Our grandson Dakota, who is visiting us at the same time as his parents Jeff and Carol, went to the supermarket this morning to buy some beer because, according to him, “What better way to celebrate Jesus’ birthday?”
Hmmmm, I think the 30-year-old fellow was asleep in Sunday school when their teacher talked about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection back in the day.
On the other hand, perhaps Dakota has moved on from religion like many of his generation and was just making a cynical comment. I hope it was the latter.
I am not religious in any way, despite being “born again” in my teens when I was a member of Los Angeles Free Methodist Church. My Christian period was short-lived, as I noticed more and more the phoniness of the “true believers” when they left church and resumed their every day lives. Maybe, since the bad behavior of these folks was “forgiven” (and my Catholic friends got their sins forgiven each Sunday!), they considered moral behavior optional.
This way of living just didn’t sit right with me, a youngster who was taught right and wrong by my parents… who were quite serious about it. They, too, weren’t religious at all, but a finer pair of parents one would be hard to find.
It is perhaps a coincidence that today, Easter Sunday, I finished reading a book about the Bible. I have always been interested in the subject and, in fact, wrote a book of my own about religious belief over a decade ago. It was a compilation of stuff learned over the years on Wikipedia, so it wasn’t primary research and, quite frankly, not scholarly… I freely plagiarized stuff but admitted as much.
The 800-page tome that I just finished reading, On The Historicity of Jesus, is a very scholarly review of all the evidence, historical and biblical, regarding the founding of Christianity. The author, Richard Carrier, is a world-renowned PhD. in history and biblical studies. In his book, Carrier carefully reviews what is known and what is speculated and measures this information in terms of its historical or mythical genesis to ultimately derive a mathematical probability on the question: Did the Jesus Christ person really exist in human form?
Like the founders of most religions, Jesus left no writings, no personal effects, no bones… no nada. He was here on Earth, but left no trace whatsoever, as did his parents Joseph and Mary. People that lived at that time in Palestine didn’t know them either. Jesus became famous a century or so after he was supposedly famous.
Curious indeed.
Dr. Carrier ultimately concludes that the Jesus Christ we all know and love from the Gospels was likely a literary construct rather than a God Man who briefly lived among human beings on Planet Earth.
One reason for this conclusion, although certainly not the only one, is that the morphing of standard Judaism into Jesus Christ cults long preceded the development of the Gospel myths that open the New Testament with stories of Jesus’s birth, ministry, death and resurrection. Those fables are completely without factual basis but serve the purpose of selling the new and improved Judaism (Christianity) to the masses.
The earliest “apostles” of this religion were disillusioned Jewish priests who were re-fashioning Judaism to explain why the Temple-focused, blood sacrifice and atonement Hebrew theology didn’t jive with God’s new plan (i.e. his “new Covenant”) with the Jewish-Christians. Hence, the Jewish-Christian cults (there were many of them experimenting with various interpretations of God’s manifestations and intent toward believers) that the self-appointed “Apostle Paul” described in his Epistles… groups of believers that Paul labored to indoctrinate into his version of the “new” Judaism. Paul, and others like him (all Jewish clergymen), were designing the new approach to God “on the fly” in the first half of the first century A.D. in many corners of the Middle East.
Of course, years weren’t denoted A.D. until centuries later (, as A.D. is an abbreviation of the Latin “anno domini” which means “the year of our Lord”). Thus, 1 A.D. would be the year that the God Man “Jesus Christ” was supposedly born. That would be the same Jesus who was allegedly born of a virgin, walked the earth, performed miracles, gave sermons, was crucified by the Romans, and arose from death after three days. All of the Jesus fable happened in about thirty years, thus during the very period that the earliest Jesus Christ “apostles” like Paul were out and about, teaching the new versions of Judaism that would ultimately be melded into Christianity.
For the record, the name Jesus in Judaism means “God is salvation”, while Christ means “anointed one”. In Judaism, the anointed one was prophesied to be the “Messiah”, God’s messenger who would deliver the Jews from their oppressors, of which they had many over the eons.
The odd thing about this critical period in Christianity is that no one living at the time of Jesus’ alleged life ever noticed that he was conducting his Godly business in Palestine. That included every religious and historical writer of the time who operated in the “Holy Lands”. Not one word was put to paper (papyrus) about the miracles, the Sermon on the Mount, walking on water, healing lepers, being crucified, or rising from the dead and appearing in front of 500 witnesses.
Zero attention was paid to the supposed Son of God, the Messiah who had come to deliver the Jewish people from oppression. It was as if he was invisible (or, more likely, not there at all). His allegedly ministry was, seemingly, like the New Coke: a product that no none was interested in.
At that time in Middle East history, the Romans occupied Palestine, the latest in a long line of great empires that had tormented the Hebrew people in God’s “promised land”.
The earliest Christian cult writers were ex-Jewish priests like Paul, who were kicking around theological ideas in the very timeframe that Jesus was supposed to have lived. Those original “apostles”)” would have known if a real Jesus was walking among them… but they never mention any of His works on earth. Paul, the earliest writer (whose Epistles date to about 60 A.D., or about thirty years after Jesus’ supposed death), admittedly never met the Man God. Instead, his teachings imply a celestial Jesus, not a once-human Jesus, who imparted his new version of Judaism to Paul through “revelation”… i.e. a dream, a hallucination, a vision… which was the standard way that famous Jewish religious figures ostensibly communicated with the Almighty and his angels.
In A.D. 69, Roman armies put down the latest Jewish uprising in Palestine and razed the Temple of Jerusalem, the most holy place in the Jewish religion, to the ground. Jews were devastated and disillusioned once again. (The New Testament book of “Revelation” was written by a very bitter Jewish theologian who hallucinated some colorful “payback” against those nasty Romans and other Devil’s spawn, culminating in heavenly rewards for the true-believers.)
The Gospels (of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were Jesus myths cobbled together over a period of time estimated from 90 A. D. to 125 A.D., ostensibly to put a face to the new religion. Most of what is in those Gospels can be traced to the offerings of Mark; the others simply cribbed the basic yarn from his work and added some spicy details. No one knows who the Gospel writers were, but it is universally believed among biblical scholars that none of the writers ever met the Jesus Christ character that every Christian swears to “know” (because of the fiction of the New Testament).
So, sixty to ninety years after a supposed God Man was murdered by the Romans (an event unnoticed by the Roman themselves and Jewish historians in Palestine), a multitude of Jesus Christ myths were produced to give a public face to the new Christian religious offering. This marketing ploy is not dissimilar to the invention of the “Betty Crocker” character in the 1950’s to help sell cake mixes.
Eventually, as many as thirty Gospels, all fantastical stories about the mythical Jesus, were vetted by the developing Christian church clergy until only four “official” fables survived… the ones that were most similar in story line and message imparted. This “canon”, or the official backstory of the Christian religion, was approved by the Church in the early 4th century, approximately 300 years after Jesus’ alleged ministry in Palestine.
Mythmaking was standard issue for God-making in ancient times: the Egyptians, the Jews, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Romans all had religions which featured elaborate myths associated with their gods. It was how very complicated theological matters were communicated to the average man, who was typically not highly educated. “Keep it simple, stupid!” was the motto of the clergy in those days. The Old Testament (the fantastic story of Creation, Adam and Eve, the Flood, the parting of the Red Sea, Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, etc., is unanimously believed by biblical scholars to be myth, not factual in any way.
Two things are obvious about the Gospel writers: (1) They were not alive during Jesus’ alleged lifetime on earth; and, (2) they were obviously well-versed in Old Testament prophesy and were skilled writers, especially the “Mark” fellow. These writers were what we now might call “Madison Avenue” types, the clever marketing folks in New York who can effortlessly sell ice boxes to Eskimos.
The obvious “elephant in the room” is the question of how Gospel writers, who lived after Jesus’ alleged lifetime and never met the guy, were able to record for posterity every word He spoke in every sermon he gave, even the extremely lengthy Sermon on the Mount. There were no tape recorders or cell phones back then to document the speeches. So, how was it that these unknown authors, who did not live in Jesus’ time period and who never met him personally, were able to document every word he spoke?
Obviously, they were incapable of this.
However, theologians sequestered in a monesteries for decades with nothing to do except devise myths could easily have come up with the elegant prose that ties closely to the prophesy of Old Testament heroes. It is very apparent, from reading the “new” Testament that the writers were very knowledgeable in the Old Testament, particularly the prophecies about the Messiah that would soon come to rescue them.
Why has the Jesus Christ myth resonated with so many people? Probably because the overall message is uplifting and promises salvation of the soul plus Heavenly rewards to the true believer. One cannot believe something if he or she doesn’t want to believe. The Passion Play and Jesus’ teachings are something that people want to believe… so they do, much like a child “believing” in Santa Claus because it’s his best interest to do so.
And then there’s the threat: if you do not believe, you’re going to roast in Hell.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, “Give me a child until age 7 and I will give you the man.” This is the rationale for “Sunday school”, baptisms and parochial education; basically, to indoctrinate (“brainwash”) youngsters in the Jesus myth and Church theology.
Children are baptized and confirmed before they grow pubic hair, already indoctrinated to be an obedient servants of the Church before they can even think rationally. They “know” the biblical Jesus because they have been told over and over that he was a real guy, and they have learned not to argue with their priest, pastor, minister or God-fearing parents. Supposedly, the parish priest is the expert that God talks to… he is God’s representative here on Earth. And, if one wants to “go to Heaven”, then he needs to attend church on Sunday and provide a generous tithe so that the work of the Lord can be accomplished.
Alas, church is where the endless propaganda campaign continues in the form of sermons and homilies.
All of that features the well-known Gospel fables, which have as much factual basis as the stories of Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the faked Moon landing, and the “stolen” election of 2020. The smell of deceit is overwhelming to those whose minds have not been corrupted.
I feel sorry for the committed Christians who proudly say, “Jesus said it. I believe it. That settles it.”
They have no idea.