To nearly 2 billion Christians – this really happened, and to a real guy – god or not.
How likely is it that what we were taught about JC (I was raised Catholic) is at all true?
Well, I’m here to tell you that most likely the entire story is just another old religious myth:
None of it is true at all and Jesus probably is just another completely fictional god-character like the thousands of other gods dreamed up by humans over the last 5,000 years or so.
Let that sink in – Jesus, like every other god ever believed in by humans – didn’t exist.
He and his exploits are as made up as Osiris, Thor, Wodin, Allah, Ganesh, etc., etc., etc. And not just that he wasn’t a god but like all the others he wasn’t a real guy at all. JC is completely made up.
I didn’t always think this.
I assumed he was a real guy: just another Hebrew prophet, predicting end times, preaching turn the other cheek and such, maybe crucified by the Romans, but the god-stuff: the Virgin Birth, the miracles, resurrection, ascension, return at the end of the world and all that jazz was all mythology that grew up around him – it was all pure fiction – but some guy named JC probably existed: but I never really looked into it.
However, in the last decade or so, Ive read 1/2 dozen books on the subject: the Historicity of Jesus that is, and read countless articles, watched YT videos from a dozen or so scholars who have researched the Bible, the New Testament especially, and now I give it a real high probability that Jesus never existed anymore than the Buddha was born out of a slit in his mother’s side, or that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse. Whether Mohammad or the Buddha were real people is in question as well, but those are both subjects of later essays.
So, its all made up? Yeah, the evidence or lack thereof, really points in that direction.
Here’s some reasons off the top of my head from memory, without consulting all the sources Ill refer to here below.
The ONLY info we have on this Jesus character allegedly being a real person is from the four Gospels in the New Testament.
The epistles of Paul say nothing about him being a real guy, walking around on earth, doing and saying things. Paul is adamant that his only knowledge of Jesus is drawn from scripture and Paul’s own visions of a spiritual Jesus. And Paul’s Epistles (half of which are forged in his name) predate the Gospels by decades, written sometime around 50 AD.
So the first words written about this Jesus guy say nothing about anything he said or did: no sayings, no miracles, no preaching, no triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, no recruiting fisherman or walking on water, no Sermon on the Mount, no feeding of thousands with a basket of bread and a few fishes, no attack on the moneychangers -NONE of it…is in the 1st accounts we have of Jesus.
Paul says nothing of any of JC’s many alleged deeds found throughout the later Gospels. How odd is that? The first guy to write had plenty of occasions in his letters where using JC’s own words, teachings, deeds would have bolstered his arguments – but we get nothing about JC’s supposed 3 years of activity described in the 4 Gospels – all written decades later.
AND, like the Gospel writers – whoever they were – Paul never met him either.
In fact we HAVE NO EYEWITNESS accounts of Jesus anywhere in the Bible or outside. NONE.
Not only did JC never write anything himself, nobody who might have met him wrote ANYTHING about him.
We will return to Paul later.
Lets talk about the Gospel according to somebody named Mark – the first Gospel written.
Like the other Gospels, it was written completely anonymously. We do not know who wrote the Gospel attributed to Mark. All the manuscripts we have – make no mention of who the author was. It was named decades later by a church father – and whoever “Mark” was, he never met Jesus either.
Mark wrote his Gospel around 70 AD. as he mentions the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. Mark is writing in Greek and messes up the geography of Palestine and is unaware of many of the Jewish customs of the time. He is not someone who could have hung around Jesus or his disciples. They would have spoken Aramaic, not Greek, and would have been unable to read or write. Roughly 1% of the population in the first century AD could read at all, even fewer could write and fewer still could craft a complex narrative full of clever and learned literary devices as in this first Gospel. It is a really well -crafted, complex piece of literature – and written by a well-educated person writing from a distance. Mark reads like well-crafted fiction, not a historical account.
The image above depicts the “Marcan Priority” hypothesis that the Gospel of Mark came first with Matthew and Luke being rewrites of Mark, even corrections of Mark’s mistakes in citing OT scripture. Of the 600+ verses in Mark, around 600 appear verbatim in Matthew and 300+ appear in Luke.
Mark’s Gospel starts with JC as an adult being baptized by John the Baptist. He has no Christmas story – no wise men, no star, no shepherds, no manger, no Virgin Birth – ONLY Luke and Matthew, written later than Mark or Paul tell us about the birth of Jesus, a “virgin” birth at that.
Paul and Mark (and John) only know JC was born of a woman, nothing about a supposed god-induced miraculous virgin birth (a common theme in mythology then: special, impossible, birth circumstances claimed for those born godly). They tell us nothing about the birth of Jesus.
And the 2 Christmas stories which are hopelessly contradictory don’t show up until 50 years or more after JC’s alleged death on a cross. Worse still, even though for Christians this is the most important event in human history: no birth of Jesus then no crucifixion, no resurrection, no saving us all from sin, – 3 of the writers who tell us about JC know absolutely nothing about it – and in the stories from the 2 Gospel writers who spin their own contradictory stories about it – we have NO IDEA when it actually happened: not the day, not the year, not the time of year.
DEC 25th was adopted later in church history, coinciding with and adopted from pagan winter solstice festivals. We have NO EVIDENCE that Jesus was born on our Christmas Day. This is such a typical example of what scholars call “syncretism” – where religions easily adopt one anothers features and blend them seamlessly into their own narratives. Another clue that this is mythology in the making.
Matthew says it was during the reign of King Herod – who died in 4 BC., and Luke says it was during a Roman census (which itself has really sketchy claims about it’s details) which matches up to a census by a Roman Procurator (Quirinius) around 6 AD.
SO we have ten year discrepancy between the only 2 Gospels that describe JC’s birth of when this momentous event might have hapened
Sure sounds like mythology to me.
And it gets worse.
In Luke its the shepherd boys told by an angel that JC is born, in Matthew its the Wise Men (Magi) following the Star…Luke tells us nothing of Wise Men or the famous Star of Bethlehem . As but another clue to all this being mythology, nowhere does Matthew mention exactly THREE Wise Men – that is but another later legendary addition that has become an integral, unquestioned part of the story that we all learn as Christians.
The above Nativity Scene many Christian households display at Xmas never happened – it is a composite of the 2 stories in Luke and Matthew, the shepherds and the Magi aren’t in both stories. IF they were there at all – they certainly were never there together. They shepherds and Magi are not both in either Gospel account, and the two groups visiting baby Jesus, would have been there a decade apart as well. This is myth.
This is so typical of what we are taught in Christian stories- sort of a composite, mish-mosh summary of various Bible accounts. I especially love it when some modern versions include Santa kneeling there piously with the Nativity grouping – people laugh that its silly – but it is truly no more fictitious than the shepherds being there with the Wise Men among the creche-crowd.
The Resurrection stories are even worse.
Paul is said to claim in Acts that JC was hanged, not crucified…let that one sink in…
“How did the Hell did that get in there?”… unnoticed, except by scholars, who, unlike the average Christian, actually READ the damn book. That’s just another clue it is ALL made up. Leaving that little oddity aside for now, in comparing all the other accounts of the Resurrection in Paul, the four Gospels and Acts: we will start with Mark, in which the earliest manuscripts of Mark, the first book to even tell a Jesus life and crucifixion story, end at 16:8 saying:
“…and they told no-one…”
The women visited the tomb and were afraid and left…and that’s it.
End of story.
This very first Gospel written ends right there as they leave the empty tomb: no Resurrection, no Pentecost, no Ascension, nothing. Only later do we get Resurrection stories and they all contradict one another. And later manuscripts of Mark over the centuries accumulated 6-7 different endings tacked on after chapter 16, verse 8 – endings which agree in various details with the different accounts in the later Gospels. Who visited the tomb, who they told, how long JC hung around, who he visited before the Ascension, and from where he ascended into Heaven – all the Gospel and Acts accounts tell utterly different stories.
I chronicled these discrepancies in detail HERE. if you’d like to review them. It is quite ridiculous and the Christian apologists have no good response for the many contradictions in Paul, the 4 Gospels and Acts.
THIS IS MYTHOLOGY.
WE HAVE NO EYEWITNESSES
WE HAVE FANTASTICAL AND CONTRADICTORY ACCOUNTS OF HIS LIFE AND DEATH
NO ONE THAT WROTE ABOUT JC WAS THERE OR EVER MET OR SAW HIM…
WE HAVE ZERO CORROBORATION OUTSIDE THE BIBLE FOR ANYTHING JC IS SAID TO HAVE SAID OR DONE.
If Jesus existed and did any of the may fantastic things he was described as doing – somebody should have noticed.
I didn’t realize until I researched the Historicity of JC that the 1st century AD throughout the Mediterranean area of the Roman Empire is actually well-documented by dozens of historians and writers. Jesus if he was at all as famous (or infamous) as the Gospel writers would have you believe, even only locally in Palestine or just Jerusalem, could have easily been written about by many who chronicled the events of the day. And there is nothing about him – crickets. And we have stories of lots of lesser preachers and prophets of the day – but nothing about Jesus Christ.
No Roman records, no letters from people that could have seen him, known him, no historians noted any of his alleged deeds. One would think if he truly did enter Jerusalem in triumph as King of the Jews – the Romans surely would have taken note of it, and if he really did draw crowds – much of the city came out to greet him – someone would have chronicled such an event. Especially his smashing of the moneychangers in the Temple Square – the Roman soldiers posted all over it would have surely seen him and responded – and vigorously!
But we get nothing. It is like such things never happened. Not to mention all his alleged public miracle, healing the sick, raising the dead – nobody ever recorded it? How implausible is all of this?
Another clue that the Temple-moneychanger event is pure fiction is that the 3 earlier Gospel writers place his destruction of the money changer tables at the very end of his ministry as a prelude, a reason for his arrest and crucifixion, yet the very last Gospel written, again decades after the others – John – places it at the very beginning of his 3 year ministry.
This is mythology. This is not recording of historical events by eyewitnesses. This is deliberate restructuring of legendary stories to fit a narrative by people who werent there and removed from the time of alleged events by decades. John has JC crucified like the Passover sacrificial lamb, on the day BEFORE Passover – on a different day than the other 3 Gospels who say it was ON Passover.
John doesn’t use the money-changer event to trigger JC’s arrest and crucifixion – he is telling a whole other version of the story and re-structures it and embellishes it as he chooses.
John also is not one guy – scholarly analysis concludes there are 3 different authors whose work is compiled into what we know as the Gospel according to John. And the water into wine miracle at the wedding at Cana only appears in John, the last Gospel written – decades after Paul and the 3 earlier Gospels. How come the previous New Testament authors never heard of this event supposedly passed down in oral histories from the time JC is alleged to have lived and died? Because John – whoever they are – made it up. He (they) even tell you at the beginning of the Gospel he is out to convince us about JC due to all the signs of who he really is. John just adds more signs…that no-one previously writing about JC has ever heard of.
Why does this very prominent miracle only show up nearly 100 years later – and nobody else for decades ever reported it?
(Hint: “Because it’s ALL bullshit“).
Interesting and well-crafted; significant literary fiction, (at least in Western cultures) – but bullshit nonetheless.
Another of the classic tells that this is just fiction is in Mark and his depiction of JC in the Garden of Gethsemane. The apostles are asleep and Jesus is ALL ALONE in the garden yet our narrator Mark tells us what JC was doing, saying, thinking, and feeling at the time – BUT MARK TELL US NOBODY WAS THERE!!
Who exactly was with Him to witness what He was going through, dutifully record it, and then tell us the story? Mark has this omniscient narrator gods-eye view of what JC all alone was experiencing – when he wasnt there and never met Jesus to tell him what He went through, so Mark could write it down and tell us all about it.
THIS IS FICTION, FOLKS.
Give it up.
We were all unknowingly conned by well-meaning people, who were conned in their time as well as cognitively immature and emotionally vulnerable children (its a scam all the way down – one that ALL religions rely on) to believe that this mythology is just so unquestionably true. It is like we retain that cognitive immaturity when it comes to religious belief.
All religions rely on this child indoctrination and later cultural inertia: that whole communities un-wittingly accept religious myths to be true – and never think it through how utterly absurd their own beliefs are. It is so easy for us humans to recognize how silly and absurd other religions are. Everybody else’s religion is just made up mythology, but not mine, mine is the true religion, the right one, the only one that’s true.
Back to Paul as a real piece of evidence that Jesus and his exploits are all fictional:
Paul knows nothing of JC’s alleged activities: his birth, the virgin birth, the preaching, travels, recruiting disciples, the miracles, the sayings, his passion and crucifixion. The very first person to tell the world (or at least one tiny little corner of it) about JC says absolutely nothing about anything he said or did as described voluminously and all too often contradictory and fantastically in the four Gospels that appeared decades after Paul. Paul never met Jesus and is adamant that he got his knowledge of JC from no man: ONLY through his own visions and in Scripture.
So Paul evidently never heard all the oral histories that the later Gospel writers must have heard in order to write their accounts of Jesus. Since no-one besides Paul, and including the later Gospel writers ever met JC or witnessed anything that allegedly happened to him, they must have gotten their info from these oral histories passed down from the original eyewitnesses who did – if Jesus was an actual person who did ANY of these things. This is the explanation that Christian apologists for truth of the Gospel stories and/or at least the existence of guy named Jesus use to explain how the Gospels were written decades after the fact by people who never met him.
But somehow Paul, despite his extensive travels and intimate involvement with multiple early Christian groups – just never heard ANY of the exploits of Jesus Christ as supposedly passed down over decades by word of mouth, by early Christians…
OR –
Maybe Paul didnt know of those stories because they hadnt been made up yet.
We don’t get taught this stuff in Vacation Bible School or in Catechism (my Catholic education).
Last, but not least, are all the obviously fantastical, unrealistic elements sprinkled throughout the New Testament accounts of JC, that didn’t, couldn’t have happened, yet we are told that at least some of it was true and that a real Jesus person did exist. How unreliable are these unknown authors and how likely is it any of this is true?
Matthew is especially notorious for embellishing the stories first appearing in Mark. He has an earthquake roll back the stone, an angel appearing, the guards apparently fainting as the women visit the empty tomb: the temple curtain torn in half and rocks split when JC died on the cross and people rose out of their graves all over Jerusalem. Really? Zombies climbing out of their graves in Jerusalem surely would have caught someone’s eye, yes? Luke has the the sun darkening for 3 hours at JC’s death – nobody noticed that either.
This is fiction: written by people who embellished the details every which way and who wrote decades after the alleged events AND NEVER MET THE MAN THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT. No-one did.
Some scholars say well, yes, the Gospel’s details are obviously made up to tell a story, but there really was a guy. There is a kernel of truth in the stories that JC was another apocalyptic preacher roaming around Jerusalem, like many others that were chronicled in early histories or other texts of the early Hebrews…he existed even if everything about him that is fantastical, unlikely, and metaphorical didnt actually happen. He was supposedly famous and triumphant and rebellious and influential – but we have no evidence whatsoever of him being a real person from any source – not even Paul, the first one to write about him. Many other preachers who exhibited more typical, even comparatively mundane preacher behaviors were written about by historians of the time, but tellingly NOT the JC of the New Testament.
So to sum up a bit.
Paul, the first writer to tell about Jesus knows nothing of any of his exploits as a person on earth as chronicled in the later Gospels.
Paul only tells us of a spiritual god.
JC never wrote anything himself, and is completely unknown to all 1st century historians and writers.
There are no eyewitness accounts of JC in the Bible or anywhere else. Nobody ever met him, none of these writers ever knew him.
The Gospel accounts are full of improbable, fantastical, and contradictory details.
The fantastical elements of the JC story are added to and embellished with each later Gospel.
With the Gospel stories being so unreliable and contradictory, how can we believe any of what they say, or that somehow they were at least based on a real guy when the earliest writer, Paul doesn’t ever speak of such a person who actually lived on earth, and no other source outside the Bible even uses the name Jesus Christ, or reports any of his alleged deeds?
Jesus being a real person at all appears to be just another Gospel embellishment to the story of a god-character being said to have spent time on earth.
There is SO much more. I’m just recalling a sampling of what Ive learned in reading about the topic: a small sampling of the voluminous evidence and reasoning for JC being just another fictional god.
There are excellent books on the subject of JC’s Historicity, here’s the best two I suggest to get started with:
1. I recommend NAILED by David Fitzgerald as a first entry into the topic.
2. For the full-blown peer-reviewed treatment that draws on over 1,000 Biblical scholar references, it is Richard Carrier’s – On the Historicity of Jesus.
You wont find a deeper dive and more convincing treatment than this. This is what scholarship is all about.
BOTH books are available on Amazon.
There’s more by both of these and other authors on the subject but just in reading these two you might realize the probability of not merely the details of JC’s alleged life and death being rather low, but the likelihood of his existence at all is just as small.
Jesus was most likely just another fictional god-character – just like any other of the thousands imagined and fervently believed in by humans in the last 5,000 year of complex civilization and elaborate religious mythologies.
For me all the evidence as laid out in these two books just nails it (sorry, it was there, I HAD to take it).
Lastly, just the abject silliness and absurdity of the entire story we are led to believe is what really strikes me. It is nuts:
“Believing in your own hallucinations is called Insanity – Believing in other’s hallucinations is called Religion!”
XIANSANITY in a nutshell:
“God had to make Himself be born so He could kill Himself to save us all from His Eternal Torment for a sin we didn’t commit, that He orchestrated long before we were born – all to prove how much He really, really, loves us – and we must love Him back – OR ELSE”
We can do better than this. Let’s stop indoctrinating children into any of this nonsense.
end religion now
(2)
