christian heresy
136 
 

that pretended to be Judaism for gentiles. Philo was born about the same time as Jesus. He was
interested in the Essenes or their brothers the Therapeutae and people of a contemplative nature,
as Jesus is traditionally depicted, and might be expected to mention Jesus and his followers. If he
ever did, it was censored at a later date by the Christians.

The historian, Flavius Josephus, was a Palestinian Jew, born at Jerusalem in 37 AD, a man of
high connexions and great culture. He was intensely interested in religious questions, and he
gives a detailed an account of the Essenian monks, with whom Jesus was connected, in one of
his works. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, he resided in Rome and wrote his works,
the chief of which are his History of the Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities. In one or other of
these lengthy and exhaustive works he would, though a Pharisee, reasonably be expected to
speak of Jesus and his followers. He even includes, in Jewish Antiquities, a full and unflattering
portrait of Pontius Pilate, and he tells of other zealots and reformers in the Jewish history of the
time. In the Jewish Antiquities, 18:3 is the following passage:

About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed be should be called man. He wrought miracles, and 
was a teacher of those who gladly accept the truth, and had a large following among the Jews and 
pagans. He was the Christ. Although Pilate, at the complaint of the leaders of our people, condemned 
him to die on the cross, his earlier followers were faithful to him. For he appeared to them alive again on 
the third day, as god‐sent prophets had foretold this and a thousand other wonderful things of him. The 
tribe of the Christians, which is called after him, survives until the present day.  

This passage is so obviously spurious that no competent theologian or historian accepts it.
Josephus was a zealous Jew and most of this is rank blasphemy from the Jewish point of view. It
hints that Jesus was divine, that he taught the truth, that he wrought miracles, that he rose from
the dead, and that the messianic prophecies of the scriptures expressly refer to him. To imagine
Josephus writing such things is preposterous. It is a Christian interpolation.

Was a real reference to Jesus cut out by the Christian censor and replaced by this clumsy
forgery? Probably. Making a zealous Jew recognize Jesus as “the Christ” at the height of the
bitter feud of Jews and Christians was clumsy enough but he would hardly pick any random page
of the historian for his purpose. It is likely that he found there a reference to Jesus that he blue-
penned, and substituted his own piece, but left untouched the last sentence of the passage, which
would be just as odd for a Christian to write.

The next most important reference to Jesus is in the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus
(15:44). He mentions the fire which burned down the poorer quarters of Rome in the year
64 AD. Nero is thought to have ordered the fire, which caused great misery at the time, and,
Tacitus says, the Emperor diverted suspicion by blaming the Christians for it and persecuting
them:

To put an end to this rumour therefore, Nero laid the blame on, and visited with severe punishment, 
those men, hateful for their crimes, whom the people call Christians. He, from whom the name was 
derived, Christus, was put to death by the Procurator Pontius Pilatus in the reign of Tiberius. 
137 
 

Tacitus goes on to describe how “an immense multitude” of Christians were put to death with
fiendish torments, and were convicted “not so much of the crime of arson as of hatred of the
human race”.

This passage has many peculiar features. There cannot possibly have been “an immense
multitude” of Christians at Rome in 64 AD. Only a few thousand were there a hundred years
later. Though it looks like a Christian interpolation, Tacitus has one of the most distinctive and
difficult styles in Latin literature, and, if this whole passage is a forgery, it is a perfect imitation.
However, only the few words about the crucifixion matter, and a good Latin scholar could easily
forge those. Some scholars believe it to be a forgery in its entirety, and that there was no
persecution of Christians under Nero. The short sentence about Pilate may be an interpolation,
but the peculiarities of the style of Tacitus count against the whole passage being forged.

Tacitus is supposed to have written this about the year 117 AD, ninety years after the death of
Jesus. What does it prove? Only that after the year 100 there was a general belief in the Christian
community that Jesus was crucified at the order of Pontius Pilate. That was not new at the time,
the reference to Pilate in 1 Timothy, whether Pauline or not, probably being as old as that. And
three of the gospels were then written, though were not apparently widely available.

Some Christian writers argue that Tacitus must have seen the official record of the crucifixion.
Tacitus was not the man to look up the archives, ninety years later, for such a thing or the type to
be interested in such a point. He did not do such research, being much more of a gossipy type of
historian rather than a meticulously researched one. If the passage is genuine, it shows only that
there were in 117 AD Christians in Rome who said these things—nobody doubts it.

Another Roman historian of about the same date, Suetonius, has an obscure passage, in his Life
of Claudius (chapter 26), which seems to refer to the Christians:

Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome because, at the instigation of Chrestos, they were always making 
trouble. 

This sentence would be quite meaningless as a Christian interpolation, but Chrestos was quite a
common Greek name, and it might have nothing to do with Christ. It would be too remarkable a
coincidence to find the Jews rioting about someone named Chrestos just about the time that they
might have been rioting about the messiah, or Christ in Greek. Suetonius, unfamiliar with the
word Christos, has understood it to be Chrestos. Claudius died in the year 54 AD, and it is
possible that sectarian fighting between Jews and Christians at Rome over messianism caused
the rioting. Possibly the riots were between Hellenized and Hebraic factions of Christianity, like
those we read of in Acts, into which other Jews were drawn. In any event they tell us no more, at
best, that some Jews as early as this thought the messiah had been. And, if Suetonius did not
understand the word Christos when he wrote in 120 or 130 AD, Christianity cannot have been
known to him even so late.

Of the twenty lines, there remain only five in a letter of Pliny the younger to the Emperor Trajan.
They say that the Christians were numerous enough in the province of Bithynia (in Asia Minor),
of which Pliny was Governor, to cause him concern, but he speaks of them as respectable, law-
138 
 

abiding folk who meet to sing hymns at daybreak to Christ “as a God”. A number of scholars
have disputed the authenticity of the passage or the whole letter, and it hardly seems plausible
that a Proconsul should write to the Emperor about such a matter. If true, by 113 AD a good
many Christians were in Asia Minor. Christian apologists reveal the desperate poverty of their
case when all they can quote, to prove that Jesus really lived nearly a century before, are these
few sentences.

So, no non-Christian writer of the first century mentions Christ—Josephus being equivocal and
adulterated—and references in the second century are proof only of what Christians had come to
believe a century later. The Christians remained a obscure sect in a world that was seething with
sects. That is all we can infer.

Mythological Hero 

The life of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels is that of the worldwide hero of mythology:

The divine hero’s birth is supernaturally predicted and conceived, the infant hero escapes attempts to 
kill him, demonstrates his precocious wisdom already as a child, receives a divine commission, defeats 
demons, wins acclaim, is hailed as king, then betrayed, losing popular favor, executed, often on a hilltop, 
and is vindicated and taken up to heaven.  

If these features are found everywhere in heroic myths and epics, but never in real life, it is not
safe to believe anyone who tells you that in one particular case it really happened. Yet that is
what the born again punter does and that is what the scheming priests make children believe
before thay have developed any critical faculty. Some believers glibly accept these other myths
but declare them false, to which one has to accuse them of special pleading. They do not know
that this one rather than any other is the “true” myth.

If we do not use the standard of current real-life experience to assess history, we would find
ourselves accepting every myth and outlandish fairy tale there ever was, and would finish up
drowning in a morass of make-belief. And why would God or Nature do things that do not
happen now? As Price says: “Isn’t God supposed to be the same yesterday, today, and forever?”

So far so good, but here Price begins to get carried away because he says the whole of the Jesus
saga is captured in the standard myth, “with nothing left over”. It is therefore:

arbitrary to assert that there must have been a historical figure lying back of the myth. There may have 
been, but it can no longer be considered particularly probable, and that’s all the historian can deal 
with—probabilities.  

He says he is more and more attracted to the theory that Jesus never existed and so is simply a
fiction.

This is where we have to part company with Mr Price because a great deal of Mark’s gospel,
considered by many to have been the earliest one written, has quite specific details of an
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extended and peculiar campaign in Galilee and a march on Jerusalem. The interesting thing
about this is that it is set in a particular and known historical period and involves historical
characters and historically verifiable institutions. It was a period of deep discontent and of
prolonged revolution ending in a four year bloody war. Now, the mythical Jesus turns out to have
been crucified as a rebel against Rome, a most likely happening if a rebel is what he was and a
most unlikely choice of death if the designers of a new religion wanted to choose a hero.

Price goes on to say that the passion stories of the gospels are too similar to contemporary myths
of dying and rising saviour gods including Osiris, Tammuz, Baal, Attis, Adonis, Hercules and
Asclepius to be real. Like Jesus, these figures were believed to have once lived a life upon the
earth, been killed, and risen shortly thereafter. Their deaths and resurrections were in most cases
ritually celebrated each spring to herald the return of the life to vegetation. In many myths, the
saviour’s body is anointed for burial, searched out by holy women and then reappears alive a few
days later.

Crucifixion 

So this is where history and myth begin to merge. The popular hero in Palestine was caught and
crucified. He was a holy man because those who fought for independence for Judaea in those
days generally were holy men, the Jews considering themselves God’s Chosen People. Since
they were expecting a miracle from God—though it never came—they persuaded themselves it
had, and began to merge history and myth. At a time when news passed by word of mouth, the
rumour machine was probably highly efficient and many of the rebel’s followers might have had
the myth not long after it was invented.

Price adds that the details of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection accounts are similar to the
events of several surviving popular novels from that period in which two lovers are separated
when one seems to have died and is unwittingly entombed alive. Grave robbers discover her
reviving and kidnap her. Her lover finds the tomb empty, graveclothes still in place, and first
concludes she has been raised up from death and taken to heaven. Then, realizing what must
have happened, he goes in search of her. During his adventures, he is sooner or later condemned
to the cross or actually crucified, but manages to escape. When at length the couple is reunited,
neither, having long imagined the other dead, can quite believe the lover is alive and not a ghost
come to say farewell.

Apologists contend that all these myths are plagiarized from the gospels by Pagan imitators,
pointing out that some of the evidence is post-Christian. Nevertheless much is pre-Christian. The
early Christian apologists prove it by arguing that these parallels to the gospels were counterfeits
in advance, by Satan, who knew the real thing would be coming along later and wanted to throw
people off the track! They could not have argued this way had the Pagan myths of dead and
resurrected gods been more recent than the Christian.

C S Lewis suggested that in Jesus’s case “myth became fact”, an argument that Price pooh-
pooh’s, Lewis being a soft-headed apologist for Christianity. The others were myths, but this one
actually happened. But though Lewis meant this as an apology for his belief, it is likely to be
true—not by accident but by design, so to speak. The very point the earliest gentile bishops
140 
 

would have been making to the Roman housewives and slaves they recruited was that this dying
God had “actually happened” recently, and witnesses could confirm it.

This latter is both the reason why an absurd religion got a foothold at all, and the reason why the
gospels seem unhistorical. There were witnesses and after 70 AD, there were even more, the
Jews having been dispersed from their homeland. These witnesses confirmed that there had
indeed been a Jesus who was crucified, but he was not a god but a rebel against the Romans.
They confirmed the fundamental fact, and for the first gentile Christians as for born again
converts today, it was sufficient—they wanted to believe.

What of the details though? The Jewish witnesses could quote particular cases and did. How
were they to be refuted? The bishops could not say they were false, because that would
undermine their case. They wanted to accept they were true, then their god was proved to have
lived in detail. So, they simply told their followers pious lies, just as they have done ever since—
the Jewish witnesses had got the story a bit confused. If it is for the glory of God and his son,
Jesus Christ, then any lie is the truth, so they confused the truth with their distortions but still
retained enough of it to keep the essence of the story of the witness. All of these lies are set down
in remarkably unadulterated form in Mark’s gospel and have been interpreted in The Hidden
Jesus [†]

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Mythological Language 

Despite the bishops’ best efforts, besides gullible souls, there were plenty of skeptics then, just as
there are gullible souls and skeptics today. Paul, the first evangelist to the gentiles, did not want
to talk at all about the god except in mythical language. He never mentions Jesus performing
healings because the healings were not physical healings at all but spiritual ones, persuading
Jews to take courage and oppose the foreign rulers. Paul would not have wanted to mention this.
Only twice does he speak of “words of the Lord”. He never speaks of Jesus as a teacher because
Jesus was not particularly known as a teacher, and what he did teach was rebellion.

Paul attributes the death of Jesus not to Roman or Jewish governments, but rather to the designs
of evil “archons”, angels who rule this fallen world, an obvious early attempt to put space
between the historical Jesus who was murdered by the Romans he hoped to convert and the God
Jesus, Paul set out to create.

Romans and 1 Peter both warn Christians to watch their step, reminding them that the Roman
authorities never punish the righteous, but only the wicked. Price amazingly asks: “How could
they have said this if they knew of the Pontius Pilate story?” The answer is that they were trying
to deceive their flocks—who at that stage will not have known the story—as preachers have
done ever since.
141 
 

Two epistles, 1 Thessalonians and 2 Timothy, do blame Pilate or Jews for the death of Jesus, and
can be shown on other grounds to be non-Pauline and later than the gospels. The story was by
then out in the open, successfully smudged by the bishops as it has since remained, despite the
attentions of hundreds of “scholars”.

Price claims that Jesus was eventually “historicized”, redrawn as a human being, much as
Abraham, Joseph, David, Solomon, Moses, Samson, Enoch, Jabal, Gad, Joshua the son of Nun,
and other ancient Israelite gods had already been. Different attempts to locate Jesus in recent
history were made by laying the blame for his death on well known tyrants including Herod
Antipas, Pontius Pilate and even Alexander Jannaeus in the first century BC! Now, if the death
of Jesus were an actual historical event well known to eyewitnesses of it, Price says there is
simply no way such a variety of versions, differing on so fundamental a point, could ever have
arisen!

We must take, Price’s word for it that there were these other attempts beside the familiar gospel
ones to ameliorate the story of Jesus, but that they should have been made is not in the least
surprising. First century bishops did not have the internet. Different versions of excuses were
made and some of them now appear in the New Testament even though they are contradictory.
Some bishops might have tried to make out that Jesus was punished by a Jewish king not a
Roman governor, for obvious reasons.

Forty Years 

Price himself, answering the apologists’ claim that there was “too little time between the death of
Jesus and the writing of the gospels for legends to develop”, says 40 years is easily enough time
for legends to arise. He also points out the apologists are not facing his argument that Jesus never
existed for they presuppose a historical Jesus who died around 30 AD. The theory that Christ is
mythical means there was no Jesus alive in Pontius Pilate’s time to give rise to a legend but
instead, that later, Pilate’s time was selected as the time when Jesus lived. Just as somebody
always knows somebody who had a miraculous experience, orally transmitted legends usually
come from the generation before last.

Now, on the idea outlined in The Hidden Jesus, this is possible. The gospel clues suggest that
Jesus began his campaign in 18 AD and died in 21 AD which precedes the governorship of
Pilate. There is reason to believe that Christians, when they took state power in the fourth
century, doctored the dates of Pilate in Josephus so that anyone who found or had kept a copy of
the Roman archive pertaining to the crucifixion of Jesus could be discredited as a fraud. Only
two easy alterations were needed to the letters which served as Greek numbers.

It just about remains possible that the dates of Pilate are correct and Jesus was crucified by an
earlier governor. The legend that it happened in the reign of Pilate then arose because Mark and
the first Christians, who had been waiting fifty years for the end of the world, decided that the
bloody defeat and diaspora of the Jews and the destruction of the temple in 70 AD sufficed for it,
and though they had forgotten exactly when the events had happened, simply extrapolated them
back forty years—a Jewish generation, the maximum extent of the prophecy—from then into the
reign of Pilate as Prefect of Judaea.
142 
 

Price questions the historicity of the passion by asking why the earliest gospel crucifixion
account in Mark spins out the terse narrative from quotes cribbed from Psalms 22? Well, the
answer is plain. Whether Jesus in reality died a noble death or otherwise, the story had to be
embellished. The legend of Jesus was now being made and the followers were not going to tell
the truth about their god, so begin to take messianic references from the scriptures and apply
them to Jesus—now Christ. He asks also why does 1 Peter have nothing more detailed than
Isaiah 53 to flesh out his account of the sufferings of Jesus? The answer is the same. And the
more recent gospels carry on mythologising, even finding a book of wisdom sayings and
attributing them to Jesus.

Objective History? 

Price also gets on dodgy ground when he disparages quests for the historical Jesus by turning to
Albert Schweitzer, an admirable scholar but a Christian. He says the “historical Jesus” found by
those bothered to look is “just” a reflexion of the individual who is looking. Price hints that
Schweitzer was the “single” exception, but any exception invalidates the rule.

On the other hand, it is quite natural, and almost inescapable, that everyone is moulded by their
own experiences and social situation. All investigators therefore paint themselves into their
findings. The truth, inasmuch as it is possible to get it, is found by the continuation of this
process until by trial and error and eliminating the excesses and the mistakes and bringing in new
discoveries, eventually a reasonable approximation will be found.

Plainly once someone is dead and times have passed, the truth can never be resurrected. Even
President Kennedy is now a myth, but we still have a reasonable picture of him. It is pure
defeatism in history to say that the historian can never get the truth because he projects himself
into his picture. Says Price:

Today’s Politically Correct “historical Jesuses” are no different, being mere clones of the scholars who 
design them.  

So there is no point in doing history at all? Nonsense!

Price now finds comfort from C S Lewis: “Each ‘historical Jesus’ is unhistorical. The documents
say what they say and cannot be added to”. Lewis took it for granted, as all Christians do, that
the gospel picture is sufficient—it is true. All the questors are doing is saying, “Not necessarily,
mate! What about this? And what about this too?” By assessing the “probabilities” in all these
pictures, an approximation to the truth will be found. Why does Price object to this?

He explains that:

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. 
143 
 

The correct attitude is that they are all approximations to the truth. If all the facts about
someone’s life are available, it is still impossible to know the historical person. Facts have to be
selected to present an accessible portrait. If many of the facts are missing or have been
deliberately altered, as in the case of Jesus, then it becomes harder still because it becomes a
matter, not of selection, but of interpretation and we have to look for clues in the events and
circumstances. None of this makes the task not worth undertaking for otherwise history—and
indeed many other fields of inquiry—is pointless.

It seems that Price is being distracted by the fashion for postmodernism—a denial of scholarship
in favour of empty verbosity. It is a sort of extension of Christian pious lies into every field of
scholarship, and unsurprisingly Christians are at the forefront of it. All you have to do is make up
anything you like by association of ideas, negation, astrology and fantasy—any means as long as
it does not involve reason or facts—to discredit, preferably, a conventional piece of learning
generated by someone else’s sincere efforts and that is scholarship. It’s baloney, but typical of
the insanity of the world.

A Broad View 

G B Shaw, in the preface to Androcles and the Lion, says that Jesus was insane. George Moore,
in his Apostle says that the figure of Christ in Luke, of which the preachers are fond, is “a
lifeless, waxen figure, daintily curled, with tinted cheeks, uttering pretty commonplaces gathered
from The Treasury of the Lowly, as he goes by”. Renan, while denying Jesus’s divinity, thought
that there was “something divine” about him. The more the liberal Christian feels compelled to
sacrifice the miracles and divinity of Jesus, the more zealous he is to magnify the grandeur of his
personality. Most Christians say Jesus is “the grandest figure in all literature”, or that, if the Jesus
of the gospels did not exist, the creation of his personality by some obscure writers of the first
century is itself a miracle:

The thesis is within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions 
about a non‐existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible. It 
involves too many complex and speculative hypotheses, in contrast to the much simpler explanation 
that there was a Jesus who said and did more or less what the first three Gospels attribute to him. The 
fact of Christianity’s beginnings and the character of its earliest tradition is such that we could only deny 
the existence of Jesus by hypothesizing the existence of some other figure who was a sufficient cause of 
Chrstianity’s beginnings—another figure who on careful reflection would probably come out very like 
Jesus!  

James Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus 

Dunn thinks he is preserving the gospel Jesus with this argument, but he is not. A figure “very
like Jesus” is not Jesus! While Wells is probably wrong that Jesus never existed, he also draws a
parallel with Faust who did exist but as a shadowy figure not that of legend. Jesus was likely to
have been the same. He did exist and was “very like” the gospel Jesus but he was an historical
person, free of the supernatural, but neverthless a remarkable Jewish leader. That is the thesis of
these pages.
144 
 

Jesus believed in eternal torment for people of weak will. He loved little children but advocated
virginity as the higher ideal, cutting at the root of family life and blighting love. Though gentle to
the adulterous woman, he bitterly and vulgarly abused the Pharisees, to which you will find no
parallel in any Pagan moralist of the time.

In the gospels, Jesus recommends hardly a sentiment that he does not violate. He scorns
synagogues and meeting-places, and then founds a Church. He has no word of guidance in the
problems of social life because be believes that the world is about to end. He is the archetype of
the Puritans, scornful of all that is enjoyable in life, bitter and unjust to those who differ from
him, quite impracticable, even foolish, in many of his counsels. Not surprisingly, the modern
world has no use for Christ.

One solution of all this tissue of contradictions is that a dozen different people’s excuses for
Jesus have been mixed together in these composite writings, the gospels. One man did not write
any gospel. One spirit did not dictate them. They embody the contradictory excuses of isolated
and often hostile communities in different parts of the Greco-Roman world. It was not the same
man who made up the excuse of Jesus loving children and scorning his mother. It was not the
same man who made Jesus into a wine-bibber and yet tell us to live on bread and sleep on stones,
who made Jesus the friend of whores and then deny human sexuality. We can assume Jesus, as
an Essene prince, was consistent in his views.

Paul’s letters show how they began to change according to the audience. To one group he has to
talk much about fornication and feasting, to another about correct ritual, to another about points
of theology. He cites little from any knowledge of Jesus, but sets the lying agenda for
Christianity by being all things to all men.

The phenomena of a Christianity in the first century implies an historical person. From a general
knowledge of Hindu and Chinese sacred literature, we have less evidence of the personal
existence of Kong-fu-tse or Buddha than of Jesus. The documents are even further removed from
the events than the epistles and gospels are. Yet no historian doubts their historicity.

Probably Peter was never at Rome, but the other Roman bishops named, from about 70 AD
onward, are not doubted. This group was a thousand miles from Judaea, and there were churches
all the way between, with overseers (bishops), elders (priests), and servers (deacons). Lives of
Jesus were circulating amongst them, and those lives or gospels do present Jesus as a man, living
in Judaea. The Church combatted and defeated the Gnostics who held that Jesus was never
contaminated by a body. Basilides, one of the ablest of the Gnostics, an Alexandrian, tried to
teach in the first half of the second century that Jesus was never a man, and the whole Church
promptly and emphatically repudiated him. He had to found a special half-Persian, half-Christian
sect.

The epistles of Paul seem to take us back to about the middle of the first century. By 60 AD,
groups of Christians existed in every large Roman city. Paul’s belief in the physical resurrection
of Jesus is, he admits, not accepted by all. It was hard to accept but that Jesus was born, taught,
and was executed in Judaea is at the basis of Paul’s teaching, and he never mentions any member
of a church who doubts it. The Gnostics with their spiritual Jesus came later.
145 
 

Paul speaks of Cephas and others who were actual companions of Jesus. The genuineness of all
the epistles must be questioned to doubt this. In 2 Corinthians 4:10 Paul says that it is fourteen
years since he first came to believe in Jesus, to believe that he was God, not that he was man. So
he joined the Christian body, and mingled with them in Jerusalem, within less than ten years of
the execution of Jesus. No Jew there seems to have told him that Jesus was a mere myth. In all
the bitter strife of Jew and Christian the idea seems to have occurred to nobody.

Setting aside the gospels entirely, ignoring all that Latin writers are supposed to have said in the
second century, a large and roughly organized body of Christians existed at a time when men
were still alive who remembered events of the third decade of the century. Many of these people
will have had quite different ideas about Jesus from the myths that the churches were building
up, but none of them said that Jesus did not exist. They all knew he did, and told the truth about
him as they understood it. They knew he was not a god!

To early Christians, Jesus is not primarily a teacher. A collection of wise teachings might in time
get a mythical name attached to it and the myth might in further time become a real person. But
from the earliest moment that we catch sight of Christians in history, the essence of their belief is
that Jesus was an incarnation, in Judaea, of the great God of the universe. The supreme emphasis
is on the fact that he assumed a human form and shed human blood on a cross. So it seems more
reasonable, more scientific, more consonant with the facts of religious history, to conclude that
Jesus existed, but for believers from the beginning he was seen as an incarnate god and given the
divine attributes of “the great God of the universe”!

Before you go, think about this… 
Evolution is irreversible—but except in a strict sense, it is not true. A fish, hundreds of millions of years 
ago, left the water ultimately to evolve into terrestrial vertebrates, but land vertebrates have often 
taken to the water since, and have assumed the shape and lifestyles of fish. The strict sense is that they 
have not become fish again.  

Who Lies Sleeping? 
146 
 

Exam
mining the Bible
B Objecctivelyy
Mere belief debases. C
Christian belieef debases ab
bsolutely. 

11. Histor
H rical Criticis
C sm and
d Sacrred Hiistory
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Wednesday,
W D
December 055, 2001

• Verifying Truth h  
• Presupposition n  
• Saacred Historyy  
• Historical Criticcal Method  
• O
Objectivity  
• Higher Knowle edge  
• Faactuality  
• Evvangelical Me eaning  
• Liiterary Idolatrry  

Abstracct 
Christianss cannot hone estly ground ttheir faith in tthe truth of aa “sacred histo
ory” recognizzed by naturaal 
criteria ass pseudo‐histo
orical or falsee. They try to show that the method forr verifying eveents used by 
historical criticism with
h regard to biiblical narratives, and in paarticular withh regard to the resurrection 
narrativess, is inappropriate. Such ob bjections are variations off the assertion n that the historical‐criticaal 
method iss based on arbitrary presuppositions. This accusation is unjustifieed. In their deesire to be jusstified 
by holdingg “sacred histtory” to be true, Christianss forego God Himself in favour of literary idolatry. 

Verifyin
ng Truth  

Christiann theologianss advance alll conceivablle theologicaal grounds too show that the
t method for f
verifyingg events usedd by historical criticism with
w regard to biblical narratives—a
n and in particuular
with regaard to the ressurrection naarratives—iss inappropriaate. Such objjections are variations off the
147 
 

assertion that the historical-critical method is based on arbitrary presuppositions. This accusation
is unjustified.

Karl Barth, in his remarks concerning the historical-critical method, refers to its far-reaching
application to history as “in fact only a ridiculous and middle-class habit of the modern western
mind, which is supremely phantastic in its chronic lack of imaginative phantasy”. Elsewhere he
says: “Proper theology begins at the point where the difficulties disclosed by Strauss and
Feuerbach are seen and then laughed at”.

Christian Hartlich of Tübingen, in December 1976, commented that this derision betrays Barth’s
inability to engage historical criticism in the only field where the truth of statements concerning
events can be decided—in the sphere of human discovery of truth. A merely asserted but
unverified statement of a historical event can be no more than a possibility. Notwithstanding
Barth’s monumental reputation, faith offers no basis for distinguishing true historical statements
from false ones.

In determining the truth of statements concerning events from the past, the critical historian does
not begin with arbitrary assumptions whether ideological, or conditioned by a predetermined
Cartesian, Kantian, Positivist, Atheist or any other concept of history—often used by Christians
as refutation in place of argument. As someone concerned with truth, the historian simply
applies, in a methodical way, the universal criteria of truth to statements about events from the
past. Unfortunately for Christian fears, recognizing this shakes the centuries old systematic
defence of the Christian faith.

Hartlich sets out some principles that Christians might well follow. What follows is a freely
rendered synopsis of them with additional commentary.

Presupposition 

The historian cannot presuppose the truth of statements of events in old documents. Critical
procedures must be followed to verify them. The historian must determine whether what such
documents affirm did in fact take place and in the way the documents say. The author of a
document might have supposed an event occurred and recorded his supposition in good faith, or
he might have written what he did to have a particular effect on the readers without regard to its
historical truth. Does the historical truth of the event stand independently of the subjective
presentation by the narrator? If so, the historian confirms the event as historical and the account
of the event as true.

The historian is necessarily critical, and criticism is necessary so long as the possibility for error
exists. Equally, it is bad method to presuppose that even the most honest people are truthful in
recording history. What they record might be honestly recorded, but there are many ways in
which they might have been misled or even deceived. Regarding events found in the bible, the
historian is not necessarily questioning the subjective conviction of the biblical authors, though
he might well do because their honesty cannot be presupposed either, but simply requiring that
what they wrote is verified.
148 
 

Sacred History 

The bible is called “sacred history”, the “history” of beings not known to normal experience,
beings of divine, demonic, and supernatural origin yet apparently active in an otherwise natural
world. “Sacred history” cannot be verified, and can only be classified as unhistorical. What is
supernatural is not natural, and so does not and cannot meet natural criteria. But the evidence for
the supernatural is tenuous, and what there is is hysterical.

When in Matthew 28:2ff, an angel descends to earth and moves a heavy stone causing, or by
means of, an earthquake, two types of events present themselves. In principle, the earthquake
could be verified by the accounts of others who noriced it. The descent of an angel is not
verifiable, and is likely to have been a hysterical interpretation of the earthquake, if we must
suppose the author is not deliberately exaggerating or deceiving. An angel is fundamentally
removed from verification.

Statements about events in the past must be verified in the same way as we verify events today.
When they cannot be, then they cannot be admitted as truth. “Sacred history” has to be taken by
the historian with a pinch of salt. In the light of all modern experience, supernatural creatures are
products of the imagination. It is hard to believe that an omnipotent God would choose such
unlikely ways of revealing himself.

Historical Critical Method 

Testing the truth of statements concerning events in documents from the past is only possible by
means of the historical-critical method. Its stipulations are not arbitrarily chosen, but have been
shown in practice to reveal historical truth where it can be revealed. Indeed, because historical
knowledge is so determined, it can be argued that historians are able to grasp only a part of
history as it really happened. This objection is valid up to a point. Real events can never be fully
reconstituted by later historians if only because of the finer detail that is inevitably lost, but—
given that observers are not reporting trickery and often they are—knowledge of the reality of
events and the actual reality of events must have been correlated originally, and though loss of
information loosens the correlation over time, it takes a long time to diisappear all together,
unless there has been deliberate destruction of data. A possible event only becomes a real event
for human beings when they confirm it by proven means of knowing reality.

The accusation of limitation in this matter must be addressed, not to historians and their methods,
but to God. If God has made the world such that we can only have imperfect knowledge of the
149 
 

avenues He choses to use, then His salvific efforts on our behalfs look misplaced. One might feel
that conditions for knowledge are unfortunate, but they still do not mean we should seek to
deceive ourselves. If God has not made it clear in the reality he has provided, then however we
might strive or theologize, we cannot make certain what, according to the way God has
constituted knowledge for us, is merely a possibility.

Objectivity 

The only criterion for determining whether an event in an old document actually took place is to
find it in the framework of experience of history in its present state of knowledge. The discovery
of other frameworks might force a review, but until they are discovered, conceivable possibilities
do not abrogate the validity of this principle. In old documents, the historian is presented with
individual opinions concerning what could be true. The historian’s task is to test whether
objectivity can be granted to these opinions.

The Roman historian Suetonius reports that, after the death of Caesar Augustus, at his funeral, a
highly placed official with the rank of praetor swore that he saw Caesar ascend into heaven as he
was cremated. The historian, therefore, has a report from a reliable source in the ancient world of
a statement by an eyewitness, an honorable senator, confirmed by an oath. Should the historian
accept this as being true? Surely God, or the gods, can take up into heaven the Caesar who had
just died? For a being endowed with almighty power, all things are possible. Does the sworn
statement of an eyewitness suffice to insert into history as a fact the heavenly journey of Caesar
Augustus—a possibility conceivable to those who believe in an Almighty. Then, the historian
could write, “After his death Augustus was taken up into heaven, a fact confirmed by a
respectable eyewitness, as the near contemporary historian Suetonius reported in his book on the
life of Augustus”.

No historian who merits the title could conclude this. No instruments of knowledge at the
historian’s disposal place him in a position to validate such assertions concerning journeys into
heaven because they fall outside the continuum of ordinary experience. An event must cohere in
principle with other events—stand in a verifiable connexion with them. An absolutely incoherent
event is not verifiable as an event, even if it is notionally accepted as possible. The concept of
contingency, dear to theologians, is no help in this matter. It is possible to conceive of an event
which has no ascertainable connexion with other ascertainable events, but such a contingent
event, by definition, cannot be shown to have taken place.

Since historians can grant no objectivity to the Praetor’s sworn sense-perception in the story of
the ascent of Augustus, they have to examine the subjective conditions which led the Praetor to
make his statement. Was it a vision—a psychological impression caused in his grief for Caesar,
who already during his lifetime was revered as God and Lord? Stories of such heavenly journeys
are widespread. What should the historian make of them? Dio Cassius relates the same incident
and names the official.
150 
 

He adds that Livia, Caesar’s wife, paid the Praetor 250,000 denar for his oath! It could be an
explanation of an unlikely event, but can the additional information be trusted in itself? The
historian has to ask whether Livia would do such a thing, and, if so, why. It might be a
derogatory accusation by her political opponents. The historian will have to investigate Dio
Cassius’s sources for his report, and whether his own historical work, or the sources he used, saw
the house of Caesar in a bad light. Even if the Praetor is proved to have been honest, the historian
cannot conclude that what the Praetor claimed to have seen is historical.

Considering the statements of events in the New Testament, historians have the same problem
with the ascension of Jesus—whether or not it was an objective event. The reasoning and
outcome are just the same. The only fact the historians have is the fact of the statement, not the
factuality of that which is stated as fact. It matters not whether the tradition is early or late, for
the statement is unverifiable in either case. A common false assumption overused by theologians
and evangelists is that earlier recorded events are more likely to be true. Even if this were true, it
is not the point. If it is unlikely as a late tradition and twice as likely as an early one, it is still
unlikely. The evangelists mean not that an early tradition is more likely, they mean to imply it is
certain. When an event is deemed unverifiable, an earlier portrayal of the event can claim no
higher degree of objectivity than a later.

These observations are wholly valid with regard to the assertion that the event of the resurrection
of Jesus is a historically demonstrable reality. P Stuhlmacher asserts as an historical affirmation
from a theological perspective, “that only the event of the resurrection of Jesus and the
confession to this deed of God fulfilled in Jesus makes the historical development of the
primitive Christian mission understandable”. This is to reason backward from the historically
demonstrable consequences of the resurrection faith and its history to the factual reality of the
resurrection. Historians, who are conscientious about their methodology, would be unable to
come to this conclusion unless they were willing to admit the same reasoning in other cases too,
151 
 

opening many impossible myths that accompany religions, cults and beliefs, as foundation
legends, as historical reality.

No historian doubts that belief in the resurrection is historically demonstrable as a significant


factor in the growth of the Christian faith. It is, though, an error to maintain that the resurrection
of Jesus itself is therefore an historically demonstrable fact. The factuality of what is believed
cannot be derived from the historical demonstrability of its consequences. Myths are commonly
invented to account for otherwise inexplicable traditions and behaviours. The historical-critical
method shows the resurrection of Jesus is not the basis of the Christian faith, but the content.
Given that statements of the events of “sacred history” are not objective, the critical historian
questions further, concerning the conditions under which statements of this kind could arise at
all.

Higher Knowledge 

Because “sacred history” was popular in ancient documents, some people conclude that the
authors of it had access to higher knowledge. Yet, in other respects, these narrators were subject
to the same human conditions as the rest of us. These ancient authors have to be supposed to
have had special knowledge in certain sacred things but otherwise were subject to the same laws,
and therefore errors as us all. This includes error with regard to empirical facts, making
statements in the form of “sacred history” just as subjective as all other human knowledge. The
writers of “sacred history” had no source of knowledge that allowed them to make truthful
statements about events unknown to ordinary mortals.

Is it credible that “sacred history” is all error, deception, illusion and invention? It might have to
be so concluded. What conditions impelled the writers of “sacred history” to relate historical
happenings as if they had really taken place, even though they never took place in fact? What
concrete, subjective conditions allowed the statements of “sacred history” to become real? How
can it be explained that the biblical writers seldom if ever seem disturbed in their accounts by the
question that today concerns everyone who seeks to report events truthfully—whether these
events in fact took place?

Factuality 

“Fact” is a modern word. Its rapid introduction was not accidental, but related to the growth of
the scientific and naturalistic methods of investigation. Science created a precise concept for a
methodologically verified, confirmed, and demonstrated reality. Earlier, human historical
experience had not yet discovered the formal principles of true objective knowledge. They had to
be acquired step by step, as the consequence of prolonged, often fruitless searching.

The awareness of verification, as a necessary condition for truth, was first recognized when
reason was faced with a multitude of supposedly true but conflicting opinions about reality,
when enquiry into all things was popularized by the growth of science. It ackowledged the need
for reflexion about the necessary conditions for the validity of such judgments. So long as the
conditions for truth were not reflected on in this way, the objective truth of statements could not
be distinguished from opinions, hopes and wishes. The concept of factuality was unknown to the
152 
 

writers of “sacred history”. Their way of narrating is naïve, taking place without thorough critical
reflexion on what made true events true. In their narrations of events they allow to flow together
heterogeneous elements which the historian today must separate.

Whatever was believed to be true was not yet governed by reason, and could without qualm be
set down as objective truth. There are biblical stories that relate events that could not have been
witnessed, according to the narratives themselves, yet even so are related by the writers as if they
had seen it—such are the report of creation, monologues by Yehouah, the burial of Moses by
Yehouah. Stories like this show that a distinction between belief about what is real and
demonstrable reality was absent from the perspective of the narrator, or that the narrator thought
it was absent from the perpectives of his audience. Many Christians do not differ today. They
consider their subjective experiences as “truth”.

A concern for the objectivity of sacred narratives was no more crucial for the community which
received them than for the writers of “sacred history”. The church accepted narratives into its
canon that contradict one another historically showing that it was indifferent to contradictions
like this in its canonized histories. These kinds of contradictions are found at the center of
christological affirmations, in the genealogies of Jesus and even in the resurrection accounts.
Their inclusion in the canon cannot have taken place with any concern for the actual events
because then the church would have had to decide which reports were true. It significantly did
not do this in the process of canonization, and nor did incongruous accounts become subjects of
discussion for the purpose of verification.

These accounts obtained an equal authority through acceptance into the canon, even though they
could not all be true at the same time. The attempts to create a harmony of the gospels, beginning
with Tatian, show an attempt by some to establish a chronologically and historically unified
course of events. However, the rejection of harmonizations by the church shows that the
narratives are not to be evaluated according to the criteria of historical truth, but that they
pursued an entirely different intention.

Evangelical Meaning 

The writers of “sacred history” use history as a form to call forth faith. Whoever misunderstands
their method, and thus conceives the statements of “sacred history” to be assertions of facts,
commits a fundamental hermeneutical error. Narrators of “sacred history” treat history as a
plastic substance that can be formed according to the intention of the narrator, one that is not
bothered by the concept of facts. Their intention is not directed towards a discerning historical-
critical acceptance by the hearer, but appeals to the hearer to grasp the evangelical meaning.
Treating the history-like statements of “sacred history” as assertions of fact removes them from
their proper context of religious propaganda, and puts them under the scrutiny of modern
historical method, the product of recent scientific thinking that must necessarily refute them.

This false hermeneutical perspective causes a disastrous theological error. “sacred history” is
simply a means of missionary expression, but is itself made the primary object of faith. Faith in
God is different from holding a story to be true. The New Testament used the form of history to
appeal to proselytes to believe. Christian preaching today does not understand “sacred history” as
153 
 

it was meant to be understood. It is not a faithful rendering of objective events, but an indirect
appeal for faith using historical narrative as a method.

“Sacred history” is instead made the primary object of faith, and has to be be regarded as true. It
is this truth which is used by modern preachers to establish faith in God. Faith in God is not
primary for the Christian, any more than it is for an atheist or a Pagan. The Christian convert
must first have faith in something other than God, in the truth of “sacred history” called the
gospels. Faith decays because Christians have to suspend their critical faculties to believe the
bible. The alternative is simply to believe in God without having to believe the sacred histories
are true. Many modern Christians are trying to move in this direction, but with opposition from
traditionalists.

Literary Idolatry 

Hartlich concludes that when the pseudo-historical statements of “sacred history” become
dogmatized and made obligatory by churches, paradoxically, the historical-critical method
becomes the requirement for Christian faith. Christians cannot honestly ground their faith in the
truth of a “sacred history” recognized by natural criteria as pseudo-historical at best, if not false.
In the desire to be justified by holding “sacred history” to be true, Christians forego accepting
God Himself in favour of an inadequate support for faith—a form of literary idolatry. Yet, given
that something must be believed without any evidence at all, why must it be God. Nature is the
more appropriate choice, and more original. That it manifestly exists and is wonderful ought to
be enough.

Before you go, think about this… 
The solution of the problem of the evolution of intelligence in mammals and dinosaurs would yield 
similar features in both.  

Who Lies Sleeping? 
154 
 

Expoosing Bibliccist Faalsehooods


In every aage, the Churcch has both p
proclaimed an
nd misrepreseented Jesus. 

Micklam, Profeessor of New Testament LLiterature and
N M d Criticism, On
ntario 

12. The
T Gospels
G s1
Vitually noone of the modern translaations [of the New Testament] can be trusted to beaar the weight that 
is put on tthem.  

John Bow
wden, SCM  

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday,
T Deccember 01, 1998
1

• Belief  
• Exxamination  
• Christian “Schoolars”  
• Thhe Gospels  

Abstracct 
Christianitty distinguish
hes itself from
m other mono otheistic religiions in its devvotion to a divvine being whho, it 
is claimed
d, appeared at a known tim me and place in history and d whose life aand teachingss are accurateely 
known beecause they w were recorded d by people alive at the timme. Yet, if anyyone today claimed to be aa Son 
of God, w
we should consider them to o be deluded or a charlatan. The clergy agree that alll gods are myyths 
other than their own, b but what makkes the Christtian god an exxception to th he rule? Theyy say the holyy 
book of Christianity, thhe bible and pparticularly th
he gospels, shhow it. Who though could believe a boo ok 
publishedd today that abounded in m miracles? Herre is the first p
part of an exaamination of the gospels. 

Belief 

In the weestern world, most of us are brought up as Christtians. Christianity distingguishes itsellf
from otheer monotheistic religions in its devotion to a divvine being whho, it is claim
med, appeared at
155 
 

a known time and place in history and whose life and teachings are accurately known because
they were recorded by people alive at the time.

Christianity teaches that its founder, Jesus of Nazareth, fulfilled the prophecies of the Old
Testament, the holy scriptures of the Jews, which narrate the unfolding of God’s plan for his
chosen people, originally the Jews but, from the advent of Jesus, the whole human race. Jesus
was the Christ, the Messiah, the saviour promised by God, a divine being, one of the Trinity of
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. As the Son of God, he was incarnated on
earth, was crucified to atone for the sins of humanity, was resurrected as proof of his divinity and
ascended into heaven. Because humanity’s sins have been forgiven by the sacrifice of the Son of
God, salvation and eternal life await for those who believe it—those who have faith.

The principal form of Christian worship is the mass or holy communion in which worshippers
achieve communion with God by consuming consecrated wine and bread which miraculously is
the blood and body of the crucified god. The holy book of Christianity, the bible, consists of a
version of the scriptures of the Jewish religion added to which are four gospels describing the
ministry of Jesus on earth, the Acts of the Apostles (mainly of Paul, the evangelist), letters of
some of the apostles of Christ, again mainly Paul, and an apocalypse.

The gospels describe the human sacrifice of the incarnate God and include a core of teaching
broadly expressed as love thy neighbour. Christianity has several holy days—the principal ones
being the supposed anniversaries of Jesus’s death, resurrection and birth—and has adopted
Sunday as its sabbath.

These are the essentials of Christianity, a religion which today holds the hearts and minds of over
a thousand million people—many in the most advanced countries of the world. Christians, even
in these cultured societies, really believe that Jesus was the absolute god who came to earth as a
man, and this is a fact of history. But is it?

Many other gods were thought by their devotees to have been historical people who wandered
around doing good deeds—Orpheus and Hercules, for example—yet most people do not now
believe they existed. Why do we consider worshippers of Hercules to be insane but worshippers
of Jesus inspired? The clergy teach that all gods are myths other than their own but what makes
the Christian god an exception to the rule? Who could believe a book published today that
abounded in miracles? If the holy book of another religion had miracles comparable to those in
the gospels, would a Christian believe it? Why are events as remarkable as miracles recorded
only in some gospels and not in others? If anyone today claimed to be a Son of God, we should
consider them to be deluded or a charlatan, and our skepticism would be justified. Yet because
we are brought up to it, we accept it without question of a man whose followers proclaimed him
a god around 2000 years ago.

Even S Augustine admitted, “I should not believe in the gospels if I had not the authority of the
church for so doing”. A saint he may be but his argument is circular, for he admits without this
special authority, it would not be possible to believe the gospels, yet, if the gospel story is not to
be believed, what special authority has the church? If the gospels were not the foundation of our
own religion we would find them preposterous and would not comprehend how anyone could
156 
 

believe such nonsense. And, if our faith is greater than S Augustine’s and we do not need the
authority of the church to accept the gospels as God-given truth, how do we explain the many
contradictions in them? Why is God so confusing—or confused?

Can we be sure the Son of God of the gospels is not an illusion or a fraud? Could we be gullible
dupes whose ethical base is a confidence trick? For Christians such questions are impertinent.
Christianity is genuine. It is the only genuine religion. All others are heathen. Pagan! Christians
have sufficient proof—their belief! Celsus, an early critic of Christianity, said the Christians do
not examine but believe. Is it credible that highly educated, worldly people today will not
examine but simply believe? It is credible! They do—just believe!

These difficulties arise because Christian beliefs are built upon the fallible testimony of men, but
they include the belief that the original testimonies, fallible as they are, are the infallible
testimony of God. Some Christians seeking rationality, struggling with the knowledge that men
wrote the accounts they revere, resolve their doubts by claiming they were inspired by God, or
by an aspect of Him—the Holy Ghost. Though written by men they are still infallible. The bible
is the holy book. The gospels can be nothing other than true: they are the gospel truth—the word
of God himself.

Examination 

Those a little more skeptical might wonder why God leaves the reporting of his incarnation on
earth to disciples who are terminally stupid and succeed in botching up the story, when he could
have rendered it accurately himself during his sojourn here. Or, he could have sent an angel to
reveal it inscribed on tablets of gold. Why didn’t he do something obviously infallible and save a
lot of trouble?

Evidently he chose not to, and a Christian would say we cannot be expected to understand. Yet,
according to Genesis, God made us in his own image, endowing us with brains. It would be
unreasonable to believe he does not expect us to use them. Quite the reverse. Having given us
brains He must expect us to use them, and, if necessary, uncover false doctrine. The Christian
scholar, Sir Edwyn Hoskyns, pleads that the basis of Christianity demands historical and critical
study—its piety depends upon it. If Christian faith rests upon a particular event in history, those
who refuse to investigate it honestly must betray a lack of that faith, for they dare not risk
discovering they are mistaken!

Perhaps the origins of Christianity are not what they seem. Perhaps cautionary tales that
circulated among oppressed and ignorant people came to be believed. Could Roman slaves and
housewives be expected to understand what motivated the Jewish nation in its plight?—that
Jesus was not what the church is now compelled to teach, lest it should destroy its own
foundation?

It is hard to be dispassionate about the bible when we have been taught to revere it all our lives,
and our systems of beliefs seem to depend upon it. The gospels have such authority in our
society that most people, practising Christians or otherwise—like S Augustine—believe that they
are absolutely or essentially true. Jews and Christians are indignant when anyone suggests that
157 
 

the authors of the scriptures were lying. ”Can saints and prophets, guided by God through the
Holy Spirit lie? Outrageous! Of course they don not lie!” They presume the biblical authors were
upright and honest people because they believe. What they read of these authors—the bible—is
why they believe! They refuse to examine the many problems especially of chronology in the
biblical texts, and even if they are obliged to consider them, they will dismiss them as Satanic
temptations.

Christian commentators have carefully steered away from accepting anything in the gospels as
allegorical or metaphoric. Rudolf Bultmann spoke despisingly of ”mere metaphors or ciphers.”
He did not know how close he was. The gospels are indeed ciphers, rather crudely done, not very
finely done as Barabara Thiering claims, yet with the same idea at root perhaps. The idea of the
Essenes was that the scriptures were allegorical and properly deciphered contained God’s
absolute truth, so the heirs of the Essenes, the gentile bishops, thought the gospels could be
written as crude allegory to hide their real nature, and still be God’s truth.

Modern bishops fear that by accepting the gospels as allegorical, the historical Jesus will be
immediately vaporized into myth. In fact, the myth is immediately condensed into history. The
mind of the allegorist is flying on magic carpets, walking on water and seeing bodies rise fronm
the dead, and what they write is not history. The allegorist has made real history symbolic, so
reading the symbols as the real history is plainly wrong. The symbols must be interpreted
properly. Allegory is the enemy of gospel exegesis based on the historical assumption. It is an
assumption, because it has no corroborating evidence. That it was set in first century Jerusalem is
not evidence that the allegory is history. The whole of the Christology of Jesus also depends on
his historicity, but the wrong christology must emerge if the allegorical Jesus is taken to be the
historical one.

E J Tinsley, a professor of theology at Leeds University says ”biblical literature is a structure of


myths, images and metaphors thrown up and conditioned by a particular series of historical
events.” So, all biblical commentary is allegorical interpretation. What we have in the gospels is
a story about a movement against the puppet king of Galilee and then against the Roman Prefect
of Judaea, but deliberately allegorized to disguise the underlying sedition, which would have
been quite unacceptable to the Romans. In case no one noticed, Christianity was unnacceptable
to the Roman authorities anyway, and remained so for 300 years, but over that time, the allegory
fooled enough ordinary people that it was a true history of an innocent and misunderstood man,
that the religion eventually became institutionalized as the state religion. Thereafter, the allegory
was institutionalized as history! Any counter evidence was carefully destroyed or suitably edited.

That the parables of Jesus require decoding is implied by the refrain: ”He that hath ears to hear,
let him hear.”

In the parable of the sower, the harvest is unnaturaly large. Even the lowest, 30 fold is hugely
optimistic. A typical yield would have been eight times. The harvest is therefore an allegorical
benefit of unimaginable value. The details of the lost sowings are also allegorical. Yet C H Dodd
in Parables of the Kingdom says Jesus ”did not feel the need for making up artificial illustrations
for the truths he wished to teach.” Professor Matthew Black thought the parables were allegories
158 
 

and said of Dodd that he ”managed to get the benefit of allegory while denying that it is
allegory.”

In the Unmerciful Servant (Mt 18:23-35), the servant owed 10,000 talents! Each talent is 10,000
denarii, the pay of a day labourer. A days pay today, for the poorest labourer would be at least
�25. So this servant owed over two billion pounds or 4 billion dollars. He was a rich servant, by
any standards. The debt is unimaginably huge! The tribute of Galilee and Peraea (Herod
Antipas’s kingdom) in 4 BC , according to Josephus was 200 talents. The parable of the Wicked
Husbandmen, the Great Feast (Mt 22:1-13), The Ten Virgins (Mt 25:1-12) are all unnatural and
unrealistic.

Professor Tinsley saw long ago that the ”mission of Jesus had been allegorized” in the gospels,
”to make it contemporary,” he believed. ”To make them acceptable,” is the truth.

Jacob Neusner in Rabbinic Literature and the New Testament. What We Cannot Show We Do
Not Know, criticises Christians for:

• failing carefully and critically to analyse the literary and historical traits of every pericope 
adduced as evidence;  
• assumping that things happened exactly as the sources allege;  
• using anachronistic or inappropriate analogies and the introduction of irrelevant issues.  

In short, Christian belief boils down to:

What you do not know,  
You do not have to show.  
Just say… and it is so. 

It is obviously quite impossible to reason with such people although Jews, pace Neusner, are
scarcely any different. ”Belief” is irreconcilable with reason. Rational people must want to
examine the origins of their beliefs and show that they are well founded. They must be
sufficiently curious to wish to examine the relevant Christian texts to justify and confirm their
views. They must be willing to look at the books of the New Testament in their human and
historical context, accepting that, if God inspired their composition, it would shine through.
Equally, if it does not, they must be willing to accept the Christian holy books are merely the
work of men wilfully or misguidedly duping their fellows. Would God want us to believe it if it
were not true?

Pilate asked: “What is truth?” Whatever we accept as the truth of Christian origins, there is sure
to be a deeper truth waiting to be discovered. Why should anyone fear it? My purpose here is to
offer the Christian story from the viewpoint of a skeptic—to show that it is possible to interpret
the facts offered to us by the early Christian writers in a non-mystical, non-supernatural way, and
thereby recover from the Christian gospels the remnants of historical truth.

But the gospels themselves offer serious problems to any rational interpretation.
159 
 

Christian “Scholars” 

Modern Christian ”scholars” apparently only want to tackle easy problems—in other words,
anything that is not a problem. This is the meaning of ”scholar” applied to a Christian student of
the bible. They do not want to risk discovering something that might rock the holy boat. They
want to be free to bibble to their heart’s content secure in the knowledge that their scholarly
peers will approve—so long as they do not actually try to discover any truths about biblical
history or myth.

These ”scholars” like to place tags of disapproval upon anyone who really tries to formulate
serious, testable theses about the New Testament. The long accepted theory is the ”Two
Document” theory that the synoptic gospels were based on Mark’s gospel and another work, now
lost, called Q. This theory superseded an earlier theory called the ”Griesbach Hypothesis”.

Now, no one imagines that the synoptic gospel writers took their sources, whatever they were,
wrote and handed to the general public the final version of their gospels—the ones we can read
today. Christians might like to think that God inspired the writing of gospels, so the process was
quite straightforward, but no objective scholar ever believed this. The gospels have obviously
been changed frequently by deliberating editing or by copying errors since they were first
written, and it is not even clear that the gospels of Mark and Luke even existed in an agreed form
at first. There is good reason for thinking that both could have existed initally as a draft form
(proto-Mark and proto-Luke) and this was worked up by many hands into the books we now
have. A similar scheme applies too to Matthew which was originally not at all like the gospel we
now have but was a collection of sayings, perhaps a version of the document called ”Q.” This
was cobined with Mark, to give a fuller, richer and more polished gospel and this was edited by
many editors before it reached the modern form.

Plainly, at a time when books were not easily made, earlier drafts might have been kept in
circulation even though they were strictly superseded by a later version. So,though the authors of
Matthew and Luke drew on Mark and ”Q,” neither Mark nor Q might have been the latest
version. Not long afterwards, incomplete versions of all three synoptic gospels might have been
around, and some editors might have transferred stories from one to the other for the sake of
harmony.

None of this detracts from the basic thesis that the synoptics are composed of Mark and Q, but
suggest the process was not simple. Yet, Christian ”scholars” disparage the ”Two Document”
thesis as ”simplistic,” a deliberate implication that those who accept it—unlike the sophisticated
”scholars,” Christian ones—are simple. Christian scholars are intent on doing what they have
successfully but dishonestly done for millennia—muddying the waters as soon as proper scholars
begin to clear them a little. These clever Christians tell the simpletons that the Two Document
160 
 

hypothesis cannot account for the complexities of the gospel texts. They are playing to the
gallery of their own gullible followers who will guffaw at the slight on the critics—God 1 - the
Devil 0. Christian mainliners preserve their fix against the nasty thought police who want to
dissuade them from their addiction and, instead, hand out a little truth in pure, unsanctified
needles. The truth is that those who paint the absurd picture of the Two Document hypothesis are
its detracters, and, like all drug dealers, it is for their usual self-seeking and dishonest reasons.

The Two Document hypothesis successfully explains most of the perceived relations between the
synoptic gospels, and more successfully than rival theories, but problems remain. The
explanation will never be known because it lies long ago, but there are no problems that cannot
be solved on the basis of the Two Document hypothesis followed by editorial attempts at
harmonisation. The reason that Christians do not like the Two Document hypothesis is that it
reduces the evidence of Jesus to Mark’s gospel which lacks the dead Jesus walking around with
holes in his hands, feet, head and side, showing them off to everyone he can find.

The Gospels 

As rational people we might wish to discover what we can about the origin of Christianity from
the evidence, but not much evidence remains other than the works long ago categorized by
Christian bishops as canonical, which is to say those which they deemed acceptable for general
consumption. Most evidence deemed unacceptable has been destroyed. Not simply lost, decayed
or despoiled by the ravages of time but destroyed by the Christians themselves! Anything that
has not been destroyed has been savaged by early Christian editors until it is difficult to know
what was original and what has been interpolated or re-written.

Most Christians who are not theologians do not realize this. They do not realize that the gospels
were not written as accurate records for the archives but purely to persuade people to believe.
They were not written as historical documents but to recruit converts, just as modern holiday
brochures are written to persuade people to spend their money. Like the exaggerated colours of
the brochures, gospel stories could be mainly hype, and gentle Jesus simply a glossy picture to
attract new punters!

Nor are the earliest Christian records those which appear first in the New Testament, the gospels,
but some of Paul’s epistles. The earliest of Paul’s epistles may have been written only a few
decades after the crucifixion, in about 52 AD. But Paul’s letters tell us almost nothing about
Jesus, the person. Indeed the absence of detail about the life of the founder of Christianity by his
most important apostle seems astonishing.

Paul can say very little about Jesus:

• he was a Jew of the line of David—Paul knew of no divine impregnation—and was the first of 
many children;  
• he started the tradition of the Eucharist;  
• he was crucified;  
• he rose from the dead on the third day;  
• he appeared to various people after his resurrection, including a multitude;  
161 
 

• he had died before Paul was converted and Paul never met him.  

Paul overcame the last impediment by claiming a superior way of knowing Jesus—
supernaturally! Paul apparently was a medium. From time to time he would fall into a trance and
have visions of the risen Jesus telling him where the chosen apostles were going wrong!

Paul uses very little of the life or teaching of Jesus because he did not know it and thought it
irrelevant anyway. Paul was preaching his own message. For Paul a belief in the risen Christ was
all that was needed for salvation. Whatever Jesus thought while he lived simply did not matter to
Paul, and Paul could not know what was attributed by the church to Christ later. These are the
reasons why much of the teaching of Jesus seems mysterious, and even contradict Christianity as
it has come to us via Paul. If you believe in the risen Christ, you are saved so what does it matter
what Jesus taught?

Nor do Paul’s epistles refer to written accounts of the life of Jesus. If they existed, it is
inconceivable that Paul would never have quoted from them when it suited him. We can safely
conclude that the gospels did not exist in documentary form when Paul wrote his letters. Paul’s
epistles were written around 50-60 AD whereas the earliest narrative gospels are from around
60-90 AD. Paul had no gospels but at some stage the gospel writers or editors discovered Paul.
They could make use of Paul’s teaching and also incorporate the theory and practice of the
church as it had evolved in the years following the death of Jesus.

Why was it not until about 30 years after the traditional date of Jesus’s death in 33 AD that the
earliest written accounts of his mission appeared?

The Jewish disciples of Jesus, the Nazarenes, considered the second coming—in Greek,
parousia—and the end of the world as imminent and regarded it as a pointless exercise to record
the events of Jesus’s life. For the same reason the apostles—preachers not writers—practised an
oral tradition rather than any written one. Being Jewish, the apostle’s teachings initially were
transmitted orally in Aramaic, the Jewish vernacular of the time, a semitic language related to
Hebrew and Arabic. The dominant themes of the early church were the passion, the resurrection
and the impending return of the messiah. Whatever the apostles knew about these, they would
have told. They would have been less interested in events preceding the week of the passion. Nor
would they have been too concerned about any peripheral teaching of the fledgling god. The first
Christians were not expecting to have to teach teachers.

Only as time passed and the second coming did not arrive did those who retained their faith
decide to write down details of the passion, and then other details of Christ’s life and thought.
The original oral tradition of the Nazarenes became a written tradition. Accounts in the form we
now have them were years later still. By then the stories had been told many times, the tellers of
the stories, missionaries, had dispersed to many lands, and the stories had become stylized and
idealized.

The first Christian missionaries, the evangelists and those who preceded them—a church already
existed at Rome when Paul arrived there—had founded many Christian churches in the Roman
Empire. These different churches produced different holy books. After the Roman destruction of
162 
 

Jerusalem in 70 AD no single church had any special seniority. Some, like the church of
Alexandria in Egypt, consisted largely of Jewish Christians who felt better able to understand the
teachings of a Jew than the essentially gentile congregations of other churches like that at Rome
where the Jewish War had left a bad impression and local Christians were keen to play down the
Jewish origins of their religion.

These different congregations saw Jesus in different ways. Jewish converts who did not revert to
Judaism, were interested in the thought of Jesus, essentially Jesus the rabbi, and therefore keen
on his sayings. The gentile churches including those set up by Paul were interested in the dying
and resurrected god and had little interest in Jesus’s life otherwise. Others saw parallels between
Jesus and Orpheus or Adonis and it became expedient to write in appropriate stories and
parables.

Some Christian historians think different followers of Jesus specialized in different aspects of
Jesus’s ministry. One collected parables, another miracles, another passion narratives, and so on.
Evidence of this is taken to be the prologue of Luke in which he refers to a number of writers
who have established the facts of the religion as handed down by the original eyewitnesses. Luke
is admitting he had earlier sources—earlier gospels—but, because they were omitted from the
canon, they have since been lost, though fragments are discovered from time to time. It seems
likely, however, that if these were systematic collections of any sort then they preceded Jesus.
They would have been collections of messianic scriptural prophecies and testimonia which the
gospel writers indiscriminately applied to Jesus.

The results of the divers sources and interests of the writers were a number of variant accounts
which at first circulated separately in particular communities. Among them were the four gospels
or their prototypes which the church later defined as being authoritative but which were
evidently not accepted by Christian writers until after 140 AD to judge by citations by early
churchmen. The acceptance of the four gospels by the church does not mean they were the most
original or the most accurate accounts. It means they were the ones that best suited the growth of
the church in its Roman milieu.

For these reasons the four canonical gospels are not reliable. Unauthentic elements were
incorporated into them. For example, the personal views of the evangelists were written into the
gospels because the translator or scribe had no way of knowing whether something was true or
the evangelist’s opinion. They were heavily and clumsily edited by their authors and by later
theologians who felt they could be improved in this or that small way. Some gospels, like Luke,
are not at all in their original form. They contain anachronisms—confusing Nazarene beliefs
with what the church at a later date wanted converts to believe. Matthew 16:18-19, on the role of
Peter when Jesus says, “upon this rock I will build my church”, notes a later concern of the
church not a concern of Jesus, who believed the world was about to be renewed under the direct
rule of God. But no single editor ever had the authority to rewrite all the holy texts to eliminate
contradictions. That was to be a boon for the church, allowing it to do as it wished, always able
to quote some bit of scripture in justification, but it is also a boon for the inquirer because ad hoc
editing leaves inconsistencies that can be revealing.
163 
 

What editing happened before 140 AD or so, is unknown but considerable. Even after 140 AD
variations continued to be introduced because the fourth century codices, the Codex Vaticanus
and the Codex Sinaiticus, differ in important respects.

Why, you might ask, are we so fussy about the reliability of the New Testament books? Our
oldest copies of Herodotus and Thucydides are only hundreds of years old yet we do not question
the accuracy of their every word. And there are many more manuscripts and fragments of
manuscripts of the gospels preserved from long ago than of any other book. Surely such
fussiness is unwarranted.

The answer is that Herodotus and Thucydides are not the sacred books of millions of people who
believe they are the true word of God. The copyists of Herodotus and Thucydides had little
reason to alter them, whereas the copyists of the New Testament texts had every reason to alter
the holy books to suit church politics and to match its changing dogmata. Deliberate alterations
were made to the gospels within only a few years of their being written. Earlier drafts of the
gospels are now lost and lost versions could explain some of the puzzles of the connections
between the gospels. But even the completed versions were altered in parts by later editors and
copyists.

Still, the gospels were written successively and the evolution of theology can be seen from
gospel to gospel, Jesus growing, for example, from the modest son of man of Mark into the fully
fledged god cast in the eastern saviour mould of John. Jesus’s own message of a personal
repentance from sin to join the elect of God and secure entry into the coming kingdom was
replaced by Paul’s innovations, redemption from original sin by irrational faith mediated by the
power and ritual of the church. The paraphernalia and dogmas of the church were constructed in
imitation of rival religions or through political necessity not from any prescriptions of Jesus.
When christologically advanced concepts appear in the gospels they were probably inserted by a
later editor.

The skeptic therefore takes the view that anything in the Christian scriptures which seems
inappropriate or contradicts church doctrine is likely to be a remnant of the original tradition that
has escaped editorial correction. An inquirer will examine the culture of first century Palestine
and will believe the gospel account when it agrees with the culture of Palestine at that time.
Otherwise he will doubt it just as he would doubt the authenticity of a Roman bicycle pump.

Before you go, think about this… 
By yielding to authority we can absolve ourselves of guilt. Like Eichmann, we are doing our duty, only 
obeying orders—it is not our fault! Furthermore those who give the order also absolve themselves from 
guilt—they do not have to do the dirty work themselves. A chain of command or a technological device 
(like a B52 bomber) diffuses the responsibility, reducing guilt more.  

Who Lies Sleeping? 

Analyzing the Bible Scientifically


164 
 

There have been many prophets of the forthcoming catastrophe but they are not hailed and praised for 
their forethought—they are ignored or condemned as Jeremiahs.  

Who Lies Sleeping? 

13. The Gospels 2


No single translation of the New Testament can be recommended as a completely clear and accurate 
reading.  

Bruce Chilton 

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, December 01, 1998

• The Gospel of John  
• The Synoptic Problem  
• The Gospel of Matthew  
• The Gospel of Luke  

Abstract 
Christians might believe that in the gospels they have independent accounts of the ministry of Jesus. 
One observer, they might argue, could have been mistaken but could four? But Matthew, Mark and 
Luke are not independent. Matthew and Luke are mostly based on Mark and Q, a missing source, but Q, 
though earlier, seems to be a collection of wise sayings with little or no narrative, so can add relatively 
little to the gospel story, which is largely narrative. The few sayings of Jesus in Paul’s epistles, which pre‐
date the gospels, stem from Q—roughly the version of Matthew—suggesting it was the earliest Christian 
text. There is evidence for Q also in the non‐canonical Gospel of Thomas. The fourth gospel, John, seems 
to stem from a different tradition from the other three especially in its account of the last week in 
Jerusalem but is too late to be of primary interest.The Gospel of John 

 
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Christians might believe that in the gospels they have independent accounts of the ministry of
Jesus. One observer, they might argue, could have been mistaken but could four? Regrettably
examination of the texts tends to explode this argument. One expects different accounts of the
same events to tell broadly the same story, but when the common material extends to the same
word order, vocabulary and grammatical peculiarities one begins to suspect copying. The four
gospel writers are not independent witnesses.

The one which does seem to be independent of the others in large measure is the last in the New
Testament and the last one completed. The first three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke are
called the synoptic gospels because they tell essentially the same story—they have the same
viewpoint. John is quite different from the other three, omitting—apparently deliberately—much
of their content. The author seemed to feel another full account could serve no purpose but that
there was scope for refinements—doctrinal clarifications and additional material to answer
criticisms. The author of John was writing a work to complement the synoptics.

The high prestige of John for Christians partly comes from Paul’s description of John in
Galatians 2:9 as one of the pillar apostles, the others being Peter and James, but it is unlikely that
John the apostle wrote it. Very little, if any, of the New Testament is written by people who knew
the Son of God in person. Despite its own claims, the signs are that it was written late, so long
after the events it records that the apostle John must certainly have been dead. John could have
been written as early as 100 AD or some say, certainly mistakenly, as late as 160 AD. It is not
mentioned by Papias or Marcion writing about 140 AD and Justin Martyr only quotes from it
tentatively in 163-167 AD as if he knew his readers would not regard it as authoritative. Not until
the third century did it become generally accepted.

John propagates a well developed theological outlook, its parts being linked together as a
uniform whole to a much greater extent than the other gospels. It is more than the set of
pericopes—units of oral tradition—that can be seen in the synoptic gospels. John is more
didactic, philosophical and theological than the synoptics. It is mainly discourse rather than
narrative, and depicts Jesus as giving lengthy disquisitions rather than the homely sayings and
parables of the other gospels. These long connected discourses suggest the source was a
programme of sermons, possibly derived from originals by the evangelist, which were worked up
by authorities in one of the regional churches.

The history of the church is of doctrine becoming more and more elaborate not of it being
simplified. Furthermore, the evolution of Jesus from man to messiah to divinity to equality with
the Almighty places John late in the timescale—advanced elements would not be lost once
established so it could not have preceded the synoptics. As it adds, at a late date, much that is not
in the other gospels and is overlaid with later theology, it can only be used as a secondary source.

The material peculiar to John is the miracle at Cana, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, healing
a cripple and a blind man in Jerusalem, raising Lazarus, washing the feet of the disciples, the
farewell discourses, parts of the passion and the prologue. We must treat these additions with
skepticism not least because Matthew and particularly Luke obviously made determined attempts
to pull together every particular of tradition they could find, and yet never heard of such an
astonishing event as the raising of Lazarus. In John this was so amazing a miracle it was the
166 
 

reason for Jesus being crucified, so it could hardly have been forgotten by those interviewed by
Matthew and Luke.

Unlike the synoptics, Jesus’s messiahdom is recognized very early (Jn 1:14). Yet, in John 6:15,
when the multitude want to make Jesus king, he refuses to accept, taking measures to evade the
crowd. The cleansing of the temple and the anointing are in a different setting and order from the
other gospels and there is little verbal agreement with them. But John is very free with the
rendering of his Old Testament quotations and it is possible that he was equally free with his
rendering of the bits of the synoptic gospels he chose to use. The title Son of man is less used
than in the synoptics—Son of God is favoured.

Besides these, John’s chronology has been mixed up, either by him for doctrinal reasons or by
editors, or perhaps by accident—some pages look as though they have been interchanged for no
clear reason. In several places in John, transpositions would improve the flow of the text. The
raising of Lazarus from the dead is the immediate cause of Jesus’s arrest not the cleansing of the
temple, which occurs near the start of the gospel, but some scholars think John 2.13b-25 has
been misplaced and should really be after the raising of Lazarus thus restoring the cleansing of
the temple to its proper place. Possibly an editor attempted to answer the criticism that Jesus’s
behaviour in the temple was an act of banditry and redolent of rebellion by deliberately moving it
earlier in the story.

The date of the last supper in the synoptics and John differ. In the synoptics, it is a Passover meal
but in John it is one day before. This difference might be due to the Nazarenes’ use of a different
calendar, the solar calendar of the Essenes prescribed in Jubilees not the lunar one of Jerusalem.
Or perhaps the synoptics used the reckoning of Jews in the diaspora in which the Passover was
fixed not varying according to the phase of the moon. But even this puzzle, which John creates,
looks less like calendrical confusion than that John thought it suited God’s purpose to depict
Jesus as the paschal lamb—simply altering the chronology to have him crucified on the day
when the lambs were being sacrificed in readiness for the Passover. Some scholars take all
John’s references to time to be symbolic.

John is the most hostile of the three to the Jews, but it has more in common with Jewish
mysticism than with Rabbinism. The author of John also allegedly wrote the Revelation of St
John the Divine between 69 and 93 AD, which, being an apocalypse, is in the style of the
Essenes. It was always controversial, Marcion rejected it, Jerome as late as 420 AD rejected it,
but Justin Martyr accepted it and gradually it became accepted universally. It is difficult for the
modern mind to understand how such mumbo-jumbo continues to be included in the Christian
canon but, since no one now has the authority to change God’s bible, it is easier to ignore it, or
leave it to fundamentalists, who love it! Historically it is valuable, being largely Essene.

Since the discovery of the Qumran scrolls—dubbed the Dead Sea Scrolls from the proximity of
the site to the Dead Sea—about fifty years ago in the Judaean wilderness, we now realize the
gospel of John also has Essene features and vocabulary. Concepts like light and truth, previously
thought to be Hellenistic, are found in the scrolls as is the contrast of light against darkness.
There are parallels with the Hermetica of Hermes Trimegistus in Egypt in the second and third
167 
 

centuries AD and some common imagery in the work of Philo of Alexandria such as the
metaphors for God of light, fountain and shepherd. Philo also uses the concept of the Logos.

John might contain therefore some elements of genuine Nazarene tradition, treated from a
different perspective from the other three gospels—but, being the last and the most highly
developed in its thinking, John remains historically the least reliable of the gospels. John still has
to be treated with the most caution, and especially where it reports remarkable incidents that no
one else ever heard of.

The Synoptic Problem 

Matthew, Mark and Luke are earlier than John but are not at all independent. Indeed, in some
respects they are so similar they create a problem of their own, called by scholars, the synoptic
problem. The problem is to explain the following facts.

• These three gospels have much common material. Matthew covers 90% of Mark! These two 
have 250 verses in common, many containing the same words and phrases. Only seven short 
passages of Mark fail to appear in Matthew. Luke contains almost 50% of Mark but misses out 
the whole chunk of Mark 6:45 to 8:26. Only four passages of Mark, about 30 verses, are not 
covered in either Matthew or Luke.  
• In about half of the material common to all three, the grammar and phraseology and even 
unusual vocabulary are often the same. Compare for example the following three passages from 
the synoptic gospels.  

…and as he was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and 
the elders, and they said unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? or who gave thee 
this authority to do these things? And Jesus said unto them, I will ask of you one question, and 
answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, was it 
from heaven, or from men? answer me. And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall 
say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him? But if we should say, Of men; 
they feared the people: for all verily held John to be a prophet. And they answered Jesus and 
say, We know not. And Jesus saith unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these 
things.  

Mark 11:27‐33 

And when he was come into the temple, the chief Priests and the elders of the people came 
unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who 
gave thee this authority? And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one 
question, which if ye tell me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things. The 
baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, 
saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him? But if 
we shall say, Of men; we fear the multitude; for all hold John as a prophet. And they answered 
168 
 

Jesus, and said, We know not. And he also said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I 
do these things.  

Matthew 21:23‐27 

…as he was teaching the people in the temple, and preaching the gospel, there came upon him 
the Chief Priests and the scribes with the elders, and they spake, saying unto him, Tell us: By 
what authority doest thou these things? or who is he that gave thee this authority? And he 
answered and said unto them, I will also ask you one question; and tell me: The baptism of John, 
was it from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From 
heaven; he will say, Why did ye not believe him? But if we shall say, Of men; all the people will 
stone us: for they be persuaded that John was a prophet. And they answered, that they knew 
not whence it was. And Jesus said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these 
things.  

Luke 20:1‐8 

• These passages are effectively identical. Not only are they from the same source they are copied 
almost unaltered.  
• Matthew and Mark often agree when Luke differs and Luke and Mark sometimes agree when 
Matthew differs but in each case the order of the common material is nearly always the same. 
There is also a body of material in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark, mostly the teachings of 
Jesus with little narrative and no passion. Again the similarity often extends to wording but 
Matthew and Luke rarely agree when Mark differs.  
• On the other hand, there are parts where the same events in Matthew and Luke are given very 
different settings and quite different vocabulary is used, as in the healing of the centurion’s 
servant (Mt 8:5ff; Lk 7:1ff).  
• Matthew and Luke often include doublets, accounts of apparently the same event with slight 
differences. Each of these two gospels also have aspects peculiar to themselves: Luke’s travel 
narrative is largely his own (Lk 9:51‐18:14) whereas Matthew groups his material into five 
themes.  

As long ago as 1778, G E Lessing attempted to solve the synoptic problem by proposing that the
gospels were different translations of an original Aramaic gospel—the story of Jesus told by his
companions and early Jewish followers. But the best explanation is that two of the gospel writers
used the work of the other, and, where they used it, they copied it virtually word for word. Since
Matthew and Luke between them contain almost the whole of Mark, we can deduce that Mark
was the original gospel and the other gospel writers had sight of it before they completed their
own versions. The reasons are as follows.

• We have seen that, in the sections common to all three synoptic gospels, passages are 
constructed too similarly to be independent.  
• Mark’s order is followed in both Matthew and Luke. The differences in Matthew are because 
Matthew has consciously grouped his material into five themes yet this order is not reflected in 
Luke or Mark. Since only seven short passages of Mark do not appear in Matthew, evidently 
169 
 

Matthew had Mark to work from and incorporated nearly all of it into his own account. We saw 
that Luke covers almost half of Mark, usually retaining the same order.  
• Matthew and Luke are more concise than Mark. Mark has six verses to describe how Jesus 
healed in crowds by driving out the unclean spirits (Mk 3:7‐12). In Matthew, only two verses are 
required and in Luke only three (Mt 12:15‐16 and Lk 6:17‐19). They also usually improve Mark’s 
style by omitting unusual words and unwieldy grammatical constructions. These are signs that 
Mark has been edited in Matthew and Luke.  
• Though Mark is more verbose he is often less precise, as when he calls Herod a king in Mk 6:14 
although, as Matthew and Luke correctly state, he was only a tetrarch (Mt 14:1; Lk 9:7). Mark 
has been corrected in Matthew and Luke so must have come first.  
• As the gospels became aimed at an increasingly gentile audience editors would be expected to 
eliminate Aramaic words. Mark has more Aramaic words in the sayings of Jesus than Matthew 
and Luke. Also Mark was not writing for Jews because he explains Jewish customs like 
handwashing (Mk 7:3‐4) and defines the Aramaic words and phrases he uses—unless it is 
expedient not to.  
• Mark is more honest in his accounts, showing Jesus with a full range of human emotions and 
even some foibles. Mark says Jesus could do no mighty work in Nazareth (Mk 6:5), Matthew 
says not many (Mt 13:58) and Luke omits it. In the stilling of the storm, Mark is definite in his 
wording, “Do you still have no faith?”, compared with Luke’s, “Where is your faith?”, and 
Matthew’s, “You of little faith” (“Mk” 4:40; “Mt” 8:26; “Lk” 8:25). Humanity fades in later 
editions as the man receded and the god advanced. 

Modern biblical analysts do not doubt that the similarities between the synoptic gospels must
imply common sources, but was it a single one? Many scholars postulate two written sources for
“Matthew” and “Luke”—“Mark” and a source labelled by scholars “Q”. Thus, the doublets
mentioned above can be explained as accounts from both “Q” and “Mark” that differed
sufficiently for Matthew or Luke to want to include both.

Luke and Matthew were not named as the authors of their gospels until Irenaeus did so in
180 AD. Such late assignments cast doubt on their validity.

The Gospel of Matthew 

Though sophisticated Christians today prefer John, Matthew was considered the most important
of the gospels for almost the whole history of the church. It was placed first in the canon because
of the regard in which it was held.
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Matthew is the most Jewish of the gospels and probably reflects most strongly the ambience of
the Jerusalem Church. Jewish customs and words are not explained as they are in Mark and, in
that sense it seems to anticipate a Jewish readership. Some see this strong Jewish flavour as
proof of its authenticity. Others dislike it as signs of the work of Judaizers, a mythical breed of
early Jewish Christians who tried to deny the innovations introduce by the Son and revert to
good old Mosaic Jewishness. Despite Judaizers and its Jewish tone, it propagates the Hellenized
view of the Christ—that conditioned by Greek culture—rather than the Jewish view of the
messiah. It does not use as many Aramaisms as does Mark and most of his quotations are from
the Septuagint, the Greek version of the scriptures, both of which could point to the source of
Matthew being a city like Alexandria or Antioch where Jewish communities had long been
Hellenized. Jewish Christians were reverting to orthodox Judaism as time went by with no sign
of the kingdom appearing. Attempts were made to stem the ebbing of the tide in vain. Even in
these largely Jewish cities, the gentile theology of Paul began to dominate, and Jesus had to
become divine—but in Matthew it was Jews who recognized it—the disciples not the Roman.

There are thematic indications that Matthew is Essenic in nature, and so it is not unreasonable to
believe that Matthew did have its origin in one of these cities. Nazarenes, escaping the troubles in
Palestine after the crucifixion, dispersed to various centres where their brothers the Essenes had
strong communities. The author seems not to be defying or negating the Jewish religion but
rather is showing here is a thoroughly Jewish faith of a firmly established church. Matthew is a
polemic with the rabbis of the synagogues—a polemic which continues the polemic of the
Essenes with the Pharisees. His purpose is exactly that of the sectarians of Qumran—he is stating
categorically that only the elect, formerly the Essenes but now the Christians, will enter the
kingdom of God.

Matthew is more carefully constructed than the other gospels. It has many similarities with the
Damascus Rule of the scrolls. Though not being quite so obviously a manual of rules, there are
rules in it—most notably in the sermon on the mount. And, like the Damascus Rule, it gives
some history of the foundation of the movement and some exhortations or discourses—in
Matthew they end with the formula, “…and it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings”,
each being devoted to a topic—the sermon on the mount, a missionary discourse, a parable
discourse, a church discourse, and an eschatological discourse, thus serving as a vade mecum for
members, as the Damascus Rule did.

Matthew is keen to show Jesus—who is a parallel figure to Moses—as the fulfilment of Old
Testament prophecy. His approach is akin to the pesher method of commentating on scripture
favoured by the Qumran community whereby current events are interpreted as prophesied by the
scriptures. Matthew has five scriptural references in the birth narrative to show that prophecy
was fulfilled in Jesus. Matthew’s use of these quotations is rarely precise. He does just what the
sectarians of Qumran did—change the quotation subtly to suit his purpose.

The original draft of Matthew might have been written in Alexandria where many of the
survivors of the fall of Jerusalem settled because of its proximity and its large Jewish
population—a third of its population of three million—or Antioch where an early church was
established possibly based on an existing Essene community. Its strong emphasis on the
leadership of Peter in the years immediately after the crucifixion (in Matthew, Peter is granted
171 
 

special authority) suggests it arose in a Jewish milieu where Peter was revered, Antioch being the
place of choice. Matthew is the only gospel to mention a church (Mt 16:18; 18:17), certainly a
late interpolation, though it might be based on the word used by the Essenes, often translated
“congregation”. Matthew also shows late influences in the concluding passages (Mt 28:18-20).

It seems odd that Matthew, a Jewish composition, should lean so heavily upon Mark, a gentile
composition, as it obviously does. The explanation can only be that Mark carried great authority,
and that authority traditionally is that Mark is really the Gospel of Peter, Peter having dictated it
to Mark. Matthew could forgive Mark his clumsy style, Latinisms and other foibles because he
was passing on the words of the man who had been Jesus’s minder.

An aim of Matthew seems to have been to answer criticisms and to do so he concocts unlikely
explanations. The reluctance of John the Baptist to baptize Jesus and the guards at the tomb serve
to explain respectively that John the Baptist recognized Jesus as superior and that the disciples
could not have stolen the body. Similarly, narratives of Peter walking on water, Judas bargaining
for silver and Pilate washing his hands serve respectively to boost Peter, damn the Jews as
money-grabbing traitors and absolve Romans of any responsibility for torturing a god.

The infancy narrative seems to answer charges of Jesus’s illegitimacy. The flight to Egypt and
subsequent return parallels Moses and the children of Israel’s sojourn there in the scriptures, but
Jesus’s family return to Nazareth, instead of Bethlehem, providing an explanation for Jesus’s
title—the Nazarene. Some wiseacres in the empire might have remembered that the Nazarenes
were a group of Jewish revolutionaries so an innocent explanation of the title was needed. In like
fashion, modern apologists, embarrassed by Jesus so plainly stating that to be rich is to be a
sinner, have invented a narrow gate in the walls of Jerusalem called the Needle’s Eye. There is
no historical evidence for any such gate. Jesus’s metaphor is paralleled several times in the
Jewish Talmud which also has large animals attempting to do incredible things serving as visual
images of the impossible.

Scholars have long recognized that Matthew had at hand a collection of citations written in
Aramaic because he punctuates his narrative at various points with the formula, “…this
happened in order to fulfil what was said by the prophet”. This collection they called the Logia.
Such collections existed in the Jewish world, for example in one of the Qumran testimonia
documents in which three sections consist of quotations of messianic prophecies and the fourth is
from the apocryphal Psalms of Jonah. Their use suggests the author was a member of a sect like
the Essenes. According to the biblical scholar, Donald Guthrie, if Matthew belonged to a group
which, like the men of Qumran were devoted to such exegesis, it is easy to see how many of the
texts would spring naturally to his mind when he was writing the narrative. In Matthew, the
Logia is combined with Mark’s account to create a richer synthesis than Mark alone. But since it
was not completed until around 100 AD, the apostle Matthew cannot have had any part in the
final editing. Additions continued to be made for another 100 years.

A church Father, Papias allegedly affirmed that Matthew collected oracles or sayings—the
Logia—which were translated by others as best they could. He says the Logia was a collection of
Jesus’s sayings compiled by Matthew for the use of Christian teachers—it was indeed a manual.
The version used by the gospel writers was probably a good Greek translation of the original
172 
 

Aramaic. Scholars consider it was assembled 25-30 years before the gospels and some
clergymen believe it might actually have been collected in Jesus’s lifetime. Much of it seems to
have been in practical form, and, because its allusions are often rural, believers consider they
give an insight into Jesus’s character.

Now we can see that the Logia preceded Jesus, deriving from a collection of Essene liturgy,
prayers, testimonia, maxims and orders, probably arranged in five parts to reflect the five books
of the Pentateuch, inspiring Matthew’s fivefold arrangement, and apparently an early catechism
or manual of discipleship. Its rural character arose because the Essenes were farmers and
herdsmen. The source called Q is essentially the Logia but Luke evidently left out much of it as
being too Jewish—emphasis on the fulfilment of the law, remarks about the lost sheep of the
house of Israel, some sayings and testimonia, and perhaps some anti-Pharisaic material.
Matthew’s apocalypse is much longer than Mark’s and eschatology also shows in the parables of
the tares and the talents suggesting a pronounced Essene influence.

There is much in Matthew to value though it is not a Greek translation of the Aramaic Gospel of
the Nazarenes. If Matthew belonged to a community of Nazarenes then even his collection of
oracles will be of interest in understanding them although they might not help us greatly in
settling the narrative sequence.

The Gospel of Luke 

The gospel of Luke also is not independent. Luke is thought to have been a doctor, the
companion of Paul on his travels. So, he was neither an eyewitness of the events he describes nor
the secretary of one, as was Mark—Paul only met Jesus in his imagination. If Luke was the
companion of Paul, the two did not communicate a great deal because Luke does not seem to use
Paul’s epistles or understand Jesus in quite the Pauline way.

Luke evidently was an educated man whose Greek was good, though not classical (writers of
literary Greek always copied the classical style) and who, by his own account, did some research
before writing. The prologue to Luke’s gospel says he used the works of a number of writers
who had recorded the memories of the original disciples of Jesus. By the time he put it all
together, Christians had long abandoned the idea of an early parousia. Luke was well versed in
the Septuagint. He also wrote Acts, both his books being written for gentiles.

Luke arguably had knowledge of Antiquities of the Jews written in 93 AD by the Jewish
historian, Josephus, and Acts is usually dated at about 100 AD, but some consider it could have
been much earlier. Acts ends tantalizingly with Paul awaiting trial in Rome in around 64 AD
suggesting to some theologians that the work was written about then. But Paul’s fate might not
have been what the early church wanted to record, and the narrative in Acts might have been left
deliberately unfinished. Though the events of Acts follow those of Luke, Acts—or parts of it—
was probably drafted first. Luke would have written down first what he was familiar with—the
history of his companion, Paul, so parts of Acts might be quite early but the gospel much later.
The Acts of the Apostles was probably written by Luke in part as early as 64 AD. Luke himself or
editors then tampered with it considerably.
173 
 

Luke has much to say about the conversion of gentiles and gentiles are often painted in a good
light. He is evidently a gentile writing for gentiles, but he is one who seems quite well versed in
Essene ways of thinking. He shows every indication of being either an Essene proselyte of
Stephen’s Hellenistic wing of the Nazarenes, or a godfearer who had stood for a long time at the
edge of the Essene movement, longing to join but not having the courage to be circumcised and
grateful for Stephen’s revisions of the law allowing gentiles to be admitted into a form of
Judaism. He shows his Nazarene influence in his desire that people should repent, repentance
being a central theme of Luke, but—like Stephen—he extends repentance beyond the Jews to
everyone, and thus helps to universalize the narrow sectarianism of the Essenes. So there are
dangers in accepting Luke as a primary source but indications that he was familiar with pre-
crucifixion Essenism. Providing that care is taken to resist Luke’s universalistic desire, evidence
about the Nazarene mission can be gleaned from his gospel.

Luke uses Mark, that is plain, but is much less deferential towards it than Matthew. He renders
some of the passages in Mark much more freely, as indeed he seems to with all his material, and
omits quite a lot. Other curiosities of Luke are that the travel narrative gives little indication of an
itinerary and that it gives unusual prominence to the role of women. Luke refers to Jesus as “the
Lord” on 14 occasions—Mark and Matthew never do (except in the fictional dialogue of demons
or angels) indicating that in Luke the split from Nazarene teaching was essentially complete.

Luke was often much freer with his material than one would expect of an editor—he was more a
re-writer. Parts of Luke seem to be taken from both Mark and Matthew. Some scholars think that
Luke used Mark and Matthew but regarded Matthew as only a secondary source much of which
he rewrote. However, most scholars believe that the material common to Matthew and Luke but
absent in Mark came from the source Q which Luke as well as Matthew had before him as he
wrote.

Comparison of the three synoptic gospels allows the missing source Q to be crudely
reconstructed. If it were a collection of sayings, it ought to contain no narrative yet it seems to
include the healing of the centurion’s servant which Guthrie considers mystifying. The two
accounts of the centurion’s servant differ considerably, which might be explained if there were
yet more sources besides Mark and Q. Other parts of Luke are similar to accounts in other
gospels but are also different enough to suggest another source (Lk 24:1-12). These additional
sources are called M and L. The narrative material independent of Mark could have been
common to M and L leaving Q a collection of pure sayings. The additional source for Luke, L,
comprises parables, isolated sayings and narrative material.

It must be remembered that some of the Logia might not have been used in either Matthew or
Luke and is lost altogether, and some might have been used by one gospel writer but not the
other so that M and L both are partly Logia—like the strongly Jewish material of Matthew
omitted by Luke. The few sayings of Jesus in Paul’s epistles, which we have seen pre-date the
gospels, stem from Q—roughly the version of Matthew—suggesting it was the earliest Christian
text. There is evidence for Q also in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas.

Naturally, the problem is enormously complicated by later editing when copyists tried to
harmonize the gospels or improve them for the sake of doctrine, and indeed by the possibility of
174 
 

there having been earlier editions, now lost, but in circulation before the ultimately accepted
versions. Vincent Taylor, a professor of New Testament language and literature, convinces us
that Luke combined Q and L to give a proto-Luke which he later combined with Mark when he
came across that gospel. He reasons thus.

• Luke omits half of Mark suggesting he had other material he preferred.  
• Luke’s passion narrative contains only 20% of Mark also suggesting Luke had another source. 
When Mark’s material is subtracted a continuous narrative remains. Luke changes Mark’s order 
unusually often (12 instances between 22:14 and 24:11).  
• The same seems to apply to Luke 21 (the eschatological discourse) where verses 20‐34 at least 
are non‐Marcan but with insertions from Mark.  
• Q material is often combined with L material but never with material from Mark which appears 
in distinct blocks suggesting it was added afterwards.  
• In the main narrative of the ministry, there are blocks of material from Mark alternating with 
other material. When the material from Mark is extracted a reasonably continuous story 
remains.  
• The proto‐Luke text lacked Galilaean material, miracles and kingdom parables. These were 
inserted from Mark.  
• Different words are used in the Greek for those rigidly adhering to the law—“grammateus” in 
the parts from Mark but “nomikos” in the other parts.  

The dating in Luke 3:1 was the start of proto-Luke. The birth narrative was added later. Possibly
Luke originally wrote proto-Luke-Acts together as one book with no knowledge of Mark’s
gospel. Later he came across it and added into proto-Luke what he thought was useful. An editor
at some stage split off Acts as a different book and subsequently it was blown hither and thither
by the zephyrs and whirlwinds of early church politics.

It seems then that there were two primary gospel sources, but the authors of Matthew and Luke
had additional material. The source of the gospel narrative was Mark. The second source was an
unknown book of gospel sayings, labelled Q, which was known as the Logia.

The Jerusalem Church must have had a gospel and written it down in Aramaic as the Gospel of
the Nazarenes. We know from Jerome this was still used by the Nazarene sect of Arabia in the
fourth century. The Quran speaks of the Gospel, in the singular, which must have been the
Gospel of the Nazarenes evidently still existing in Arabia at the time of Muhammed in the
seventh century and revered by local Christians. It was written in Aramaic. Ibn Ishaq, the first
biographer of Muhammed, tells us in the eighth century that the Abyssinians, who were
Christians, followed the same gospel as the Christians of Arabia but were circumcised, revered
what was claimed to be the Ark of the Covenant and kept the laws of the Torah including the
food taboos.

Some critics believe that a Nazarene Gospel existed even before Jesus and that his followers
applied it to him after Jesus’s crucifixion—a distinct possibility if the Nazarenes were inspired
by Essenes. Ancient scholars identified the Nazarene Gospel with a version of Matthew and, if
this is true, it probably contained little narrative. Essentially it would have been Q, the collection
of sayings and testimonia of the type found at Qumran. Paul, who probably had this among the
175 
 

books he carried with him, would have been content with it since he ignored any stories about
Jesus’s life as irrelevant to the spiritual person wearing the body.

In the post-War years, Robert Graves and Joshua Podro tried, by combining classical and Jewish
scholarship, to restore this Nazarene Gospel rather fancifully. They rashly accepted all of the
gospels as equally true, each relating genuine Nazarene tradition, and, together with bits of other
books whether canonical like Acts or non-canonical like the Recognitions of Clementine, tried to
restore the original as a rearranged and reinterpreted combination of them all!

My objective also is to try to retrieve the true events of the gospel but I shall be less rash. I do
not accept the gospels as equally valid. The fourth gospel, John, seems to stem from a different
tradition from the other three especially in its account of the last week in Jerusalem but is too late
to be of primary interest. Matthew, Mark and Luke are not independent. Matthew and Luke are
mostly based on Mark and Q, but Q, though earlier, seems to be a collection of wise sayings with
little or no narrative so can add relatively little to the story I seek to uncover which is largely
narrative.

What is left is Mark’s gospel.

Before you go, think about this… 
Pope Gregory XV in 1622 set up the Sacred Congregation for Propagating the Faith, whence came the 
word “propaganda”. Propaganda is particularly important in war, when governments want voters to 
believe they are right, and the enemy is wicked. Truth is the first casualty of war. In 1936, Boston 
merchant Edward Filene set up the Institute for Propaganda Analysis to show Americans propaganda 
methods. It did not last long but it produced a standard list of propaganda methods still used.  

1. Bandwagon—Pump up the party and the message  
2. Card‐stacking—Biased the case for your position  
3. Glittering generalities—Evoke emotions with power words  
4. Name‐calling—Denigrate opponents  
5. Plain folks—Sell the leader as an ordinary man to increase trust  
6. Testimonial—Get independent celebrities to give their backing  
7. Transfer—Link the leader with trusted people of past and present 

Few people realise they are being manipulated by propaganda all the time. 
176 
 

Investigating Biblical History


Not all genetic mutations are equally likely.  

Who Lies Sleeping? 

15. The Gospels 3


Vitually none of the modern translations [of the New Testament] can be trusted to bear the weight that 
is put on them.  

John Bowden, SCM  

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, December 01, 1998

• The Gospel of Mark  
• Analysing Mark’s Gospel  
• Abstract of the Thesis  

Abstract 
The Gospel of Mark is considered the first written gospel, it has ‘priority’ over Luke and Matthew 
because they used Mark in composing their own gospels twenty or so years later. Mark was not a 
companion of Jesus, possibly not an inhabitant of Palestine and possibly not a Jew. His gospel includes 
garbled bits of Essene and later material, is confused in its geography and sociology and has a false 
ending. Nevertheless, if Mark’s is the first gospel to be recorded, if it is considered accurate enough by 
two more gospel writers to be reproduced by them in large measure and, if Mark really wrote down 
what Peter said, as church tradition has it, then Mark should contain the essence of the Aramaic oral 
tradition, the story of the Nazarenes as perceived by Peter, supposedly Jesus’s right hand man.  
177 
 

The Gospel of Mark 

The missionaries to the gentiles spread stories about Jesus by preaching the “kerygma”, “that
which is proclaimed”, the main characteristic of a gospel. That is how the sayings and deeds of
Jesus got to Rome where someone wrote a gospel, to be attributed to Mark, between 65-71 AD.
Mark’s gospel was anonymous until a second-century tradition linked a “Mark” mentioned in the
epistle 1 Peter 5:13 with the gospel.

The gospel of Mark is considered the first written gospel, it has “priority” over Luke and
Matthew because they used Mark in composing their own gospels twenty or so years later. They
were more complete works and written in better Greek, so the early Church preferred them and
neglected Mark. Mark is theologically the most primitive of the gospels, though Matthew is the
most Palestinian.

Mark’s gospel is simple, clumsy and breathless—everything happening “immediately—the


author joins “pericopes” with the Greek word “euthus” meaning “immediately”, or
“straightaway”. It suggests Mark is not familiar with Greek, simply meaning to say “then”. No
one has yet thought of a reason why such a crude and clumsy work could have been adopted by
the church while elegant writers like Matthew and Luke had already published their own
versions. Mark’s gospel must have been retained because it was the first one.

Mark is, according to Eusebius, writing around the beginning of the third century but quoting
Papias who wrote about 130 AD, the interpreter and companion of Peter in his later travels.
Perhaps Mark translated lessons given in Aramaic by Peter for the Greek speakers in the
audience. At any rate Papias says he recorded in no particular order the old man’s memories of
the acts and sayings of Jesus. Mark was therefore not first hand. He had not known Jesus, but
from Peter’s sermons and anecdotes he was able to write his gospel shortly after Peter’s death in
about 64 AD.
178 
 

The passages in Mark related in the third person plural might have been Peter’s own words.
Some of the adjacent material seems so closely related to it that, sensibly, it too should be
included with that thought to have been Peter’s. The rest of the material in Mark seems to be in
well arranged blocks or pericopes suggesting already collected pre-Marcan material. Inasmuch as
Peter must have followed the Nazarene tradition in his sermons and the other material, being
very early, can hardly have lost much of its original content, Mark should be closest to the true
story of the Nazarenes.

Difficulties with the testimony of Papias are that Peter has no special significance in Mark’s
book and Mark’s theology is Hellenized like Paul’s. Matthew, the singularly Jewish gospel, uses
Mark lending some credence to the view that Mark must have been based on the testimony of an
authoritative Jewish figure—Peter—and possibly Peter emulated Jesus in his modesty, feeling
little need to play up his own role. When Paul’s influence waxed the gospel would have been
edited to suit his outlook. It seems to have assumed a shape close to the present one by about
90 AD.

Mark had been written down “in no particular order” but later was tampered with by editorial
additions and rearrangements. In the version which we now have there is a broad chronology
leading from Galilee to Jerusalem, and then to the events leading to the crucifixion, but
individual episodes cannot be assumed to be in the correct order. It gives a description of the
work and movements of the Nazarene band but its true meaning has been thinly disguised to
anyone who cared to believe other than the Christian gloss.

Significantly, since Mark’s is considered the earliest gospel, the last twelve verses are not
original—these last verses cannot be the recollections of Peter. Peter’s story ends with the
message of a young man in a white robe, the garment of the fully initiated Essene, sitting in
Jesus’s tomb that Jesus is risen and gone ahead of them to Galilee. Whereupon the disciples fled
in fear and said nothing to anyone. No appearances! No ascension! A later editor, considering the
ending inappropriate, added the last eight verses in which Jesus appeared all over the place and
then rose into heaven to be received at the right hand of God. How many Christians realize that
all these essential notions of their religion are absent from the earliest version of Jesus’s life?

New Testament Greek is called “koine”, which might be considered as meaning “common” or
“colloquial”. It was not classical or even refined Greek, and has given Christian translators a
marvellous time in making up translations of abstruse words—perhaps vulgarities or profanities
or just bad grammar and misunderstandings—as words that suit them. Mark writes in this
colloquial Greek not the more refined classical Greek of an educated man. He includes Latinisms
suggesting the influence of Rome—Marcus was a very common Roman name at that time. He
seemed unfamiliar with the country of Palestine or common Jewish customs, scholars giving the
following examples:

• Dalmanutha referred to in Mark 8:10 does not exist by that name, though it seems to be the 
same as Magdala of Matthew 15:39 properly rendered Magadan  
• in Mark 5:1 the country of the Gerasenes extends to the Sea of Galilee but Gerasene is really 
some forty miles from the lake, behind the mountains in what is now Jordan and then was the 
country of the ten Greek cities called Decapolis  
• he describes the town of Bethsaida in Mark 8:26 as a village  
179 
 

• he invents Jewish proceedings  
• he confuses references to the Herodian family in Mark 6:17  
• he thought the appearance of Jesus before the High Priest was a trial not the committal hearing 
that it was  
• he thought a wife could divorce a husband contrary to Jewish law in Mark 10:12.  

Though some of these anomalies might be explained, it seems Mark either was not a Jew or, if he
was, was so thoroughly Hellenized he retained few traces of his Jewish roots. He could have
been a gentile, judging from his name and his Latinisms, possibly a Roman Christian convert
with no direct experience of Palestine, and writing in Rome for a gentile readership.
Confirmation that Mark was a pagan convert comes in the Acts of Barnabas supposedly written
by John Mark himself. He writes:

I John, accompanying the holy apostles Barnabas and Paul, being formerly a servant of Cyrillus the high 
priest of Jupiter, but now having received the gift of the Holy Spirit through Paul and Barnabas and Silos, 
who were worthy of the calling, and who baptized me in Iconium. After I was baptized, then, I saw a 
certain man standing clothed in white raiment, and he said to me: Be of good courage, John, for 
assuredly thy name shall be changed to Mark, and thy glory shall be proclaimed in all the world. The 
darkness in thee has passed away from thee, and there has been given to thee understanding to know 
the mysteries of God. 

Note the symbols of Essenism, baptism, white garments and hidden mysteries of God. Jupiter is
the Roman name of Zeus, and, in his gospel, Mark tries to flatter the Romans and denigrate the
Jews it being composed when Jewish nationalism was a nuisance in the empire and Christians
had to be distanced from the Jews. The missionaries were trying to get converts among the
gentiles of the Roman Empire so the Romans in the story had to be blameless. There are several
signs of this.

• Paul and the authors of Matthew and Luke accept the descent of Jesus from David but Mark 
ignores it dissociating Jesus from any claims to the throne of Israel  
• He calls the disciple, Simon, a Cananaean to avoid the word “Zealot”  
• He relates the story of the tribute money apparently to acknowledge Caesar’s authority not 
reject it  
• He puts the responsibility of the death of Jesus on the Jews and relieves Pilate of it by inventing 
the custom of releasing a prisoner, a custom which is otherwise unknown and most unlikely  
• The divinity of Jesus is first recognized in Mark by a Roman  
• He inserts the passage attributed to Jesus that a prophet is not without honour except in his 
own country and among his own kin to indicate that Jesus acknowledged his rejection by his 
family and countrymen. But it rests uneasily with his brother James and thereafter his nephew 
succeeding him as the head of the Nazarenes  
• He runs down the apostles appointed by Jesus—they are stupid, weak, argumentative, vain, 
treacherous, cowardly—all part of the process of dissociating the Son of God from the Jews, and 
excusing the character of the early Christians.  

Writing a couple of decades later when Jewish nationalism had ceased to be an issue, Luke has
no need to be as cautious. Roman distaste for the Jews had faded and Josephus had published his
180 
 

Jewish War as a warning to potential hotheads in Palestine. Jews were no longer a threat and
poor and illiterate Christian converts would not have understood references to them.

Mark includes as part of chapter 13 what was originally an Essene explanation of the signs of the
coming kingdom now garbled with a Christian prophecy of God’s punishment of the Jews
inserted after the fall of Jerusalem.

Mark’s gospel has a false ending—the so-called Markan Appendix—the final verses of Mark
(Mk 16:9-16:20), the post-resurrection accounts, are false, having been added a long time after
the original composition:

• many manuscripts end at Mark 16:8, many have just two sentences added to the end of Mark 
16:8, some have both the two sentences and the twelve verses, some have another addition to 
Mark 16:14, the “Frear Logion”  
• Eusebius and Jerome in the fourth century did not know of the added twelve verses  
• the style and vocabulary cannot possibly be first century.  

The fourth-century AD Codex Sinaiticus is the only ancient Greek manuscript that contains the
entire New Testament. It does not however have the Markan Appendix. In Secrets of Mount
Sinai, James Bentley made this observation:

The scribe who brought Mark’s Gospel to an end in Codex Sinaiticus had no doubt that it finished at 
chapter 16, verse 8. He underlined the text with a fine artistic squiggle, and wrote, “The Gospel 
according to Mark”. Immediately following begins the Gospel of Luke.  

James H Charlesworth has pointed out that Codex Syriacus (a fifth-century translation), Codex
Vaticanus (mid-fourth century), and Codex Bobiensis (fourth or fifth-century Latin) are all early
manuscripts that exclude the Marcan Appendix. About 100 early Armenian translations and the
two oldest Georgian translations also omitted the appendix. Manuscripts written after Sinaiticus
and Vaticanus have been found that contained the Marcan Appendix but with scribal notes in the
margins that said the verses were not in older copies. Others have dots or asterisks by the verses
to mark them as different.

None of the variant endings were the work of the original writer. The New Jerome Biblical
Commentary notes that the longer ending, traditionally designated Mark 16:9-20, differs in
vocabulary and style from the rest of the gospel, is absent from the best and earliest manuscripts
now available, and was absent from manuscripts in patristic times. It is most likely a second-
century compendium of appearance stories based primarily on Luke 24, with some influence
from John 20. The shorter ending consists of the women’s reports to Peter and Jesus’s
commissioning of the disciples to preach the gospel. The non-Marcan language and the weak
manuscript evidence indicate that this passage did not close the gospel. The addition at Mark
16:14 of the longer ending is a late gloss aimed at softening the condemnation of the disciples in
this verse. All the endings attached to Mark in the manuscript tradition were added because
scribes considered Mark 16:1-8 inadequate as an ending.
181 
 

Some say they replace an original ending which was lost. That is not true. They were added
because there were no appearances in the earliest tradition. The earliest gospel is unable to testify
to the appearances. It ends perfectly well in the middle of Mark 16:8 before anyone knew of
appearances, but, without the appearances, the resurrection has no basis, and so theologians have
to claim that they are accidentally missing. Mark was written before Paul or some early editor of
his epistles had invented them. None of the early Church fathers, Clement, Origen, Eusebius and
Jerome, mention anything after Mark 16:8 when they could have strengthened an argument by so
doing.

Mark was not a companion of Jesus, possibly not an inhabitant of Palestine and possibly not a
Jew. His gospel includes garbled bits of Essene and later material, is confused in its geography
and sociology and has a false ending. Nevertheless, if Mark’s is the first gospel to be recorded, if
it is considered accurate enough by two more gospel writers to be reproduced by them in large
measure and, if Mark really wrote down what Peter said, as church tradition has it, then Mark
should contain the essence of the Aramaic oral tradition, the story of the Nazarenes as perceived
by Peter, supposedly Jesus’s right hand man.

Dr H Kee sees Mark as written to strengthen the church as it faced its impending problems—
interest was waning, because apocalyptic hopes had not been fulfilled. The bishops feared a
crisis of apostasy among converts, and suffering for those converts who remained faithful. Mark
wanted to prepare the faithful by papering over the cracks and showing that even the disciples
had not understood Jesus’s real intentions. They were shown as failing to comprehend even the
simplest things Jesus had said, and that they would suffer before the coming of the kingdom. So
it was understandable that lesser mortals like ordinary gullible converts were confused and
disappointed.

Mark’s should be accepted as the most authoritative rather than the least of the gospels. It is this
gospel that should be the central reference for anyone reconstructing the true events at the
foundation of Christianity. The other two synoptics are obviously later but have much of the
original tradition and can be used to supplement deductions from Mark. John is much too late to
be anything but secondary. Nothing that occurs only in John can be trusted unless it can
somehow be traced to Mark or to the Essene tradition.

Analysing Mark’s Gospel 

In reconstructing the events leading to Jesus’s death, we follow the gospel of Mark. We want to
build on the earliest tradition and the one most free of later Christian accretions. The other
gospels are of less value the later they are but they can help when they clearly relate to episodes
in Mark. Matthew and Luke and less so John can be used to flesh out the shorter but more
original account of Mark. In accepting assistance from these other gospels we can feel more
assured when there is a clear Essene reference, and less assured when the references are traceable
to the gentile church.

Tradition is that Mark took Peter down in no particular order and yet the arrangement of Mark
does seem to be ordered. An examination of Mark shows that there is a broad sequence of events
which could hardly be altered. That broad sequence can be used and the individual items of the
182 
 

tradition, or pericopes as they are called, can then be themselves examined to find whether there
is any better way of fitting them into the outline. Without a general theory that is difficult but
given a hypothesis along the right lines the pericopes can be fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Some pieces are missing and some have been bent but a reasonable picture emerges. Of course it
must be true that some sayings Jesus used in his eschatological speeches were used more than
once so there is no fixed context. Some of these can be perceived in the gospels dotted here and
there. We must try to see more closely the relevance of such scattered sayings to the general
argument and place them accordingly.

Many of the miracles are complete misunderstandings of the mystical language or code used by
the Nazarenes. Others could have arisen as metaphors of sayings or titles of the messiah. The
healing of a blind man was probably code but used as a metaphor of the light of the world. The
withering of a fig tree is a metaphor of the destruction by God of the enemies of Israel but was
taken to be a metaphor of the destruction by God of Israel implying that Christianity had
superseded Judaism.

The four gospels are anti-Jewish. The gospels and Acts arose in an atmosphere of racism that
New Testament scholars are aware of but say nothing about. They were written to disassociate
Jesus from the Jewish cause at a time when Jews were looked upon unfavourably by most
citizens of Rome. Yet, since they were based on a Palestinian tradition, elements of it still
emerge from the deliberate obfuscation of the New Testament. They aim to disassociate
Christianity from its Jewish origins and remove any hints that it was anti-Roman. Jesus and his
followers are depicted as harmless healers and preachers. Since the gospels were completed and
widely circulated only after the Jewish War, the purpose of the bowdlerizing was clear—Jewish
nationalists were unpopular. The result is the bizarre story of the passion in which a monster like
Pilate is an angel and respectable religious sects like the Pharisees are demonic. Furthermore,
with the dispersion of the Jerusalem Nazarenes, the heresies of Paul had no one to oppose them
and found new favour among the godfearers of the empire. The Hellenists took over and were
able to dictate policy. Mark wrote the first and most factual gospel with these two objectives in
mind to provide a new authority after the destruction of the Jerusalem Church.

The first details of the new gentile religion that were put together were the details of Jesus’s
suffering or passion, to use the technical term. E Trocme believes that Mark was originally in
two main sections. Chapters 1-13 told the mission story and it was added to the passion narrative
of chapters 14 and 15, which was either from an older written source or from an oral source so
often repeated that it had already become stylized. This idea does not contradict the tradition that
Peter was the original prime source. Gentiles were mainly interested in the dead and resurrected
god, and the passion must have formed the central part of missionary preaching in the first few
decades. That is not to say that an apostle like Peter would not tell other parts of the story, but
these would have been most often related to close associates in private company. Mark was
apparently the first to combine the private recollections of Peter with the public ministry centred
on the passion. Vincent Taylor believes that Mark’s passion narratives themselves stem from two
sources—a narrative form from a gentile source, and a semitic collection of self contained
narratives. The gentile source has to be treated with suspicion. It comprises: Mark 14:1-2; 10-11;
17-21; 26-31; 43-46; 55-64; 15:1; 3-5; 15; 21-24; 29-33; 34-37; 39; 16:9-20. One or two other
doubtful passages have been given here the benefit of the doubt.
183 
 

C H Turner thinks the passages in Mark related in the third person plural were originally related
by Peter—1:21 29 5:1, 38 6:53-54 8:22 9:14 30 33 10:32 46 11:1 12 15 20 27 14:18 22 26 32.
T W Manson added more material to Turner’s on the grounds that the adjacent material could not
be detached from that thought to have been Peter’s giving 1:16-39 2:1-14 3:13-19 4:35-5:43 6:7-
13 50-56 8:14-9:48 10:32-52 11:1-33 13:3-4 32-37 14:17-50 53 54 66-72. The rest of the
material seems to be well arranged blocks suggesting already collected pre-Markan material.

We adopt the procedure of trawling through Mark’s gospel noting each event and assessing its
authenticity and place in the story, checking where appropriate the parallel accounts in other
gospels.

Abstract of the Thesis 

To follow the arguments and judge whether they are valid, readers need to know my premise and
some information missing from the gospels to persuade them that this premise has some
foundation.

The premise is that Jesus Christ, the God of the Christians, was an Essene leader. The
information missing from the gospels is who the Essenes were, how they related to the other
Jewish sects which do appear in the gospels, why Jesus seemed not to be even an orthodox
Essene and what it all had to do with the Roman occupying forces.

The synopsis which follows should give preliminary answers to these questions enabling the
reader to see the point of the preparatory material and understand the subsequent commentary.

Jesus was an devout Jew—he stoutly defended the law of Moses as the gospels illogically admit.
Most Jews yearned for their gentile enemies—especially the Romans who ruled them—to be
overcome so that they could be ruled as a theocracy—a kingdom of God. They believed that God
had promised them a messiah, a great king who would drive out the gentiles allowing the
promised kingdom to begin, as an extension of heaven, on earth.

One sect of the Jews believed this so strongly that they had separated themselves from the
ungodly to prepare the way for the messiah and begin to create the kingdom of heaven on
earth—they were the Essenes. Their community they considered to be perfectly holy, and their
members had to behave as perfectly holy people, to be a foundation of the heavenly kingdom.
But they believed that the kingdom of God could not encompass the world until the men of
184 
 

perfect holiness detected the signs of the times which announced the acceptable day of the
Lord—the day of vengeance of God—when God would avenge the wrongs done to His people.

When the time was right there would be a cosmic battle in which the forces of darkness and evil
would be overcome by God’s miraculous intervention. The duty of the Essenes was to watch for
the signs and lead out the saints, those who were perfectly holy, against the forces of darkness—
the Romans and their allies, sinful Jewish collaborators.

When the signs indicated that God was ready to create His kingdom on earth, most Jews, being
children of Israel, the chosen people of God, would revert from sinfulness to godliness—they
were the simple of Ephraim, Jews who had been misled by their pragmatic and collaborating
leaders—the Pharisees.

But though Essenes had the secrets of discerning the signs of the times, it was not a perfect art
because heaven had not yet arrived, and the Essenes had to send out leaders with the mission of
converting the simple of Ephraim. The success of these missionaries would itself be an important
sign of the coming kingdom.

The men sent on this essential mission were senior figures in the Essene hierarchy. Jesus was
such a man and so was John the Baptist. They had to urge the simple of Ephraim to prepare for
the coming kingdom. Jesus was the nasi, the prince of Israel, a leader in the Davidic mould who
would convert sinful Jews and assert the authority of God’s righteous.

Only “the righteous” could enter the kingdom so sinful Jews had to repent sincerely, ritually
purify themselves through baptism and prepare for the coming battle. In his acts of conversion,
the nasi was metaphorically casting out evil spirits, making the blind see and healing the sick.
Those who were thus purified could enter the kingdom and were the soldiers in the messianic
army. The nasi represented the messiah but could make no claim to be him, the appointment
being God’s alone at the end time.

If the nasi were successful than the kingdom was nigh, and if the sum of the signs were such that
the acceptable day of the Lord was imminent then the forces of light would engage the forces of
darkness, precipitating the cosmic battle for the kingdom. Then one like unto the Son of man,
who the prophet Daniel told would come on a cloud from God—probably the archangel Michael
with a heavenly host riding out of the Mount of Olives as it cleaved east and west—would arrive
to institute the kingdom. Essenes felt that God only helped those who help themselves and the
kingdom of God had to be won by the righteous taking on their enemies, then God would
intervene with a miracle.

Jesus was appointed nasi by John the Baptist. After initial successes recruiting the simple, the
authorities caught on and hounded them, the Nazarenes were seen as a liability, many followers
asked Jesus and his generals to leave them alone and they had to flee from Antipas’s soldiers to
Phœnicia.

Jesus hid, then ventured back into Antipas’s country. He was still certain the signs were correct
but had come to believe that God wanted him to to capture Jerusalem and the temple and that to
185 
 

inaugurate the kingdom of God he was required to play the role of the messiah, Melchizedek.
Then God would intervene with a miracle. His disciples crowned him Melchizedek—he was
transfigured!

His band proceeded to Jerusalem with Jews travelling for the coming Passover. No one could
address him by any title that might draw attention to the spies of the authorities. Outside the city
the Nazarenes overcame the inadequate Jerusalem garrison and Jesus purposely revealed himself
by fulfilling the prophesy of Zechariah—entering the city on a foal of an ass—and controlled the
temple. The defeated Roman garrison in the Antonia barracks withdrew to await reinforcements
from Caesarea.

Pilate’s troops counter attacked after a few days, killed the Galilaeans in the temple, battered the
Tower of Siloam where some were holding out and recaptured the city. Still there was no
miracle. Jesus and his generals in hiding took a last supper together—an Essene messianic meal.
Jesus, convinced that he had done all that God required and that a miracle was still in the offing,
said he expected to be eating his next meal in the coming kingdom. His men remained armed.

The next day was the Passover, a likely occasion for a miracle. They went to the Mount of Olives
where, according to prophecy, the miracle would take place and Jesus urged his men to keep
watchful—not for the enemy but for God’s intervention.

It did not occur. A body of the temple guard arrived instead. Jesus had been proven a false
prophet and had to suffer the appropriate fate prescribed in Zechariah—he had to die as the
worthless shepherd.

Succeeding pages expand this thesis and look into its consequences in the history of Christianity.

Before you go, think about this… 
Pseudoscience is indifferent to facts. Proponents of it make up anything to convince the gullible, even 
when just consulting reference books would settle the issue. They depend on ignorance and apathetic 
acceptance of seemingly authoritative statements. Because the facts of the pseudoscience are untrue, 
there is never any need to update them. Pseudoscience nearly always depends on an old classic book or 
books that are forever true. Even obvious mistakes, errors, and misprints are not or rarely corrected. 
Mistakes in it are explained away. Science is continually revised and textbooks are frequently updated 
because of the progress of science. (Distinguishing Science and Pseudoscience, csj.org) 
186 
 

What is True History in the Bible?


Experts, though they defend their own dogmas as determinedly as any medieval prelate, are liable to 
regard unorthodox ideas with contempt and show little eagerness to investigate them.  

Who Lies Sleeping? 

16. Mark: First Gospel or Pious Forgery?


© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: 31 October 1998

• Gospel Priority  
• Marcan Priority and “Q”  
• Criticisms of the Two‐Source Hypothesis  
• The Direction of Early Christology  
• Conclusion  

Abstract 
For over a hundred years most scholars have been satisfied that the shortest and clumsiest gospel, 
Mark’s, was the first one, an idea called the ‘Priority of Mark’. A lost source, Q, alongside Mark explains 
most of the problems of commonality between Matthew and Luke while allowing them such different 
approaches. Matthew has arranged his material in a non‐narrative way to give Jesus several major 
discourses, the most famous of which is the Sermon on the Mount. Sayings from these discourses 
appear all over the place in the other two gospels. If Matthew was the original author, as a few still 
think, it is hard to see that later evangelists would be so cavalier with his work. Why also should Luke be 
so respectful of Matthew’s words when he thought his order was wrong? If Luke and Matthew knew 
nothing of each other’s work but used common sources, such things are not problems.  

Gospel Priority 

Christian scholarship is a type of treadmill. Christians keep plodding round the same material
until they return to the conclusions they had long ago discarded. For over a hundred years, most
scholars have been satisfied that the shortest and clumsiest gospel, Mark’s, was the first one, an
idea called the “Priority of Mark”.

The hypothesis of the priority of Mark is that Mark wrote, then first Matthew and then Luke each
used Mark independently as a source for their own gospels. But Matthew and Luke have a lot of
common material not in Mark, mainly sayings of Jesus, but with narrative material too. Where
did this common material come from if Matthew and Luke wrote independently? This generated
the “Two-Source” hypothesis. Matthew and Luke both used Mark but each had another source,
largely of the sayings of Jesus, which is now lost. The lost source was noncommittally called
“Qwelle” (“Q”), simply German for “source”.
187 
 

In the introduction to his gospel, Luke admits that he had sources, saying that “many” including
eyewitnesses had declared that which Christians believed. This has been taken to be evidence for
his use of Mark and Q as main sources and other lesser ones. Streeter, in 1926, expounded the
Two-Source theory fully in his study of the origins of the gospels. Indeed, he went further
because some material in both Matthew and Luke are exclusive to each gospel and so must have
been the authors’ own work or taken from further sources of which we know nothing. For 60
years, Streeter’s exposition was accepted almost universally.

But Christians never liked Mark being the first gospel because it lacks many of the features that
they hold dear, such as Jesus’s appearances and the birth narratives. If these did not appear in the
first gospel, the implication is that they were invented for later ones. Christians always wanted
Mark to be an abbreviated version of Matthew and Luke as people had once thought. The
treadmill having revolved a turn, today Christian polemicists like William R Farmer champion
the idea again—in the “Two Gospel” or “Griesbach Hypothesis”.

Its supporters believe the gospels were written in the order Matthew, Luke and Mark. Luke made
use of Matthew and Mark made use of Matthew and Luke thus dispensing with Marcan priority
and the hypothesised source Q. If Luke did not use Matthew directly, then material common to
Matthew and Luke not derived from Mark, must be from the hypothetical source, Q. But, if Q did
not exist because Luke had Matthew to hand, Farmer asserts the reasons for Marcan priority are
not valid. There are also other theories that dispense with Q and Marcan priority. Here they are
summarised.

• The Griesbach hypothesis—Matthew was copied by Luke, and Mark conflated them both—can 
explain the alternating support in order of pericopes of Mark by Matthew and Luke without 
appeal to “lost sources”. Its failing is providing a comprehensible account of Mark’s 
composition, particularly explaining Mark’s major omissions from his sources Matthew and 
Luke.  
• Austin Farrer’s and Goulder’s theory of Marcan priority—Mark without Q—explains the 
agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark by accepting Luke’s direct use of Matthew, 
dispensing with any need for Q, but it cannot explain the order in Mark in relationship to 
Matthew and Luke as well as can the Griesbach theory. Goulder is not convincing that Q can be 
abandoned. However, that Matthew used Mark and Luke used Mark and Matthew is more 
convincing than the previous hypothesis—that Mark used Matthew and Luke.  
• The Boismard Multiple Source theory affords an explanation for agreements between Matthew 
and Luke against Mark but it fails Occam’s Test. It is too complicated to be validated and seems 
less likely than the Goulder and Austin Farrer theory. Boismard takes us into the realm of 
conjecture, where everything is possible whereas the scientist tries to keep to the simplest of 
hypotheses to meet Occam’s razor. Nevertheless, the real history of the gospels will have been 
complicated.  

Farmer’s lengthy article in support of the Two-Gospel hypothesis and attacking the Two-Source
hypothesis (Synoptic Problem Seminar at SNTS, Copenhagen, Denmark, 4-8 August 1998) is
savage but not convincing. He adopts a high scientific posture but omits much of the context. He
pleads that his opponents atomize the gospels in analysing them and says, since the Synoptic
Problem is the problem of explaining the agreement and disagreement between the Synoptic
gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—it is important to see these three gospels as synoptic,
188 
 

“together in the same view”. Yet, he ignores the background of the early Christians as if it was so
irrelevant as to be a distraction.

It is hard to analyze something without pulling it to pieces. Surely, that is an aspect of science.
Nowadays, the term used is “backward engineering”. The enemy aircraft is taken to pieces to
find out how it can be synthesised—put back together again! No one pretends that an aircraft in
bits can fly, but only by taking it to bits can the engineer understand how it flies.

Science has to work in different ways according to the circumstances. Its bases of observation,
hypothesis and deduction are constant but the ways of testing hypotheses have to change. In
experimental science, an experiment, devised to distinguish between hypotheses, tests them.
Unfortunately, in history, palaeontology and textual criticism amongst others, experiments
cannot often be carried out and the evidence is fixed pending new physical discoveries. In these
cases, scientific criteria cannot be so strict. Christian scholars speak of “proof”, the more
fundamental they are, the more affirmatively. Their own personal convictions are proof
enough—they are certain, 100 per cent. They often demand the same degree of proof from
scientific investigations. It is always impossible. However many times an event is observed there
is no certainty it will happen in the same way next time.

We might never know for certain which gospel was first. The evidence is conflicting. The
churches always took it to be Matthew, and the only reason that was doubted was because it
posed problems in conjunction with our reading of the other synoptic gospels. Unless we unearth
an unequivocal statement that So-and-so’s gospel was the first, or an indisputable statue to So-
and-so the author of the first gospel, we are unlikely to be able to certainly deduce which of them
came first. We have to take the balance of the evidence, and the evidence will be unbalanced to
different people to different degrees. Most scholars still use the Two-Source Hypothesis because
the other ideas offer even greater problems.
189 
 

Marcan Priority and Q 

Since the point of Farmer’s article is to attack Marcan priority let us, briefly, recapitulate the
arguments for it.

1. Mark is the shortest gospel. If it is a synopsis of Matthew and Luke, why were much loved verses 
from both like the Good Samaritan and the Sermon on the Mount, not to mention either birth 
narrative, omitted while Jesus’s foibles are included? It is more feasible to believe it is both 
shortest and partial because other traditions had not yet been invented or collected.  
2. Mark is the least polished and most vivid suggesting its early date as the recollections of an 
eyewitness—traditionally, Peter.  
3. Mark’s text is altered in Matthew for good reasons. His Greek was poor, his knowledge of 
Palestine poor, he was critical of both Jesus and the disciples, and he was often unclear. Streeter 
argued for Marcan primacy from Matthew’s tendency to improve Mark’s style. Later evangelists 
expunge Mark’s frank descriptions. If Mark followed Matthew and Luke, it is nigh on impossible 
to imagine why the developing church would want to adopt such a poor gospel compared with 
the ones it already had. Sanders and Margaret Davies say that though no one can recover 
ancient intentions, there are strong objections to accepting Griesbach’s Mark as the third 
gospel, though they do not rule it out.  
4. Occasionally Matthew alters Mark then fails to make a necessary later change to match. In 
Matthew 14:5 Herod was only stopped from murdering John the Baptist because of the crowds 
who thought him a prophet. Incongruously, in verse 14:9 he was sorry he had to behead him. 
His sorrow matches Mark where Herod admired John as a good man and just—an Essene. 
Matthew altered Herod’s admiration to murderous distaste but forgot to alter his sorrow. He 
was copying Mark. Farmer would reverse this argument saying that Mark was trying to correct 
Matthew’s error, but Mark’s style is so bad, arguments this way round carry no weight.  
5. The order of Luke is essentially that of Mark and the order in Matthew is also that of Mark 
except where he has deliberately grouped items into general discourses by his hero. Once 
thought to have been a strong argument, critics point out that the order would largely have 
been followed whoever did the copying, so preservation of order in Mark is not a strong 
argument for it being original. In other words, the common general order of Matthew, Luke and 
Mark can be explained by turning Streeter’s argument round. Only someone writing after 
Matthew and Luke and deliberately combining them can keep the order Luke preserved from 
Matthew and yet, whenever Luke departed from Matthew, following the order of either one or 
the other. However, the argument has to be taken in context. If Luke used Matthew, he ignored 
his special groupings, a strange decision when Matthew was supposedly the first gospel and 
highly regarded. So, we have to suppose that Luke ignored the special ordering of Matthew and 
then so did Mark who was copying from both Luke and Matthew. The argument from order is 
that the priority of Mark is simpler and more reasonable in the context of all three Synoptics—
one of Farmer’s bleats!  
6. Some passages in Matthew and Luke are almost identical. If Mark is basing his choice of extracts 
from his two master texts on consistency, as the Griesbach hypothesis supporters believe, why 
has he missed out the most consistent parts?  
7. If Luke copied Matthew, he sometimes follows Matthew’s words closely but not his order of 
events and other times he does the reverse. Here also is a curious inconsistency.  
190 
 

A lost source surmised alongside the priority of Mark explains most of the problems of
commonality between Matthew and Luke while allowing them such different approaches.
Matthew has plainly arranged his material in a non-narrative way to give Jesus several major
discourses, the most famous of which is the Sermon on the Mount. Sayings from these
discourses appear all over the place in the other two gospels. It is hard to accept that later
evangelists would be so cavalier with the work of the original one. Why also should Luke be so
respectful of Matthew’s words when he plainly thought his order was wrong. If Luke and
Matthew knew nothing of each other’s work but used common sources, such things are not
problems.

Different instances in both Matthew and Luke seem to preserve the original story most closely. If
Matthew had been the original gospel, it should have a clear predominance of original wordings.
On the other hand, why should Mark, copying from the two, miss out passages which are
effectively identical in both and therefore apparently doubly reliable. The hypothesis of the
source Q explains these puzzles because both evangelists took passages they admired almost
verbatim from Q, but Mark had no access to it.

Hoping to be iconoclastic, a supporter of Farmer’s view, Christopher M Tuckett, in the New


Interpreters Bible, 1995, notes that nearly all of Mark is paralleled in Matthew or Luke or both,
yet all this shows is that some literary relationship exists. It does not prove that the only
possibility is that Mark’s gospel was the source of Matthew and Luke. The failure of Matthew
and Luke hardly ever to agree against Mark in order and wording does not prove that Matthew
and Luke independently used Mark as a source. It only shows that Mark is some kind of “middle
term” between the other two in any pattern of relationships.

To Farmer’s glee, Tuckett declares in this “flagship publication” the “weak and inconclusive
nature” of some of the arguments for the Two-Source Theory, adding that since Streeter’s
arguments for Marcan priority are no longer reliable, work based upon Streeter has to be
questioned—most of the work this century!

The situation seems serious. But is it? Is Streeter really demolished? Are the attacks on him well
founded or just the perambulations of the Christian “scholars” round their cloistered universe in
which the same texts are consumed and regurgitated in different patterns according to the current
fashion? Why are the reasons for Marcan priority more “weak and inconclusive” than those of
Farmer’s alternative hypothesis?

Criticisms of the Two­Source Hypothesis 

Are Matthew and Luke independent as the Two-Source hypothesis requires? Of all the counter
arguments to the Two-Source hypothesis, the weightiest is the question of minor agreements
between Matthew and Luke—they seem to be prime evidence for literary contact between the
two. There are also about six pericopes of about 32 verses present in Mark but absent from
Matthew and Luke. One such is the seed growing in secret in Mark 4:26-29. Proponents of the
Two-Gospel hypothesis take these passages to be agreements between Matthew and Luke against
Mark, and should be added to that category of evidence against the Two-Source hypothesis, as if
it is obligatory for editors to use all of the material at their disposal. Farmer argues that advocates
191 
 

of the Two-Source theory have never satisfactorily explained the agreements of Matthew and
Luke against Mark.

Though there are arguably many examples of minor agreements, the attitude of Farmer, et al, is
that any one of them serves to destroy the idea of the priority of Mark. He cites Goulder, who has
taken what Streeter designated as one of his “residual cases” where Jesus is being mocked and
has shown that the agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark cannot be explained except by
requiring Q to expand to include a passion narrative. For Farmer, this reduces to an absurdity the
chief tenet of the Two-Source theory, that it can most simply satisfy the synoptic data by offering
Mark to explain narrative agreement of Matthew and Luke, and “Q” to explain their agreement in
sayings of Jesus not in Mark.

Hans-Herbert Stoldt has compiled 272 minor agreements, an apparently impressive number.
Many, however, are merely grammatical agreements. If two editors don’t like split infinitives we
can get “to boldly go” altered to relatively few alternatives. If both choose to alter it to “to go
boldly” is that a minor agreement proving literary contact? Of course not, other than that both are
using the same language and have the same idiosyncrasies of style. If Matthew and Luke
independently used Mark but corrected him, almost every minor agreement can be explained in
an innocent way.

Stoldt’s excessive list actually makes the argument of minor agreements ridiculous. The word
“minor” disguises a few quite serious agreements that cannot have come from Mark or from Q.
But, though hardly minor, do they necessitate the hypothesis that Luke used Matthew? If he did,
the argument leads us back to questions like Luke’s blatant ignoring of Matthew’s arrangement
of events. Some have suggested that Matthew or Luke got hold of the other at a late date in
writing his own gospel and plagiarised a few stories he thought impressive. Who can say it is not
true?

Here, of course, we meet another absurdity of the critics of the Two-Source hypothesis. It is
treated as if it alone must be a complete solution to the Synoptic Problem. Yet, anyone knows
that the evolution of the gospels took at least a century and probably as many editors. So, there
was time for editors to take episodes from one gospel into another, if they thought it illuminating.
Other contributions were elements of the oral tradition which emerged, perhaps quite late and
became included in slightly different forms in both gospels then were perhaps harmonised to
some degree by later editors, and deliberate or inadvertent harmonisation between the two
gospels by copyists familiar with both.

Doubtless there will be an outcry—“All this speculation isn’t very scientific!” Perhaps not, but it
is probably what happened, and there will never be any way of knowing precisely. The
reasonable Two-Source theory is that Mark and Q were the original sources, Mark about 60 AD
and “Q” possibly a pre-Christian book of wisdom sayings—Essene, doubtless—but Christianised
as the Logia about mid-century and conceivably, even then, associated with the name Matthew.
Mark itself probably came in at least two versions—pre-Jewish War and post Jewish War—parts
of which were eventually bound together probably in error, giving us the curious double image in
the middle of Mark which a diligent editor tried to rationalise but which Matthew and Luke were
unaware of. If Matthew and Luke copied parts of this earlier edition of Mark, parts of which
192 
 

were later omitted or changed, their agreements together against our present edition of Mark are
explained.

Later, a learned editor improved the Logia “Gospel of Matthew” by incorporating Mark to give
us essentially the modern Matthew. Later still, another compiler, known now as Luke, put Mark
and Q together in a different style suitable for gentiles rather than Jews. It seems that Mark fell
out of fashion and was almost lost because the two newer gospels were preferred, but was
eventually saved when the church put together its canonised books. Q was not so lucky perhaps
because it was essentially a book of sayings with little or no narrative. It disappeared into
history’s dustbin.

Before the gospels became well known and eventually canonised, copyists made piecemeal
changes in pious attempts consciously or otherwise to harmonise them. One might ask why the
editors did not go the whole hog and just harmonise the gospels instead of writing new ones.
Well, Farmer is trying to say they did—the result was Mark, a gospel that was the bare
consensus of the other two gospels. If so, the bishops picked a dunce to compile it. Later, there
was a complete harmonisation of the four gospels, which was popular for a long time. But some
people and some churches preferred the originals. In short, nobody had the authority to replace
earlier gospels with harmonised versions, and eventually we finished up with four of them in the
New Testament and many others lost or rejected.

The Two-Gospel hypothesis requires the author of Mark to rewrite Matthew and Luke omitting
the miraculous birth of Jesus, the sermon on the mount, and the resurrection appearances, but
adding the young man fleeing naked, a difficult healing miracle for Jesus and the putative God
supposed mad by his family. Farmer merely says that all this needs to be explained if Mark was
the third gospel. Why adopt a hypothesis with such serious defects? But the least credible aspect
of it is that the church would accept such a poor rendering of the gospels of Matthew and Luke as
that of Mark. Not only that but it then added to this simplistic piece of work the legend that it
was the gospel spread by the church’s greatest Saint, Peter. If the church really did this then it
was the very first pious forgery!

The Direction of Early Christology 

Whatever Christians believe, there is no doubt that Jesus, if he lived at all, was a man. From a
man he was transformed into a god. That change can be seen in the progression of the gospels. In
almost thirty verses, Mark has a more human Jesus than Matthew. If Mark followed Matthew, the
Church sanctioned a work in which Jesus was made less god-like than he was in the source
gospel. Farmer, quite feebly tries to refute this by saying no one knows the direction of primitive
Christology, arguing a high Son of God Christology was well entrenched in the church long
before the gospels were written, to judge by Paul’s letters. Paul’s letters themselves have been
jumbled up and multiply re-edited before they reached their present state. Furthermore, by Paul’s
own evidence, he and Peter were at loggerheads, so why should Paul’s Christology have to be
overwhelmingly present in a work that is, according to tradition, Peter’s?

Semitic expressions are found in Mark but not in Matthew. Why should Mark writing for a
gentile audience introduce foreign words into his supposed summary of Matthew and Luke? The
193 
 

only explanation again would be that Mark was a deliberate forgery, intended to be attributed to
Peter, a simple Aramaic fisherman.

A similar problem is that the Greek text for Jesus’s question from the cross,

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,  

conforms to Aramaic orthography in Mark 15:34 whereas Matthew’s parallel Greek text (27:46)
conforms to Hebrew orthography. Only Matthew’s Hebrew “Eli, Eli” properly explains the
bystander’s observation. “This man is calling Elijah.” Mark’s Aramaic “Eloi, Eloi” seems
unlikely to have been mistaken for the name of Elijah.

Farmer believes Mark made the change for some curious reason and so destroyed the credibility
of the words of the onlookers. Really, this is an argument for Marcan priority. Mark was,
according to tradition, Peter’s interpreter and Peter was an Aramaic speaker. Jesus was well
versed in the scriptures as he would necessarily have been as an Essene leader. In his agony,
Jesus would have quoted the scripture in Hebrew, as he had learnt it, but Peter would have
related the story in Aramaic. Matthew, a Jewish scholar, would have realised Jesus must have
quoted Hebrew not Aramaic and therefore restored the original when he corrected Mark. In the
60s of the first century, the church must have had some Aramaic speakers accessible to it, even if
most Jewish Christians had by then abandoned Christianity. Why then would it have permitted
Mark to make such a blunder in his harmony? “Eloi” in Mark favours the idea that the book
records the memories of an Aramaean speaker.

Many of Mark’s readers did not understood Aramaic expressions because he generally translates
them (Mark 3:17; 5:41). He translates the Aramaic word “corban” (Mark 7:11) whereas, when
Matthew uses a related word elsewhere in his gospel (Mt 27:6), he leaves it untranslated. Farmer
believes this shows some of the Greek text of Matthew was first used in circles where Aramaic
loan words in Greek were well understood. Possibly! Matthew wrote for Jews, but they would
have been worldly Jews in the wider Empire and so would have understood both Greek and
Aramaic. Otherwise, it shows that, when Matthew’s gospel was offered to gentile Christians, it
did not need “corban” editing out or translating because the gentile Christian audience knew
what “corban” was—Mark had explained it, Mark being the earlier work.

Farmer thinks that the use of Aramaic expressions in his gospel shows that Mark had an interest
in including such expressions in his text for effect. He explains that the well established use of
the Aramaic word “abba” for Father, meaning God, in churches acquainted with Paul’s letters,
including the Christian community in Rome, reminded Mark’s readers of Jesus’s origins. So,
Mark deliberately wrote the text of his gospel in a bogus Aramaic style to make it seem
authentically Nazarene. Farmer is telling us the author of Mark was not honest. Why not believe
that Mark wrote what Peter had said and translated it for his Greek speaking audience, as the
church always said? Otherwise, the Church is being accused of blatant forgery.

No critic would deny that the gospel of Matthew is more Jewish than Mark, and more
Palestinian. Matthew evidently was a Palestinian Jew, though he would likely have been writing
in Alexandria or Antioch. It seems odd that Matthew, a Jew, should have taken the clumsy work
194 
 

of the gentile, Mark, to write a Jewish gospel. This can be taken as an argument against Marcan
priority, but it is fully understandable if Mark’s work was known as the reminiscences of Peter.

Overlaps between Mark and Q, Farmer’s school tells us, are not allowed in the Two-Source
hypothesis. Nor is Q allowed to grow to explain the agreements of Matthew and Luke against
Mark. The Two-source hypothesis must maintain the independence of Matthew and Luke. These
restrictions are placed on the Two-Source hypothesis because, if it didn’t have them, it would
undermine the ground for the Griesbach hypothesis. It is difficult to imagine that Mark and Q did
not overlap. Why should the author of Mark not know any of Jesus’s sayings recorded in Q?
Mark’s gospel is not rich in sayings but why should some of those which appear in Mark not
have also appeared in Q? If Q contained elements of narrative, some of those too might have
overlapped.

Moreover, Streeter postulated specific sources M and L for material peculiar to Matthew and
Luke. Who is to say for certain that none of this M and L material was not part of Q? The source,
Q, is not merely the material common to Matthew and Luke but a different book in its own right.
Who knows that Matthew did not omit verses that Luke liked and vice-versa? Parts of M and L
therefore originated in Q. Q is understood to be sayings with little or no narrative, but the gospel
authors might have changed sayings into narrative. The physical dumbness of the priest
Zachariah in Luke’s birth narratives was a metaphorical dumbness in a thanksgiving chant. So,
what is to stop Q from expanding, if it explains things?

Once Boismard is followed and it is accepted that one or more gospels existed in more than one
edition and that the gospels as we have them may have been dependent on more than one proto
or intermediate gospel, the criticisms of the Two-Source hypothesis start to evaporate. Only
when forced into its conventional straitjacket, does it fail to explain the agreements between
Matthew and Luke against Mark.

Conclusion 

The basic Two-Source hypothesis adequately explains almost everything that needs explaining
but there are a few rough edges that might never be fettled off. Common sense suggests the
historic answer is more complicated than the basic Two-Source hypothesis, but the complete
answer is unlikely ever to be certainly known. The Two-Source hypothesis at core is secure, but
editorial changes, copyists errors and harmonisations, and later interpolations must have
complicated the central idea. These relatively minor problems are being used by the Two-Gospel
school to beat the advocates of the Two-Source hypothesis. The Two-Gospel advocates are on
the thinner ice, though further discoveries might prove them correct. If so, the earliest bishops
will be found guilty of forging a gospel of Peter!

Before you go, think about this… 
Pseudoscience is indifferent to valid evidence. The emphasis is not on meaningful, controlled, 
repeatable experiments, but on unverifiable personal experience, hearsay, rumor, and anecdotal 
evidence. Scientific evidence might be cited but is rarely relevant, and is simply to give the 
pseudoscience the appearance of scientific respectability. (Distinguishing Science and Pseudoscience, 
csj.org) 
195 
 

What is True History in the Bible?


Faith is knowing everything. 

17. Manipulating the Good News


© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, October 11, 2001

• Christian Censorship in Josephus  
• Testimonium Flavianum  
• Acta Pilati  
• Suetonius  
• Thallus and Pliny  
• The Talmud and Lucian  
• Tacitus  
• Missing Records  
• Lack of Evidence  
• Comment  

Abstract 
If Nero persecuted Christians, it was the only example of Roman intolerance up to the Jewish War. 
Origen, the early Christian apologist, declared that the number of martyrs was inconsiderable. The 
Christian fathers, Acts, Justin and Origen all say little or nothing about the Christian persecutions of 
Nero, because the victims were predominantly Jews. Acts concludes by saying that Paul was not 
forbidden to teach in Rome, he did it with all boldness—and the year was around 64 AD. How Christians 
have manipulated their good news to create myths—aka lies—still told.  

Christian Censorship in Josephus 

Christians are fond of quoting authorities to their bemused converts. It stems from the absolute
authority they give the bible as the supposed infallible word of God, but they extend it to any
written word that an evangelist choses—under the influence of the Holy Ghost—to quote.
Usually the authorities quoted are simply other fundamentalist believers, but they expect their
flock to take them on trust and being sheep, they do!

What, then, does the historian know about Jesus Christ? He knows, first and foremost, that the New 
Testament documents can be relied upon to give an accurate portrait of Him. And he knows that this 
portrait cannot be rationalized away by wishful thinking, philosophical presupposition, or literary 
maneuvering.  
196 
 

John Warwick Montgomer, History and Christianity.  

This quotation is untrue in every particular, but being a Christian, it can be written without a
blush. It is even only possible to write this rubbish because many of the historical records of
Jesus have disappeared. Lost!

Who lost them? The Christians!

Flavius Josephus was the Roman name of Joseph ben Matthias. Josephus during the second half
of the first century AD, produced two long and detailed histories of the Jews and the events
leading to the Roman victory in the Jewish Wars, History of the Jewish War and Antiquities of
the Jews, but has almost nothing to say about Jesus and even that is probably added by Christians
to fill a prominant gap left by the censors.

Josephus was born in Jerusalem only a few years after the crucifixion. He shows an interest in
the Jewish religious groups of the time. He tells us about the Jewish religious parties, about John
the Baptist who Christians say was the herald of the Messiah and about Jesus’s brother, James,
whose death he says was a reason for the start of the War in 66 AD. But he tells us nothing about
the crucifixion or how it occurred. A man almost contemporaneous with Jesus and whose
reputation was built on detailed histories of the Jewish people fails to mention him except in two
brief passages, if they are genuine.

The precocious Josephus had studied all the Jewish religious sects before the age of 19 when he
decided to become a Pharisee. He became a clerk to the Sanhedrin and at 26 went as an envoy to
Rome to plead for some priests sent to Nero by Procurator Felix for trial. With the help of
Poppaea, the Empress, who was possibly a Jewish proselyte or at least a godfearer, he succeeded.
He was thus in Rome at much the same time as Paul, the Apostle to the gentiles.
197 
 

Back in Jerusalem in 64 AD, revolt was simmering. Josephus was patriotic enough but had seen
the power and extent of the Empire and knew that rebellion was futile. When the war broke out
Josephus was made a general by the Sanhedrin and fought in Galilee with John of Gischala, the
Zealot leader of the Galilaeans. Vespasian captured him after the town of Jotapata had been
sieged for 47 days and decided to use him as an interpreter. Josephus got on well with Vespasian,
predicting that he would become Emperor, which he did. Vespasian asked Josephus to write an
account of the Jewish War for his campaign Triumph, a Roman victory parade. It was to be a
warning to the people of the East not to try to defy Roman might.

Josephus wrote a draft in his native Aramaic which he called On the Capture of Jerusalem. This
he polished into his book, the Jewish War. To gather his material, as the appointed historian of
the Emperor, he was granted access to official archives, to the Reports of Roman Governors, the
campaign diaries of Vespasian and Titus, the Emperor’s commentaries and he also corresponded
with Agrippa I, for a short while King of Judaea before the war. His work had the ultimate stamp
of approval—that of the Emperors themselves.

When Josephus uses official sources it is usually evident. He often tells us who filed the report
from which he is quoting and transcribes it verbatim with little effort to paraphrase. Thus even
non-signalled passages from official sources can be identified by their style. When writing from
experience he is more informal, sounds less official and is less impersonal in the information he
imparts.

Our present versions of the Jewish War mention none of Jesus, John the Baptist or Menehem,
who revolted in 66 AD, but they do tell us of Judas of Galilee and Theudas, both messianic
nationalist leaders. He records that the Jews merely protested when the Romans erected a statue
of Caligula in the Temple, an act grossly contemptuous of the Jewish religion. This is a curiously
subdued response for the fanatically religious Jews. In their outrage, history suggests they must
surely have rioted, if not revolted.

Also strange is the omission of the fire in Rome in 64 AD which Nero attributed to the
Christians. Such passages smack of censorship because Josephus usually fastidiously records the
smallest detail of events relevant to his subject. It looks as though a whole chapter might have
198 
 

been erased by Christian censors because it depicted Jesus and his followers as fomenters of
rebellion.

Testimonium Flavianum 

Some manuscripts of the Jewish War contain a passage on Jesus extracted from Josephus’s
companion volume, the Antiquities of the Jews, proving that someone has tampered with the
original text, presumably in an attempt to fill the obvious gap left by the initial excision.

The inserted passage is favourable towards Jesus even though he was viewed, rightly or wrongly,
by the Roman hierarchy as a terrorist. Josephus would have been taking an unlikely risk by
making such an assessment. Remember he was a captive who had been adopted by Vespasian
and given certain privileges in return for certain duties—privileges which could easily have been
withdrawn. Domitian, who was Emperor when the Antiquities of the Jews was published, could
have been no lover of Jesus or his followers. He even ordered all descendants of King David to
be rounded up for questioning in an attempt to detect potential rebels and he banished two
members of his own family for wanting to be Christians.

In versions of the Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus, edited by Christians, are two passages
describing Jesus. Neither is in the Jewish version of the Josephus’s Antiquities. The longer
passage, the so called Testimonium Flavianum (18:3:3), is cited by Christians as independent
confirmation of Jesus’ existence and resurrection. It reads:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who 
wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many 
Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of 
the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place 
come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored 
to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvellous things about him. 
And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.  

At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man; for he performed many wonderful 
works. He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many 
Jews and Gentiles. This was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us, 
had condemned him to the cross, they who before had conceived an affection for him did not cease to 
adhere to him. For on the third day he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having foretold 
these and many other wonderful things concerning him. And the sect of christians, so called from him, 
subsists to this time.  

Josephus, Antiquities 18:3:3 (Lardner’s translation)  

Church historians never doubted this testimonium of Josephus for over a millennium. As
Josephus was a Jew, it was considered all the more valuable, and that he nevertheless himself
still did not believe in Jesus was even more confirming evidence of the power of the redemption
of Christ.
199 
 

In so far as he confesses Christ, acknowledging him to be the son of God, he was compelled and 
constrained to do so solely by the power of God.  

Cardinal Baronius, 1588 

The church claimed even an unbeliever and an adversary of the faith had to confess to its truth!
Quite why is hard to say. It is like the soldiers who were present at the crucifixion in Matthew.
That such remarkable witnesses can nevertheless not believe seems to be a failure of something
in the redeeming powers of the Christ, rather than the opposite. But Christians are still not too
critical, or even thoughtful.

Robert Eisler in The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist examined the “Testimonium
Flavianum” in Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews that the Churches had used since Eusebius as
independednt, that is extra-biblical, evidence of Jesus as Christ. Medieval Jews are on record as
saying their own Hebrew manuscripts of Antiquities did not contain this passage. Of course, the
Christians claimed the passage had been erased, and indeed it had been in many instances. Many
Jews were ready to accept it as the work of Josephus, but they regarded him as a careerist and
opportunist, who possibly inserted it because some members of the Flavian family were
influenced by Christianity. Others noted that, if the testimony were indeed authentic, it could
only be the work of a Christian, and whether it was Josephus seeking to impress Christians or
Eusebius it did not matter.

Giphanius, Hubert van Giffen, Protestant philologist and lawyer, is said to be the first Christian
scholar to declare the testimonium a forgery, though there is no such written claim in his own
work. It was a dangerous thing to say. The first extant printed questioning of the testimonium
was by the Lutheran theologian, Lucas Osiander. He regarded the Josephus passage as entirely
spurious. Snellius, Professor Sebastian Schnell, was the next. Critics of the passage were chiefly
philologists while its defenders were theologians. A Portugese rabbi, Rabbi Lusitanus, first
pointed out that the testimonium interrupts the logical structure of the narrative, and must
therefore be regarded as an interpolation. According to Pastor Johannes Muller, Lusitanus states:

Josephus telleth first how Pilate hath given cause for rebellion whereupon the text should continue to 
say how about the same time still another tumult happened unto the Jews, but because in between 
them is told the history of Jesus, the text doeth not hang together, the other tumult pointeth to the first. 

The French Huguenot Tanneguy Lefevre argues in quite a similar strain:

To speak in plain Latin, this interpolation could not have been more ineptly inserted anywhere else. 

In this part of the text two calamities (thoruboi) are mentioned. Josephus ends the first with:

And so the riot (stasis) ceased.  

The second, described in chapter 5, he connects with the first, saying:

And about the same time another calamity disturbed the Jews. 
200 
 

A thorough examination of the validity of this paragraph in Josephus was made by Nathaniel
Lardner, according to a correspondent, John Seed, writing Credibility of the Gospel History in
the 1730s and 40s. He was a Christian but a liberal religious dissenter, even something of an
early Unitarian. His Works were published in 11 volumes in London in 1788 and there were later
editions. Since Lardner, many other scholars have written about it, so no Christian apologist can
plead ignorance of their findings. Eichstadt (1814) and Niese (1893-94) repeated Lefevre’s
argument, and Professor Norden again in the twentieth century. Now, only scholars speaking for
the churches, that is scholars who eschew scholarship when it comes to their belief, regard the
passage as genuine. The truth is, it is a forgery. Why should we accuse it of being a forgery?

1. The church fathers liked to quote passages that supported Christianity, yet not one of them 
quoted this passage in defence of Christianity until Eusebius did in the fourth century, about 
330 AD, though the works of Josephus were famous. Previous Christian writers make no 
reference to Josephus’s commendation of Jesus even when it would have suited them, as they 
must surely have done had it existed. Eusebius (died c 340) quoted it three times, but Origen 
(died c 254), although he was the first scholar the church had and one of the best, writing in 
about 250 AD long before Eusebius, is clear in two passages that the Antiquities did not note 
Jesus as the Christ. He quotes other parts of Josephus but never this passage. Indeed, he 
puzzled:  

Though he [Josephus] did not admit our Jesus to be the Christ he none the less gave witness to 
so much righteousness in James.  

Elsewhere adding:  

…although [Josephus] disbelieved in Jesus as Christ. 

He was explicit about it, and could hardly have been explicit unless Josephus had said so 
explicitly. In other words, it was not simply an omission of the testimonium from the text but 
the negative of it. Nor could it have been a doubtful inference from his saying “Jesus was called 
the Christ”, perhaps implying he was not, because no church man has made that inference from 
Matthew where the same expression is found. Whatever Origen read in his edition cannot have 
been the text as it was the century after and now is, but quite a different text, hostile to Jesus 
and the Christians. Josephus had flatterred Vespasian as the messiah, and depended upon it for 
his life, so it seems quite unlikely that he would have risked it by a concurrent denial. Plainly 
Origen’s version of Josephus’s works did not have the passage to which we are referring, but by 
330 AD the version used by Eusebius did. Jerome’s Latin version has the insertion but it is less 
assertive, rendering “He was the Messiah” by “He was believed to be the Messiah”. It shows 
that the text of Josephus has been altered. Who would or could have altered it?—only 
Christians. So, there is no proof of the testimony before Christianity was the state religion, and 
able to suppress hostile and contrary writings, a power conferred by an edict of Constantine and 
re‐enacted by the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian after Julian’s Pagan revival. Christians 
even imposed laws requiring capital punishment for anyone who concealed possession of 
writings hostile to Christianity. Christians were in a position to censor books, even those that 
201 
 

had already been issued, and because books were expensive, being hand copied, the owners, 
whether individuals, booksellers, or libraries and synagogues, would rather they were altered so 
that they could retain them than let them be confiscated and burned, or risk hiding them with 
worse consequences. Many glosses and marginal notes in the manuscripts of Antiquities we still 
have show every one of them, Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and others were owned by Christians.  

2. The passage is amid stories about calamities that have befallen the Jews. This is not a calamity 
as it stands, but has been inserted instead of the original piece which will have described Jesus’s 
failed rebellion—certainly a calamity.  
3. Josephus says this man performed “wonderful works” yet fails to describe any one of them 
though he quotes the miracles of others.  
4. The passage is too pro‐Christian. Josephus says that Jesus was the Christ, an unlikely statement 
for him to have made, not only because he was a Pharisaic Jew but also because he was critical 
of messianic movements. Josephus, a Jew in the pay of the Roman Emperor and at his mercy as 
a captive, could not possibly praise a man killed—as far as the Romans knew—as a rebel and a 
threat to Rome. Only a Christian could write this. So, what do we find? Not that the passage was 
forged but, Christians declare Josephus to be a secret Christian!  
5. For the same reasons Josephus would not have said the Christian religion was the “truth”. 
Josephus was effectively a prisoner of the Romans, given a privileged position because he 
flattered the Roman general, Vespasian, who later became emperor, and because Vespasian 
found him useful. He would have been courting personal disaster to say that the followers of a 
crucified rebel told the “truth” about him when he was under the guardianship of the general 
who put down the massive Jewish rebellion in 68 AD.  
6. Stating that the sect of Christians “…subsists to this time”, implies it was written a considerable 
time after the events he was describing. Conceivably, such a point could have been made when 
Josephus wrote about 60 years later, but it would have matched the time when Eusebius wrote 
better.  

Josephus’s work will have referred to Jesus but unfavourably. Because the passage was not
quoted even in an attenuated form, we can conclude that the reference was too defamatory for
Christian bishops to quote. Christian redactors found unsuitable references to Jesus, and
interpolated brief but suitable references based purely on Christian belief. The passage sounds
much like Josephus in style. If it is a bald insertion it has been written in a style compatible with
Josephus’s, but it could be a skilful redaction of a genuine passage. Phrases such as “tribe of
Christians” and “wise man” which are typical of Josephus are possibly relics of the original.
Christian editors who Christianised the text might have cleverly retained these phrases to keep
the flavour of Josephus.

The passage giving testimony to Jesus in Antiquities comes during a catalogue of calamities that
the Jews experienced at the time of Pilate taking office. Josephus seems here to be drawing upon
official sources and lists Pilate’s raising of the standards in Jerusalem and his taking Temple
funds to finance the construction of an aqueduct into the city. Then he mentions Jesus and
concludes with two incidents in Rome that occurred, according to Tacitus, in 19 AD. This
chronology implies that Pilate was governor earlier, and Jesus was active much earlier, than
Christians today believe.
202 
 

The next section of Antiquities has skipped almost two decades to a revolt led by “The Egyptian”
(the one that Paul was mistaken for in Acts) in Samaria in 35 AD. So two tumults in Jerusalem
and two incidents in Rome bracket a short paragraph praising Jesus, then there is a jump forward
of 15 years to the next strand of the story. Something looks amiss.

Following the testimonial to Jesus, the first of the two incidents in Rome is introduced by:

About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder…  

but there follows a description of a woman tricked into intercourse with a man pretending to be a
god in the Temple of Isis in Rome, a passage eight times longer than that allocated to Jesus and
of no apparent relevance to the Jews, despite its introduction. The only relevance to the story of
Jesus was that the conniving Priests of Isis were crucified by Tiberius, although it might have
been included as a satirical commentary on the myth, new at the time, that Jesus was born of a
virgin. Logic requires this introduction to be that of a passage about the tumult accompanying the
arrest of Jesus and described in the gospels. This section was deleted in some copies of Josephus
and strongly edited and put forward in others so that the ministry of Jesus would not be described
as a calamity.

Eisler says the word “tumult” has been deleted by a Christian censor. Because something was
deleted, it must have been hostile to Christianity. Many such deletions made in Jewish works, so
it is not at all peculiar. Jesus was hanged because he led a rebellion. That is clear from the
gospels. What Christian textual analysts of the events in Josephus will not consider let alone
credit is that the original reference to Jesus here was a reference to a tumult. Eisler suggests a
minimum of hostile text that deleted, shown here by ellipses, left the existing version. He
reconstructs the passage in this way:

Now about this time arose an occasion for new disturbances, a certain Jesus, a wizard of a man, if 
indeed he may be called a man, who was the most monstrous of all men, whom his disciples call a son of 
God, as having done wonders such as no man hath ever yet done … He was in fact a teacher of 
astonishing tricks to such men as accept the abnormal with delight … And he seduced many also of the 
Greek nation and was regarded by them as the Messiah … And when, on the indictment of the principal 
men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to the cross, still those who before had admired him did not 
cease to rave. For it seemed to them that having been dead for three days, he had appeared to them 
alive again, as the divinely‐inspired prophets had foretold—these and ten thousand other wonderful 
things—concerning him. And even now the race of those who are called messianists (christiani) after 
him is not extinct.  

Because the passage sounds like the work of a Christian, it must have been added to Antiquities
some time between Origen and Eusebius, when Christians got the power to edit books. After the
Christians became supreme in the reign of Constantine they evidently planted evidence on
Josephus, turning the leading Jewish historian of his day into a witness for Jesus as Christ.
Eusebius is one of the few Christians to admit that lying for the advancement of the church was
acceptable (though Paul started it all). He most likely interpolated this passage into Josephus.
203 
 

Some Christians admit that Josephus’s quotation about Jesus is “contested”, but do not say what
they mean, and otherwise treat the quotation as authentic. Contested means that the majority of
scholars since the early 1800s have rejected the entire Testimonium Flavianum as a Christian
insertion, but Christian clergy and preachers, disdainful of honesty, still say it is genuine. Even
though Christians of all denominations are aware that the passage is suspected, by the best
experts, of being a forgery, they still quote it in support of their Jesus. This is not only dishonest,
it is exploiting the Christian’s self-styled virtue of being truthful to spread lies. They follow their
masters Paul and Eusebius in using lies to propagate their own “truth”. The people fooled by this
are mainly ignorant. The intelligent will cringe at the dishonesty involved and disregard
Christian “evidence”.

It is remarkable how the preconceived version of Jesus that Christians over the years have
manufactured by such steps as this censoring of Josephus holds them in thrall. The obvious
unbuttered truth is that Jesus was hanged as a rebel, and here in Josephus the obvious explnation
of the facts is that a reference to it has been excised and a passage supporting the Christian myth
inserted. The change was necessitated because it was hostile, and that is what Origen says long
before Eusebius reports something quite different.

Antiquities, does mention both John the Baptist and James, the brother of Jesus. Josephus also, in
passing, mentions Jesus later in Antiquities:

So he [Ananus, son of Ananus the high priest] assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before 
him the brother of Jesus, he who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others (or some 
of his companions) and when he had formed an accusation against them, he delivered them to be 
stoned.  

Antiquities 20:9:1 

Many scholars think this too is forged. If not, it confirms that a previous mention had been made
of Jesus. An unfavourable reference to Jesus in the original version must have been excised to
render it publishable but Christian copyists, finding that their crudely censored versions
contained no reference to Jesus felt obliged to insert one. So what Origen could not see, Eusebius
could.

More space is devoted to John the Baptist in our editions of the Antiquities than to the master
whose coming the gospels assure us he was proclaiming. A section covering the career of Jesus
in considerably more detail than the short passage we now have must have been deleted.
204 
 

Acta Pilati 

Provincial governors had to dispatch, to the Emperor, “acta”, official reports of all that occurred
under their jurisdiction. Important trials such as those requiring the death penalty had to be filed,
particularly if the trial concerned an attempt at insurrection against Imperial rule. On the
evidence of the gospels Pilate must have filed an account of the trial of Jesus, and one must have
existed in the Roman archives.

We know that Tiberius had an almost obsessive reverence for the legal and civic reforms
introduced by his predecessor, Augustus, and paid meticulous attention to the governance of the
provinces. Officials had to take care not to step outside of their powers and particularly not to
oppress their inferiors. Taxation was light and the policy in frontier regions was to avoid conflict.
It is inconceivable that Tiberius should not have been informed of the trial of a man charged with
riotous assembly and treason.

Josephus had access to the Acts of the Governors and he would have needed it to get an accurate
view of events between 6 AD when his earlier source, the books of Nicholas of Damascus, court
historian to Herod the Great, ended and about 55 AD when his direct experience as a scribe to
the Sanhedrin would have become relevant. So for the period of about 50 years, which covered
the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus, Josephus’s main source would have been Roman
and Herodian archives.

Justin Martyr was certain that Pilate would have sent a report of the crucifixion to Tiberius at
Rome. He knew what the duty of a Roman governor was, and it involved being a dutiful
bureaucrat. He had to despatch his reports, but Justin cannot have had access to the records and
could not have verified there definitely was such a report. Christians take refuge behind this
uncertainty, but Justin himself has no doubt and writes (1 Apol 48,53) “And that He did those
things, you can learn from the Acts of Pontius Pilate, ” and “And that these things did happen,
you can ascertain from the Acts of Pontius Pilate.”

Justin was also confident that the Roman records of the census of Cyrenius would reveal the
birth details of Jesus and his family.
205 
 

Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty‐five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was 
born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing made under Cyrenius, your first 
procurator in Judaea. (Justin Martyr, 1 Apol 34)  

The point about these assertions is that no such evidence has ever been adduced by Christians,
whether the Acts of Pontius Pilate or the census of Cyrenius. When the Christians took control,
they obviously had access to these records, but they have never produced them and they are not
part of the New Testament as they ought to be. It shows that they did not support the Christian
case.

If Jesus did live, it seems incredible that there was no reports like these, because Romans were
usually meticulous officials. Of course, the Acta might have said nothing more than what the
gospels accept—that Jesus was crucified as a rebel against Roman authority, a man claiming to
be the king of the Jews, at a time when the proper king of the Jews was the Roman Emperor.
Such a report would prove Jesus was a criminal in Roman law, not that he was a god. Christians
might have wanted to preserve such a report nevertheless, but did not. It must therefore have
given detail of the acts that led to Jesus being crucified—that he led a rebellion and captured
Jerusalem. Christians would not have wanted to keep such incriminating evidence and there is
little doubt that they therefore destroyed it and presented forgeries to the world when they took
power under Constantine.

In the fifth century, someone forged a report that Christian theologians know is a forgery but
nevertheless quote as if it were genuine.

In his History of the Church in 325 AD, Eusebius informs us that the Acta Pilati, were published
in 311 AD by the Emperor Maximinus Daia precisely to prove that the claims of the Christians
were false and the verdict of Pilate was correct. Oddly these documents date Jesus’s trial and
crucifixion to 21 AD, apparently at odds with Josephus who says Pilate did not take up office
until 26 AD. Eusebius concludes the Acta Pilati were forgeries. But it is stretching credulity to
suggest that the Roman administration were so incompetent as to unnecessarily change the date
when they were altering the record to discredit the Christians.

What reason could they possibly have to want to alter the date especially with Josephus so well
known? It is more likely that the triumphant Christians only a few years later decided to alter
Josephus to put Pilate’s rule outside of the period when the Acta were dated. The Christians had
control of the copying of books after the time of Constantine but their opponents could have
hidden copies of the Roman records. By altering Josephus, any copy of the true record that
emerged could be shown by reference to Josephus to have been a forgery. And altering the dates
in Josephus needed only two simple numeric changes—to the Greek number for the length of
Pilate’s Prefecture (from 18 to 10 years) and the Greek number for the length of the Prefecture of
Gratus, his predecessor (3 to 11 years).

Gratus had appointed four High Priests according to Josephus. Now John’s gospel (11:49)
describes Caiaphas as “High priest that year”, implying that it was usual for High Priests to be
changed each year. That is just what Gratus had been doing, confirming that three years was his
206 
 

term of office. Gratus had appointed a new High Priest for each year he was governor and had
appointed the fourth one, Joseph Caiaphas, for the next year, but Gratus was then recalled.

Pilate arrived, found Caiaphas High Priest and kept him in place for his full term of office. When
Pilate was recalled, Vitellius, Legate of Syria, Pilate’s boss, sacked Caiaphas also. So there is
good reason to believe that Pilate and Caiaphas ruled Judaea in tandem for eighteen years from
18 to 36 AD. The policy of Tiberius was not to change governors believing that, like blowflies,
they left the body alone when they were sated. Pilate’s long period of office is testimony to the
policy if not the theory.

To return to the Acts of Pilate: we are faced with the following chain of logic.

• Either the Acta Pilati existed or they did not.  
• If they did not exist Pilate must have neglected his duty in not submitting them but Pilate was a 
conscientious bureaucrat and would not neglect such matters. It is difficult to believe that none 
were written or submitted.  
• If they existed either they were favourable to the Christian story and so would be part of the 
Christian canon or they were unfavourable to the Christian story and so would have been 
destroyed or altered. They are not part of the canon and so they were unfavourable to the 
Christian cause. They were either destroyed or altered.  
• If they once existed but had been destroyed someone must have known and therefore claims 
that they once existed would have been made. Claims that the Acta once existed have been 
made.  
• If they once existed but had been altered someone must have known and therefore claims that 
they had been forged would have been made. Claims that the Acta have been forged have been 
made.  

It looks very much as though the Acta Pilati once existed as would have been expected but have
been destroyed by the Christians. The only reason they would have destroyed them is that they
did not match the story the Church wanted to be believed.

There is a Slavonic text of Josephus’s Jewish War which seems to be an early version. it is not
free of Christian alterations but tells a different story from the usual. Jesus is not named as such
but is called the “Wonder Worker” and led a band of 150 disciples into Jerusalem in a pathetic
attempt at revolution. He was crucified around 21 AD. Christians tell us this is a mediaeval
forgery!

Suetonius 

The apparent allusions to Christians in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius (120 AD), one in the
section on Claudius and one in the section on Nero, are ambiguous. The short mention of
“Chrestus” in Suetonius shows that the Roman author was not sure of his subject by spelling
Christ’s name wrongly, if that is who he meant. Suetonius wrote of a Jewish revolt at Rome in
the reign of the Emperor Claudius apparently instigated by “Chrestus”:
207 
 

As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus, he expelled them 
from Rome.  

Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars (Claudius 25:4) 

The passage implies that there was an actual person named “Chrestus” in Rome at the time
instigating trouble. Jesus was not in Rome instigating the Jews in 45 AD, so Suetonius must have
meant another person. By 41 to 54 AD when Claudius was Emperor scholars doubt that Jesus’s
supporters could have spread to Rome in sufficient strength to cause a revolt.

“Chrestus” is not another spelling of “Christus”, as some Christians pretend. Chrestus is the
Latin form of a Greek name Chrestos. It means “Excellent One” in Greek. Christus means
Messiah, so “Chrestus” would have to be a mispelling of “Christus”, meaning Christ to imply a
Christian presence in Rome at the time.

Chrestus as a proper name is so common that it occurs over 80 times on Roman inscriptions.
Chrestus was a common name in Rome because it was given to hard working slaves, many of
whom earned their freedom over the years. Suetonius might have been simply giving the name of
a Roman rabble-rouser. He possibly read “Christus ”and, assuming the common name was
intended, corrected it to “Chrestus”. So he perhaps should have written “Christus”, meaning a
messiah, but not specifically Jesus. The disturbance would have been caused by messianic Jews
possibly responding to the messianic claims of a contemporary. If Chrestus indeed meant Jesus,
the riots were by orthodox Jews incensed by early Christian missionaries on Stephen’s wing.

So, in summary, plausible explanations of this passage in Suetonius are:

1. Chrestus was a freed Jewish slave fomenting zealous Jews into believing the messiah was soon 
to come.  
2. Chrestus is an error by Suetonius who took his source to mean that, Chrestus being the name 
with which Suetonius was familiar, but the riots were by messianic Jews rioting with each other 
about whether the messiah had come or not, possibly in reference to the claims of Jesus’s 
followers.  

The linking of a word so close to Christus and “Jews” in the same context, favours the second
explanation, so Suetonius can be taken as a rather weak witness to the fact that Jews even in
Rome were in a turmoil over messianism at the time, possibly as a result of Christian claims. At
a stretch, it shows that some people—presumed to be Christians—might have been claiming that
the messiah had come.

Even if Suetonius is referring to Christians in Rome, this only confirms the existence of
Christians, not the earlier existence of Jesus. There were Christians in Rome during the first
century AD but this does not imply that Jesus was himself historic.
208 
 

Thallus and Pliny 

The testimony of the Pagan historian, Thallus, is also worthless but is often quoted by the liars of
Christendom. Eusebius says Thallus wrote, in Greek, in three volumes the history of the world
from the fall of Troy down to the 167th Olympiad in 52 AD. None of Thallus’s work exists any
more except a reference to the crucifixion in the remaining writings of a third century Christian,
Julius Africanus. Africanus’s own work survives only in fragments, but refers to the lost history
of Thallus as describing Jesus’s death being accompanied by an earthquake and darkness.
Africanus says Thallus in the period before 221 AD, wrote in the third book of his history, that
the darkness which supposedly covered the earth at the time of the crucifixion was an eclipse:

Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse of the sun—wrongly in my opinion.  

Plainly this has little value since the passage could easily have been inserted into Julius
Africanus and we have no way of checking whatever Thallus said. The earthquake and darkness
are confirmed nowhere. They are peculiar to the New Testament. Yet, from this, Christian
apologists have argued that a non-Christian contemporary of Jesus testified to the midday
darkness. Thallus might be saying what the Christians believed, but the explanation is impossible
because Jesus was crucified at the new moon. Solar eclipses cannot occur at Passover when the
moon is full. The moon, in its monthly track round the earth, is in the diametrically wrong place.
Even Africanus realized this.

The fragment is damaged. It speaks of “…allus”. Is this Thallus? Thallus was a popular name
common on Roman inscriptions. Josephus (Antiquities 18:6:4) refers to a Thallus:

Now there was one Thallus, a freed‐man of Caesar’s, of whom he borrowed a million of dracmae, and 
thence repaid Antonia the debt he owed her.  

Thallus was born about 50 AD, so must have been writing about 80 AD or later, after the first
gospel written, Mark’s. If he had used Mark’s gospel as a source, the observation is not
independent, and Thallus would have probably have been a Christian himself, to have been
reading it at such an early date after it was written.

The Talmud and Lucian 

The Talmud contains virtually no mention of Jesus. There was much persecution of the Jews by
Christians during the Middle Ages, and many Jews were afraid that the presence of unfavorable
references to Jesus in the Talmud of the time would bring down greater revenge by the
Christians. References were eliminated by Jewish copyists so that Christians would have no
excuse for burning their books and synagogues, as they were wont to do. Scholars have collected
the references from ancient copies of the Talmud and published them, but they remain disputed.

Jesus in the Talmud was a bastard and a magician who learned magic spells in Egypt or else stole
the secret name of God from the temple and used it to work magic or miracles. The father of
Jesus was a soldier named Pantera. Talmudic stories were set down in the period from 200 to
209 
 

500 AD, and, even if reflecting the earlier situation, were coloured by Jewish attempts to deal
with Christianity. The Talmud therefore is not historically accurate and is only marginal use in
assessing Jesus as an historical person.

Another fragment, quoting the letter of Mara Bar Serapion, also has not been accurately dated. It
says that the Jews killed their “wise King”. Christians will say this is Jesus, but this fragment is,
again, worthless for this purpose.

Lucian’s sarcastic comment, written in the second century, is evidence that the Christians of the
time thought that a man had been crucified in Palestine as the basis of their sect. It also shows
that they were a brotherhood, confirming that the use of brother in the bible acknowledges
membership of the common order not blood relationship, and the gullibility of the gentile
Christians is also lampooned.

It was then that he [Perigrinus] learned the wondrous lore of the Christians, by associating with their 
priests and scribes in Palestine. And—how else could it be? He made them all look like children; for he 
was prophet, cult‐leader, head of the synagogue, and everything, all by himself. He interpreted and 
explained some of their books and even composed many, and they revered him as a god, made use of 
him as a lawgiver, and set him down as a protector, next after that other, to be sure, whom they still 
worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world…  

The poor wretches have convinced themselves first and foremost, that they are going to be immortal 
and live for all time, in consequence of which they despise death and even willingly give themselves into 
custody, most of them. Furthermore, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all brothers of 
one another, after they have transgressed once for all by denying the Greek gods, and by worshipping 
that crucified sophist him‐self and living under his laws. Therefore they despise all things 
indiscriminately and consider them common property—receiving such doctrines traditionally without 
any definite evidence. So if any charlatan or tricksters able to profit from them, comes along and gets 
among them he quickly acquires sudden wealth by imposing upon simple folk. Lucian, Perigrinus  

The “evidence” quoted from Pliny Secundus, Pliny the Younger, is also of dubious value. He had
to punish the Christians in Asia Minor as a subversive group. In a letter to the Emperor Trajan of
about 112 AD, some eighty years after the presumed date of the crucifixion, Pliny wrote that he
had found Christians to be harmless people who sang hymns at daybreak (just like the Essenes)
to their Christ as to a god, and asked the Emperor whether therefore he had to take action against
them. This correspondence proves that there were Christians living in Asia Minor in 112 AD,
which is hardly surprising as it was one of the first places proselytised by Paul. But the fact that
Roman officials found Christians practising their “superstition”, as Romans called, it tells us
nothing about Christianity’s origins. Singing hymns to a god called Christ says nothing about the
historical Jesus. Christians could have invented their myth of Jesus Christ to explain why they
were worshipping a god called Christ.
210 
 

Tacitus 

Another major ancient historian who supposedly mentions Jesus is Tacitus. Cornelius Tacitus
(55-120 AD) wrote his Annals at least 70 years after Jesus’s crucifixion. Jesus is not mentioned
by name anywhere in the extant works of Tacitus. In his Annals, Tacitus says that the Christians
were accused by Nero of setting fire to Rome in 64 AD. He accuses the Christians of hating the
human race.

He says that members of this mischievous sect were horribly tortured and their confessions led to
many others being convicted, and, in Book 15:44, he mentions Christus:

Nero looked around for a scapegoat, and inflicted the most fiendish tortures on a group of persons 
already hated by the people for their crimes. This was the sect known as Christians. Their founder, one 
Christus, had been put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. This checked 
the abominable superstition for a while, but it broke out again and spread, not merely through Judaea, 
where it originated, but even to Rome itself, the great reservoir and collecting ground for every kind of 
depravity and filth. Those who confessed to being Christians were at once arrested, but on their 
testimony a great crowd of people were convicted, not so much on the charge of arson, but of hatred of 
the entire human race.  

Tacitus, Annals, (D R Dudley’s translation)  

Even if this is genuine, what does this tell us about Jesus? From the way in which this is written,
Tacitus did not claim firsthand knowledge of the origins of Christianity. By 120 AD the
Christian tradition that Christ had died under Pilate had been established. Tacitus was not
recording a historical event but the Christians’ own explanation of their origins. And Tacitus
would have thought an action like this typical of Pilate. He is repeating a story which was then
commonly believed, namely that the founder of Christianity, one Christus, had been put to death
under Tiberius.

In any case, scholars maintain there could not have been many Christians in Rome even by
64 AD and that Tacitus, writing 60 years later, is confusing the Christians of his day with those
instigated by Chrestos in Suetonius, messianic Jews. This would better explain the accusation of
“hating the human race”, in conventional terms a curious accusation to make of Christians but
one which could apply to Jews, especially orthodox Essenes, who considered themselves as
God’s Elect, thought gentiles were inferior and hated the Romans.

If Tacitus had been using the Roman imperial records, to which he had access, the report would
grow in importance. Had he? Note that he calls Pilate the “Procurator”. This shows he was not
using official records because Pilate was the “Prefect” of Judaea. The lesser title of Procurator
only came into use later. He also calls Jesus by the religious title “Christos”. Roman records
would not have referred to Jesus by a Christian title, but by his given name. Tacitus is telling us
nothing historical but only contemprary knowledge.
211 
 

Gibbon points out that, if Nero persecuted Christians, it was the only example of Roman
intolerance up to the Jewish War. Even Origen, the early Christian apologist could declare that
“the number of martyrs was very inconsiderable”. The Christian fathers, Acts, Justin and Origen
all say little or nothing about the Christian persecutions of Nero, because the victims were
predominantly Jews. The only other reason for the silence would be if the passage in Tacitus was
interpolated. Notice that Acts concludes by saying that Paul was not forbidden to teach in Rome,
he did it with all boldness—and the year was around 64 AD.

In truth, these are serious difficulties that prevent this passage from being taken as genuine, and
suggest it is a Christian interpolation (Comment). In summary:

1. No other report that Nero persecuted the Christians has ever emerged.  
2. Multitudes of Christians cannot have been in Rome in 60 AD, unless Christian is being used more 
widely than it is today—to mean messianic Jews rather than believers that the messiah had 
come in Jesus.  
3. The term Christian was not in common use in the first century.  
4. Nero was indifferent to the religions in his city, and did not need any group to be his scapegoat 
because the rumour that he started the fire was an early slander of an unpopular man.  

Damning to the authenticity of this passage is that it is cited, among obvious fairy tales, almost
word-for-word in the Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus (d 403 AD). Again, no one before had
mentioned this part of Tacitus, and nor do contemporaries. It was probably not in the
manuscripts of Tacitus at that time, but copyists in the Dark Ages might well have copied the
passage from the Chronicle into the manuscript of Tacitus they were reproducing.

Missing Records 

Christians explain the lack of official records of the events of Jesus’s life by claiming that they
were totally unimportant at the time. For a vast empire, insignificant events occurred in a distant
country of which Romans knew nothing and cared less. To children in Sunday school this sounds
quite convincing. But it is not true and should not be repeated by honest adults.

Palestine was not a minor country of little importance to the Romans. The Jews were already
widespread as merchants and artisans in the Empire and Judaea was strategically important
astride the trade routes to Persia, Arabia and India, and the military corridor by land from Africa
to Asia. The countries to the east had been serious rivals to Rome not long before and were still
strong and independent. They remained a threat at the time of Barabbas though later the Romans
briefly annexed them.

Romans mistrusted Jewish links with these countries. Many Jews still lived in Parthia preferring
to remain even though Cyrus the Persian had allowed them to return from Babylonian exile. And
the Jews, though inhabiting only a tiny country, had a record of militancy that, combined with
their strategic position, meant they could not be ignored. Thus events in Judaea were watched
keenly by Roman observers at diplomatic and military levels if not by the hoi polloi, and
statesmen demanded regular and accurate dispatches.
212 
 

Jesus was proclaimed a king as even the gospels admit and as such he was a rival to Caesar and a
threat to the Empire. That was no trivial crime and required detailed reports from the Roman
governor to the Emperor. If, though, as Christians maintain, it was not worth recording and
indeed was not recorded, it seems curious that early opponents and critics of Christianity failed
to question the absence of independent evidence of Jesus’s existence. The Christian apologists
did not attempt to answer any such questions, so apparently they were not put. Only in modern
times have critics argued that Jesus never existed at all.

In the early days of Christianity, its critics’ main argument was a different one—Jesus was a
bandit and a magician and, remarkably, that the records of the time proved it! A Jewish source
says Jesus was crucified at Lydda as a false teacher and a beguiler. Celsus and Lucian early in
the second century and Sossianus Hierocles late in the third tell us that Jesus was a sorcerer and a
fomenter of rebellion who committed highway robbery at the head of a band of men. These
documents existed because later scholars refer to them. But where are they now? Gone! Nothing
of this remains now because Christians, when they came to power under Constantine, began to
destroy anything contrary to their own view.

The death penalty was prescribed for anyone owning or trying to preserve any books
describing Jesus as a magician or an agitator!

The writings of Arius and Porphyry were ordered to be burnt. De Judaeis by Antonius Julianus
completely disappeared. We only know it existed because Josephus mentions it. Another book,
vital because it was written at the end of the first century by Justus of Tiberias, who organised
the revolt in Galilee, has also gone. But Photius, Bishop of Tyre in 448 AD, commenting on
Justus’s book which still existed then, expressed surprise that it made no mention of Jesus. Justus
knew the events of that period from direct experience and could hardly have avoided mentioning
the execution of a claimant to the Jewish throne. But the Christian censor had been at work for a
century. Thus Photius tells us that when the writings of Eunapius, a critic of Christianity, were
republished after the death of Julius the Apostate, all anti-Christian references had been
expunged.

 
213 
 

Passages were removed from Lucian. The works of Celsus and Sossianus Hierocles were
suppressed and we now only have quotations made from them by Christian polemicists. Many
old manuscripts in museums and archives are testimony to the Christian censors blotting out
sentences or sometimes obscuring whole pages by spilt ink.

Besides official censorship, Christian editors and copyists, altered passages as they saw fit. Even
Josephus which has managed to survive has been “improved”. The paragraph in Antiquities of
the Jews bearing witness to Jesus was not in its present form in 250 AD and is thought by many
to be a Christian forgery.

The missing books of Tacitus possible owe their disappearance to their having references to
Jesus. The books of Tacitus come to a halt at the siege of Jerusalem. The Romans considered
both Christians and orthodox Jews to have participated in the Jewish War, and Sulpicius Severus,
a Christian writer, does not demure. He asserts, in his Chronicle written in the fifth century, that
the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple to stop it from being an inspiration to the Jews and
to the Christians. (These Christians could only be those of the Jerusalem Church, the Nazarenes
or Ebionim.)

However this is not confirmed by the works of Josephus as they stand today and it is an amazing
statement to be made by a Christian especially at such a late date. Because it is quite contrary to
anything the Church would want to maintain, it could not be an invention of the time. Yet, if it is
based on a contemporary source, it must have been a prestigious one to carry weight against
Josephus. The only source with such prestige is Tacitus. Since it is just at this point that the
works of Tacitus are lost, there is again a strong hint of Christian suppression.

Jews also had to alter their records if the Christian censor was not to burn them. Explicit
references to Jesus were replaced by references to “a certain one”. The version of the Old
Testament written in Greek, the Septuagint, was also tampered with by the Christians who then
accused the Jews of altering their own version. In the pogroms of the Middle Ages, Jewish
Scriptures were burnt by the cartload. In 1263 AD King Jayme I of Aragon in Spain ordered that
all Jewish books should be destroyed.
214 
 

The greatest act of Christian vandalism of all was the destruction in the fifth century of libraries
like that of Alexandria and the Pagan schools that had propagated Greek scholarship. This
wholesale destruction of accumulated wisdom in the name of God precipitated the dark ages
from which we did not recover until the Renaissance. Are the churches are different now? The
Catholic, John P Meier, with the approval of the Imprimatur, advised in A Marginal Jew, in
1991 AD that Secret Mark, the Gospels of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter, the Egerton Gospel
and all other non-canonical texts about Jesus were worthless and might be thrown “back into the
sea”. We can be certain that if Christians had anything to do with it many modern discoveries
would never see the light of day. They would be incinerated.

Lack of Evidence 

The lack of evidence makes it impossible to prove that Jesus ever existed.

1. There are no proven, legitimate references to the existence of Jesus in any contemporary source 
outside of the New Testament. Even the New Testament is really not a contemporary source, as 
it was written from 30 to 120 years after Jesus died.  
2. There is no evidence that the town of Nazareth ever existed at the time.  
3. The earliest New Testament accounts do not refer to any details of the life of Jesus. The 
authentic Pauline epistles imply only that he was a god.  
4. The existence of Jesus is not necessary to explain the origin or growth of Christianity (see Earl 
Doherty’s detailed arguments).  

The most convincing evidence that Jesus lived is the fact that he died as an opponent of the
Roman state. No myth, to explain the worship in the Roman empire of a celestial or cosmic god
called Christ, would have been invented with the immense disadvantage that the god died
opposing the state. It was this embarassing fact that the early church desperately tried to ignore
that led to the lack of citations by Paul and other early Christians to the life on earth of the god. It
shows that Jesus was historical, but was not the person that Christians think he was!

Comment 

From John  

Remsburg (The Christ) gives good reasons to think of it as a interpolation. He is discussing


“Nero, in order to stifle the rumor, ascribed… but only to gratify the cruelty of one man (Annals
Book XV sec. 44)”.

In the middle of that passage which takes up quite a long paragraph, there is this brief sentence
that he puts in italics, “The founder of that name was Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was
punished as a criminal by the procurator, Pontius Pilate”. He states that “This passage, accepted
as authentic by many, must be declared doubtful, if not spurious, for the following reasons:”

1. It is not quoted by the Christian fathers.  
215 
 

2. Tertullian was familiar with the writings of Tacitus, and his arguments demanded the citation of 
this evidence had it existed.  
3. Clement of Alexandria, at the beginning of the third century, made a compilation of all the 
recognitions of Christ and Christianity that had been made by Pagan writers up to his time. The 
writings of Tacitus furnished no recognition of them.  
4. Origen, in his controversy with Celsus, would undoubtedly have used it had it existed.  
5. The ecclesiastical historian Eusebius, in the fourth century, cites all the evidences of Christianity 
obtainable from Jewish and Pagan sources, but makes no mention of Tacitus.  
6. It is not quoted by any Christian writer prior to the fifteenth century.  
7. At this time but one copy of the Annals existed, and this copy, it is claimed, was made in the 
eight century—600 years after the time of Tacitus.  
8. As this single copy was in possession of a Christian the insertion of a forgery was easy.  
9. Its severe criticisms of Christianity do not necessarily disprove its Christian origin. No ancient 
witness was more desirable than Tacitus, but his introduction at so late a period would make 
rejection certain unless Christian forgery could be made to appear improbable.  
10. It is admitted by Christian writers that the works of Tacitus have not been preserved with any 
considerable degree of fidelity. In the writings ascribed to him are believed to be some of the 
writings of Quintilian.  
11. The blood‐curdling story about the frightful orgies of Nero reads like some Christian romance of 
the dark ages, and not like Tacitus.  
12. In fact, this story, in nearly the same words, omitting the reference to Christ, is to be found in 
the writings of Sulpicius Severus, a Christian of the fifth century.  
13. Suetonius, while mercilessly condemning the reign of Nero, says that in his public 
entertainments he took particular care that no human lives should be sacrificed, “not even 
those of condemned criminals”.  
14. At the time that the conflagration occurred, Tacitus himself declares that Nero was not in Rome, 
but at Antium.  

Remsburg continues:

Many who accept the authenticity of this section of the Annals believe that the sentence which declares 
that Christ was punished in the reign of Pontius Pilate, and which I have italicized, is an interpolation. 
Whatever may be said of the remainder of this passage, this sentence bears the unmistakable stamp of 
Christian forgery. It interrupts the narrative; it disconnects two closely related statements. Eliminate this 
sentence, and there is no break in the narrative. In all the Roman records there was to be found no 
evidence that Christ was put to death by Pontius Pilate. This sentence, if genuine, is the most important 
evidence in Pagan literature. That it existed in the works of the greatest and best known of Roman 
historians, and was ignored or overlooked by Christian apologists for 1,360 years, no intelligent critic can 
believe. Tacitus did not write this sentence. 

I think you’ll be impressed also with 40 writers he lists during the time, or within a century after
the time that Christ is supposed to have lived, but are silent upon the Jesus we are looking for. I
can remember another writer by the name of Stein mentioning 60 writers, but I don’t know if he
lists them individually as Remsburg does.
216 
 

According to Robb of Robb Marks bookseller The Christ is the most sought after book he has.
The publisher is Prometheus, and I’m sure you’re aware of their skeptical press. I really admire
this mans work. I think you’ll be as impressed with him as I. Anyway, if you want the book, I
would get in touch with Robb before I bought it from Prometheus itself, because Robb sells these
books actually cheaper than the Prometheus press due to his very low postage rates. He’s a good
man to deal with.

A little history on John E Remsburg (1848-1919). From the flap cover it mentions that he was
“one of the most popular and widely traveled freethought lecturers of the late nineteenth century.
Raised in poverty in small-town Ohio and largely self-educated, Remsburg entered adulthood as
one of the youngest soldiers in the Union Army. During the Civil War, he acquitted himself with
distinction in the battle of Fort Stevens and received a special certificate of commendation from
President Lincoln himself. After the war, he became a school teacher and eventually
superintendent of public education in Kansas.

By 1880 Remsburg had become a committed freethinker when he published Thomas Paine: The Apostle 
of Religious and Political Liberty. At this time he also began lecturing on freethought and quickly proved 
to be a great success. When he retired, twenty years later, he had delivered more than 3,000 lectures 
and addressed audiences in over 1200 cities and towns in North America. Among Remsburg’s other 
significant books were ‘The Bible’ and ‘Six Historic Americans.’  

It is nice to share information with like-minded individuals. I’ve always enjoyed reading
freethought works, and have a couple of hundred that I still reference quite a bit when I get time
for on-line debates such as the format that the Secular Web now has. I will always put Remsburg
work in the top five, easily.

You seem like a very well read man, and I have one more recommendation for you that I’m sure
you will like to get also if you haven’t already purchased it because it will literally cause your
heart to start pounding because of the discoveries it brings forth. It’s called Forgery in
Christianity by Joseph Wheless, and I’ve never found so many nails to drive in a casket than
what I found here. He spends a great deal of time quoting early church fathers, and if I only had
one book that I could offer a Christian to read, and I could get them to read it, it would be this
very book. Be forewarned, do not start reading this book unless it is early morning or afternoon,
because once one reads the first 10 pages, including the foreward, you will not put it down until
you complete it! I’ve steered friends to this book, and more times than not, I hear the same
response of them not eating, working, sleeping until they have at least completed half of it. I
hope I’m not wrong this time, but I think surely this one is on the www.infidels.org site under
historical documents. It’s 406 pages.

After this, I’m headed back to your site. It’s good to know you’re a freethinker, Mike. Thank you
for your time, and for a great site. John

Thanks for the comment and references. All I can say is that these reasons look convincing
enough. My feeling is that Christians would not insert something that said they hated the human
race and named names. For the same reason, the Christians repeating earlier sources might have
217 
 

been embarrassed by it and omitted mentioning it. But the weight of evidence you cite is er…
weighty! Best wishes, Mike.

Before you go, think about this… 
Christian fundamentalism came out of the revivalism that flourished in the nineteenth century, based on 
opposition to Darwin. “Fundamentalist” and “evangelical” mean the same thing because of their 
common origin. Fundamentalists cannot read the bible as it stands, accepting a simple message with its 
faults. They treat it as a divine code in which the separate verses have to be arranged properly to yield 
divine truth. The ones who show them how it is done are their greedy and arrogant pastors, who have 
taken the place for believers in fundamentalism of the Catholic priesthood of the middle ages for the 
Christians of the time. They tell simple ignorant believers what to think—after all the trouble Luther and 
Calvin had taken asserting the right to think for themselves. 

Examining the Bible Objectively


A warmer planet will mean that the permafrost of Siberia and Canada will melt releasing methane 
trapped there forming a positive feedback loop pushing temperature higher still.  

Who Lies Sleeping? 

17. The Hellenistic Background to


Christianity
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, May 14, 1999; Sunday, 02 October 2005

• Greece  
• Morals of the Athenians  
• The Development of Religion  
• The Rise of Philosophy and Skepticism  
• Morals in Ancient Rome  

Abstract 
Wicked Pagan Greece produced a line of unsurpassed moralists, a strange mystery to Christians for 
whom there is only one ethical route in the whole universe. Socrates and Plato believed in one God and 
were highly moral idealists. Athens was not so much the city of vice as the greatest morality making 
center the world has ever known. It culminated in the Stoic School which produced Christ‐like austere 
moralists such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and gave many educated Romans a high moral 
character. The Stoics ridiculed the idea of spirit and free will, which Christians insist are the 
indispensable bases of any moral conduct. For one hundred and fifty years, Rome had Stoic emperors 
218 
 

whose ethical level exceeded any in the history of Christendom. Of the twenty nine Pagan Roman 
emperors twenty one were admirable men of good character.  

Greece 

The Greeks had hardly been civilized a few centuries when they discovered three great
fundamental truths of science—the vastness of the universe, the existence of atoms, and the law
of evolution. If the Christian Church bad not subsequently crushed all science, science would be
a thousand years more advanced.

To the historians of all later time, this genius of the Greek intellect has always been a mystery. If
the Hebrews had been Greeks, it would be a miracle, a product of God’s revelation and
inspiration. The first European nation to become civilized reached the high water mark in nearly
every branch of culture. One has only to reflect on the language we use today to realize the
world’s debt to Greece. Philosophy, ethics, politics, aesthetics, democracy, gymnastics, athletics,
music, theatre, chorus, comedy, tragedy—these and a thousand others are Greek words, because
they stand for things which the Greeks invented or discovered.

To talk of the “genius” of the Greeks is mere mysticism. Words and phrases suffice as
explanation. Nor can the explanation be given by reflecting on the glorious climate, the
picturesque world, the blue sky and the blue sea and golden sun, of the Greeks. Greece is
scorched much of the year and scratching a living from its rocky terrain was never easy. Though,
a beautiful place with exceptional air and light, only arm-chair philosophers see any explanation
in such qualities. In any case, the sun and sea and hills are the same now as they were two
thousand years ago, and today they inspire no genius.

The Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Celts, and Slavs are one family, and the ancestral tribe lived
somewhere in the Caucasus. It spread west and south. The earliest Greeks, powerful barbarians
with iron weapons, destroyed Crete, a Semitic maritime empire that ruled the eastern
Mediterranean. Half the Cretans fled to Asia Minor, where they had colonies, and the Greeks
werepassing through, or occupying. Contact spread aspects of Minoan civilization to the Greeks.
Nearly all the early poets and scientists of Greek literature belong to Asia Minor.

Athens, in the Greek archipelago, was conveniently situated for communication with Asia
Minor.Physical circumstances explain more than genius or religion does. But until the fifth
century Athens had only a moderate civilization, with no outstanding achievements except the
abolition of royalty and the creation of democracy—the first democracy in history. This does not
puzzle us. Athens was a city-state—a single city with a moderate amount of the surrounding
country. And it never had more than a population of about four hundred thousand, of whom
three- fourths were slaves. Such a change was comparatively simple in a small community like
that of the Athenians, but quite impossible in rigorously organized monarchies with millions of
people and vast armies of mercenary soldiers. In effect, a city of one hundred thousand men and
women produced the bases of the modern world.
219 
 

In the fifth century, the Athenians learned the lesson of heavy defeat and avoided war for a
century. The Persians completely destroyed the old Athens in 479 BC, and the Athenians, in
rebuilding, were fortunate enough to secure a statesman who was also a thinker and an artist.
Pericles proposed that they should raise on the ashes of the older Athens the most beautiful city
in all the world, and that they succeeded will forever be told in the world’s literature while
civilisation continues. Never again will such artistic and literary wonders be crowded into one
century by so small a people.

Athens was a near perfect democracy. Not a bean could be used from the treasury, not a building
designed or raised, without the consent of the twenty thousand male citizens and voters.
Moreover, the theatre—also, in later years, the parliament house—seated thirty thousand
spectators, to witness the superb tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, as well as the
comedies of Aristophanes and Menander.

The Athenians were narrow-minded about religion—always a great retarding influence—but


even here they rarely enforced their laws. Intellectuals simply paid it enough lip service to avoid
trouble—the condemnation to death of Socrates having a political element. Common Athenians
were bigoted, but they were proud of their unique city and its achievements.

Morals Of The Athenians 

The even more bigoted Christian preacher will say:

We grant you a certain intellectual talent to the Greeks, but what of their moral level and spirituality? 

Joseoph McCabe wonders, “Why lay so much stress on spirituality and virtue? Spirituality is a
shibboleth.” The Christian is shocked. Believers do not expect to hear such things questioned.
But they try to answer.

Without a high moral and spiritual level, society degenerates, intellect is paralyzed, energy and the great 
deeds of the strong are sapped. 

McCabe responds:

Are you smiling? These Athenians, lacking the spirituality and morality of Christians, gave the world such 
brilliant intellectual achievements that no nation, even twenty times as large, will ever rival them. The 
220 
 

Athenian state, little and corrupt as it was, produced “the most refined, brilliant civilization the world 
has yet seen”, the words of a clergyman. 

Christian retorts:

Surely, all the authorities admit that the Athenians were brilliant in art and intellect and loose in morals.  

If that were true, immorality is consistent with brilliant art and intellect, if it does not promote
them. But it is not true. A clergyman will compare the Greeks of more than two thousand years
ago with people of modern times. Modern civilisation is not Christian and, being two thousand
years later than the Greeks, it ought to be wiser in its social life. To compare Greek morals with
Christian, the twentieth and twenty first centuries can not properly be used as a yardstick. Ages
when practically everybody was a Christian should be compared with the Greeks—the middle
ages in Europe, known as the Dark Age.

Menander was the culmination of Greek manners. He was the second greatest comedian of
Athens. Only fragments of his comedies remain but many of the works of the other great Greek
comedian, Aristophanes have survived. Christians are fond of quoting the scurrilities of some of
those comedies as “typical” of Athenian sentiment. Menander, was not scurrilous, writing in one
fragment:

Prefer to be injured rather than to injure, for in so doing you will blame others, and you will escape 
censure. 

Menander’s comedies reflected a state of moral and domestic sentiment like our own, and they
were full of moral scenes and happy endings. But, only scholars read these. Aristophanes has
more influence on our views of Athens. Pious monks of the Dark Ages, according to Christians,
“preserved for us all that is best in classical literature” yet preserved the “scurrilous” plays of
Aristophanes and ignored the almost Christian pleasantries of Menander!

A Christian theologion judges Æschylus, the Greek tragedian, thus:

No modern theology has taught higher and purer moral notions than those of Aeschylus and his school, 
developed afterwards by Socrates and Plato, but first attained by the genius of Aeschylus. 

Not faint praise for an age preceding the preaching of Christ by five whole centuries, and before
the “prophecies” and psalms of the Jewish scriptures were written! Aeschylus…

…shows the indelible nature of sin, and how it recoils upon the third and fourth generation, thus 
anticipating one of the most marked features in Christian theology. 

The Christian drives the lesson home in these decisive words:

The agreement of Sophocles (in his Œdipus) shows that these deep moral ideas were no individual 
feature in Aeschylus, and that there must have been a sober earnestness at Athens very far apart from 
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the ribaldry of Aristophanes. Such immorality as that of the modern French stage was never tolerated 
among the Greeks, in spite of all their license. 

This “license” is at variance with every other word he says. It is an assumption based on the
absurd Christian prejudice that no one could be moral without Christianity. The third great
tragedian, Euripides, is also morally noble. His heroines…

…are the women who have so raised the ideal of the sex that, in looking upon them, the world has 
passed from neglect to courtesy, from courtesy to veneration. 

Along with the three greatest dramatists of Greece, Menander was also full of a down to earth
virtue which was truer to life. It must have been too dull for the Christian monks. But the worthy
monks carefully preserved the ribald works of Aristophanes for us, either because they enjoyed it
more, or because they wanted only to preserved evidence that suited their prejudices. His
“Lysistrata” is a supremely funny and daring picture of a sexual strike by the women of Greece.
Prostitutes walk on his stage, and talk freely. Sex jokes are as common as in a London comedy
club or a high-class Chicago revue.

Athens was not divided into a score of refined people and a brutal mass:

We hear of no low music halls, or low dancing saloons. Even such vice as existed was chiefly refined and 
gentlemanly. 

Aspasia, the friend of Pericles, is merely lampooned by the comedians.

There is no absolute proof of her want of dignity and morality. 

She was a virtuous lady to whose house even Socrates and Xenophon, the great moralists, went
for the purpose of serious mental improvement. Nor is here evidence that there were hetairai at
Athens, though there were at Corinth, and or evidence that the hetairai were immoral. And as to
the immorality of some of the legends about the gods, several chapters of the bible are utterly
unsuitable for children because they represent a disgusting morality for a supposedly good god.
Alcibiades described in Plutarch, is not an example of typical Athenian manners. No one doubts
he was highlighted as in every way untypical. And, to conclude the list, the Greek love of boys
was largely innocent, as Jowett had proved long ago, and Edward Carpenter has proved again in
his beautiful Iolaus.

The Greeks were not morally inferior to modern nations. Some intensely Christian countries
today accept quite as much looseness, and far more homosexuality than did the ancient
Athenians. Athens was far superior to Europe when it was entirely Christian in the Middle Ages.

The Greeks, like the Babylonians and Egyptians, were much the same as ourselves. They seem to
have observed the same ideals in the same ways. Admittedly women were not free, as they are
today in the west. Most Greek women and girls were guarded in an oriental seclusion. They were
treated more like Moslem women—and plenty of those prefer it to the western style—and they
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could hardly philander, even if they were so disposed. Consequently, there were prostitutes.
Corinth had a lot of them. Human nature was just the same, then as now, human ideals were just
the same, and the popularity of heterosexual brothels shows that most men were neither
homosexual nor interested in children.

Sex is not the whole, or the main part, of morals—though Christians often think it the only part.
Justice, honour, kindliness, truthfulness, generosity, temperance are the great principles, and
Greek society was no less familiar with them than we are.

The Development Of Religion 

The old gods of Greece, Zeus and his wife and daughter, Hephaestos and Aphrodite and all the
rest, were brought down from the northeast into the peninsula by the early barbaric Greeks. They
were nature gods. The Greeks bad no sacred books about them in the same sense as the Hebrews.
The poets, Homer and Hesiod and others, give us their stories.

A critical study of the Greek writers in different ages shows that, since there was no “inspired”
record—though Plato worked out a theory of inspiration of the poets like the Christian theory—
to limit anyone’s imagination, the gods were understood differently by different writers at
different times.

To the austere tragedians, Zeus was the moral ruler of the world. Few took moral principles more
seriously than Athenians did. To lighter poets, the amours of the gods were light poetic material.
Much, if not all, of the moral light-heartedness, attributed to the gods, was not original in Greek
religion. Their amorous adventures fell from the lips of the bards at the courts of the petty and
pleasure loving early kings who loved their legends embroidered with all sorts of baudiness.

The stories of the immorality of the gods had no concern with the morals of mortals. In the same
manner, Christians must not be vindictive, and must suffer injury or insult without retaliating,
but their God does nothing of the kind. He punishes with merciless vigour anyone who offends
Him. “God’s ways are not the ways of mortals”.

The Greek maid would not willy nilly receive a lover because Zeus set a baudy example. A maid
would sooner be a laurel tree than copulate with the sun god, Apollo. Doubtless, Greek maids
admitted lovers in the same proportion as maidens have since civilization began. Aspasia loved
Pericles but could not marry him because she was a Milesian and could not marry an Athenian.
Like any true love, no doubt she ignored the proscription. The hetairai seemed more like
Japanese geishas than Western prostitutes. They were female entertainers whose talent was far
from simply offering sexual favours for money.

The religion of Greece was not the Greeks’ source of morality, and had no particular theology
even. It taught no lies about a life after death because, if there was a life beyond, being beyond, it
was not open to our scrutiny. Like the biblical Hebrews, they considered the dead slept. In
Greek, the word “cemetery” means the place where people sleep. Yet for the Christian it is a
gloomy and haunted place of dead spirits, even though it should be a light and happy place
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because of Christian expectation of a future life in a balmy place. In Athens, people accepted
death and talked about it with serene recognition that it was a natural fact.

Unlike the Babylonian, the Greek had no belief in legions of devils whom the gods would permit
to torment him. Greeks originally believed in as many spirits as any other nation but they almost
allowed them to pass out of existence. The Greeks’ minor spirits were mainly nymphs, dryads,
satyrs, and so on, playful nature sopirits generally doing what comes naturally in woods and
waters.

The Greeks were the first people in the world to develop sport in the modern sense. For the
youths there was as fine and healthy a system of athletics and gymnastics as exists anywhere in
the world. Stadia were as important as theatres. Our modern stadia, our Olympic games, the
words gymnastics and athletics, are Greek. Olympia, which gave the name to the Olympic
games, was a special recreation city for all the Greeks. Modern Olympic games are degenerate
imitations of these, for the Greeks had intellectual, poetic, and musical contests, as well as races
and wrestling. Even the maidens, although they were carefully guarded in the home, had their
sports.

Part of the reason for this, and undoubtedly a consequence was the Greek admiration of beauty,
was their love of a clean and comely human form, male and female. The wonderful statues left
us by the great Greek sculptors, chiefly Phidias and Praxiteles, which are from living models,
show us the result. But Greek men thought the love of woman merely procreative, but the love of
young men virtuous. Plato, as strict a moralist as any, explains this in his “Symposium” and
shows that it was not the sordid vice that Christians imagine.

Greeks were not exhorted to be like the gods in the sense that Christians want to be like Jesus.
The gods were not role models. Zeus was often seen as the supreme guardian of justice, but the
Greeks thought mysterious beings called Fate or “The Fates” pursued the criminal and avenged
injustice. Zeus was simply Father Zeus. His full name meaning, like Jupiter, the father in heaven.
He sent the rain and the sunshine upon just and unjust alike and was seen in quite a general way.

The official religion never troubled about ethics. Sacrifices, ceremonies, and processions—
artistic developments of ancient practices—were what it enjoined for cultural bonding.
Retribution for seducing a man’s wife or daughter was not the business of Zeus but was the
business of the husband or father, and he would pay close attention to it. Equally, justice was a
social matter, a secular concern.

The educated tolerate this religion and practiced it in public as a public duty but laughed at it in
private, as long as the mass of the people were ignorant enough to believe in it. The stories of the
amours of Zeus were not dogmas. No one need believe them, and the educated did not. Educated
Greeks thought Zeus the spirit of the universe and the other gods and goddesses aspects of the
same principle.

The normal Greek religion was complicated by secret cults known as “mysteries”. The
Eleusinian Mysteries, consisted of a nine days’ celebration at Eleusis, near Athens. Every
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freeborn Athenian had to be initiated, and had to take an oath never, under pain of death, to
reveal what he or she saw.

Just as the secret gatherings of the early Christians were said to be for the purpose of orgies—
and as late as the fourth century S Ambrose tells us that they sometimes were—so the Greek
mysteries were said by early Christians to cover orgies of indecency. On the contrary, they
concentrated the most austere and pious elements of the Greek people. Originally, long before,
when the mysteries were a secret fertility cult, they no doubt involved the sexual rites of the
fertility goddess Demeter or Ceres. The moral blandness of the official religion, for some, made
them turn to the mysteries.

Some people, of a pious frame of mind, are not happy unless they can groan over their sins. The
official Greek religion gave no hope of a resurrection and never bothered about a future life.
About the middle of the sixth century, before the Golden Age of Pericles, probably triggered by
the advance of the Persians and Zoroastrianism, a religious revival passed over the country and
led to the extension of the mystery cults. (It also had an effect on philosophy.) The pious types
found their expression in the Mysteries, which were to many Greeks what the Holy Week was to
the Catholic. Some Greeks bemoaned their sins and were “baptized” at the Mysteries in the most
pious manner.

The cult of Dionysos or Bacchus was another cult which attracted the religiously fervant.
Dionysos was the Spirit of the vine. In his Mysteries there seems to have been a representation of
the birth of the baby god Dionysus like that of Horus in Egypt or of Christ in Catholic churches
today.

The preachers, who talk glibly about the pagan Greeks and their immoral gods, have no idea of
the amount of spiritual life—equal to the Christian life—that there was in ancient Greece.

Rise Of Philosophy And Skepticism 

Greek philosophy is as brilliant as every other creation of the Greek intellect. The line of thinkers
which that little nation produced in three centuries has no parallel in the history of thought, and
every conceivable variety or cast of speculation made its appearance. But Greek thought became
distorted by religion. It turned away from science to “spiritual truths”. It has shown for all time
how futile and mischievous is that high sounding appeal for us to turn from science to “spiritual
truths”.

Greek civilization first reached a high development in the Mediterranean fringe of Asia Minor or
on the islands off the coast, and this points to an influence of the conquering Persians. The early
Greek philosophers nearly all belong to this region. Philosophy was born out of the inspiration of
Persian religion, and the Greek desire to improve on the novelties of their enemies. But the most
essential condition to bear in mind is the liberty the Greeks enjoyed in Asia Minor. They were in
a colonial world. They were free to speculate.

This Greek fringe on the coast of Asia Minor was known as Ionia, and the first school of thinkers
is known as the Ionic school. From the start it was more scientific than metaphysical. Its leaders
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studied Nature, and man as a part of Nature. They sought the first principles of things, not in
abstract metaphysical formulae, and not at all in religion, but in physical realities. Thales, the
father of philosophy, thought that water was the original element out of which all other things
came. Then the religious revival took place, and the next Greek thinker said that “the infinite”—
not God, but something hopelessly indefinite—was the first principle. The third, Anaximenes,
took air—an infinite quantity of air—as the starting point. The fourth, Xenophanes, said that the
primordial element was earth. The fifth chose fire.

This was the birth of speculation about Nature and guesses were bound to be crude. The world
was being interpreted on natural principles, without the absurdities of the Babylonian creation.
Xenophanes, a skeptic, noted the repulsiveness of the legends about gods. Heraclitus, denied that
the world was created by gods, because it was an eternally changing substance. Empedocles of
the Greek colony in Sicily, whose mind was a strange blend of mysticism and science,
maintained that there was only one God, “a sacred and unutterable mind”. In the fifth century
BC, God was conceived as people do today.

These speculations about the universe, besides showing men how to think without gods, led on to
a belief in evolution. If there was no beginning, contrary to the Babylonians, if the universe was
eternal, and there was one primordial element of all things, then there has been an eternal
evolution of this element into the contents of the universe today. Every one of these early Greek
thinkers believed that, and the doctrine was further developed by two of the boldest of them all,
Leucippus and Democritus.

About the middle of the fifth century, Leucippus, another Ionian Greek, hit upon the idea that
matter must be composed of atoms. The universe consisted of an infinite number of atoms, of
different shapes and sizes, which have, without any directing mind, gradually come together in
the bodies we see today. Democritus developed this idea with real scientific genius. All the
contents of the universe, including man, were the result of an eternal, unguided, quite
purposeless tossing and mingling of the atoms. Democritus, moreover, while completely
rejecting all religion, worked out an elevated system of humanitarian morals.

Three very great principles had been fixed—the eternity of the world and its independence of
gods, the existence of atoms, and the fact of evolution. At the same time these early thinkers
observed much in astronomy, and they were good mathematicians. Many of them visited Egypt,
and learned whatever the priests of Egypt could tell them. They obtained some idea of the
immense size of the sun and of the vastness of the universe, and Pythagoras actually declared, for
the first time in the history of thought, that the earth revolved round the sun.

Here was a promising foundation for science, but religion hampered its development and
diverted thought to other channels. Anaxagoras took the speculations of the physicists to Athens,
and the democracy made him fly for his life for uttering such impieties, although he judiciously
blended his science with some theological mysticism.

Another train of thought, in Greece itself, had meanwhile led to skepticism. There arose a school
of Sophists who took pleasure in contending that the mind could come to no valid conclusions
whatever. Protagoras talked about the gods even less respectfully than Confucius.
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I cannot say whether they exist or not. Life is too short for such difficult investigations. 

Both this man and Anaxagoras were great friends of Pericles, and these skeptical ideas pervaded
the whole group of artists and thinkers of the Golden Age. But—partly in political opposition to
the aristocratic party, to which they belonged—the democracy raged against them, and
Protagoras in turn had to hurry from the country.

In these circumstances Socrates, the leader of a different line of Greek thinkers, came upon the
scene at Athens, in the second half of the fifth century BC. He was put to death in 399 BC. This
great thinker and moralist, a man of the highest and most independent character, met death on the
grotesque and false charge of corrupting the young men of Athens.

What did it matter whether the ultimate principle was air or water or fire? Or whether there were
atoms? What did matter was that human conduct should be effectively guided and that men
should understand the real nature of justice and “the good”. Socrates turned the brilliant race
aside from the foundations of science which had been laid, and he provided instead the bases of
philosophy and ethics. Pythagoras, the Greek who had first realized that the earth traveled round
the sun, yet a strange mystic, had preceded him. Philosophy was to be profoundly religious.
Religion was to become a philosophy.

Socrates wrote no works. His ideas are known only from his pupils, Plato especially, and
Xenopbon. Plato has given them his own more mystical colour. Like Socrates, he believed in one
God, an eternal spiritual being such as modernists now offer us. He believed intensely in the
immortality of the soul, and provided feeble “proofs” of it, now laughable. He belittled matter
and the flesh, and traced everything good, true and beautiful to “spirit”. Plato set a fashion which
has not died. The verbiage that befogs the minds of people today is from this glorification of
spirit and depreciation of matter. It begs the question whether the mind is or is not material. Plato
shows that monotheism could be reached without a gleam of revelation, and anticipated the ethic
of Christ centuries before he was born.

Greek experience shows anyone’s philosophy of life, materialist or spiritualist, religious or


nonreligious, makes no difference to their moral ideal. The materialist Democritus had as lofty
sentiments as the mystic Pythagoras or the spiritual Plato. The skeptical Alcidamas, a Sophist
and atheist, was the first man to denounce slavery, thousands of years before Christianity did.
The atheistic Epicurus had as sane and sober a conception of character as the theistic Aristotle.
Morality is a human matter. Its roots are in human experience, not in religion.

Aristotle was far less mystic than Plato. His god, or Supreme Mind, was unconscious of
sublunary matters, and therefore not a universal providence or a creator. Nor did he believe in
personal immortality. His system of thought is one of the most learned and original ever given to
the world. He summarized all the science of his time, and he made a science of ethics and
politics. Unfortunately, he was also a metaphysician. He thought that besides our knowledge of
Nature (“ta physica”) it was possible to get a knowledge of things beyond the physical (“ta meta
ta physica”, or metaphysics), and these were more important and more worthy of the mind. In
that sense Aristotle, though for his time a great scientific man, joined Plato in leading human
thought astray.
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Yet, all these thinkers were high moral idealists. Wicked Pagan Greece produced a line of
unsurpassed moralists, a strange mystery to Christians for whom there is only one ethical route in
the whole universe. Athens was not so much the city of vice as the greatest morality making
center the world has ever known. It culminated in the Stoic School. The philosophers used to
gather groups about them in their gardens or in public places, and one of them, Zeno, chose the
Painted Colonnade (Stoa Poikile). Hence the Stoic philosophy.

It was not a religion. Zeno and the Stoics spoke of God but he was a material entity, and he was
not the author and vindicator of the moral law. The law was an eternal part of Nature, and a man
was urged to live in harmony with Nature. This philosophy inspired, in the Roman world, the
greatest humanitarian movement ever known until modern times. It kept educated Romans at a
high level of character, and it produced Christ-like austere moralists such as Epictetus and
Marcus Aurelius. This austere and, in its more sober Roman form, effective of moral systems
was a dogmatic materialism! The Stoics ridiculed the idea of spirit and free will, which we are
asked to regard as the indispensable bases of any moral conduct.

Passing over schools of Pantheists, Cynics, and Sophists, Greek philosophy ended in the system
of Epicurus. He built upon science, gathering together all that the early scientists had said about
the universe. He spoke of gods as beings somewhere out in the abysses of space with whom a
sensible man need not concern himself. Like Buddha and Confucius, he was a practical atheist. If
there were any gods, they had nothing to do with us. His ethics, one of the sanest systems given
to the world, had nothing to do with religion. Moral law was social law. Epicurus was—contrary
to the libelous, ridiculous idea of his philosophy which Christian writers put into circulation—
one of the most abstemious of men. Tranquillity, the quiet life, was his idea. If he was wrong at
all, it was in being too ascetic.

But Athens was now in full decay. The work of Greece was done. The republic, enfeebled by a
long civil war, had fallen. The monarchy of the Macedonians overshadowed it. The philosophy
of Epicurus reflects the time, the wish for a quiet, passionless life. The work of civilization
passed on to Rome.

Morals In Ancient Rome 

The ethical code of ancient Rome was mainly the Stoic philosophy of the Greeks. Ancient Rome
is little understood except by scholars, and there is no other nation of antiquity except the
Babylonian that is so often selected by preachers as an awful example of depravity before Christ,
or apart from Christianity. Rome was the second Babylon.

Many of the misunderstandings about Rome arise from broad ideas that are false. The preachers
never tire of speaking of its vices—of which they know nothing—but some social writers have
calumniated Rome because to them it was an awful example of capitalism. They confirm the
impression that the population of ancient Rome was a few wealthy and unscrupulous men and a
vast army of exploited and vilely treated slaves.

The wealth of the Roman capitalists or rich men is much exaggerated. Scholars have been
interested in calculating the actual wealth, in modern currency, of these Roman millionaires. The
228 
 

largest fortune amongst them definitely known to us is that of Crassus, who was nothing like as
rich as Bill Gates. In America, Crassus would probably fall short of his first billion. The richest
man of Juvenal’s day might have exceeded the billion mark. There are men in America who
could have bought up any of the richest patricians Rome ever had!

In Rome, now and again a vulgar or half mad emperor came to the throne, and during his reign
morals declined among a certain section of society. It is to the reigns of these men that the
preacher turns for his material. Most societies have a jet set, and in Rome it grew larger under the
bad emperors. These men gave, in their marble mansions with cedar ceilings, banquets which
were orgies of choice wine and naked Syrian girls, while slaves in the roof poured perfume and
flowers on the intoxicated guests. There is no reason whatever to think that this set was more
numerous, proportionately, than the set which patronizes actresses and models today, or sets up
mistresses in luxurious apartments.

The Christian propagandist will assure us that the main source of immorality in Rome was the
wealthy class, one tenth, or less, of the population. Though the Empress Messalina was notorious
in that she went, night after night, to a common brothel to prostitute herself and return to the
palace, in the words of the poet, Juvenal, “tired, yet not sated, with men”, the Byzantine
empresses, who were all Christians, led much more promiscuous lives as a group than the Pagan
Roman emperesses.

Juvenal is generally the source of these scandals. Yet he is unreliable because he was a
propagandist intent on denigrating the upper crust. He was a militant. Wild gossip was all grist to
his mill. Some of it might have been true, but Juvenal meant to tarnish the whole aristocracy. Nor
is he often giving contemporary news. He wrote his famous Satires about the year 90 AD, and
the sins of Messalina had been perpetrated decades before!

These are the things that get into the papers. Virtue, though admirable, is uninteresting. Vice,
though deplorable, is entertaining, and the more grotesque, the more absorbing. The Christian
emphasis on sexual morality obscures the greater importance of justice and honour, but were the
mass of Roman people more or less immoral than in a modern city?

There were plenty of brothels (“lupanaria”) in Rome. Walking along a street, a prostitute behind
a curtain might try to attract your attention. The red light districts of modern Christian cities are
no different. There are no statistics but all the evidence is consistent with the assumption that the
mass of Roman men were just about as immoral as men now are, and rather less than men in the
Middle Ages, when the clergy were nearly all immoral and some owned brothels.

Ammianus Marcellinus, an old and severe soldier, returned from his campaigns to Rome, and, in
disgust, described what he saw. Vice has no great part in his account. In the same age, S Jerome
says more about immorality, writing about the Christian priests and ladies of Rome whom he
knew well. Particularly telling is Salvianus, a priest, writing in the next century, who writes to
his flock that the virtues of the Pagans, who have disappeared, shame the vices of the Christians,
who have taken their place.
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In the small wealthy class at Rome, there was less adultery than there is now or was in the
Middle Ages. Adultery was punishable by death in Roman law, and though this was rarely
enforced, intrigue might get a man impeached at any time. The first emperor, Octavian, who
ruled for forty years during the most luxurious period of Rome, sternly enforced the law, to the
extent that he banished for life his own passionately loved but libidinous daughter, Julia. That
was wicked Rome.

Really intimate and reliable pictures are best afforded by private letters, which reflect the
character of the circle to which they belong—the letters of Cicero, Pliny, Seneca, and
Symmachus. Every single letter could have been read without a blush by Mother Theresa. They
reflect circles in which vice is a thing not done by gentlemen. Any real student of Roman
literature will conclude that the great body of the men and women of Rome were as temperate
and regular as we are.

The average Roman gentleman was a firm believer in the doctrines of the Stoics. Stoicism and
Epicureanism were the philosophies of life of refined Romans. The Stoic philosophy had a
wonderful influence in Rome. Crowds followed Stoic orators like Dion Chrysostom, or read
Stoic moralists like Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. Most of the famous Roman jurists,
the creators of European law, were Stoics, humanitarians of the highest character. Their letters,
and such works as the Saturnalia of Macrobius, a slave author who describes what is under his
eyes in his master’s house, give us the true measure of Roman character. lt was generally fine.

Emperors were Stoics. For one hundred and fifty years, Rome had Stoic emperors whose ethical
level exceeded any in the history of Christendom. Under them the world made a humanitarian
progress that has no parallel except in these secular days. In the first century AD, under the
Pagan emperors, more than three hundred thousand orphans were reared in public institutions in
Italy alone. Of the twenty nine Pagan Roman emperors twenty one were admirable men of good
character, and eight only were bad or insane.

This Roman world, like the Greek world, produced moralists as good as any Christian. Yet, the
Asiatic religions which celebrated the birth of a saviour god in mid winter or the death and
resurrection of a god in spring, became extremely popular in the Roman Empire and prepared the
way for Christianity. The older Roman religions was eventually suppressed and Christianity
substituted by force for them, and the world sank into barbarism within a hundred years.

In the cities of Babylon, Egypt, and Persia, in Athens and Rome, men lived, in spite of
technological differences, much as they do today in Paris and London, New York and Chicago,
and that is more decently than they did in Christian times. No shining sword of marality divides
the world into BC and AD, consequential on the appearance of a Saviour! Old civilizations were
not in darkness and the shadow of death. In ethic and religious belief, they provided the material
for the Christian religion, which gratefully accepted them then pretended they were its own all
along.
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Before you go, think about this… 
The change to bipedalism required major changes in our ancestors’ anatomy; bones, muscles, internal 
organs all had to alter. Dinosaurs did not need such drastic modification. They had evolved as bipedal 
animals.  

Who Lies Sleeping? 

Studying Belief in the Bible


Is it possible that hadrosaurs were the cattle of the Cretaceous period, herded on the great plains before 
being shipped to a Cretaceous Chicago for making into meat pies and hamburgers?  

Who Lies Sleeping? 

18. Summary and Background


The Christianity of the first century was, and yet was not, the Christianity of the fourth century. The 
Christianity of fourth century was, and yet was not, the Christianity of the feudal Europe. The 
Christianity of feudal Europe died at the Reformation, and was born again in Protestant Christianity.  

Prof J A Froude, Short Studies: Origen and Celsus 

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Wednesday, January 12, 2000

• Judaism and the Jewish Scriptures  
• Alexandrine Judaism  
• Christianity  
• New Scriptures  
• Rome and Christians  
• Religion in Rome  
• Persecution  
• Paulinism  
• The Later Church  
• The Constant Church  

Abstract 
Christians believe that Jesus was an ethical teacher, a reformer of Judaism, who was cruelly treated and 
slain by the old guard, jealous of their tradition. Ethically there was little in it that did not exist in 
classical philosophy but it brought with it the features of the oriental mysteries that were already 
popular in the empire and in particular the Jewish scriptures which impressed the Greeks with the sense 
of purpose shown by the oriental God over an apparently long period of time.  
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Judaism and the Jewish Scriptures 

Judaism differs from the tribal cult which preceded it. Its inspiration is the Babylonian and
Persian monotheism brought from Mesopotamia from 586 BC which the Persian administrators
imposed upon the original mythology. Monotheism was at first esoteric but became popular
through the efforts of Zoroaster in Persia and from there it influenced the civilizations of the two
rivers and the religion of the Jews in exile. A tribal god, Ormuzd in Persia and Yehouah in
Palestine, was declared the God of all and a class of priests was formed to administer the new
religion. These were bold moves and in justification they ascribed the changes to a traditional
law giver, respectively Zoroaster and Moses.

Deuteronomy is certainly late because a sect of Egyptian Jews at Elephantine on the Nile did not
know of Deuteronomy in the fifth century BC. It could not therefore have been written by Moses
some seven hundred years before. It was written either in Babylonia or in Palestine after the
Persians set up the temple and attributed to Moses to give it authority. Such books, not really
written by their supposed authors, are called pseudepigraphs and are common in the Judaeo-
Christian tradition—indeed in eastern tradition generally.

The Jewish priesthood at this time were really inventing Judaism under the protection of the
Persian kings who had sponsored them to set up a theocracy provided they gave service to
Persia. The Persian kings at the request of the Jewish priests issued edicts to all Jews subject to
Persia. They laid down the rules of the new religion with its temple and priesthood established in
Jerusalem. Thus Judaism was set up by the Persian kings.

A school of priests led by Ezra rewrote the legends of the old Hebrew cult, adding the extensive
codes of law needed by a centralized priest-led religion. The prophetic works were later
pseudepigraphs critical of the acceptance of cultural incursions by Greeks from the time of
Alexander, not Chaldaeans or Assyrians, though they drew upon Jewish legend. These
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pseudepigraphs were illuminating problems of the day from the third century BC not in the
eighth century BC.

Apart from plainly late books like Daniel and Ecclesiastes, the Hebrew bible is improbably
uniform philologically for a library supposedly covering several thousand years. Its linguistic
and stylistic uniformity suggest it was not written over thousands of years but merely a few
hundred. The books of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah were written or adapted from earlier works
by schools of prophets, possibly Essene or Hasidic, from the third century BC. Like most of the
Jewish scriptures, they contain fragments of old history, legend and myth, not all Jewish, but
have been essentially rewritten with problems of the day in mind.

The enemies of Israel described in them stood for the Seleucid Greeks of Mesopotamia and Syria
though not in any direct way, the books being moralistic romances rather than precise allegories.
Their messages were directed not merely at the people but also at the official priesthood who
were being Hellenized, at least in part, despite the elaborations of the Levitical code. Thus they
were essentially the work of dissenters.

The Yehouah set up by the Persians was the god, not merely of the Jews but of the whole world,
he was the Almighty God who rewarded righteousness, punished iniquity and did not require
sacrifice, apparently defying the whole raison d'etre of the Jerusalem temple and its priesthood,
according to dissenting sects that came to see Yehouah as an exclusive God. The priesthood
under the Greeks continued the universalisation of the religion, much to the annoyance of the
dissidents. Foreign influence strengthened and with it collaboration and Hellenization.

Pseudepigraphy was not merely a disguise but was meant to strengthen the message by having it
uttered by a great man of the past. Their authors were based on scriptural figures like Samuel,
Elijah and Elisha and would have been familiar as larger versions of the village hasid.

They had little immediate effect but pious Jews like the Essenes revered them, accepting the
books as true history, modelled themselves on them and took it upon themselves to continue the
tradition in a formal way, sending out men like John the Baptist and then Jesus as righteous
leaders to bring the people back to the ways of their fathers. They also knew they had a message
relevant to their own time and spent much effort treating the books as allegorical—containing
coded messages from God. Later the writing of prophecy was superseded by the writing of
apocalypses.

The first was the Book of Daniel written in 164 BC when Hellenism tried to subdue Judaism. In
the third century, the prophets had attacked in a veiled way the pervading influence of Greece,
called Babylon or Assyria, and its pantheon of strange Greek gods, called idols, but the attack at
the time of the author of Daniel was more direct, Antiochus Epiphanes, the king of the Syrian
Greeks putting a statue of Zeus in the Jerusalem temple—the abomination of desolation. Daniel
was a protest and a call to action against this forcible Hellenization, though the real problem was
the voluntary Hellenization that had been proceeding apace.

The author pretended he was a seer, Daniel, in exile in Babylonia 400 years before. It became the
model apocalypse. Its real nature as history disguised as prophecy, as a pseudepigraph, was
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realized by a polemicist against Christianity, Pophyry, whose works are typically ”lost”. As
Renan observed, the Book of Daniel offers an early philosophy of history. The Jews stood in the
way of all the great empires of the first millennium BC and were trampled by them in turn. They
were ideally situated to note their rises and falls, fearing their rises and gloating over their falls.

Daniel observes this and notes that the purpose of it was ultimately a world theocracy, a
kingdom of god led by Israel, God's Children as its priests and princes. The kingdom would be
brought about by a messiah, a son of David, who would triumph over all for God. The messiah
was necessarily a triumphant figure but after the death of the Christian God in particular,
scriptural passages which seemed to point to a suffering messiah were highlighted and the
Rabbis conceived of a messiah ben Joseph who would suffer to account for them and wrote him
into the Talmud.

In fact, they were nearly all personifications of Israel itself as a suffering people, though some
might have been historical references to the Essene Righteous Teacher who was evidently
murdered around 100 BC and added subsequently to the scriptures as annotations. Otherwise
there is no mention of a messiah ben Joseph in the Qumran sectarian literature.

The prophetic writers seemed to have no concept of immortality, national and individual justice
being meted in fleshly life. Early Hebrew religious ideas reflected in Genesis had the notion of
soul as the breath of life which, after death became the shadow of the man meandering aimlessly
through Sheol, the Jewish Hades, unaware of God. God was the god of the living not the god of
the dead and the zenith of prophetic writing concerned itself with life not after-life.

Not that fears or superstitions of “ghosts”, the shade of the personality, lingering on earth before
departing were not held in the popular imagination. But this was merely a shadow—it was no
life. Perhaps it was the root from which the idea of a future life arose but the future life was
conceived as a life on earth, a purified and renewed earth but an earth no less. God rewarded the
righteous by renewing their earthly body into an everlasting heavenly world.
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First, God sent His messiah to judge and purify the world. He and his saints would subjugate all
the nations and submit them to the universal theocracy based on Jerusalem. The wicked among
the dead are ignored or raised and punished. The wicked among the living which included most
gentiles, were punished by fire, the agent of the process of purification which only the righteous
would endure.

Alexandrine Judaism 

An important link between Judaism and Christianity was Alexandrine Judaism which was
formulated in the cosmopolis of Alexandria where Jewish and Greek ideas came into intimate
contact in the 200 years preceding the present era. Philo expressed the product of the interaction
around the time when Christianity was founded, but even books in the scriptures—the Wisom
literature—seem to show Greek influence.

Personalized abstractions like Wisdom, Spirit and Word were conceived as the means by which
God acted on the material world, and Philo attempted to elaborate them. Jews in Alexandria were
able to avoid offence and participate in the debate with the Greeks by supposing that some
elements of God's revelation to the Jews had passed into the Greek world through the Greeks'
long-time interest in Eastern religions. Some Greeks had therefore been able to arrive at a
philosophic monotheism apparently through reason but really because the idea had come to them
indirectly from God's revelation to the Jews. Jewish thinkers were able thus to retain their
conviction that they remained the people chosen for God's revelation when the Greeks had
actually come to monotheistic views independently—or perhaps both had a common source in
Persia.

This conviction was sufficient to allow worldly Jews to proselytize among the gentiles and seek
ways of subsuming their world view to the Jewish. Western people then, as they do still, saw the
East as the source of religious mystery and the Jews could feel they were fulfilling their destiny
as the light of the world. The Sibylline Oracles were composed in Greek identifying the universal
God with the Hebrew God, assuming the superiority of Judaism and the falseness of other gods,
and expressing the basis of messianism. The connexion was strong enough for Celsus to call the
Christians, the Sibyllists.

Another factor was the translation in Alexandria of the Hebrew bible into Greek as the
Septuagint. Hebrew was dead in everyday use even in Palestine although its persistence in
Judaea as a religious language still made its mark in common speech which was Aramaic. But
diaspora Jews in the Roman empire spoke Greek and it was for them that the Jews of Alexandria
translated the scriptures into Greek.

Naturally that was a boon to proselytizing Jewish teachers for they could direct their admirers to
the sacred books, saying that they, and not the mystery religions of Phrygia or Egypt, contained
the true revelation of God. These popular religions of the time, brought from the east were those
in which a god suffered, died and were mourned by their devotees before being resurrected.

The concentration of sacerdotal energy at the Jerusalem temple was another obstacle to the
spread of Judaism in the empire, both in the insistence on the sacrificial ritual and its complexity
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and in the exclusivity of Jerusalem depriving others of the reassurance of a ritual contact with
God. The Essenes had started the movement away from the temple ritual that the Christians
completed. But the real victory could only come with the destruction of the temple as a ritual
centre after the Jewish war in 70 AD. This was no loss to the Essenes and their progeny, the
Christians, who were to assume the authority of the Jerusalem Church and add their own sacred
books to the scriptures.

Christianity 

A common stratum of the religions of the middle-east was that of the dying and resurrected god
who manifested himself in several forms—Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz, Mithras. Judaism
officially had no such god or hero but Christianity was to provide it. Though the new religion of
the Persian “returners” frowned on the reverencing of Tammuz and actively tried to suppress it,
it did not entirely succeed and the emotional power of the dying god might have persisted as an
undercurrent even at the height of temple worship.

This emotional appeal was particularly strong to women, as Christianity has proved, and it is
unlikely that the idea did not penetrate into Israel. The wailing of the women of Jerusalem for the
dead god Tammuz at the city's gates, mentioned in Ezekiel 8:14 is proof that it did.

The Jews also had the idea of a saviour king, another concept brought in from “exile.” The
messiah would subjugate the nations which had oppressed Israel and set up a theocracy. The idea
of the messiah arose in exile when the people were despairing and then seemed to be realized
when Cyrus the Persian destroyed the Babylonian oppressor of the Jews and allowed them to set
up the theocracy they desired. In the scriptures Cyrus is regarded as a messiah.

Christianity arose by a merging of the two ideas, triggered by the crucifixion of a revered
apocalyptic leader who believed himself to be the messiah but died knowing that he was not.
Jesus was a profoundly religious Jewish leader who made a deep impression on his faithful
followers who were mainly apostate Jews who had adopted a largely Greek culture, collaborated
with the gentiles or were plain sinners and wanted to be saved because they sincerely thought, as
did Jesus, that the end of the sinful world was nigh.

He meant to lead them to a kingdom of God through a revolution against the Roman enemy
which he was certain would prove to God that His children preferred Him to the usurper. Jesus
was a defender of Judaism but not of the temple hierarchy and a rebel against the foreigners
whose alien culture he abhored. In trying to create the conditions that he felt God needed to
prove Israel worthy of His intervention, he had to lead his followers in rebellion against the
foreigner and the Jewish sycophants who pandered to them.

As irregular soldiers they could not always follow the strict requirements of the law and Jesus
taught them not to fear God's annoyance in such circumstances because purity of spirit was more
important than ritual purity. In short, he held strictly to the Essene interpretation of the law but
also showed his followers that, when circumstances prevented strict application of the law, it
could be abrogated as a temporary measure as long as the man was pure of heart.
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This temporary lifting of legal requirements, for practical reasons in revolutionary


circumstances, as long as the devotee was of pure intention, was extended by the Christians into
a permanent abrogation of the law. After Jesus's crucifixion, his followers expected a long period
of strife before the kingdom came, and it was not hard for some of them, not used to the strictest
adherence to the law to use the continuing battle as an excuse justified by Jesus to backslide.
These temporary circumstances were extended until the original qualification on the suspension
of the law was forgotten. After about half a century Jesus's concessions to the needs of the hour
had crystallized into a firm abrogation of the law for all. This combined with the Essene rejection
of sacrifice and the temple ritual in favour of sweet scents and prayer amounted to the reforms
desired by gentile godfearers.

Jesus, a strict Jew, will have been surprised to find that he had become a reformer of the law, and
the reforms allowed gentiles free access to the Jewish God. Quite different was the teaching of
Paul for whom the law was unimportant and Jesus an example of the dying and resurrecting god
of the east whose teachings were irrelevant.

Thus, a strict upholder of the law became a liberalizer of strict Judaism for his gentile or
Hellenized followers, the early Christians. Christians then began to maintain that Jesus had been
a reformer all along. He was transformed from a strictly Jewish revolutionary into a reforming
universal ethical teacher. And the myth has stuck.

Christians believe that Jesus was an ethical teacher, a reformer of Judaism, who was cruelly
treated and slain by the old guard, jealous of their tradition. Ethically there was little in it that did
not exist in classical philosophy but it brought with it the features of the oriental mysteries that
were already popular in the empire and in particular the Jewish scriptures which impressed the
Greeks with the sense of purpose shown by the oriental God over an apparently long period of
time.

Christianity was never an ethical movement in its origins in the sense that Christians like to think
it was—a movement to reform Judaism led by a charismatic ethical teacher who came to be seen
as an aspect of God himself. The ethics of Christianity began with the ethics of post-exilic
Judaism, particularly that of the sect of the Essenes, then adopted an outlook that subjugated
freedom and personality to the state, initially the mighty Roman empire, in return for protection.

In ethical teaching, Jesus differed from the mainstream only in the sense that Essenes differed
from them. He abhored the corruption and Hellenization of the temple, accepting that God
preferred prayer to sacrifice according to the prophets. Otherwise he was an apocalyptic Jew,
expecting the kingdom of God imminently, and his followers accepted that the kingdom
remained imminent even after his death.

Such teaching of Jesus that we have is not original but, as we might expect of a strict Jew, comes
from Hebrew sources in the scriptures. Jesus's sayings are essentially scriptural though Christians
like to claim that they have been given a freshness. Often it is the omission of the scriptural
reference and the retention of the context that makes them seem new. The sentiments of most of
it were not even original to a Greek as Celsus pointed out. The Golden Rule is not exclusively
Christian but exists in all major religions, whether in its positive form or not, even so far away as
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China. It was found among the Greek writers and was noted in its negative form by the famous
liberal rabbi Hillel a hundred years before the crucifixion.

Nor was the ascetic side of Christianity distinctive until it degenerated into fakirism. It came
from the ideals of the monastic Essenes but had its equals among the Pagans who it must have
seemed to have been imitating. The Essenes were likened by the classical writers to the
Pythagoreans who did not drink wine or eat flesh and remained chaste. These were ideals
adopted by the Orphists who were strictly vegetarian out of compassion for animals, a
compassion not found in Christianity until Francis of Assisi a thousand years later despite Jesus's
expression of God's concern for sparrows. Indeed, Paul sneered, with a possible reference to the
Persian religion:

Does God take care of oxen? (1 Cor 9:9) 

Nevertheless, converts were not required to accept the teaching, at least in the orthodox branch
of the church, but to believe in the miraculous resurrection of the saviour. The earlier stage, that
of the Essene sectaries required devotees to live according to their peculiar interpretation of the
Mosaic law and their own additional precepts, but the peculiarities of the transmission of
Christianity from Essenism lost this history and made it seem as if Christianity sprang from the
incarnation of one man.

The discovery of the scrolls has allowed the connexion of the Essenes and the Christians to be
pieced together, the link being the band of converts of backsliding and Hellenized Jews known
apparently as Nazarenes. The faith of the early Christians was a confession that a certain Jesus,
of which stories spread from Palestine, was the messiah—the Christ. The gentile converts of
Syria and Asia Minor could not check the stories, and can they have been expected to?—they
had converted because of their faith!

The evangelists converting them persuaded them that belief without proof was a virtue. Indeed, it
was proof itself of the strength of their faith! Faith in this belief of the Jewish messiah's
appearance, as promised by God in the scriptures, guaranteed eternal life in a mystical kingdom
of God. Unbelief meant destruction or even eternal torture. These were simply the beliefs of the
Essenes transferred to a messiah which had appeared rather than one which was expected.

The Essenes expected the kingdom of God to appear on earth but it was always a mystical
kingdom because it was uncorruptible and free of sin—it was heaven on earth. This was soon
moved to an entirely other dimensional world when the messiah did not return on cue. The
original messengers, the Jews, were soon rejected as murderers of a god, and before long
S Augustine was advocating persecution of those who were unwilling to join the Church because
the servants of the Lord must:

Compel them to come in. 
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New Scriptures 

The Christian community preceded its canon and its literature was selected from works which
were often conflicting, but the criteria of inclusion were not truth and accuracy but whether they
favoured orthodoxy or heresy, and control or expression. Probably the correct translation of the
beginning of Luke is that it is a narrative of what is “most surely believed among us” rather than
“fulfilled among us”, the “us” being, like Theophilus, the Christian converts. In this translation,
the author of Luke frankly declares that the narrative is not history but what the first Christians
believed. It was considered too dangerous to allow people to choose on merit the books they
would like to read.

Mark was constructed as a series of pericopes or incidents which have been put together to form
a narrative. The pericopes are not necessarily in the right order and their meaning has been
deliberately changed. Renan remarks on the terrible nature of the miracles in Mark's gospel,
surely a reference to them being only thinly veiled in their violence. But it is not necessary to
interpret every pericope correctly for the truth to be revealed. The weight of evidence is not a
chain of logic but accumulative.

The pericopes were partially, at least, mixed up, some must be missing and some could be
spurious insertions. One can attempt to explain them all but if one goes too far in one instance it
does not invalidate the rest as a false link in a chain of argument would. The explanation of the
death of John the Baptist could be pure fairy tale but it has features which could be Essene so it
is included. If it should prove to be pure fairy tale, the general interpretaion is not thereby
invalidated.

A parallel between the despair of the Nazarenes followed by their elation at their realization that
the missing body meant the general resurrection had begun with its first fruits occurs in Seneca's
Hercules Oetaeus. At the hero's death, his mother, Alcmena, at first sorrows but when she
realizes that her son had become a god equal to his father, Jupiter, and had ascended to heaven,
she is triumphant.

Rome and Christians 

Not for the first time men were abandoning hard won democratic rights for authoritarian regimes
over which they had little control. The political form of civilization of the West, democracy, had
evolved differently from the absolutism and priestly cultures of the east. The Greek city states
had developed a rational and humanistic form of government compared with the rigidly
hierarchical, religious based systems of the east. There was interplay and overlap but the systems
developed differently.

The Roman Republic had furthered the original ideal based on fifth century BC Athens but the
statesmen of these later times saw that the system was in decline and tried to delay its end. It was
impossible, of course, and men chose the Caesars rather than the Republic which was considered
anarchic. And the first form of anarchy the tyrant rids himself of is opposition leaving the worse
anarchy of the petulance of power.
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Under the early empire the Roman Senate retained some powers, limiting the absolutist
tendencies of the Caesars, but Julius Caesar with his typical flair sought to have himself made
Pontifex Maximus to utilize religious as well as secular power. Julius Caesar, though thought of
as noble, could not tolerate opposition, and his successors were often worse.

Christianity arose shortly after the Roman republic had been overthrown in favour of the
emperors. Romans were proud people and could often be relied upon to respond to patriotic calls
in the name of the Republic to defend Roman liberty. Under the emperors this liberty was lost for
the bulk of the people as emperors became more capricious and civic life and justice fell apart.
Though sick of despots, they had no will to return to democracy. Christianity took advantage of
this political weariness and ultimately it survived the Caesars and the Roman empire.

Through suspicion of political parties, rather than demanding liberty, Romans condemned
themselves to the dual tyranny of the Chi and the Kappa, the absolutism of religion and
monarchy, no doubt feeling in their ignorance and superstition that somehow God would curb
the excesses of the emperors. Out of Kappa, Chi expresses the modelling of Christ's institution
on that of the Kaisar (Caesar). Christianity's reflexion of the organization of the empire in its
own set up encouraged the idea and the perpetuity of the “divine right of kings”. Its ethos
supported authority against freedom. The Caesars were respected against those who would defy
them.

So, absolutism returned first, as monarchy, with the Caesars and then, as theocracy, with the
triumph of Christianity. Not that theocracy had been eliminated in the west for the Celtic kings
and chiefs had been supported by the powerful theocracy of the Druids, but a thoughtful and
generally logical system had mainly prevailed before giving way to the forces of absolutism
radiating from the east.

The frightful tyranny of Domitian stimulated in the Senate a revival of interest in the Republic
and the principles of liberty and the emperors of the second century temporarily reverted to
republican ideals. Marcus Aurelius repudiated Caesarism and a vision of a monarchy, republican
in spirit, prevailed into the third century AD. Thus, most emperors were not absolute rulers in the
eastern sense, having to work according to the law and the common good.

Curiously the liberal emperors' only real blot was their treatment of the Christians even though
Christians were the most sycophantically obsequious to the Roman authorities in all respects
except worship. Despite the persecutions of the emperors, philosophic opinion remained critical
of it and even when Julian later attempted to revive Paganism he forbade violence from Pagans
or Christians.

Religion in Rome 

In religion, the Roman idea was to try to absorb foreign cults into the framework of the existing
civic religion. Human sacrifices had been abolished and as long as a foreign cult was otherwise
respectable it was allowed to practise, though many educated Romans considered them as
superstitions. Such practically minded men knew the predilection of the common people for
fanaticism and religious frenzy.
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Civic religion had been tamed and brought within the confines of the state system. Pageants and
parades were controlled and served to release tension and enhance a life that would otherwise be
dull and empty for many. State officials would have been suspicious of eastern cults, one of
which was Christianity, and would try initially to suppress them, and then to control them.

When Tacitus, writing about 120 AD, describes the Christians murdered by Nero after the great
fire of 64 AD, he accuses them of “hatred of the human race” which should be sufficient to show
that these were not Christians at all but messianic Jews, probably Essenes. Tacitus knew the
Christians of his own time and their own explanation of their origin in the crucifixion of a holy
man in the time of Pontius Pilate the cruel prefect of Judaea. He was not confirming the truth of
it but merely stating it by way of explanation of who this sect were.

Tacitus might have disliked them but could hardly have described them as hating the human
race. The Essenes however regarded it as virtuous to remain apart from gentiles except for
necessary commerce which they undertook only according to strict rules and under the eye of a
mebaqqer, or guardian. Since Essenes felt that even their fellow Jews were sinners and
backsliders, let alone the gentile races, they could fairly be described as hating the human race.

Since Christianity stemmed from Essenism and the early Christians would have sought
friendship in their mother sect, there is a vestige of truth in Tacitus. But the word Christian was
used about the Essenes because they were messianists, and Christ is simply the Greek for
messiah. If the troubles which led to Nero's excessive reaction were disputes between messianic
Jews, Essenes, and other Jews then it would be easy to suppose the instigator had been a man
called messiah or Christ.

This is the error made by Suetonius wrting about messianic disturbances in the time of Claudius
which led to the expulsion of Jews from Rome which is found in the New Testament. Tacitus
makes essentially the same mistake writing about the events of twenty years later. For messianic
Jews like the Essenes, the arrival of the messiah and purging of the world was imminent. Plainly
they were excitable and would react to rumours that the messiah had arisen, rumours that were
not infrequent as we know from the Acts of the Apostles.

Rome was a large city with a majority of foreigners in its population, many of whom were Jews,
some skeptical of and some believers in the messiah. In the seething tenaments of the Roman
slums rumours were rife and trouble could flare up easily. Thus, the persecution of Christians
meaning followers of Jesus, by Nero is almost entirely false, the bulk of the people suffering
being Jews. Indeed from Juvenal, Nero used the opportunity to rid himself of enemies whatever
their religious or national origins.

The one characteristic of the Christians of the time which was certainly true was that they were
not interested in social or political opposition. They were disliked for their exclusive stand on
religious worship but always took to heart the rule of rendering to Caesar what was his, though it
was a call to defy Caesar when Jesus first uttered it in Palestine.

Tacitus records that, before the fall of Jerusalem, a supernatural voice was heard in the temple
proclaiming the departure of the gods (not God)! Few found this alarming because it was widely
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believed that the scriptures prophesied that the east would be strong and men from Judaea would
possess the world. Jews in the diaspora continued to believe this, only slightly discouraged by
the events of the Jewish War, and continued to proselytize in the empire for many more years
through two further Jewish revolutions until the third, that of Bar Kosiba, led to such severe
reprisals that Jews withdrew into that social exclusiveness from which they have yet to return.

Juvenal writing before this did not mention Christians at all implying only Judaism to have been
prolselytized. Later it was only the Christians. So, for about half a century after the Jewish war,
Jews remained optimistic that their destiny was to possess the world. Among the expatriot Jews
were those of the Essene sect who were ever excitable about the prospect of a messiah emerging.

The Christians had an almost identical view, the difference only being that they were expecting
the return or parousia of their messiah to cleanse and judge the world. As an explanation of the
scriptural references to a suffering messiah, it perhaps offered advantages to many messianic
Jews and the godfearers who admired them. There was nothing unbelievable in Pilate crucifying
a man, he was remembered as cruel, and yet it was not difficult in gullible times to dissociate
Jesus from the true stories about him which some travellers brought back with them. For over a
normal lifetime the Romans had crucified many Jewish rebels, none of whom had any but the
most incidental success, and the gentile bishops became masters at denying and distorting the
true accounts of Jesus's unsuccessful revolution when it suited them, or blaming explicit outrages
on other messianic failures. The Acts of the Apostles even mentions some of these.

Fraternities for the sharing of certain mysteries were widely accepted in the empire. Even the
Jews joined in fraternities to celebrate the Seder in Jerusalem, just as the apostles were reported
to have done, and variant sects like the Essenes habitually met to share a sacred meal. Such
collegia were common among the devotees of the eastern religions like those of Dionysos and
they could become politically powerful. The Roman authorities were therefore suspicious of
such circles as being bands of conspirators and demanded that they be registered. Those that
were were collegia licita, legal gatherings, and those that were not remained illegal—collegia
illicita.

Curiously at this time the Romans were so tolerant of sectarianism that, once they had discovered
and investigated an illegal gathering, provided that it was not involved in clandestine activity, it
was tolerated even though it was illicit. Though the collegia were supposed to be authorized, if
innocent they were not treated as illegal, even if they did not register. The Jewish religion was
licit.

Even Christian collegia were never declared explicitly and solely illicit though they were
sometimes persecuted under more general rules. Each new college had to obtain authorization by
proving to the authorities that it had no political objectives. Only in its earliest days would the
church have been able to do this. Once it had grown beyond a certain size, its administration and
organisation declared it a reflexion of the Roman secular state. That could only be interpreted in
political terms.
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Persecution 

At Antioch the converts to the new sect called themselves followers of “The Way” using the
expression used by the Essenes of themselves in the scrolls. Legend has it that Peter was their
first bishop, the word bishop being the Greek translation of the Aramaic word also used by the
Essenes for their community leaders. Keen to gain respectibility the new sect promoted its
ethical monotheism and the purity of its morals as conducive to the obedience of Roman law.

The fable that Tiberius wanted to deify Jesus officially but was stopped by the Senate was typical
of the Christians' appeal to the absolute authority above the democratic one. It labels the Senate
as the enemy of Christianity while the despot was its friend. The Christians buttress tyrants with
the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings and eventually, in the Middle Ages, both the Pope and
the Holy Roman Emperor could be called “God on Earth”.

Opposition to Christianity was based on Romans educated in the free schools, the last bastions
against Christian totalitarianism in Greece in the sixth century AD, as was the Senate earlier in
Rome. The fairness of the second century emperors is shown by Marcus Aurelius who was
philosophically a Stoic but who endowed chairs in all the schools of philosophy without favour
to those he preferred himself.

The repression of Christianity is largely Christian myth and, to the extent that it occurred at all,
its basis remains unclear. Cases described as Christian persecution seem to be simply punishment
of illegal acts. The justice of the punishment can be argued but mostly Christians were not
persecuted for being Christian but for breaking the law. Significantly such persecution as did
occur tempered as the absolutism of the emperors increased—from the time of Commodus on.

Gibbon showed conclusively that Christians experienced no serious persecution before


Diocletian and this was a last splutter of a weak candle. The Chi of Christ was ultimately
victorious with the Kappa of the emperor Constantine and the oriental court favoured by
Diocletian was permanently adopted by the latter. Absolutism was on the march even in its
birthplace, the east. The Greek influenced dynasty of the Parthian Arsacids gave way to the
intolerant despotism of the Sassanids.

Paulinism 

Paul, who was not a Palestinian Jew if he was a son of Abraham at all, saw the opportunities
offered by the death of the popular rebel and began to tout it as a new religion combining the
various elements mentioned above.

Paul is remembered better than the other apostles precisely because of his self-imposed task of
evangelizing the gentiles. The original branch of the Nazarenes was to die out, pushed by the
Jewish War into the desert where it influenced Mohammed before succumbing to his revolution.
Paul travelled west and became well-known in the Roman empire, the victor in the Jewish War.

Most of the other apostles, the ones who had known Jesus in life and possibly greater men than
those we know of, remained in Palestine and were destroyed without trace with the Jerusalem
243 
 

Church. None of the other apostles, other than Peter has any substance, and we know much,
much less about Peter than we do about Paul. It is possible that some of Peter's experiences have
been transferred to Paul in the Acts of the Apostles to boost the apostle to the gentiles, Paul's trial
before Annas, for example.

Paul himself seems to have evolved from having an apocalyptic outlook to being gnostic.
2 Thessalonians 1:7-8 is purely apocalyptic, the apocalypse however being postponed until after
the parousia. In Acts 3:27, we read:

Every soul that will not hear the new prophet shall be destroyed.  

He seems to have consistently denigrated the Jews, preached abrogation of the law and
propagated the saving power of belief in the dying and resurrected god. He therefore became the
hero of those gentile Christians who by the turn of the second century were departing from the
Essenic beliefs of their founders.

Paul was not an associate of Jesus and it appears he had little contact with the chosen Apostles.
Yet his writing is littered with words and expressions favoured by the Essenes, more so than any
other New Testament writer. It seems he must have been an Essene or so closely associated with
them that he could pick up their argot. Having done so he used it ostentatiously perhaps aware
that it gave his speech a prophetic quality and gave him a suitable gravitas.

Paul demanded that converts have “faith” that Jesus had come as “Christ”, died and been
resurrected. He announced that God had given men “grace” to believe. These three key words,
faith, Christ and grace, are all favourites of the Essenes, though Paul gives them a new meaning.

The faith of the Essene was that God would gather the righteous into His holy kingdom under the
leadership of His messiah. Faith for Paul was that the messiah had come in the person of Jesus.
For the Essene the messiah was a noble leader supported by God but, for Paul, Christ, the Greek
word meaning messiah, was a new form of the god who died and in three days was resurrected to
save believers—a god like Tammuz and Attis.

Grace for Essenes was holiness or piety which had to be practised without let by the righteous
aspiring to the kingdom of God. The judgement was with God but Essenes trusted God not to be
capricious in His judgements and so a life of righteousness and good works could be expected to
be acceptable to Him. In Paul's outlook the decision of God seems much more whimsical. God
decides whether faith has been true enough but no one knows what the criteria are. Faith is
necessary but not sufficient for salvation, the final judgement being God's, but seeming to be
arbitrary.

The original Jesus myth required Jesus to be resurrected because that was Essene belief—the
righteous dead were resurrected into this life in renewed bodies which were incorruptible
because earth had now been joined to heaven. Jesus was the first of the righteous so to rise and
thus proved that the kingdom of God was beginning.
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Paul it seems had his doubts about this. He had been brought up in a Greek city not a Jewish one,
and was probably a Jewish proselyte or first generation Jew rather than of the seed of Abraham
as he claimed. Paul seems to have served the three years required of an Essene novice but never
to have completed the novitiate. His training and upbringing had made him familiar with Greek
thought, eastern mystery religions and Jewish apocalypticism.

He had difficulty in accepting that putrified flesh could be renewed. His epistles show him to be
inclined towards “docetism”, the belief that the risen Jesus was a phantasm that only seemed
real. He could not wholeheartedly accept the notion of a resurrection of the flesh and
compromised with a tendency towards docetism that was later picked up by the gnostics in their
philosophical mythology.

Of course, the original believers accepted the resurrection as just that because they were Jews
and that was the earliest tradition. The orthodox Church took this to be the proper tradition and
they opposed docetism. This has been written into the gospels, the apostles being depicted as
doing absurd and revolting things to prove that Jesus was indeed flesh and blood and not a ghost.

The Jews of Alexandria knew of a personified creative reason called the Logos or the Word
which was a mediator between God and man. In John's gospel we find essentially the same
concept as a pre-existent Logos, an emanation of God that was God, which the gospel
immeditely identifies with Jesus Christ who was also the Son of God. Thus the Father and the
Son were united in the Logos yielding two thirds of the Trinity.

Philosophical speculators of the time liked trinities and they had a respectable ancestry in
trinities of Gods like the Egyptian trinity of Osiris, Isis and Horus. Always syncretic, Christianity
could not allow such an attractive prospect to pass by. Paul had virtually invented the divine
trinity, the third aspect of which was the Holy Ghost.

The Church's investment in Jewish tradition and monotheism was too strong to allow the Hebrew
God to spalate into three fragments, and instead the theologians worked overtime on some nifty
verbal dance-steps to allow Christians to enjoy three gods and one, at the same time! They
composed the Nicene Creed.

Regrettably, the female principle was lost in this because the Holy Ghost was conceived of as
masculine or neutral in sex, whereas the female gender of the Hebrew word suggested the
femininity of the idea. The Fathers of the Church had succeeded in excluding women but they
left a void into which popular devotion eventually placed the Virgin Mary who began to take on
the attributes of a goddess.

Both the orthodox Church and the gnostics wanted to appropriate Paul but his inclination
towards docetism led to his adoption as the Father of Christian Gnosticism. The use made of him
by the gnostics led to his being derided in the second century by some as the “Apostle of the
Heretics”. Basilides and Marcion, hoping to rid Christianity of its Jewishness, rejected all the
chosen apostles. For them there was only one apostle, “the Apostle”, Paul. Was Paul known not
to be a true Jew? That he was favoured by those who hated Jews might help confirm our
suspicion that he was no son of Abraham.
245 
 

The objectives of the Catholic church and the gnostics were always quite different. The gnostics
were seeking a philosophic religion allowing for great variety and putting emphasis on personal
revelation. The Catholic church set out to become the Holy Roman Empire—not the German
Bund invented later to replace the lost Western Empire but a religious Roman empire in parallel
with the secular empire of the Caesars. The importance to success of having clear objectives is
illustrated by the triumph of Catholicism. The practical minds of the church office holders
enabled them to fulfil, in a sense, age old prophecy and rule the world as a modified Jewish
priesthood.

Soon heresy and schism were to be denounced as crimes to be punished not by God in judgement
but by men with torture. The ideas of enlightened minds that had conceived of freedom and
emancipation were quashed; slavery was endorsed; tyranny was upheld; women were
subjugated; pie in the sky was promised in compensation to the oppressed provided that they
suffer silently on earth.

The unforgiveable sin against the Holy Ghost of Jesus and the Essenes became defiance of
church authority. This was the system that succeeded in the fourth century in becoming the only
religion of the empire—the culmination of the syncretism of the emperors. Perhaps nothing
would have been substantially different if the winner had been the church of Mithras or Isis
because the political objective had been to bring them all together as a mighty state religion.

The fact remains that the Christian Church nominally came out on top and it did because it had
set out to do so as the partner of the secular power. In the west, dual political systems arose with
the secular and spiritual arms of kings and bishops. In the east, the system was that of absolute
theocracies of unshakeable internal strength.

It was not until 1917 that an eastern theocracy was overturned by rebellion rather than by an
external enemy. And what was achieved? The philosophy of personal servility to the almighty
state which the Bolsheviks introduced was merely more of the same.

The Later Church 

In the sixth century AD, the intolerance of Christianity had its ultimate triumph over the long
standing classical quest for knowledge of the Pagan schools. Against the power of the autocrats
the Pagan schools ahd been unable to disseminate knowledge and had remained exclusive. The
mob were ignorant and hostile to learning and, though mostly they were also not interested in
Christianity, the other-worldly threats and promises of its creed impressed their superstitious
minds. Combined with the Church's readiness to administer sustained torment to dissenters in
God's name assured it of victory against more critical minds.

Imperial contenders were offered support in return for which the church hierarchy demanded
favourable treatment for the orthodox and persecution for opponents. Old Roman laws against
witchcraft and magic were invoked against devotees of rival religions whose gods were called
devils. In the epistle 2 Peter 1:20, the evangelist forbids any novice to interpret scripture himself.
Believers had to believe what they were told, not what they themselves read. To make your own
246 
 

interpretation might have been heresy, a “treason against God.” For Christians, conscience was
not “the most exacting confessor and it only can forgive your sins” as Kant was later to say.

To expose any such heresy legitimate proof could be had by torture—no person was safe, of
whatever class or status, the Christian concession to democracy! In Greece, Justinian closed the
Pagan schools and stole their endowments. In Alexandria, the library was burnt to a toast.
Freethinking was proscribed. The gnostics had also lost out and those compelled to join the
universal church had to curse their former affiliations, saying:

I anathematize those who say that Zoroaster and Buddha and Christ and Manichaeus and the Sun are 
one and the same. 

The Manichaeans followed the earlier gnostics in following Paul. Even after the victory of the
church, groups called Paulicians after some unknown leader called Paul but glad to be associated
with the “Apostle to the Heretics” survived in pockets and had their effect in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries. The Paulician heresy was stamped out with brutality and atrocity for they held
gnostic beliefs.

Plotinus in the third century founded the last of the great Pagan schools in the midst of the
growth of Christianity, and its philosophy became known as neo-Platonism. We know of no
books of Plotinus that attack the church, although gnosticism is attacked. Perhaps Plotinus saw
the church merely as deceivers with no intellectual substance but saw the gnostics as having
intellectual pretensions. Plotinus saw no merit in the gnostics regarding everyone other than
themselves as having no divine spark, indeed possessed by devils, but saw in them Platonic
elements.

The new philosophy seems to have been favoured by intelligent Christians for whom the
barbarism of ritual and creed were unsatisfactory. They enrolled in the schools and learnt about
Platonism and Stoicism from them before they were eventually closed down, and thus
profoundly were to affect Christianity at its incipient intellectual growth points. Since then much
that passes for Christianity is really Platonism or Stoicism.

However the neo-Platonists stayed starkly divided from Christianity in believing that the
allegorical adventures of gods and heroes were never real. They distinguished myths from
history and science. Myths were useful in illustrating a point, but the point should never be lost
in the myth. Primitive people were perhaps unable to express themselves in abstractions, because
the words for them did not exist or because such language was too arcane for popular
consumption. They therefore illustrated their important truths with myths. In many scriptural
myths it is not hard to educe the moral, and one is faced then with the decision about whether the
moral was the original purpose. If it was, the story is not true as history or science.

Though Christians like Marcion would have liked to have been shot of the Jewish tradition,
others saw it as a valuable asset and sought a philosophical framework to support the mythology.
Only the Greek schools had the erudition to supply it—neo-Platonism supplied the theory of the
immaterial soul. The plain and simple reasoning of mere men with their gift for thought had to
supply the rational and moral basis for the assertions of the revealed religion.
247 
 

What though was to be the higher, rational philosophy or the superstitions of a popular religion?
The answer was superstition and rational thought was relegated for a millennium to the footstool
of a religion which revered images of a human sacrifice suffering torture nailed on a cross.

In 1 Corinthians 3:18-19 Paul writes:

If any man thinketh he is wise among you in this world let him become a fool, that he may become wise. 
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.  

Whether Paul, if it is not an anti-gnostic insertion, meant this literally or metaphorically, it was
taken literally by Christians. In the sixth century, a Christian expounded a treatise on this text
saying:

Philosophers set forth opinions without harmony or congruence.  

Justinian, who always wanted money like most Christians since Christ, accepted that the
philosophical schools were useless and closed them down, pocketing their funds, as you do.
Simplicius, a philosopher of the neo-Platonist school of Athens fled to Persia hoping to continue
the Pagan tradition. Highlighting the ignorance of Christians, he said they understood nothing of
what they had read, and hypocritically ignored their own innumerable divisions about subjects of
such practical importance as how the godhead was to be understood.

Science was lost and absurd arguments on angels and needles replaced them for the duration of
the Dark Ages. Even today long into a scientific revival, scientists feel obliged to make self-
conscious references to God or to biblical myths of no scientific relevance, purely, apparently,
out of a need not to ignore religion. A surprising number of scientists remain Christian, renewing
for themselves the verbal gymnastics of earlier times. It shows the astonishing power that the
shaman has over society.

The Constant Church 

Elizabeth Maclaren (The Nature of Belief, Sheldon, 1976) shows how Christian faith has altered
over the centuries. Jesus who has the message in the gospels became Jesus who was the message
in Paul. Ever since, Christians have ignored whatever messages Jesus seemed to have had in
favour of Paul's message. First century Christianity was based on the Jewish scriptures. In short,
it was primarily Jewish. The gospels were written later in the first century and were not in
general circulation until the second, so Christians learnt about Christ mainly from whatever the
first Christians deemed were prophecies of him in the scriptures. Matthew's gospel was a
modification of the basic collection of stories about the historical Jesus in Mark to highlight
scriptural prophecy.

First century Christianity was Judaism for gentiles except that the appearance of the messiah in
the form of Jesus heralded the kingdom of God. Four centuries later, God existed as the Trinity,
the second part of which, the Logos, had incarnated on earth as the Son or Christ, living and
dying as a man called Jesus—meaning Saviour—whose presence on earth united humanity with
God, offering them the benefit of immortality. By the twelfth century, the doctrine was that
248 
 

humanity had sinned against God in arrogant pride and ought to have had the treatment
experienced by the generation of Noah. Instead, God sent his son to die for man's sins. Thus
divine justice is done and Satan is foiled as long as people accept the sacramants of the Church!

In the twentieth century, for the Western liberal Christian, God is the focus of life and hope,
which Jesus expressed in the mythology of his time in a message of love and liberation that
transcended his death and continues to be interpreted today. God does not intervene by miracle—
nothing is supernatural—but Jesus exemplifies love and the purpose of life.

Christianity has changed continuously in the last 2000 years as culture has changed, and now
exists in as many varieties as there are believers. There are around 30,000 denominations of
Christianity, and it seems fair to ask with Ninian Smart (The Phenomenon of Christianity,
Collins 1979) what the Amish of Pennsylvania have in common with the Zulu Zion. Jesus has
become everyone's personal Good Luck Charm. Once they look beyond the rabbit's foot, they
meet problems:

• The Inquisition, once the organ of the Christian God's divine providence, is considered by most 
modern Christians as barbaric.  
• Crusades were once considered the Christian armies out to save the world from the infidel, but 
few people today can see them as anything other than bands of savage xenophobic robbers off 
to the east to plunder Christian and infidel alike.  
• Many modern Christians can see only intolerance of the cultures of others in the Christian 
doctrine of considering other religions as heathen and false, and imposing the need to send out 
missionaries to “save” them.  
• Slavery was once approved by Christianity but now is not.  
• Sexual freedom was always decried by Christians but today few see much harm in it.  
• Christ was the putative Prince of Peace, and, though liberal Christians are pacific, most priests 
and bishops will happily serve as military chaplains and bless armies and battleships.  
• Christianity began with communistic ideas of property ownership, yet, under Protestantism, has 
promoted capitalism and the exploitation of the earth.  

Traditional Christianity, so far as its claims to truth are concerned, to those looking at it from
outside, is in the same boat as Marxism, Straussism, fascism, or any other ideology used by a
narrow elite. Some of the parallels between it and them become dangerously close. Christianity
too has re-written history to suit itself. Christianity too has murdered opponents in large
249 
 

numbers. Can its justification be any different, or is any crime acceptable in the interests of the
Christian God?

These examples illustrate that Christianity amounts to believing anything! To be able to believe
anything is to believe nothing. Christianity is meaningless and it is time, after 2000 years, that
people found something worth believing.

Before you go, think about this… 
An evangelical wrote his minister thanking him for explaining God’s Law… “Now I remind liberals 
defending homosexuals that God, in Leviticus 18:22, says it is an abomination. Please advise me now 
because God says, in Leviticus 21:20, I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. 
As I have to wear reading glasses, am I sinful to take Holy Communion? Thank you again for reminding 
us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging. 

Bonus 

Finding History in the Bible


Only nine per cent of Americans accept the central finding of modern biology that human beings, and all 
the other species, have slowly evolved by natural processes from a succession of more ancient beings, 
with no divine intervention needed along the way. 

The Quest for the Historical Jesus 1


© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, November 14, 1999

• The Slippery Christ  
• Three Quests  
• Historical Evidence  
• First Quest  
• Albert Schweitzer  
• Rudolf Bultmann  
• Ernst Troeltsch  
• A New Quest  

Abstract 
The four gospels are our chief source of direct information about Jesus. These, however, are always 
tendentious, often contradictory and sometimes demonstrably wrong. Moreover, the events Jesus 
prophesied in them did not come to pass. Instead, he endured the ignominy of a Roman crucifixion. 
Within the movement which sprang up after his death, a process or metamorphosis took place by which 
the proclaimer became the proclaimed, the rebel was acclaimed as God, and the Christs of faith began 
to rise, like bad odours, from the corpse of the Jesus of history. In the quest for the historical Jesus there 
250 
 

are more bad odours generated by Christian scholars than feasible pictures, but Christians do not mind, 
as long as the exasperated doubter gives up the quest and remains within the fold of the believing flock. 
A survey of the quests for the historical Jesus.  

The Slippery Christ 

The history of Christianity is remarkable for many things, not least for the resilience of the faith
despite vast historical changes, the “infinite variety” of the forms it can take and the changing
ways in which, over the last 20 centuries men and women have seen Jesus, and worshipped him
as “the Christ”.

The roots for this saga are the four gospels, our chief source of direct information about Jesus.
These, however, are always tendentious, often contradictory and sometimes demonstrably
wrong. According to medieval scholar and Christian, Jaroslav Pelikan (Jesus through the Ages,
Yale University Press, 1985), the Jesus they yield “resembles a set of paintings more closely than
a photograph”. Since people see in them what they want, a mirror might be a more accurate
analogy. Believers always convince themselves that they—and usually they alone—have come
face to face with the “true” Jesus.

People have offered a bewildering variety of pictures of Jesus, including the cosmic Christ,
creator of the universe; the Christ crucified of the medieval world; the mystic “bridegroom of the
soul”; Christ as the prototype of the Renaissance “universal man” or the Enlightenment’s
“teachet of reason” and the modern resurgence of Christ the liberator.

Even so, his story becomes rather thin in the modern era when the Jesus of history began to
dethrone the Christs of faith. A liberal, western European Christian of today is likely to be chary
of the Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, not
because he was an awful tyrant who murdered his wife and was so hated by the population of
Rome he had to move his capital to a different city, but because he obtained the throne with
God’s supposed help in sending the miracle of a cross in the heavens saying “Conquer by this”.

Today’s Christian is certain that the essential message of Jesus was not to go around conquering
in his name but that we should love one another. The biblical scholar, C H Dodd, was less sure.
He pointed out that, in the gospels, Jesus is credited with few sayings about love for one’s fellow
251 
 

men, and what he does say would have been commonplace among first century Pharisaic Jews.
The urgency of his message was elsewhere.

The Jesus that emerged from the historical work was a Jew of his time—a time when the Jews
were in rebellion against the foreign oppressors, the Romans. Jesus was an Essene who expected
from the signs of the times the literal coming of the Kingdom of God in the lifetime of those
whom he addressed. He called upon Jews to repent, and to make ready for this divine
intervention in which, as the signs multiplied, he saw himself as playing the role of liberator or
the earthly saviour of the Jews. If he did his part and the Jews repented, then God would respond
by sending the angel Michael and his heavenly armies to defeat the Satanic Romans and join
heaven and earth together as a home for the righteous.

But the events he prophesied did not come to pass. Instead, he endured the ignominy of the
Roman crucifixion. Within the movement which sprang up after this death a process or
metamorphosis took place by which the proclaimer became the proclaimed, the rebel was
acclaimed as God, and the Christs of faith began to rise, like bad odours, from the corpse of the
Jesus of history. In the quest for the historical Jesus there are more bad odours generated by
Christian scholars than feasible pictures, but Christians do not mind, as long as the exasperated
doubter gives up the quest and remains within the fold of the believing flock.

Three Quests 

It is fashionable these days to speak of three “quests” for the historical Jesus, though, of course,
there has only ever been one quest, and it will continue while the supernatural Jesus is claimed
by Christians to be historical. Honest people, some of them Christians, consider research on the
historical Jesus as demanded by historical inquiry and the need to reach an adequate theology.
But usually Christians say they are concerned with a living Jesus not a historical one. One
apologist argues:

If the expression the real Jesus is used at all, it should not refer to a historically reconstructed Jesus. Such 
a Jesus is not “real” in any sense, except as a product of scholarly imagination. The Christian’s claim to 
experience the “real Jesus” in the present, on the basis of religious experience and conviction, can be 
challenged on a number of fronts (religious, theological, moral), but not historically.  

The quest for the historical Jesus is therefore valueless to evangelical Christians whose beliefs do
not depend on historical facts. Interest in the historical Jesus signifies a failure of faith. For them,
ignorance is bliss.
252 
 

It always has been for most Christians because no priest or preacher wants to spill the gravy boat
and no punter wants to lose the fantasy of their imaginary friend, Jesus. Belief in him is a form of
MPD, and should be treated in the same way—by psychiatry. The reason is that the Christian
Jesus is obviously not historical. It will be impossible ever to get a consensus on what the life of
the historical Jesus was, because no Christian will accept history, so the quest will be an eternal
merry-go-round.

Nevertheless, the quests have led to a good idea of who the historic Jesus was, for rational
historically minded people, and broadly it was the very first Jesus offered by Reimarus, who is
considered to have initiated the “first” quest, the second having been launched by Bultmann and
those of his era, and the third or modern quest having been founded in the seventies with Jewish
scholars and some skeptical Christians prominent, and heavily dependent on the hypothetical
pre-Christian document called “Q”.

The primary sources are still the four gospels. The hypothesis that makes best sense of the
relations among the gospels is that Matthew and Luke independently used Mark and another
source Q. John is seen as essentially independent of the others, of little historical worth and that
overlaid with mythology. No gospel writers witnessed the events they describe. The gospel of
John is not narrative, it is only Christology. The biblical quest for the historical Jesus is confined
to the three synoptic gospels. The narratives, in the three synoptic gospels, add up to only thirty-
one days of Jesus’s life, and his ministry lasted about a year and a half. This is not much of a
base for a history of Jesus.

Historical Evidence 

Little external evidence supports the biblical evidence of the historicity of Jesus, but this is true
of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. No archeological evidence has been
unearthed for the Mount Sinai where Moses was said to have received the Ten Commandments;
none for the flight from Egypt by the Israelites; none for a battle of Jericho where the walls could
253 
 

not have come tumbling down because the town had no walls at that time; none for the military
conquest of Canaan, none for David, Solomon, and so on. The Christian scriptures are equally
unreliable history.

Since the middle of the twentieth century, however, the Dead Sea Scrolls have revealed to
anyone not besotted by the lies of Christian “revelation” the true source of the beliefs of Jesus.
The scrolls not only revealed a diverse Judaism which freely employed dualism more familiar to
us from the language of earlier Mazdaism and later gnosticism, but also they alerted us to
diversities in understanding Torah. They have also stimulated new attention to the works of
Josephus and Philo. Nevertheless, we still have lacunae to fill, and have to make judgements
where there are gaps, and this is where the Christians are able to obfuscate.

An analogy is this. The Romans are on one bank of the Rhine. A little later, they are on the other
bank. How did they get there? The true answer is, if that is all we know, we cannot say for sure
how they got over the river. Nevertheless, if someone said the river parted and they were able to
cross dryshod, we would say they were insane. Yet that would be the Christian answer. The
historian would boringly say that the Romans built a bridge, or used boats, both feasible answers.
That a miracle happened is not.

In the quest for the historical Jesus, the theologians come up with a mass of unfeasible answers
just to leave the faithful saying: “I might as well believe what I’ve always believed, that the
waters parted”. So we get Christian scholars coming up with theories:

• the Germans pretended to be Romans,  
• the Romans walked under the river,  
• they went via the Behring strait,  
• they stood on the backs of whales,  
• they tunnelled under,  
• they did it by mirrors,  
• they flew over,  
• aliens took them over,  
• they were not Romans but were Vikings, and so on.  

Plenty of Jesuses can be imagined but few of them meet the criteria of feasible history and most
can be discounted.

First Quest 

The first historical quest of a Jesus unadulterated by theological mud came out of the eighteenth
century Enlightenment. It aimed to use the Jesus of history as an ally in the struggle against the
tyranny of church dogma and power in setting belief and practice. The first to undertake a
scientific investigation was the German orientalist Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) who
wrote a 4,000 page manuscript titled The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples. Gotthold Lessing
published it posthumously in 1774, Reimarus like Copernicus being worried by the
consequences, but it received little attention until Strauss published his own famous work fifty
years later.
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Reimarus saw in Jesus of Nazareth a Jewish messianic revolutionary whose failure led his
followers to steal his body and create a new story of Jesus based on aspects of Jewish
messianism. The Christian religion did not grow out of the teaching of Jesus. It emerged new
from these failed expectations.

His major points were:

• We should draw an absolute distinction between the writings of the later church and what Jesus 
might have said.  
• Jesus spoke as a Jew—Christian readings cannot be attributed to him.  
• Jesus performed no miracles.  
• He was a man not a god.  
• His notion of the Kingdom of God was the messianic expectation of Jews at the time.  

Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741-1792) wrote a fictitious life of Jesus but one with clever insights.
Jesus was reared by the Essenes and studied Plato and Aristotle under Greek teachers. He
performed no miracles, and in later life became a senior brother of the Essenes. He learned that
he must die, like Socrates, and Luke and Nicodemus plotted how to bring this about. They
rescued Jesus from the tomb and Luke’s medicine brought Jesus to health. After a few physical
appearances, mentioned in scripture, Jesus retired to the Essene community where he died in old
age.

In 1835, David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) published a two volume life of Jesus, revised in
1839, and again in 1864. Strauss argued that one needed to unravel the historical Jesus from the
overlaid myths and miracle stories of the evangelists. He concluded that:

• None of the gospel writers was a witness of the events they discussed. Their accounts were 
second hand.  
• Every story prior to Jesus’s baptism is a fabrication.  
• The story of Jesus calling twelve disciples is not historical.  
• None of the miracles happened.  
• The gospel of John is a complete fabrication.  

Bruno Bauer (1809-1882) wrote a life of Jesus in which he concluded:

• Matthew and Luke copied from Mark and added nothing new to the story. Jesus’s life rests on 
one person who was not a witness.  
• The gospel of John contains no historical material at all.  
• The birth stories are literary inventions.  
• All the writings of Paul are fictitious.  
• The Jews did not expect a Messiah and Jesus did not claim to be one.  

The Frenchman, Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-1892), followed with his Vie de Jésus in 1860 in
which he romanticised Jesus as a great moral teacher, but no more. His Life of Jesus emphasised
the unhistorical gospel of John which prompted Albert Schweitzer to comment:
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There is scarcely any other work on the subject which so abounds in lapses of bad taste… It is Christian 
art in the worst sense of the term… There is insincerity in the book from beginning to end.  

Martin Kähler, in The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 1896,
concluded that a biography of Jesus was impossible. He argued that as the Jesus of history was
inseparable from the Christ of faith and yet since the New Testament mainly concerns itself with
the latter as does the church—and it is this Christ that has influenced history, scholars should
only be interested in the Christ of faith. He concluded:

I regard the entire Life of Jesus movement as a blind alley. 

At the turn of the 20th century Heinrich Julius Holtzman developed the theory of Mark’s priority
as the first gospel of the synoptics and argued that we can know the historical Jesus by
unravelling the connexions and borrowings between the gospels. He firmly denied that it was:

…possible to describe the historical figure of the one from whom Christianity derives its very name and 
existence in such a way as to satisfy all just claims of scrupulous historical critical investigation. 

Albert Schweitzer 

Albert Schweitzer published his The Quest of the Historical Jesus in 1906. He reviewed and
exposed the fallibility of the previous lives of Jesus and the problem of whether anything could
be safely known about him. He found previous questors had fashioned Jesus according to their
own worldview. The initial questors were rationalists trying to discredit traditional Christian
teaching. Counter quests were Christian theologians hoping to to fend off the criticism by
building from theological bricks a “real Jesus”. The result of the latter was a Jesus whose
message of a “spiritual kingdom” was that of nineteenth century German Protestantism.

This was a hugely important discovery for Christians who ever since have been able to say that
any historical Jesus is merely a reflexion of its author’s prejudices and can be discounted. It
seems that any Christian version is not a product of prejudice and must be accepted. Schweitzer
concluded:

• Jesus was an eschatological Jewish leader, convinced the world was in the End Time, who tried 
and failed in a mistaken mission to bring in the kingdom of God. No one had properly recognised 
this.  
• The quests had been fruitless.  
• There is no history of Jesus that can be discovered, and:  

“In the last resort this book can only express the misgivings about the historical Jesus as 
depicted by modern theology. There is nothing more negative than the results of the critical 
study of the life of Jesus”. 

Nineteenth century research into the so-called “Pseudepigrapha” of the Hebrew Bible, had
revealed new insights into Palestinian Judaism—a prominent trend had been apocalyptic. The
teachings and activity of Jesus could not be honestly examined without reference to Jewish
256 
 

eschatology. The recognition of Jesus’s “thoroughgoing eschatology” is Schweitzer’s


unassailable contribution to scholarship. He upheld Johannes Weiss who had convincingly
shown, in The Preaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God, that Jesus taught pure
eschatology.

No modern Christian commentator likes to think about it, because it answers too much.
Schweitzer himself hated the idea but, unlike modern Christian “scholars” he did not try to
escape from his honest conclusions. Jesus was a first century Jewish leader intent on seeing in
the cosmic victory of God over evil. This Jesus is foreign to Christians, as Schweitzer knew:

The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma. 

Since Schweitzer recognised that Jesus was an eschatologist, and his words must only have been
an interim ethic which had nothing to offer us, he abandoned devotional for practical
Christianity, as a medical doctor in Africa.

Nineteenth century scholars concluded that a Jesus who would curse fig trees, claim to be the
only begotten Son, and pretend to perform miracles, was psychologically sick. Albert Schweitzer
wrote The Psychiatric Study of Jesus to refute these claims that Jesus was mentally unbalanced
and that if he were alive today, he would be institutionalized.

Eschatology, involving ideas of the last judgment, resurrection, and supernatural deliverance of
the elect from temporal earthly existence, though nominally Christian, has been lost in fairy tale
ideas like that of “the Rapture” based upon Thessalonians. In the first century Jewish milieu, the
concept was one of a cosmic battle. Many features of the early church, whether reconstructed
from the gospels or Paul, only make sense against the background of eschatological expectation:
resurrection, the gift of the Spirit (meals, baptism), and the continuing anticipation of God’s
imminent intervention. The earliest community beliefs also could not be honestly disconnected
entirely from the beliefs of Jesus and his disciples before Easter.

Rudolf Bultmann 

In his treatment of the historical Jesus, Jesus and the Word, in 1920, Rudolf Bultmann thought it
a happy conclusion that:

We can know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian 
sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary. 

What can be known by examining Jewish tradition of the time is Jesus’s message, his “word”,
the coming of the Kingdom of God, a “miraculous eschatological event”, but one that has to be
interpreted existentially: “the Kingdom of God is a power which, although it is entirely future,
wholly determines the present… because it now compels man to decision”. Bultmann concluded:

• The Christian proclamation (kerygma) will never be confirmed by historical investigation.  
• Since the message is in the myth, the gospel of John is the preferred one.  
• The historical quest is impossible, irrelevant, and illegitimate.  
257 
 

For Bultmann, a scholarly “quest of the historical Jesus” is impossible and theologically
illegitimate because it substitutes worldly proof for faith. The simple fact of the Christ event—
that God acted—sufficed. In The New Testament and Mythology he concludes:

The Christian life does not consist in developing the individual personality, in the improvement of 
society, or in making the world a better place. The Christian life means turning away from the world. 

Is it surprising the world is a mess when it is run by people of this teeth grittingly irresponsible
philosophy? Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book, Christ the Center, (1960) concluded that, if we did
find an historical Jesus, it would show that Christian faith had been an illusion. The world
thereby might be saved.

Karl Barth preferred not to participate in the quest for the historical Jesus. Barth with Paul
Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann and others accepted Kähler’s conclusion that faith could not depend on
the historical Christ, about whom nothing could be known. He agreed with Bonhoeffer that
nothing in historical investigation could add anything to faith. At most, such analysis might tell
us what others thought Jesus was like. But Barth was an alien as far as the natural world was
concerned. The natural world was irrelevant to him because only Christ was important and
Christianity was the “end of all religion”. If that is so, it only is because it will be the end of
humanity. We should take this as the severest warning to us, not the ultimate accolade that
Christians suppose it to be.

Ernst Troeltsch 

Ernst Troeltsch saw the historical method of analysis as having three essential features:
probability, analogy and correlation. Historians cannot deal in certainties. They discover events
with a degree of probability attached to their likelihood. The probability of an event has to be
judged by analogy with such a similar event occurring today, in times we know, are familiar with
and have some estimatable degree of attestation. By analogy, it looks impossible that anything
like 600,000 able-bodied men left Egypt in the Exodus.

Correlation is the principle that events influence each other. Nothing occurs in isolation and the
likelihood of an event occurring has to be judged in the knowledge that it can be influenced by
other events. The inhabitants of the hill country of Palestine had no knowledge of an Evil Spirit
until after they had been colonised by the Persians who already had an Evil Spirit in their
cosmogony. From the rule of correlation it is idle for Christian or Jewish theologians to claim
that Jews invented the concept independently.

Troeltsch says it is invalid to place all emphasis on one event to the exclusion of others because
all relevant events have to be judged equally by the same set of rules. Christianity cannot be
judged only on its own claims about itself but in the wider context of human history. The
dogmatic viewpoint of traditional Christianity violates all this, because it divorces a fixed set of
events entirely from their realistic setting. Its pronouncements are absolute, being the Word of
God and so they too are utterly divorced from any historical situation. Christian authority stems
from its very falseness in historical terms—it is separated from history in practice despite the
claimed historical setting of the mythical stories.
258 
 

Its appeal is to the supernatural, the sphere of the human imagination, not history. Salvation
history is supernatural history, and Troeltsch shows that it is therefore not history at all but
romance based upon loyalty to a church or purely subjective inner experiences. Even Rudolf
Bultmann said that it was impossible to believe in demons and spirits, while using electrical
appliances and modern medicines, as Christians are expected to. History is like the fruit of a real
tree but salvation history is like the fruit of a tree drawn on a piece of paper. The latter can be
made to look wonderful but will not feed anyone. Troeltsch’s ideas help us to distinguish the
two, should we have trouble.

The only justification for the doctrinal basis of Christian tradition would seem to be miracle… for only 
such a belief can save it from being a contingent part of the ongoing fabric of history.  

John Bowden  

Critics of Troeltsch accuse him of not knowing what to do with a miracle if one happened
because his method rules them out. The point about a miracle is not that it is unique—all events
are unique, even the most trivial—but that it cannot happen in Nature without God’s
intervention. Spectacular single events, such as someone surviving a severe fire or fall are not
miracles although they are called miracles in popular usage. A miracle simply cannot happen. It
has zero probability of occurring. It is its impossibility that makes it a miracle.

A virgin birth would admittedly be pretty miraculous, though scientists might be able to think of
a peculiar set of natural circumstances that could lead to one. Nevertheless, it is so miraculous
that few scholars and many ordinary Christian believers do not think there ever was a virgin
birth. A genuinely dead and already decaying man being resurrected would certainly be a miracle
by any standards, and it therefore forms the basis of Christian faith, but it is such a poorly
attested miracle that it is much more likely that the witnesses are deluded, mistaken or crooks
than that the event happened. Only by eliminating the likely possibilities can the miracle be
given credence. As it stands, it has none to anyone except those who will believe despite the
evidence.

None of the “miracles” in the bible are well attested unless the miracle of the bible being the very
word of God is true. If it is, then believers have to explain why everything that can be learnt by
scholarship about the bible shows it to be the manufacture and composition of human beings, and
is full of just the errors and contradictions that a human work copied by hand for many
generations would contain. In brief, if God produced a miraculous book, why did he not ensure
that it was miraculously distributed without errors? Christians believe the New Testament
because they are Christians, not the other way around.

A New Quest 

In 1953, one of Bultmann’s students, Ernst Käsemann, in a famous address to the annual
gathering of the “old Marburgers” (the Bultmann school), declared the Lord of the Church could
not have had no historical existence or he would have been completely mythological! Interest in
the historical Jesus was theologically valid, after all, and he set in motion the “New Quest of the
259 
 

Historical Jesus”, based on scholarly investigation, and recognising that the kerygma of the
church emerged from an eschatological message.

Critical analysis such as form criticism would allow information about the historial Jesus to be
found in the gospels, but criteria were needed to settle the authenticity of Jesus’s sayings.
Bultmann had already formulated one such criterion, dubbed by Norman Perrin, “the criterion of
dissimilarity”:

The earliest form of a saying we can reach may be regarded as authentic if it can be shown to be 
dissimilar to characteristic emphases both of ancient Judaism and of the early Church. 

Or, “if we are to seek that which is most characteristic of Jesus”, it will be found in the things
wherein he differs from Judaism, such things as would be “new and startling to Jewish ears”. The
premise that the authentic Jesus was to be found not in his Jewish context but in whatever was
different from it, became a typical Christian confusion of true inquiry. Plainly this criterion begs
the question, because its underlying assumption—that Jesus was deliberately being different
from contemporary Jews—is what Christians want to hear.

About 90 percent of Jesus’s sayings are found in contemporary Jewish teaching, leaving just 10
percent for the real Jesus. Robert W Funk, founded the Jesus Seminar in 1985, calling scholars
together to offer an alternative to the fundamentalist pictures of Jesus in American society.
Around 200 people have participated to discuss, then vote with beads on historicity. Not much
survives and even the Lord’s Prayer goes. The Jesus Seminar agrees that:

…way less than 25 percent of the words attributed to Jesus were his.  

In fact, the scholars of the Jesus seminar concluded that 82 percent of the words ascribed to Jesus
were not actually spoken by him:

1. The only words in the gospel of Mark were 12:17, “Render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar’s”.  
2. The only words in Matthew were: 5:38‐39 “Turn the other cheek”. 13:33 The parable of the 
leaven in the flour. 20:1‐15 The parable of the workers in the vineyard. 22:21 “render unto 
Caesar… “ None of the Sermon on the Mount was accepted, the only part of the Lord’s Prayer 
were the words “Our Father”, and only three of the beatitudes: the hungry, poor and sad. 
Omitted were the references to the meek, merciful, pure in heart and peacemakers.  
3. In Luke, the scholars accepted: 2:20 “Blessed are the poor, hungry, and sad” 6:27 “love your 
enemies” 6:29 “turn the other cheek”, “go the second mile” and “give your shirt”. 10:30 the 
story of the Good Samaritan 11:2 only the word “Father” in the Lord’s prayer. 13:20 the parable 
of the leaven 16:1 the parable of the shrewd manager.  
4. Nothing in the gospel of John was accepted. But the scholars gave credence to the Gospel of 
Thomas and used it to confirm or deny Jesus’s words.  

Donald A Wells explains that the following assumptions were made by the Jesus Seminar to
begin its analysis. An assessment is appended to each:
260 
 

1. The Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke are more reliable than John in separating the 
legendary and the mythical from the historical Jesus. Agreed.  
2. The gospel of Mark is the oldest and Matthew and Luke copied from it. Agreed.  
3. The most likely passages are those consistent with an oral rather than a written tradition. 
Meaningless. All of it is oral tradition.  
4. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are assumed to be literary narratives and not history. Meaningless. 
All writing is literary. He means “fiction” which is too sweeping.  
5. It was assumed that Jesus was not an eschatologist (he did not believe in the imminent end of 
the world). Total nonsense. He plainly was.  
6. Since the oldest gospel manuscripts in our possession were written 175 years after the death of 
Jesus, and since every scholar who copied a manuscript added marginal notes which subsequent 
scholars commonly added to the body of the text, we ought not put much too emphasis on the 
particular words. Far too sweeping.  
7. The Dead Sea Scrolls are of no help since they were written before the birth of Jesus. Nonsense. 
They might as well say the Jewish tradition is no help because it was founded before the birth 
of Jesus. Jesus plainly was an Essene and the Jesus Seminar wants to count the truth out at 
the start.  
8. All the gospels were widely circulated for many years anonymously and were later given 
authorship names by persons unknown to make them more acceptable. The Church Father, 
Eusebius, had stated (300 AD) that Christians would not accept a writing as authentic unless it 
had been written by a famous person. Agreed.  
9. Paul’s writings were in circulation long before the first gospel appeared, Paul never read the 
gospels. Since Paul had never met Jesus, his conjectures cannot be the basis for any facts about 
Jesus. Agreed.  

Before you go, think about this… 
A provost of Paris, J Huizinga tells us, hated the clergy, mocked church ritual, refused confession, and did 
not keep Easter. In earlier times, he would have been an heretic. A few noblemen are recorded as 
having refused extreme unction at their death. They also might have been heretical, but the many more 
who had the same views but died unconscious or fevered will have been given the Catholic sacraments 
anyway, thus dying a Catholic whatever they had believed in their lifetime. 

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