Jesus: Fact or Fiction?

presented to a joint meeting of the

Unitarian-Universalist Society of Iowa City Secular Humanists
and Secular Students at Iowa, March 29, 2016
copyright 2016 by Peter Nothnagle
All rights reserved.

So, Jesus Christ. The son of God, the Messiah. King of kings and lord of lords (to quote the Hallelujah
Chorus). Or, some say, just a man, but a man who was inspired by God to teach great moral truths. Or,
for those of us who dont believe in God, at least we can all agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in
the year one, and he grew up to be a wise teacher, had twelve followers, and was unjustly killed by the
Romans, right?

Jesus is the most famous person on Earth, and the most influential person who ever lived, yet people
have very different ideas about who or even what he was. I want to find out what we know for sure
about Jesus, and how we came to know it. Thats what Im going to be talking about tonight.

I want to make one thing very clear from the beginning. I am not going to be talking about faith claims of
Christianity at all. We might or might not agree whether the stories about Jesus being virgin-born,
turning water into wine, raising poor Lazarus from the dead, and all the rest, should be defended as
historical or attacked as myths. Those are cool stories, and although personally I would need better
evidence than we have before I could believe any of them, I think by their very nature we can never
know for sure whether anything like that really happened. Tonight I want to set faith claims aside and
just talk about the real-world, flesh-and-blood man who lived in first-century Palestine who was he,
really? Was he a wandering philosopher-teacher whose ideas became the basis of a new religion? The
leader of a band of rebels, whose martyrdom kicked off a social movement inspired by his noble
sacrifice? A fraud, who duped the rubes with cheap magic tricks and annoyed the authorities? Or could
he be an imaginary celestial being, one of any number of dying-and-rising savior deities that populated
mystery cults all around the ancient world, who somehow came to be seen as a historical figure over the
centuries? What do we know for sure about Jesus? And how do we know it? Lets get started!

The obvious place to start is the Bible, where Jesus figures prominently. People will also tell you that
there are lots of references to Jesus in historical sources outside of the Bible, and I will talk about those,
too, but first lets have a quick little Bible study class.

Something you might be surprised to learn is that there is not, and never has been, a single book that
could be called the Bible. A Bible is a collection of sacred writings by many different authors from
different cultures, and even different religions, which were set down between two and three thousand
years ago, and have been evolving ever since. When all those pages are gathered together between two
covers its easy to think that it presents some kind of consistent and coherent story, but it really doesnt.
There isnt even a single collection of writings there have been many Bibles throughout the centuries,
variously promoted and suppressed in different locales at different times. Even today the conservative
Protestants, liberal Protestants, Catholics, Copts, Orthodox, and many other large and small Christian
sects all use different Bibles that have been edited and translated with different theological agendas,
and even contain different collections of books. For instance the Catholic version of the Old Testament
includes seven books that arent in the Protestant one. A new Bible came out last year, containing a lot
of books that aren't in that King James you keep under your pillow, even including a book that scholars
know for sure is a 19th century forgery that was concocted to legitimize British imperialism. It's a very
impressive, holy-looking volume, 1,400 pages, leather bound I'd love to have one to add to my
collection but it's ninety bucks. Just this year theres a new version of the King James Bible translated
into internet emoticons you know, smiley faces and so forth. You think Im joking but its true its
on iBooks for only $2.99. Its supposed to be 3,200 pages long, which I dont quite understand, unless
thats 3,200 pages on your phone. At any rate, the Bible is hardly the eternal and unchanging word of
God.

Not only does a Bible contain dozens of books from many writers with different viewpoints, none of
those books is in its original form. Each of them has been extensively rewritten over the centuries, and
theres no original manuscript of any part of the Bible to compare with the modern versions. Our oldest
sources are still copies of copies of copies, centuries passed between the original writings and the
creation of the earliest copies we now have, and all our copies are different, which means that we can
only guess which variant of a single word or sentence or whole chapter is what the original author might
have written. All the copyists down through the ages have been highly motivated members of one sect
or another who brought their own agendas to the process, and this influenced their word choices, and
even what stories got added or taken out, and they also simply made mistakes. Any copyist would of
course have known about the possibility of copying mistakes, and when he encountered something in an
old manuscript that didnt sit right with the theological ideas of his particular time and locale he might
have introduced changes to a text that he honestly thought was the correction an earlier error. Even
when all our available sources agree on something, we still cant be certain it was what the original
author intended, because the sources we have could all simply be faithful copies of a corrupted earlier
copy that has since been lost. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century may have put a stop
to the constant accumulation of copying errors, but it only solidified the judgment calls and mistakes
made by the editors of the Bible in that time period, while scholarship has obviously made a lot of
progress since then. Most of the differences are trivial, but some of them go to the heart of the beliefs
of the various denominations, like the Trinity, Hell, salvation through works vs. salvation through faith,
and on and on. Its possible that parts of the Bible we have today are very different from the originals,
having been changed over time to keep up with shifting theologies. Of course unless you are a scholar
with some very specialized knowledge, you can only read the Bible in translation in many cases, a
translation of a translation and every translator brings his own theological outlook to that task as well.
So no Bible that exists or that ever could exist could be a neutral and authentic source of historical
information. But we do the best we can with what we have.

Im going to talk about the New Testament tonight, because thats our source material for getting to
know Jesus. There are four parts to the New Testament: the gospels, the epistles, the Acts of the
Apostles, and the Book of Revelation. The four gospels are accounts of the life, words, and deeds of
Jesus. The epistles are 21 letters written by early church leaders to various congregations. Acts is a
collection of stories from the early church after Jesus death, and Revelation is that trippy peek into
Gods throne room those two are really not about Jesus during his lifetime. Our question tonight is,
what can we say with confidence about Jesus during his time on Earth, so were going to look at the
closest things we have to first-hand testimony about Jesus in the Bible, which are the gospels and the
epistles.

Even though the gospels are always placed first in the New Testament, it is generally believed that the
epistles were written earlier. The epistles are thirteen letters from the apostle Paul, and eight more
letters attributed to other early church leaders. These letters were supposedly written to congregations
in far-flung towns around the Roman Empire, and they are full of Christian teachings and advice about
how to run these first churches. So they tell us a lot about the beliefs and practices of the original
followers of Jesus.

Most scholars think Paul was born in the early first century, and his letters would have been written in
something like the 50s AD, whereas the gospels were all written significantly later. If thats true, Paul
would have been writing shortly after Jesus is supposed to have lived Pauls life and Jesus life would
have overlapped, and Paul would have been able to visit the places that Jesus preached, and even
interview people who knew him and had heard his actual words. Pauls letters should give us the very
best idea of what Jesus was about. So youre dying to know exactly what Paul said about Jesus, and Ill
get to that in just a minute.

First, though, theres a bit of a problem with relying too heavily on Paul, in that most scholars agree that
at least six of the thirteen letters are forgeries from several generations after Paul lived. It looks like
when the church was developing, if a bishop was having trouble with differences of opinion among his
churches, he might cook up a so-called letter from the apostle Paul which would conveniently buttress
his position. In fact a few scholars suspect all the letters could be forgeries Paul himself could have
been a fictional character who was simply invented to give authority to the fake letters.

Another thing is that it is pretty clear that even the authentic letters of Paul have undergone some
creative editing before they got into the form that we have. For example, we can see that one long
letter may have been assembled from a number of shorter ones, because it appears to contain several
sets of introductions, main messages, and conclusions. Pauls second letter to the Corinthians, for
example, may have been put together from over a dozen shorter letters. What other changes may have
been made along the way? Could Paul's original teachings have been altered as church doctrines
evolved? We dont have the originals, so theres no way to know.

So the epistles consist of thirteen letters from Paul, at least some of which are forgeries, and eight
letters supposedly from other church leaders, which as it turns out are all also forgeries or are simply
anonymous. And to cap it off, Paul may not have been a real person in the first place. But even if these
letters are neither original nor authentic, they are still very useful to us in trying to understand what the
first Christians believed, because they were intended to be authoritative they set forth what the
dominant faction of early Christian leaders considered to be the right beliefs and the right way to
practice the religion.

So what do they say about Jesus during his time on Earth? They probably didnt come right out and tell
you this in Sunday school, but Paul, the guy who lived closest to the time of Jesus, and whose writings
were and remain enormously influential to Christians, said nothing about Jesus, the man. Everything in
Paul is perfectly consistent with a Jesus who was a celestial being who never came to Earth in a physical
form, had no disciples and never had a ministry, and communicated
with his earthly representatives solely through visions and by
inspiring them to find esoteric meanings in Old Testament writings. But I certify you, brethren, that
Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected all right, but not on planet the gospel which was preached
Earth. Paul says that it all took place in the lowest sphere of heaven, of me is not after man. For I
neither received it of man,
which, according to Hebrew cosmology, is a region of space neither was I taught it, but by
between the Earth and the moon. Paul certainly never met Jesus the revelation of Jesus Christ.
face to face, and its pretty clear he wouldnt have listened to
anyone who claimed to have done so. His letters are quite clear that Galatians 1:11-12
the only authentic way to know Jesus and to get his divine message
was the way he did it which was psychically. Paul is adamant that
he didnt get his information from any mortal. Just see Galatians chapter 1 its a quick read!

But what about all those details that everybody knows about Jesus he was born in a shed, he taught in
the temple when he was a child, he fed thousands with loaves and fishes, he preached the Sermon on
the Mount, he was tried in front of a notorious despotic governor, and was publically executed and
buried in a rich followers tomb? If Paul knew anything about any of that, he never said so! We know
those stories because they come from the gospels, but it seems like Paul didnt know them, and theres
an easy explanation for that, since the gospels werent written until generations after Paul had died
those stories were invented in the intervening years.

Now you might think, hold on, this cant be right, because how can Christians reconcile this glaring
contradiction? Christians are taught that Jesus was wildly famous because of his actual words heard by
thousands of people, as well as the public miracles he performed. Paul was intensely interested in Jesus
so he couldnt have been unaware of all the stories yet he didnt mention any of them. The
explanation you usually see is that Paul knew all about earthly Jesus but didnt feel the need to tell the
whole story he was writing to people who already knew about Jesus personal appearances, so he
didnt have to repeat them. Really? Never once? Even if Jesus actual words would prove a point Paul
was trying to make, or settle a dispute? I dont buy that answer.

This is the first major point I want to make in this talk Paul is situated to be the best witness to the
historical Jesus we have, and as far as we can tell, he knew nothing about a flesh and blood Jesus on
Earth. Pauls Jesus lived in space, never had a body, and only communicated to humans telepathically
and those messages didnt even start coming until after Jesus had died and been resurrected. This is
devastating to the idea that there was ever a real, flesh-and-blood Jesus, because the people he was
writing to all those Christian congregations that were already going strong way back in the middle of
the first century, before the gospels were even written must have likewise believed in this Jesus whom
no one had ever actually seen. This belief was the foundation of Christianity, not a belief in a Jesus who
preached personally to his disciples and the crowds.

Thats all very interesting, but its not much use to us in our effort to learn about the historical Jesus.
With some trepidation, lets look at what gospels say.

Before I talk about whats in the gospels, I should mention that the names associated with them,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are not the names of the people who wrote them. All four books are
anonymous those names were attached to the various books many decades after they were written.
Although the gospels are always published in that order Matthew first, then, Mark, Luke, and John
its pretty clear that that is not the order in which they were written. We can tell that Mark was written
first, because Matthew and Luke and again Im using those names as the titles of the books, not as the
names of the authors Matthew and Luke each quote huge chunks of Mark. Matthew repeats almost all
of Mark, and about half of Mark is copied in Luke often word-for-word. Therefore the gospel of Mark
had already gotten spread around before Matthew and Luke were written. But the three of them, Mark,
Matthew and Luke, all tell a similar story about Jesus, although with interesting variations. The fourth
gospel, John, describes Jesus as quite a different sort of being, not even human. There are also many
other gospels and similar books that didnt make it into the modern Bible, which were probably also
based on Mark, but since were trying to get to the historical facts about Jesus, I think we should
concentrate on the three earliest gospels.

So as I say, Mark was written first. And when was that? Nobody knows for sure, but Mark mentioned a
big catastrophe that befell the Jews in Jerusalem, which most scholars think was the Jewish Revolt of AD
66-73 which resulted in over a million deaths and the destruction of the great temple, although it could
almost as easily be referring to the Bar Kochba revolt of the 130s. Therefore Mark could have been
written as early as the 70s, although many scholars think it is more likely it was written a generation or
more later.

The gospels dont really agree on what Jesus was, but they all indicate that he was able to walk around
and speak to people face-to-face, to eat and sleep and generally blend in with the humans, and
ultimately to die in a very mammalian manner. Mark, being the first gospel, and therefore the one that
was closest to the historical events, portrays Jesus as a man who presumably had an unremarkable birth
and childhood, who was adopted by God as an adult and was somehow infused with Gods spirit, said
and did wonderful things under Gods influence, but was ultimately abandoned by God before his
crucifixion, and it all takes place within a single year. Matthew and Luke each took Marks story and
greatly expanded on it. Its from each of them that we hear that Jesus was fathered by a god.

Its interesting that the birth stories in Matthew and Luke are completely contradictory. You can look it
up! Parts of each story are going to be familiar to you, and they get mashed together in every childrens
Christmas pageant, but you might not be aware that the two gospels tell different stories. Luke wrote
about lower-class Jesus born in a barn with a feeding trough for a cradle, far from home in Bethlehem,
with angels announcing it to shepherds a very humble beginning (the Little Drummer Boy nativity). But
Matthew wrote about high-born Jesus born in a house, at home in Bethlehem, visited by astrologers
from the east led by a star and offering gifts appropriate to a king, and who immediately attract the
attention of evil King Herod, who was worried about this rival king and so had all the baby boys of
Bethlehem murdered, which somehow wasnt noticed by any contemporary writer or even the other
gospel writers (the We Three Kings nativity). So Lukes Jesus was born as the lowest of the low, but
Matthews Jesus was born as a king. Mark, you may remember, never mentions a birth at all! And the
gospel of John, if youre curious, is like Mark Johns story begins with the baptism of Jesus as an adult
and he doesnt seem to know anything about an unusual birth. Then again, Johns Jesus isnt really
human in the first place hes some kind of humanoid avatar of a divine being who created the
universe.

If you look at Jesus birth as described by Matthew and Luke, it reveals a little of what went on behind
the scenes as those books were altered down through the years. Both of them go to great lengths to
make Jesus the fulfillment of what they think of as a prophecy from the Old Testament in the Book of
Isaiah, about the coming of a great king of the Jews. To that end they each include a long, elaborate
genealogy to prove that Jesus was a direct descendant of King David. Those genealogies are complete
fiction, of course they turn out to be vehicles for smuggling in some Hebrew numerology, and nobody
could have kept records like that over a period of a thousand years anyway, so theyre just a literary
device to invent a royal lineage for Jesus. Also, if Im doing my math right, consider this: Suppose we
very conservatively say that King David had at least three children who survived to adulthood, and each
of his children had three children, and so on, for a thousand years. Well very conservatively say that
there were only three complete generations each century. After ten centuries, the number of Davids
direct descendants could theoretically have been two followed by 14 zeroes! By the time of Jesus,
everybody in the eastern Mediterranean region would have been a direct descendant of King David! As
is everybody in the whole western world today, so hail to you! And getting back to the two royal
genealogies in Matthew and Luke, they actually contradict each other, but whatever.

But wait a minute the two gospel accounts also say that Jesus was the bastard son of God, and his
mother was still a virgin, which can only mean that Jesus wasnt related to Joseph, and therefore he
would have been the one person in Palestine who couldnt have been descended from King David
through the male line! So how can there be both a royal genealogy and a divine insemination in the
same story? I think its because when Matthew and Luke were adding stuff to the gospel of Mark, they
each wrote about the blood relationship to King David, and later editors added the miraculous
conception and birth stories. Why would anyone do that? It may have just been to improve Jesus street
cred, or it may have been to make the earlier versions conform to some developing new theology, like
to smooth over the difference between the earthly Jesus of Mark and the celestial one of Paul. Either
way, since the genealogies were already well-known, whoever added the miraculous birth stories
couldnt very well take the genealogies out.
Its interesting to notice contradictions like these, and so many others. Right there, I think it casts doubt
on there being a true story at the core. In the real world, when many people work on a question, we get
progressively closer to the truth by testing different theories against the evidence. If were on the right
track, the pieces start falling into place, and when we arrive at the truth, the contradictions should all be
resolved. But if an idea springs solely from the human imagination, with no anchor in real historical
events, then we should expect the story to change and become more elaborate over time, and to split
into more and more local variants in response to the local conditions and customs. Which is, in fact,
exactly what we have seen in Christianity.

Back to the gospels. I need to point out that the four gospels that made it into the New Testament were
composed in Greek, which was not the local language of Jesus supposed homeland of Galilee. Where
they have Jesus quoting from scripture, he uses a source called the Septuagint, which was a version of
the Old Testament created in Egypt and used by Greek-speaking Jews who lived outside of Palestine and
didnt understand Hebrew which means that if Jesus was real, and if the gospels are accurate, Jesus
didnt know the Hebrew Bible, he only knew the Greek Bible, which doesnt fit the story, to say the least.
What does make sense would be if the Greek-speaking people who wrote the gospels in Greek were
only familiar with the Greek Old Testament, and when they needed to put words from scripture into
Jesus mouth, thats what they turned to.

Also, Mark, our most authentic gospel, is full of glaring errors in geography and cultural practices that
no local person would have made, and although writers of the later gospels went to some effort to
correct Marks mistakes, they introduced a few of their own. The most surprising one is that the gospels
agree that Jesus came from a town called Nazareth but we now know that there was no such town in
the first century. Nazareth is a made-up place name that was attached to a later settlement. If you
permit a short digression, this idea that Jesus came from a town called Nazareth probably comes from a
misreading possibly deliberate of something in the Gospel of Mark. Mark said that Jesus was a
Nazarene, that is, a member of an obscure Jewish sect by that name. The early Catholic Church needed
to redefine Nazarene as a guy from a town named Nazareth, because those Nazarenes taught some
conspicuously un-Catholic doctrines. Mark only says that Jesus was of Nazareth once, and that could
very well be thanks to one of those helpful copyists I mentioned earlier. The writers of the later
gospels made sure that Marks Jesus the Nazarene became Jesus from Nazareth, and thats what we
have today. By the way, even though there was no Nazareth in the supposed time of Jesus, you can
certainly visit there today its been a major tourist attraction for centuries. You can stroll among
costumed reenactors with donkeys, enjoy lamb stew in the restaurant, and experience the world that
Jesus didnt. Theyve got a great website! You can even order a reproduction of a Roman oil lamp or a
pair of sandals from the online gift shop.

So my second main point is to draw your attention to this big credibility problem with Mark Mark is
supposed to be the closest thing we have in the gospels to an on-the-scene report about Jesus, but it
looks to me like both Mark and his readership lived far away from and much later than early first-
century Palestine. Its hard to believe it was written either by or even for anyone with any real familiarity
with the time and place it portrays.

A lot of Christians think that the gospels are first-person testimony, but they are plainly not, and they
dont pretend to be. The gospels are written in the third person, and theyre full of things that no
observer could have witnessed, like what the Magi dreamed after they met King Herod, or what Satan
offered to Jesus when they were on that camping trip together. Even if we thought these things had
some basis in real events which, since we dont know the authors sources or their motivations, could
only be a leap of faith they clearly contain lots of fictional embellishments, especially when you
consider the contradictions among them. The fact is that we dont know who wrote the gospels, nor
when they were written, nor where, nor even why.

But if the gospels arent history, what are they? Four possibilities:

1. It turns out that the early Greeks enjoyed popular thrillers, and the basic gospel story looks an
awful lot like some of them. There are ancient novels that feature a hero who has various
adventures and eventually makes a narrow escape from death in one case he is actually
crucified but survives it (sound familiar?), before he finally gets the girl and lives happily ever
after or something like that. Theres also a Life of Aesop, you know, the Aesops Fables guy,
which is obviously fictional, but which closely parallels the gospel story. In the story, Aesop
started life as the lowest of the low he was born into slavery but he helped a young woman
in distress who turned out to be a servant of the goddess Isis in disguise, and the goddess
rewarded him by endowing him with great wisdom. He traveled the land exercising his famous
wit, poking fun at the wealthy and powerful through the medium of his fables about talking
animals and so forth, much like Jesus with his divine gift supposedly travelled and taught moral
lessons in the form of parables. He eventually ran afoul of the authorities and he was unjustly
executed, and in the end he was rescued from death by the goddess and reborn as an immortal
being to dwell in her celestial realm. Does any of that start to sound familiar? This was written
down right about the same time as the gospels.
 2. Theres a writer named Dennis R. MacDonald who has discovered striking parallels between
Mark and that blockbuster of ancient literature, Homers Odyssey. In both books, theres an
archetypal suffering hero who has a small band of somewhat dim followers, and they
encounter curiously parallel situations, even in the same order. Whats particularly interesting is
that people who study ancient literature for a living know that at the time the gospels were
being written, the Odyssey was used as a study tool by everyone learning to write in Greek. The
way it worked was that the student would use the Odyssey as a model, and create his own tale
in a similar style and using similar themes. So Mark could be a work of fiction made in imitation
of the Odyssey.

3. In the same way, Mark also looks like a retelling of stories from the Old Testament, with the
character of Jesus as an updated version of Moses, and with elements taken from stories about
Elijah and Elisha, including their ability to speak and act for God and their ultimate victories over
death. There are even closer parallels to a holy book that didnt make it into modern Bibles, the
Ascension of Isaiah.

4. Finally, a weirder one. Another writer has pointed out that the sequence of events in Mark can
be mapped on to an interpretation of the zodiac! Jesus life story begins with his baptism, under
the sign of Aquarius, the water-bearer. Then he recruits his first two followers, the fishermen
Simon and Andrew, under Pisces, the sign of the two fish. And so on, throughout the astrological
year so Mark could be a sort of secret teaching manual for astrologers. Have you ever
wondered why Jesus had exactly twelve disciples? Could it be symbolic of the sun and the
twelve signs of the zodiac? Hey, I'm just asking questions! No matter how far-fetched this
astrology theory sounds, to me it is still more believable than the whole raising the dead,
walking on water stuff thats in Mark.

Not only were there plenty of fictional characters that look a lot like Jesus, theres a long list of
documented historical ones, too, who had many followers and were said to perform miracles. Many of
these people were executed by the Romans or the Jews, and a few even supposedly ascended to heaven
after their deaths. So even though the gospel stories of the life of Jesus stand apart in our time, back
when they were written the air was humming with very similar stories and today, nobody takes the
rest of them very seriously. The gospels are not unique and they arent even original!

So my first point was that the earliest writing about Jesus is in the letters of Paul, which portray him as a
being who had never been to Earth and never spoke to anyone face to face; my second point was that
the gospels werent written by or for people in first-century Palestine; and to summarize my third point,
the first gospel could well have been intended as some kind of metaphorical retelling of familiar
mythical stories, not supposed to be taken as history at all, and all the other gospels are further
elaborations based on that.

Theres something very interesting that you may have noticed in all this. If you line up the books of the
New Testament in the order in which they were written, the earliest authors, the ones supposedly
closest to the facts of Jesus' life, have the least information about him. The later the story, the more
details. The first one to write about Jesus was Paul, who described a celestial being which was almost
completely mysterious and inaccessible. Then came Mark, the shortest and simplest gospel, which
brought this supernatural being into the body of a man. Later writers added backstory elements like a
supernatural birth, and loads of new details that werent in Mark, like direct quotations, miracles, dream
narratives, action scenes, dinner menus, sea voyages, variant accounts of the trial and execution,
contradictory post-resurrection appearances, Jesus promises to return and bring on the End Times
almost immediately, and finally, backpedaling to try to explain why that hadnt happened yet. To me this
seems very much like a legend that grew in the telling! But is there a kernel of historical truth here? Its
frankly impossible to tell from whats in the Bible.

And by the way, the authors of the gospels didn't mention Paul one single time. You will recall that Paul
didn't know anything that appeared in the gospels, either. I don't know exactly what that means, but I
know it's a big problem for Christianity! Now the Acts of the Apostles, the third section of the New
Testament, has a lot about Paul, but that book had to have been written at least a full generation after
Paul's lifetime if he ever lived in the first place so it could certainly be legend or fiction instead of
history. Acts tries very hard to reconcile differences between Paul's letters and the gospels, to the
extent of introducing some obvious contradictions to the letters so I'm inclined to go with "fiction".

So everything we can learn about the historical personage of Jesus from the Bible turns out to be... open
to interpretation. Lets turn our attention to historical sources about Jesus other than the Bible. This part
of my talk is going to be really short. Both religious and secular historians have been combing through
papyri and inscriptions for centuries, and they have found exactly nothing about an earthly Jesus from
the entire first century. Believers and even some serious scholars will tell you with great sincerity that
there are such documents, but its simply not the case! I think a lot of people think that Jesus was a
famous person in his time, therefore there simply must be independent reports about him but when
pressed, they can only point to a small handful of very brief remarks which are either too vague, too
late, or turn out to be out-and-out forgeries. The first legitimate references to Jesus start to appear in
the second century, but these are all talking about the Jesus of faith they are reports of what Christians
believed, not independent accounts of Jesus life. There are no contemporary accounts of an actual
Jesus.

What we have instead is a striking lack of evidence where we would really expect to find it if there were
an even slightly remarkable person at the origin of the stories:

Jesus, if he existed, left no writings that survive.

If anybody witnessed Jesus being followed by huge crowds or preaching on the mount or being
tried and crucified, we have no record of it.

Jesus supposedly had a dozen devoted followers, but none of them wrote anything that
survived, and even though they supposedly went out and spread the word after Jesus death,
apparently nobody noticed any of them, either.

Of the famous, well-informed, widely-read chroniclers and commentators of the time, none had
 anything to say about Jesus.

Outside of the anonymous, undated, and quite possibly fictional gospel of Mark, there is no attestation
of Jesus or his direct protgs from the entire first century the entire century when Christianity
supposedly began is a big black hole. Almost, dare I say it, as if nothing we can read about Jesus actually
happened.

Now as we all know, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Even if there is no evidence for a
historical person behind the stories about Jesus, that in itself doesnt prove that there never was such a
person. However in this case I think this absence does tell us something. We have plenty of writings on
other upstart religious leaders in that time and place, even minor ones. If there was also Jesus, he must
have been truly insignificant, otherwise someone should have written something about him, too. Its
possible that all the accounts describing the real Jesus have been lost over time, but keep in mind that
this was an age when the only way to preserve and distribute books was to make handwritten copies,
and the early church was very big in the copying business so you would think that any document that
would prove the existence of Jesus would have been precious, it would have been extensively copied,
and it would have been referred to in countless sermons, histories, and letters many of which we do
have.

So this is my fourth main point from the year one well into the second century, except for the gospel
of Mark, any account of a person anything like human Jesus is nonexistent, from secular and even from
Christian sources. The whole Christian story stands on the gospel of Mark undated, anonymous,
flawed, and liberally tampered-with.

Whats more, by the way, the first people who did write about Jesus all wrote from distant lands
Greece, Syria, Egypt, and Rome. This lack of sources from the area of Jerusalem, plus the author of
Marks ignorance about the region, leads me to a conclusion that may astonish you as much as it did me
not only was there never a historical Jesus, but Christianity didnt even begin in Palestine! Its
beginning to look as if the gospel stories were composed in other cultural centers of the Roman Empire,
and only set in the Palestine of a bygone era, possibly to conceal the fact that they were really fiction.

You might be asking, if there was no charismatic leader who founded Christianity, then how did it get
started? Well, skeptics like me have three magic words that get us out of any difficulty I dont know.
We think its perfectly all right to cast doubt on a shaky proposition whether we have a better
explanation or not. But I think its unlikely that Christianity began with an individual at all. Just like there
never was a single Bible, there never was a single Christianity. There have always been many
Christianities. We can see that just in the very different concepts of Jesus that are presented side-by-
side in the Bible. The celestial being in Paul. The ordinary human possessed by a spirit in Mark. The god
that came to Earth in human form and then returned to Heaven in John. Also, the four canonical gospels
were selected from dozens of books, each telling a different story the first church leader to list those
four by name was Irenaeus of Lyons in 180, and the first one to declare that these were the only
authoritative ones was Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, in the late 4th century. Many streams came
together to form Christianity, and it took hundreds of years of debate and even bloodshed to hammer
out a catholic religion that word literally means universally accepted which, of course, couldnt
be maintained, and today consists of tens of thousands of distinct faiths with every imaginable
conception of Jesus.

I dont know how Christianity started but I have a theory. There were many mystery religions in that
region that taught of celestial beings that had magical births, were sacrificed, and were then reborn. I
could list some names but you probably wouldnt recognize them and thats all right, because they are
all just ancient myths that have no impact today all but one! Paul preached the belief in one of these
dying-and-rising gods as a fulfillment of Jewish prophesies of a coming Messiah. These teachings werent
based on any real-world evidence, and the reliance on visions and mystical insights encouraged many
ambitious church leaders to promote their own versions of the religion, therefore many competing sects
arose. Somebody had the great idea of inventing an apostolic tradition claiming that their sects
priests were taught by priests who were taught by followers of Jesus Christ himself, in the flesh. They
needed evidence to back up this amazing claim, so someone we call Mark cast the celestial Christ
character as a human being in a thinly-disguised work of symbolic fiction, setting his story in a long-ago,
far-away land, using character types and situations from Homer and other popular tales in order to retell
stories from the Old Testament. Along came the anonymous authors of Luke, Matthew, and John, and
many other writers whose works are now lost or largely forgotten, each taking Mark as a point of
departure, and each portraying a Jesus who suited the purposes of his particular version of the
developing new religion. Jesus became a real person who was made to say different things to lend
authority to each faction. Eventually, in the fourth century, some of the differences among these beliefs
were ironed out by a big committee called the First Council of Nicaea. Due in no small part to the
patronage of the emperor of Rome, this compromise theology became "orthodox", and any objectors
were declared heretics and their writings were suppressed.

Or, to put all that more briefly, Jesus was an invention of Christianity, not the inventor.

I suspect that the gospels were carefully written to be understood on two levels: For the average,
uneducated person, the kind of church-goer that Robert Price calls a pew potato, the message of
Jesus, the celestial spirit, was easier to grasp when he was represented as a human teacher. The gospels
were collections of easily-understood tales with obvious moral lessons, and enough dazzling miracle
stories to hold peoples attention. They described an actual, bodily teacher, with realistic settings and
quotable sayings, easy to understand and to remember. But there was a second, hidden meaning.
Selected insiders were taught to interpret the texts in secret, more esoteric ways. The very name Jesus
Christ literally means Anointed Savior its not somebodys name, its a flashing yellow light that hes
a character in an allegorical tale. So a gospel could be read, not as a biography of some philosopher who
taught using parables, but as one long parable, written in coded symbols, which was a memory aid for
the precepts of some long-forgotten Mystery religion, but only for properly initiated members. The
lessons are there in black and white, but can only be understood by those few who have been given the
knowledge to unlock them. In fact this is exactly what the author of Mark reveals in chapter 4, verses 11-
12. This is Jesus talking:

To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything
 comes in parables; in order that they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen,
but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven. [my emphasis]

Thats right, Jesus, as portrayed in Mark, taught in code, because he didnt want everybody who heard it
to be saved, only the ones who knew the secret meanings. Which, of course, didnt get written down
for us otherwise they wouldnt have been secret!

Its interesting and a little sad that the people who are the most devoted readers of the Bible the
Christian fundamentalists take it to be the simple and literal truth. They are reading it in the most
superficial way possible. Theyre carefully, studiously, painstakingly, and laboriously missing the point.
The Bible is a fascinating collection of living documents, a window into the lost worlds of bygone eras,
and it has been tremendously influential in the development of Western culture. Its so much more
useful and interesting to study it that way, rather than to pretend its a simple historical account!

A gospel parable is a tool for conveying a moral lesson. Youre supposed to understand the lesson, not
get hung up on the superficial details of the parable. But even implausible fiction has a way of turning
into history in peoples imaginations. It happens all the time. How many of you know what happened
outside of Roswell, New Mexico in July, 1947? A rancher found some odd sticks and bits of aluminum
foil on his land. There was a dustup about the possibility of a crashed flying disc in the local
newspaper, but it turned out to be the remains of an experimental balloon, and the whole thing was
quickly forgotten. But thirty-one years later, I kid you not, The National Enquirer dug up the story and
breathlessly reported it as a government coverup about a crashed alien spacecraft, and today it is firmly
fixed as such in the imaginations of millions of people. More and more elements accreted to the simple
original story, and now it includes eyewitness reports of otherworldly crash victims and even faked film
of their autopsies, and alien-inspired technologies being developed by shadowy government officials
inside Area 51. And this didnt happen in some benighted corner of history, it happened in literate,
technologically-advanced America in the late 20th century where anybody could have compared this
fantastic tale to real stories about real spacemen! You might expect that a silly, made-up story about a
crashed flying saucer in a source like The National Enquirer should have been worth nothing more than a
chuckle. But sometimes a silly story seems to strike a chord, and it doesnt just persist, but grows!

Weve also seen religions get started from unpromising beginnings. Consider the Mormons. Joseph
Smith, a small-time con man, had been convicted of swindling farmers in western New York by
persuading them that he could find gold buried on their land. After he got out of jail he came up with a
better idea this time, an unfalsifiable one. He announced that an angel came to him in a dream and
told him where to find buried golden tablets, which he conveniently couldnt show to anyone and only
he was able to read, via magic! And millions of people actually believe this even in the 21st century.
Against reason, Mormonism became a major world religion in much less time than Christianity did. We
might have had a Mormon president! By the way, even if you think Mormonism is ridiculous, we have
way more and better evidence for the miracles surrounding it than we have for Jesus, like original
documents, even sworn affidavits. It goes to show that masses of people can believe really weird things,
even on grossly insufficient evidence, and even when there are much more likely explanations for the
poor evidence we actually have like, for example, people make stuff up.
I think Christianity came along at a fertile moment in world history, when the Roman Empire was
collapsing under its own decadence as well as onslaughts from outside, and the gospels promoted a
successful new lifestyle of cooperation and self-sacrifice. It
also appealed to the vast majority of the population, the poor
and powerless it taught them to be content to suffer here The evangelists were fiction-
and now with the promise of pie in the sky when you die. But writers, not observers or
when Christians gained control, power did what power does, eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus.
Each of the four contradicts the
it corrupted. So alternative Christianities were either other in writing his account of
suppressed or forced to adapt to fit the orthodox version, the events of his suffering and
bishops and popes assumed the power to control crucifixion.
information, and the rest, you might say, is history. Porphyry (ca. AD 234-305),
Against the Christians
I think that Jesus started out as a mythical celestial being, and
later was cast as a historical figure to consolidate the
authority of leaders of the emerging religion. The priests and
bishops were in on the deception, which they may have honestly believed was justified to lead the
masses to salvation, but eventually even most of them came to believe the pious fraud. For most of the
last 2,000 years the church has had absolute control over government, education, the writing of history,
and peoples very lives, and the idea of a historical Jesus was part of the orthodoxy question it at your
peril. For centuries its been preached in church and taught in history classes as unassailable fact. It
doesnt help that even today, most scholars of religious studies are, you know, religious I dont think
they approach the question with open minds. The result is that even though it is becoming clear that
there is very little evidence that Jesus was a real person, to doubt him is seen by most people as either
hyperskeptical or even delusional, even among atheists.

I dont mean that theres a conspiracy to keep the idea of a historical Jesus alive. Its just that from
generation to generation, people have been taught that everybody knows that Jesus was real, and
questioning this assumption has not been, shall we say, encouraged. There have actually always been
people who thought Jesus was a made-up character in a story, from antiquity right down to the present.
In the past that kind of talk could get you and your books burned, but now with the internet, those
questions are out in the open, and even poseurs like me can make some very powerful arguments
against the historical Jesus.

So thats my take on what is known as the Christ-myth Theory. As good critical thinkers, you might be
asking, how do the defenders of the historical Jesus respond? Surely they have either all changed their
minds and now agree with me, or they have some good arguments I havent addressed, right? Lets see.

Christians really dont like the Christ-myth Theory, of course. Ill share some of their common objections.
Please understand I am not putting these forward as good arguments. I think you will see the holes in
them before I even give my response. But I assure you, this really is the quality of pushback we get from
Christians.

1. No one would just make up a story like whats in the gospels people who had been on the
 scene where the stories took place would have denounced them as lies. But remember that the
first gospel looks like a tale set long ago, in a country far, far away. There was probably no one
present who could contradict the story, and even if there had been, we dont know how the
gospels were received. For all we know there may have been pushback, but the only writing that
survives is from believers.

2. Jesus disciples were martyred for their beliefs. They must have known Jesus was real because no
one would die for a lie. Well, first of all, its not too far-fetched that someone might end up dead
because of a lie, and of course lots of people have died because they honestly believed
something that wasnt actually true! At any rate, it turns out that the inspiring stories of the
disciples noble deaths come from local legends and church traditions that may have developed
over centuries, and not from reliable historical records. We cant even tell whether Jesus
disciples were real people in the first place, and we certainly dont know how they died.
Remember that big black hole of any solid information about Jesus or any of his followers from
the entire first century? Any proof for these supposed martyrdoms would be in there.

3. The Bible was extensively copied more than any other book people must have known it was
factual or there wouldnt have been such a demand for it. That just means that Christianity
became widely practiced and powerful, which nobody disputes. Are other popular books all true
also? The other biggest sellers of all time are the Koran, the Sayings of Chairman Mao, Don
Quixote, a Chinese dictionary, A Tale of Two Cities, Lord of the Rings, and of course Harry Potter
and the Sorcerers Stone.

4. Lots of smart people believe in Jesus, and smart people are generally right. Anybody can be
wrong about anything, especially in an area where they arent experts, and I submit that nobody
is an expert on God. Smart people can be spectacularly wrong, because they are able to spin
very imaginative justifications for beliefs they are desperate to hold on to. There are lots of
smart Scientologists who are wrong about Xenu, the galactic overlord. If a billion smart
Christians are right about Jesus, then a billion smart Hindus would have to be wrong about Lord
Shiva but if its only about the numbers, why couldnt it be the other way around? And if either
group could be wrong, why cant both groups be wrong? We would know if one group were
right if we had sufficient evidence.

5. Ah, but we have witnesses! How about 1 Corinthians 15, vs. 3-8? This is the apostle Paul in his
own words:

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ
died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he
was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to
Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and
sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he
appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he
appeared also to me.
 Five hundred witnesses! Checkmate, atheist! I probably shouldnt even include this one, because
these appearances are supposed to have taken place after the crucifixion and resurrection. Paul
doesnt actually mention anybody seeing Jesus before he died, and its evidence for the pre-
dead Jesus were trying to find. But I have had Christians use this excerpt from 1 Corinthians as
evidence for a historical Jesus, so I do them the honor of engaging their argument. So lets have
a look. In Pauls testimony, we dont actually have 500 witnesses we only have one guys story
about 500 witnesses. He doesnt even say how he knows this did he talk to each of them, and
count? Is he just repeating a story he heard elsewhere? Could someone possibly have
exaggerated at some point? And even it happened exactly as described, look at what he wrote:
the resurrected Christ appeared to all these people, and finally to Paul himself. But thats only
persuasive if were also thinking of the gospel stories
that say the crucifixion happened to a real person at a
specific time and place. Remember, Paul didnt know One of the saddest lessons of history
those stories. We know what Paul meant when Christ is this: If weve been bamboozled
appeared to him Paul found him in ancient texts: he long enough, we tend to reject any
says he received this in accordance with the evidence of the bamboozle. Were no
longer interested in finding out the
scriptures. Hes not saying Jesus walked out of his grave truth. The bamboozle has captured
and was spotted on the street in Jerusalem Paul had us. Its simply too painful to
no idea that Jesus ever was in Jerusalem! So Paul is acknowledge, even to ourselves, that
saying these five hundred experienced Christ like he did, weve been taken. Once you give a
charlatan power over you, you
in some kind of metaphorical way. Thats not so almost never get it back.
impressive. Ill bet I can find 500 people right here in
Iowa City who would say they have had some kind of Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted
World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
personal encounter with Jesus.

I should also point out that none of the gospels mention

this large-scale appearance of the risen Christ. What the gospel of Mark does say (before various
and contradictory addenda were made some hundreds of years later) is that Jesus first
appeared, not to Cephas, then the twelve et cetera, but to three women and thats it, end of
story. So either Paul or the author of Mark was badly mistaken or both of them were. Or they
made stuff up.

So much for how Christians answer the Christ-mythicists. How about secular historians? I have to say,
their answers really arent any better! What I have seen is that time and again, their rebuttal is
something like The overwhelming majority of experts agree that Jesus was a real person. And thats
true, most of them do say that, but why? They go on, The evidence for a historical Jesus is so abundant
that we shouldnt even have to defend our position. And strangely, most of them stop at that point,
with that assertion. Most historians dismiss Christ-mythicism as crankery and fringe pseudohistory, but
if pressed for their evidence that Jesus was a real person, were back to the same suspect and
contradictory sources that I have already refuted in this brief talk the gospels, the epistles, tradition,
authority in other words, they take it on faith. They also have some obscure and technical arguments
like the criterion of embarrassment and the fact that Paul refers to the apostle James as the brother
of the Lord which I can get into if you want, but I assure you, I can defeat those, too, and Im just
some guy with a hobby! Also, strange as it sounds, some historians rely on sources that dont actually
exist. For example, they say that when Matthew and Luke
were adding to the narrative of Mark, they might have used a
collection of Jesus authentic sayings which has since been The invisible and the nonexistent
lost therefore this missing document is evidence for a look very much alike.
historical Jesus. Well, maybe, but that goes both ways, you
Delos B. McKown, The
know I could stand here and counter their hypothetical
Mythmaker's Magic
documents with my hypothetical documents. But if I did, I
would hope you wouldnt think that I was persuasive! It
really does seem bizarre to me.

We wouldnt be having this kind of controversy over any other demigod from a distant land 2,000 years
ago. Nobody obsesses over the historical Hercules, after all. Jesus gets a pass on the way history is
normally done, even among most secular historians. Its as if theres some psychological reason why, in
spite of all the accumulated evidence and clear-headed modern arguments, they still seem unable to
move from we can be certain to we can't be certain like, they would have to admit that they and
their beloved mentors might have been wrong all along. Or maybe some of them think their careers
would suffer if they published something their universities big donors didnt like.

Well, in the 21st century, the internet has made history a democratic area of study. We all have access to
all the literature, and even to the primary sources like ancient manuscripts. Just as citizen scientists
are making important discoveries like finding undiscovered comets and animal species, there are
citizen historians who are developing interesting new ideas about history, and spreading them around
like never before. Thanks to this, the word is getting out: Jesus is in trouble.

So what have I learned in my efforts to uncover the historical Jesus? Ill be blunt. The whole, vast edifice
that is Christianity looks like it was built on a foundation of myth and misunderstood fiction and a lot
of it is straight-up propaganda. That doesnt mean that its all false, but heres the important bit: it does
mean that we are not justified in believing that any of it is true. Believe it, if you like, on faith, but know
that all the evidence that supports it is either weak, contradictory, or fraudulent. This discovery hasnt
destroyed my faith, because I didnt have any to begin with, but even as an atheist it still leads me to a
sobering conclusion: that there is really no limit to humans capacity to deceive ourselves. It has shown
me that as individuals and as a society we are all capable of believing a falsehood, or at least believing
something without justification, even if its a very big thing and even if we have believed it for a very
long time. And since theres nothing special about me, its a healthy reminder that I can be wrong about
important things, just like everybody else! So I make a conscious effort to follow the advice of a wise
man, Matt Dillahunty, who says that the time to believe something is right after you have sufficient
evidence.

I should probably admit that I have an agenda: There may have been a time in our barbarous past when
religions helped to build and preserve civilization, and that was a good and necessary thing. But that
would have been long ago. I think that in the 21st century religion does a great deal more harm than
good. I want to help to kick one of the supports out from under Christianity, and hurry along the coming
post-Christian era. Thats an end times I can get behind!

But I want to end on a positive note. There are lots of people who think Jesus might not have been the
son of a god, but he was nevertheless a brilliant philosopher and teacher, far ahead of his time. They
would hate to see him get erased from history. There are some beautiful and powerful lessons to be
found in the gospels: Take care of one another. Answer hurtful actions with compassion. Dont store up
wealth like a miser but do whatever you can to help the poor. Dont make a spectacle of yourself praying
in public. These ideas have lit the world, and we would do well to heed them even today. But does it
take a supremely gifted being to have ideas like these? I think its much more inspiring to realize that
they didnt come from a god, or even from an extraordinary person, but from ordinary, anonymous
women and men just like us. Theres no reason why each of us cant also light the world with great
ideas.

Thank you, and I hope you had a happy Easter!

bibliography:

Carrier, Richard, Luke vs. Matthew on the Year of Christs Birth, in Hitler, Homer, Bible, Christ
(Richmond, CA: Philosophy Press, 2014).

On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix
Press, 2014).

Why the Resurrection is Unbelievable, in The Christian Delusion (ed. John W. Loftus; Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 2010).

Coogan, Michael D. (Ed.), The New Oxford Annotated Bible (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Ehrman, Bart D., Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York, NY:
HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).

Fitzgerald, David, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All (Lulu.com, 2010).

Price, Robert M., The Historical Bejeezus: What a Long, Strange Quest Its Been (Cranford, NJ: American
Atheist Press, 2013).

Salm, Ren, NazarethGate: Quack Archaeology, Holy Hoaxes, and the Invented Town of Jesus (Cranford,
NJ: American Atheist Press, 2015).

Zindler, Frank, Cognitive Dissonance: The Ehrman-Zindler Correspondence

(http://www.mythicistpapers.com/zindlercogdis.pdf, 2012)

The Jesus the Jews Never Knew: Sepher Toldoth Yeshu and the Quest of the Historical Jesus in Jewish
Sources (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2003).

Numerous scholarly essays appearing online on the blogs Richard Carrier Blogs (Richard Carrier), Celsus
(Matthew Ferguson), The Mythicist Papers (Ren Salm), and Jesus Never Existed (Kenneth Humphreys).

Numerous episodes of the podcasts The Bible Geek and The Human Bible by Robert M. Price, and
recorded lectures and interviews by Richard Carrier, Earl Doherty, David Fitzgerald, Ralph Lataster, and
Robert M. Price, available on YouTube.