The following passages in the Book of Daniel are some of Christian’s favorites to prophecy the coming of Jesus. By using a few mistranslations and misplaced punctuation, they end up with a very clever and amazing attempt to place Jesus in the Hebrew Bible.
These are the quotes from the New Testament:
"Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon the holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation of iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and sixty two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troubled times. And after sixty two weeks shall the Messiah be cut off, but not for himself, and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolation’s are determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week, and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even unto the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate." Daniel 9:24-27
The Christian interpretation showing all the mathematics follow:
The Artaxerxes of Nehemiah 2:1 rose to power in 465 BCE, and so, according to Nehemiah 2:1, the commandment to restore Jerusalem began 20 years later, i.e., 445 BCE.
Now, since they claim that a Biblical year had 360 days, they multiply 360 by 483 (69 weeks equals 69 periods of seven years--69 X 7 = 483 years). This equals 173,880 days.
To change from Biblical years to our solar years, they divide 173,880 days by 365 1/4; this equals 476 years. Add 476 years to 445 BCE and you will get 31 CE.
Actually, they add a few days, and it ends up around 32 CE, which is just when they claim that Jesus was crucified. Thus, Daniel 9:25, according to the Christians when discussing the Messiah, is referring to Jesus; saying that he will be "cut off” i.e., crucified.
Sounds reasonable, but is it accurate? There are really many difficulties (errors) with this interpretation, which is why Jews were never impressed with it. The first problem is that the Christians mistranslated the main verse (25). The way Christians read it is that after seven weeks and sixty two weeks, the Messiah will come; i.e., after 69 weeks. The obvious question is why didn't Daniel simply write 69 weeks, instead of writing 7 plus 62. The answer is that they mistranslated the verse. If you translate it correctly, that question disappears. Here is the correct translation.
Know and discern that from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem unto one anointed, a prince, shall be seven weeks; and for sixty two weeks shall it be built again with streets and moats, but in troublesome times. Note the main difference―not that it will take 69 weeks before the Messiah will come, but rather a mere 7 weeks. If you study this in the original Hebrew, this should be quite clear. Thus, the translation by itself answers the above question of why not simply write 69, instead of 7 plus 62.
According to the correct translation, the anointed one will come after 7 weeks; the city will remain built for 62 weeks, and after the 62 weeks, (verse 26) it will be destroyed. The Christian translation cannot explain why Daniel had to mention the first seven weeks, and in fact, it is a mistranslation. Thus, if they show you their version of the Bible, open the
original and show them the difference.
Another major difficulty is that according to the simple, untwisted translation of verse 26, two events were to occur after the 62 weeks—the anointed one would be cut off, and the city and the sanctuary would be destroyed. As you know, Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD, which is 38 years after the death of Jesus―more than five "weeks" off. There is no
acceptable answer for these missing five weeks according to the Christian interpretation.
Another difficulty is that the Jewish year is not really 360 days long. While the months are based on the lunar patterns, the years must coincide with the solar system. Simply study the Jewish calendar. You will see that since the solar year exceeds the lunar year by around 11 days, there will be an extra month added around every three years. Thus 445 BCE plus 483 years (69 X 7) ends up 38 CE, and by then everyone admits that Jesus was already dead.
Another difficulty is that Christians, for lack of a better answer, claim that the 70th week will take place when Jesus returns in his second coming as a king. The problem was caused because Daniel mentioned a total of 70 weeks, and then he specified 7 plus 62, leaving one remaining. The Christians say that the first 69 weeks were consecutive, then there is at least a 1,900 year gap, and sooner or later the 70th week will occur. This is obviously a very forced explanation, born of desperation. Remember, Christian apologetics is a thriving industry.
There is one other important point that should be reviewed. On examining the other books of the Bible, it becomes quite apparent that Daniel is referring to Cyrus, of Persia, and not Jesus. In Jeremiah 25:11-12, the word of God clearly states that the Babylonian exile will last for only 70 years. In Ezra 1: 1, it says that "Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom...saying...Whosoever there is among you of all His people, let him go to Jerusalem, and build the house of the Lord..." In Isaiah 45:1, it says, "Thus saith the Lord to his anointed (messiah/moshiach), to Cyrus..." Thus, Isaiah, in the name of God, calls Cyrus an anointed one, and Ezra discusses how Cyrus fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah. Since Daniel lived after Isaiah and Jeremiah, but before the period of Ezra, it is most reasonable and probable to affirm that the anointed one that he referred to in Daniel 9:25 is Cyrus, and not Jesus.
The reason why a Christian would have difficulty understanding this is because the compiler of the King James Bible was shrewd and deceptive. In the original Hebrew, both Daniel 9:25 and Isaiah 45:1 use the exact same word―"moshiach." However, in the Christian version of the Old Testament the word," moshiach," is translated in Isaiah 45:1 as "anointed" whereas in Daniel 9:25, the same Hebrew word is translated as "the Messiah." (the correct translation of "Moshiach" is "an anointed one.") This deceptive translating makes it virtually impossible for the innocent reader who does not know Hebrew to discern the truth.
In addition, the compiler of the Christian Bible did another clever maneuver. The Christian Bible arranges the sequence of the various books of the Bible in a peculiar manner: the Pentateuch, Samuel, Chronicles, then Ezra, and then Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and then Daniel. (In the Jewish Bible, Ezra follows all of the above.) The reason for placing Ezra in the Christian Bible before Isaiah, and before Psalms, Proverbs, etc., even though Ezra lived long after those books were written is presumably to fool the reader of the Christian Bible. Had the reader read Ezra immediately after Daniel, which is the correct chronological location, the reader would immediately recognize that Ezra 1:1 and Daniel 9:25 refer to Cyrus, and not Jesus
O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive! [Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, A Tale of Flodden Field (1855), xvii]
DANIEL AND THE ANOINTED ONE
Hugh Fogelman
FOUR stories come out of Daniel Chapter 9 as told in the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible (which is much different than the King James Version of the Christian Bible:
FIRST ― Daniel was prophesying about the period before the destruction of the Second Temple when he wrote; “Seventy septets have been decreed upon your people and upon your holy city to terminate transgressions (9:24). The Sages say it is a phrase referring to seventy times seven years, or 490 years, referring to the seventy years of exile that passed from the “Destruction of the First Temple” until this vision, and the entire 430-year period of the “Second Temple” (Rashi).
SECOND ― Daniel 9:25-27 reads; “And you should know and comprehend: From the emergence of the word to return and build Jerusalem until an anointed prince will be seven weeks; and for sixty two weeks it will be rebuilt, street and moat, but in troubled times. And after the sixty two weeks an anointed one will be cut off and will be no more, the people of the prince who comes will destroy the city and the Sanctuary, but his end shall come like a flood. Until the end of a war, desolation is decreed! He will strengthen a covenant with the great ones one week; and for half of the week he will abolish the sacrifice and offering, and upon soaring heights will the mute abominations be, until extermination as decreed will pour down upon the abomination.” Please pay particular attention to the semicolon between the 7 weeks and the 62 weeks.
However, in the King James Version of the Hebrew Bible, Daniel 9:25 says:
25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. (NOTICE: there is no semicolon, just a comma – WHY?)
I wonder who tampered with the KJV? The original 1611 edition of the KJV correctly separates the seven weeks from the 62 weeks WITH A SEMICOLON.
The current KJV, however, deceptively compresses these two time periods into one. By revising the KJV and altering the punctuation they completely changed the message of the angel Gabriel’s prophecy. (This is nothing new in Christian writings). By combining “seven weeks” with “62 weeks” into ONE period of 69 weeks, Christian translators advance the idea in the mind of their readers that there is one messiah (anointed ones) spoken, instead of the correct message of TWO. All Jewish kings, priests, judges and anyone who rules were “anointed.”
THIRD ― Isaiah 44:28 & 45:1-3; Ezra 1:1-3 and 11 Chronicles 36:21-23 all tell us how this anointed one is by name ― Cyrus, the messiah, who did indeed start to rebuild the Second Temple. This fact can never be disputed. Until 1885, however, the KJV correctly translated this verse so as to reflect the two anointed ones spoken of by the angel. The first anointed ruler (Cyrus) who arises after “seven weeks” and a second one who is anointed and removed after a subsequent “62 weeks,” or 434 years―the High Priest.
The sages say the “septets” refer to full seven-year periods. The prince of this verse is Cyrus, who gave permission to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. He ascended to the throne fifty-two years (seven full septets plus three years) after the exile had begun. From then until the second destruction of Jerusalem was 438 years, or sixty-two septets and four years (Rashi).
FOURTH ― The Talmud and Roman historians say Vitellius, governor of Syria, removed both Pilate and Caiaphas from office in around year 36 CE. Caiaphas was the Jewish High Priest, a Sadducees, the anointed one could have been the one Daniel wrote about, saying, “Then after the sixty-two septets (weeks), the anointed one will be cut off and will exist no longer,”and by him being removed from office, he was indeed “cut off” and his Priesthood “existed no longer.”
The Sages explain that Daniel could also have been talking about “the anointed one” being Agrippa, the last Jewish king, at the end of the Second Temple Era. After his death, the prince of this verse, the Roman Titus, would command the destruction of the Second Temple, which we all know will not be rebuilt until after the War of Gog and Magog, in Messianic times. Daniel 9:26 (Rashi)
FINALLY and most important, Jesus never qualified to be the Jewish messiah according to what the book Christianity holds as being AUTHORITY, the Hebrew Bible. So, whether or not Jesus was the anointed one spoken by Daniel is not important or even the issue. Why not? Because Jesus was NEVER anointed according to Jewish Biblical standards of how a king is anointed, and Jesus never came from the tribe of Judah, and was not from David’s son Solomon, as the prophets claimed from whom the messiah will come. So to Judaism and the Hebrew B ible, this is all irreverent.
Daniel 9:25-27
Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times
And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.’
And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
So, whenever some Christian evangelist claims he can show something from Daniel, ask him why the New Testament KJV translates “moshiach” 37 places in the Jewish bible as "anointed," (that is the proper translation); but in Daniel the KJV does not translate moshiach at all. Instead it transliterates it to messiah, with the “capital M.”
Why does the Christian bible change Daniel’s message from an anointed one to THE MESSIAH (HaMoshiach)? Does Christianity have to change the SOURCE Bible in order for their religion to be true?
Showing posts with label Christ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christ. Show all posts
Friday, July 11, 2008
Christian "Messianic" Deciet and Lies
Messianic Judaism: A Christian Missionary Movement
Messianic Judaism is a Christian movement that began in the 1970s combining a mixture of Jewish ritual and Christianity. There are a vast and growing numbers of these groups, and they differ in how much Jewish ritual is mixed with conventional Christian belief. One end of the spectrum is represented by Jews For Jesus, who simply target Jews for conversion to Christianity using imitations of Jewish ritual solely as a ruse for attracting the potential Jewish converts. On the other end are those who don't stress the divinity of Jesus, but present him as the "Messiah." They incorporate distorted Jewish ritual on an ongoing basis.
The movement has received criticism from mainstream Christian leaders, for these groups claim to believe in the New Testament and yet gloss over the distinction between the two communities instituted in that work, and for the deceptive tactics used to gain Jewish converts. They are typically very pro-Israel and include an unusually high number of Jewish symbols -- the Magen David, Torah, talleisim, shofars, yarmulkes, mezzuzahs, Shabbat candles, and use of Hebrew and Yiddish language -- to assure prospective converts that they are not renouncing Judaism by accepting Jesus. According to Jewish law and tradition, such an acceptance is indeed a renunciation of Judaism.
Like the Christian Missionary, one of the major roles of the Messianic Jew is to proselytize others. They prey on such vulnerable individuals as the lonely, the elderly, the poor, the emotionally unstable, the naive, or those who are just untutored in Scripture. These unfortunates are lured into accepting missionary doctrines out of emotional need, not intellectual conviction. For even after a superficial reading of the missionaries' textual "proofs" within context, one sees that their doctrines are founded solely upon misquotations and mistranslations of Hebrew Scripture.
The term "completed Jews" is now used by some Messianic Jews and Missionary Christians to describe Jews who have accepted Jesus as their savior. This is offensive because of the implication that a Jew who has not accepted Jesus is not "complete." This term has also recently popped up in Washington, DC during House subcommittee support of President Bush's proposal to channel government money to religious social service programs. Jewish and civil liberties groups note that this testimony clearly documents the President's initiative will result in government-financed proselytizing.
Education: The Best Protection Against Missionary Groups
One of the most significant differences between Judaism and Christianity (or Messianic Judaism) is that the latter rejects the laws that God gave to Moses to teach to the children of Israel. According to the New Testament passage John 3:36: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath.” Christian theology firmly believes that if you do not believe in Jesus you are going to "burn in Hell." We Are Not Going to Burn in Hell: a Jewish Response to Christianity demonstrates how to refute Messianic Jews and Christian missionaries by using passages from both the Tanach and the New Testament. It is a definitive source to counter every argument Christian missionaries may make to sway a Jew to their theology. The first chapter is available on-line.
It is truly surprising how many people there are who confess a belief in Jesus as the Messiah, without having first obtained an adequate knowledge and understanding of the New Testament, the main source of information about him. When a person is calmly shown the factual mistakes and absurdities that are in the New Testament, and sees where it misinterpreted and mistranslated the Tanach, it awakens the realization that they were misled by people whom they thought were friends.
One should be aware of the fact that Paul, a founding father of the early church, and the most successful missionary that ever lived, confessed to using deception and lies to make converts:
Corinthians 9:20-22: To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those under the law I became as one under the law -- though not being myself under the law -- that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law -- not being without law toward God but under the law of Christ -- that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak.
Romans 3:7: If through my lies God’s truth abounds to His glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?
Philippians 1:18: In every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Jesus is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.
The veracity of everything that Paul stated and wrote is called into question by the fact that these quotes are found in the books he himself authored. Or, did he?
Jesus of Nazareth: The False Messiah
For almost two thousand years, the Christian Church has taught that Jesus was crucified, died, and was resurrected three days later. This has long been one of the church's foundational beliefs, along with the virgin birth, atonement, and future second coming of Jesus.
In the year 325 CE, Constantine (a non-baptized Pagan) convened the Council of Nicea to settle disputes in the Church. The council changed Jesus from man to God in the flesh, they changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, and the Passover was changed to Easter. Among the nearly 200 Gospels circulating in the first three hundred years of this era, the Catholic Church canonized only four. Origen, the great Catholic father, confirms this fact: "And not four Gospels, but very many, out of which these we have chosen."
A partial list of the different books considered by the Church for inclusion were a gospel written by Jesus’ own hand; letters and other correspondences written by Jesus; letters written by the "virgin" Mary; Pilate’s official report to the emperor of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, with Pilate’s confession of faith; the reply to this from Tiberius, and the trial of Pilate; official documents of the Roman Senate about Jesus; Gospels, epistles, acts, by every single one of the twelve apostles; and official documents of church law and government, written in Greek by the apostles. In his book, Answering Christianity's Most Puzzling Questions, Christian apologist Richard Sisson states:
"In fact, after the death of Jesus a whole flood of books that claimed to be inspired appeared.... Disputes over which ones were true were so intense that the debate continued for centuries. Finally in the fourth century a group of church leaders called a council and took a vote. The 66 books that comprised our cherished Bible were declared to be Scripture by a vote of 568 to 563."
Paul and the writers of all four canonical Gospels described the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, as they understood it had happened. There is a acknowledged consensus among academic Christian theologians that:
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not written by Jesus' disciples but by a person or persons whose names are unknown.
Neither Paul nor any of the Gospel writers had been an eyewitness to Jesus' ministry or death.
The Gospels record the beliefs and memories of various Christian groups as they had evolved at the time they were written.
Their Hollow Inheritance: A Comprehensive Refutation of Christian Missionaries cites additional discrepancies. Matthew 1:20 and Luke 1:31 describe "angels" appearing to Jesus’ mother and her husband informing them of her forthcoming "immaculate conception" and "virgin birth" to the "Son of God," the "Messiah." When compared with the way Jesus’ family and neighbors treated him, it is absurd to believe that "angels" really visited them:
Mark 3:21: Upon hearing of it, his family went out to seize him, for they said, "He is beside himself."
To offset the startling fact that Jesus’ family thought that he was insane, some New Testament editions replace "they" with "people," although "they" is in the original Greek text.
John 7:5: For even his brothers did not believe in him.
Luke 4:16: And Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the Sabbath day…
There, Jesus hinted to his friends and neighbors that he was the Messiah, however:
Luke 4:28: When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up, and put him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down headlong.
How very strange it is, that during all the years in which Yeshu grew up with them, his brothers, friends, and neighbors did not notice that he was a "divine being." And could it have been that his parents forgot or didn’t tell anyone what they experienced? This stretches one’s imagination.
Origins of the Jesus Mythos
Christianity is based on the unique belief that Jesus was God's Son, born of a virgin, sacrificed for the Salvation of man. In reality, as sacrificed virgin-born Savior Son of God, Jesus was not unique. Not even close. The Jesus mythos simply followed the traditional model of the ancient pagan savior-gods.
At the time of Jesus of Nazareth, as for centuries before, the Mediterranean world roiled with a happy diversity of creeds and rituals. Details varied according to location and culture, but the general outlines of these faiths were astonishingly similar. Roughly speaking the ancients' gods:
Were born on or very near our Christmas Day
Were born of a Virgin-Mother
Were born in a Cave or Underground Chamber
Led a life of toil for Mankind
Were called by the names of Light-bringer, Healer, Mediator, Savior, Deliverer
Were however vanquished by the Powers of Darkness
And descended into Hell or the Underworld
Rose again from the dead, and became the pioneers of mankind to the Heavenly world
Founded Communions of Saints, and Churches into which disciples were received by Baptism
Were commemorated by Eucharistic meals
Krishna was born of the virgin Devaki; the Savior Dionysus was born of the virgin Semele. Buddha too was born of a virgin, as were the Egyptian Horus and Osiris. The old Teutonic goddess Hertha was a virgin impregnated by the heavenly Spirit and bore a son. Scandinavian Frigga was impregnated by the All-Father Odin and bore Balder, the healer and savior of mankind.
Mithras was born in a cave, on December 25th, of a virgin mother. He came from heaven to be born as a man, to redeem men from their sin. He was know as "Savior," "Son of God," "Redeemer," and "Lamb of God." With twelve disciples he traveled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. He was buried in a tomb from which he rose again from the dead -- an event celebrated yearly with much rejoicing. His followers kept the Sabbath holy, holding sacramental feasts in remembrance of Him. The sacred meal of bread and water, or bread and wine, was symbolic of the body and blood of the sacred bull.
The celebration of Christmas on December 25 was originally the pagan birthday of Mithras, the sun god, whose day of the week is still known as "Sunday." The halo of light which is usually shown surrounding the face of Jesus and Christian saints, is another concept taken from the sun god. The theme of temptation by a devil-like creature was also found in pagan mythology. In particular, the story of Jesus's temptation by Satan resembles the temptation of Osiris by the devil-god Set in Egyptian mythology.
The Source of the Original Gospels
Theologians have also observed for many decades that two of the synoptic gospels (Matthew and Luke) have many points of similarity. In fact, the writings have many dozens of phrases and sentences that are identical. This observation led to the theory that both gospels were based largely on an earlier document called "Q" meaning "Quelle," which is German for "source," and is comprised of three distinct documents:
Q1 described Jesus as a Jewish philosopher-teacher, written circa 50 CE.
Q2 viewed Jesus as a Jewish apocalyptic prophet, written circa 60 CE.
Q3 described Jesus as a near-deity who converses directly with God and Satan, written circa 70 CE during a time of great turmoil in Palestine.
The authors of the Gospels of Matthew (circa 80 CE) and Luke (circa 90 CE) wrote their books using text from Q, Mark and their own unique traditions. The author of the Gospel of Thomas also used portions of Q1 and Q2 in his writing, but seems to have been unaware of Q3. This gospel was widely circulated within the early Christian movement but did not make it into the Christian Scriptures.
What is remarkable about Q1 is that the original Christians appeared to be centered totally on concerns about their relationships with God and with other people, and their preparation for the Kingdom of God on earth. Totally absent from their spiritual life are almost all of the factors that we associate with Christianity today. There is absolutely no mention of (in alphabetic order):
adultery
angels
apostles
baptism
church
clergy
confirmation
crucifixion
demons
disciples
divorce
Eucharist
healing
great commission to convert the world
heaven
hell
incarnation
infancy stories
John the Baptist
Last Supper
life after death
Mary and Joseph and the rest of Jesus' family
magi
miracles
Jewish laws concerning behavior
marriage
Messiah
restrictions on sexual behavior
resurrection
roles of men and women
Sabbath
salvation
Satan
second coming
signs of the end of the age
sin
speaking in tongues
temple
tomb
transfiguration
trial of Jesus
trinity
virgin birth
There is no reference to Jesus' death having any redeeming function; in fact, there is no mention of the crucifixion at all. John E. Remsburg's The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidence of His Existence, lists the following writers who lived during the time, or within a century after the time, that Jesus is supposed to have lived:
Josephus
Philo-Judææus
Seneca
Pliny Elder
Arrian
Petronius
Dion Pruseus
Paterculus
Suetonius
Juvenal
Martial
Persius
Plutarch
Pliny Younger
Tacitus
Justus of Tiberius
Apollonius
Quintilian
Lucanus
Epictetus
Hermogones Silius Italicus
Statius
Ptolemy
Appian
Phlegon
Phæædrus
Valerius Maximus
Lucian
Pausanias
Florus Lucius
Quintius Curtius
Aulus Gellius
Dio Chrysostom
Columella
Valerius Flaccus
Damis
Favorinus
Lysias
Pomponius Mela
Appion of Alexandria
Theon of Smyrna
Enough of the writings of the authors named in the foregoing list remains to form a library. Yet in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, according to Remsburg, "aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ." Nor, do any of these authors make note of the Disciples or Apostles -- increasing the embarrassment from the silence of history concerning the foundation of Christianity.
A Jewish Messiah
Judaism, unlike the Christianity, does not believe that the Messiah is Jesus. The noun moshiach (translated as messiah) annotatively means "annointed one;" it does not, however, imply "savior." The notion of an innocent, semi-divine being who will sacrifice himself to save us from the consequences of our own sins is a purely Christian concept that has no basis in Jewish thought or scripture. In Judaic texts, the term messiah was used for all kings, high priests, certain warriors, but never eschatological figures. In the Tanach, moshiach is used 38 times: two patriarchs, six high priests, once for Cyrus, 29 Israelite kings such as Saul and David. Not once is the word moshiach used in reference to the awaited Messiah. Even in the apocalyptic book of Daniel, the only time moshiach is mentioned is in connection to a murdered high priest. The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Pseudepigrapha, and Apocrypha never mention the Messiah.
The man destined to be the Messiah will be a direct descendant of King David (Isaiah 11:1) through the family of Solomon, David's son (1 Chronicles 22:9-l0). He will cause all the world to serve God together (Isaiah 11:2), be wiser than Solomon (Mishnah Torah Repentance 9:2), greater than the patriarchs and prophets (Aggadah Genesis 67), and more honored than kings (Mishnah Sanhedrin 10), for he will reign as king of the world (Pirkei Eliezer).
Amongst the most basic missions that the Messiah will accomplish during his lifetime (Isaiah 42:4) are to:
Oversee the rebuilding of Jerusalem, including the Third Temple, in the event that it has not yet been rebuilt (Michah 4:1 and Ezekiel 40-45)
Gather the Jewish people from all over the world and bring them home to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 11:12; 27:12-13)
Influence every individual of every nation to abandon and be ashamed of their former beliefs (or non-beliefs) and acknowledge and serve only the One True God of Israel (Isaiah 11:9-10; 40:5 and Zephaniah 3:9)
Bring about global peace throughout the world (Isaiah 2:4; 11:5-9 and Michah 4:3-4).
There are over a dozen additional prophecies which the Messiah will also achieve (there is no mention of any “second coming” in the Tanach or the New Testament). In order to avoid identifying the wrong individual as Messiah, the Code of Jewish Law dictates criteria for establishing the Messiah's identity (Mishnah Torah Kings 11:4):
"If a king arises from the House of David who meditates on the Torah, occupies himself with the commandments as did his ancestor King David, observes the commandments of the Written and Oral Law, prevails upon all Israel to walk in the way of the Torah and to follow its direction, and fights the wars of God, it may be assumed that he is the Messiah.
If he does these things and is fully successful, rebuilds the Third Temple on its location, and gathers the exiled Jews, he is beyond doubt the Messiah. But if he is not fully successful, or if he is killed, he is not the Messiah."
Over 1,000 years before the attributed birth of the historical Jesus, it was recorded in the Tanach:
Numbers 23:19: God is not a man, that He should be deceitful, nor the son of man, that He should repent. Would He say and not do, or speak and not confirm?
Psalms 146:3: Do not rely on princes nor in the son of man, for he holds no salvation.
Even the New Testament concurs that Jesus, in fact, is not the Messiah:
Matthew 20:28: Just as the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve.
Counter-Missionary Training
When confronted by a Christian missionary or a member of the Messianic movement, one should remember that the very existence of Jesus, and events surrounding him significant to the Christian mythos, are entirely absent from every historical record. Missionary arguments usually appeal to emotion rather than to reason; they will attempt to make you feel embarrassed about denying the historicity of Jesus. The usual response is something like "Isn't denying the existence of Jesus just as silly as denying the existence of Julius Caesar or denying the Holocaust?" One should then point out that there are ample historical sources confirming the existence of who or whatever else is named, while there exists no corresponding evidence for Jesus.
Christian scholar Rt. Rev. George Arthur Butterick, in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, a book written by to prove the validity of the New Testament, states:
"A study of 150 Greek [manuscripts] of the Gospel of Luke has revealed more than 30,000 different readings.... It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the New Testament in which the [manuscript] is wholly uniform."
There are 304,805 letters (approximately 79,000 words) in the Torah. In the over 3,000 years since Moses received the original Scripture from Mt. Sinai and wrote the 13 copies (twelve of which were distributed among the Tribes), spelling variants have emerged on a total of nine words -- with absolutely no effect on their meaning. The Christian Bible, in comparison, has over 200,000 variants and in 400 instances, the variants change the meaning of the text; 50 of these are of great significance.
When countering Christian Missionaries it is important to always base one's arguments on actual Scripture – the original Hebrew text (public domain applications and software are available if your browser is not Hebrew-enabled). Remember that the English translation of the Tanach (which they call the “Old Testament”) in nearly every Christian Bible is taken from the Septuagint, one of many Greek translations that differed considerably from the Masoretic text. It is this Greek Septuagint, not the original Hebrew, that was the main basis for the Old Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and part of the Arabic translations of the Old Testament.
Even the earliest English translation of the JPS Tanach (Jewish Publication Society) was a slightly modified version of the Old Testament found in the King James Bible, instead of a direct translation of the original Hebrew which accompanied it. Christian Missionaries will almost always use the English translation of the JPS Tanach as a "proof text." Far more accurate English translations of the Masoretic text are found in Koren's The Jerusalem Bible and Artscroll's Stone Edition Tanach.
The Messiah Truth Project sponsors weekly on-line Video Conferences in Counter-Missionary and Torah Education six nights a week on VirtualYeshiva.com. Participation is free, and downloadable handouts are provided. Follow-up questions will be answered through our Discussion Forums; you can participate by linking here. You can also access our ever-growing library of original educational material by clicking one of our four topic areas below:
Counter-Missionary Links and Literature
(Additional links and add your own link here)
Outreach Judaism: A national organization that responds directly and positively to the issues raised by missionaries and cults by exploring Judaism in contradistinction to Christianity. The organization's goal is to generate a lasting connection between Jewish families and Judaism through building immediate awareness of the current Hebrew-Christian movement in the USA, Canada and Israel.
The Task Force on Missionaries and Cults: A counter-missionary and counter-cult organization in North America that provides information and assistance to individuals and communities in the U.S., Europe, and Israel.
Australian Anti-Missionary Web Site: A user-friendly, easy-to-navigate presentation of resources, articles, and links designed to aid the navigator in his pursuit of the truth behind missionary activities.
Messianic Verses in Tanach: Missionaries quote Hebrew Scriptures to support their contention that "Jesus fulfilled 300 prophecies from the Old Testament." Here you can read how these quotes are either mistranslated, taken out of context, or both.
The Real Truth About The Talmud: There are many lies circulating the internet about the Jewish Talmud. These allegations are supported by misquotations from the Talmud, frequently wrong or taken out of context. These are the real truths.
Project Truth: Shmuel ben Avraham provides common words and language used by Missionaries, and how to talk to a Missionary with answers to specific verses and concepts commonly used.
Shomrai HaBrit: Keepers of the Covenant homrai HaBrit-Keepers: An organization dedicated to keeping Jewish people true to the eternal covenant with God. Included are prophecies used by Christian Missionaries and their actual interpretation.
The Anti-Missionary Website: This page is dedicated to the resistance of Christian Missionaries. It calls for an official, public opposition to Christian missionary, are describes ways to protest their goal of world conversion.
What Jews Believe: An excellent site explaining Jewish beliefs concerning life, death, sin, forgiveness, and atonement and their difference from Christian beliefs. It shows how missionaries who often claim to be Jews, hold beliefs that are distinctly Christian.
Counter-Missionary Reference: An index to various "proof texts" used by missionaries and discussions on those verses by various counter missionary websites.
Torah Atlanta: Educating Jews on the issues raised by missionaries and the tactics they use.
The Truth of Judaism: A vast resource of links for Judaic terms, Torah and Chumash, news and media, and Jewish references.
Articles on Missionary Groups and Religion
Why Don't Jews believe in Jesus?: For 2,000 years, Jews have rejected the Christian idea of Jesus as messiah; Rabbi Shraga Simmons explains why.
Jews for Jesus: Rabbi Shraga Simmons describes underhanded tactics used to trick unsuspecting Jews into joining a Christian movement.
Evangelizing The Jews (Part 1): To bring about the Second Coming, fundamentalist Christians believe they must convert the Jews. Having failed in the past, they are now armed with a new arsenal of deceptive techniques, detailed by Rabbi Tovia Singer.
Evangelizing The Jews (Part 2): Jews who are lonely and know the least about Judaism are the most susceptible to Christian missionaries. Rabbi Tovia Singer explains why college kids and the elderly are their prime targets.
Jesus Codes: The Real Story: A recent book being used to proselytize Jews to Christianity claims that hidden messages have been found in the Bible proving that Jesus is the Messiah. Rabbi Daniel Mechanic focuses on misuses and misrepresentations of the Codes phenomenon, especially when they are aimed at proselytizing Jews.
The Jesus Puzzle: Was There No Historical Jesus? This article by Earl Doherty appeared in the Journal of Higher Criticism, published by the Institute for Higher Critical Studies based at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.
Portable Document Format Downloads
(Get your free Adobe PDF reader here)
Messiah Truth: A Jewish response to the Messianic movement and other missionary groups using passages from both Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament. This four-page printable document contains nearly all of the counter-missionary text from this page. Print, copy and share!
The Problem With Matthew: A Guide For Refuting Missionaries: The purpose of this eBook is to empower Jews to protect themselves against Christian missionaries, whether they call themselves Southern Baptists, Jews for Jesus, or any other organization bent on the assimilation of Jews into the Christian religion. There is also an on-line edition available.
How the King James Version (KJV) Bible Originated: A simplified history documenting the KJV as essentially a handful of late and haphazardly collected minuscule manuscripts supported by no known Greek witness.There is also an on-line edition available.
Judaism 101: An encyclopedia of Judaism, covering Jewish beliefs, people, places, things, language, scripture, holidays, practices and customs. It includes a wide variety of basic, general information about Judaism, written from a traditional perspective in plain English. There is also an on-line edition available.
Judaic Glossary: A concise glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish terms and their meanings.
Messianic Glossary: A 250-page expository glossary of terms used in Christian Messianic teaching (a zip of all fonts used may be downloaded here).
Messianic Judaism is a Christian movement that began in the 1970s combining a mixture of Jewish ritual and Christianity. There are a vast and growing numbers of these groups, and they differ in how much Jewish ritual is mixed with conventional Christian belief. One end of the spectrum is represented by Jews For Jesus, who simply target Jews for conversion to Christianity using imitations of Jewish ritual solely as a ruse for attracting the potential Jewish converts. On the other end are those who don't stress the divinity of Jesus, but present him as the "Messiah." They incorporate distorted Jewish ritual on an ongoing basis.
The movement has received criticism from mainstream Christian leaders, for these groups claim to believe in the New Testament and yet gloss over the distinction between the two communities instituted in that work, and for the deceptive tactics used to gain Jewish converts. They are typically very pro-Israel and include an unusually high number of Jewish symbols -- the Magen David, Torah, talleisim, shofars, yarmulkes, mezzuzahs, Shabbat candles, and use of Hebrew and Yiddish language -- to assure prospective converts that they are not renouncing Judaism by accepting Jesus. According to Jewish law and tradition, such an acceptance is indeed a renunciation of Judaism.
Like the Christian Missionary, one of the major roles of the Messianic Jew is to proselytize others. They prey on such vulnerable individuals as the lonely, the elderly, the poor, the emotionally unstable, the naive, or those who are just untutored in Scripture. These unfortunates are lured into accepting missionary doctrines out of emotional need, not intellectual conviction. For even after a superficial reading of the missionaries' textual "proofs" within context, one sees that their doctrines are founded solely upon misquotations and mistranslations of Hebrew Scripture.
The term "completed Jews" is now used by some Messianic Jews and Missionary Christians to describe Jews who have accepted Jesus as their savior. This is offensive because of the implication that a Jew who has not accepted Jesus is not "complete." This term has also recently popped up in Washington, DC during House subcommittee support of President Bush's proposal to channel government money to religious social service programs. Jewish and civil liberties groups note that this testimony clearly documents the President's initiative will result in government-financed proselytizing.
Education: The Best Protection Against Missionary Groups
One of the most significant differences between Judaism and Christianity (or Messianic Judaism) is that the latter rejects the laws that God gave to Moses to teach to the children of Israel. According to the New Testament passage John 3:36: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath.” Christian theology firmly believes that if you do not believe in Jesus you are going to "burn in Hell." We Are Not Going to Burn in Hell: a Jewish Response to Christianity demonstrates how to refute Messianic Jews and Christian missionaries by using passages from both the Tanach and the New Testament. It is a definitive source to counter every argument Christian missionaries may make to sway a Jew to their theology. The first chapter is available on-line.
It is truly surprising how many people there are who confess a belief in Jesus as the Messiah, without having first obtained an adequate knowledge and understanding of the New Testament, the main source of information about him. When a person is calmly shown the factual mistakes and absurdities that are in the New Testament, and sees where it misinterpreted and mistranslated the Tanach, it awakens the realization that they were misled by people whom they thought were friends.
One should be aware of the fact that Paul, a founding father of the early church, and the most successful missionary that ever lived, confessed to using deception and lies to make converts:
Corinthians 9:20-22: To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those under the law I became as one under the law -- though not being myself under the law -- that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law -- not being without law toward God but under the law of Christ -- that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak.
Romans 3:7: If through my lies God’s truth abounds to His glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?
Philippians 1:18: In every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Jesus is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.
The veracity of everything that Paul stated and wrote is called into question by the fact that these quotes are found in the books he himself authored. Or, did he?
Jesus of Nazareth: The False Messiah
For almost two thousand years, the Christian Church has taught that Jesus was crucified, died, and was resurrected three days later. This has long been one of the church's foundational beliefs, along with the virgin birth, atonement, and future second coming of Jesus.
In the year 325 CE, Constantine (a non-baptized Pagan) convened the Council of Nicea to settle disputes in the Church. The council changed Jesus from man to God in the flesh, they changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, and the Passover was changed to Easter. Among the nearly 200 Gospels circulating in the first three hundred years of this era, the Catholic Church canonized only four. Origen, the great Catholic father, confirms this fact: "And not four Gospels, but very many, out of which these we have chosen."
A partial list of the different books considered by the Church for inclusion were a gospel written by Jesus’ own hand; letters and other correspondences written by Jesus; letters written by the "virgin" Mary; Pilate’s official report to the emperor of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, with Pilate’s confession of faith; the reply to this from Tiberius, and the trial of Pilate; official documents of the Roman Senate about Jesus; Gospels, epistles, acts, by every single one of the twelve apostles; and official documents of church law and government, written in Greek by the apostles. In his book, Answering Christianity's Most Puzzling Questions, Christian apologist Richard Sisson states:
"In fact, after the death of Jesus a whole flood of books that claimed to be inspired appeared.... Disputes over which ones were true were so intense that the debate continued for centuries. Finally in the fourth century a group of church leaders called a council and took a vote. The 66 books that comprised our cherished Bible were declared to be Scripture by a vote of 568 to 563."
Paul and the writers of all four canonical Gospels described the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, as they understood it had happened. There is a acknowledged consensus among academic Christian theologians that:
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not written by Jesus' disciples but by a person or persons whose names are unknown.
Neither Paul nor any of the Gospel writers had been an eyewitness to Jesus' ministry or death.
The Gospels record the beliefs and memories of various Christian groups as they had evolved at the time they were written.
Their Hollow Inheritance: A Comprehensive Refutation of Christian Missionaries cites additional discrepancies. Matthew 1:20 and Luke 1:31 describe "angels" appearing to Jesus’ mother and her husband informing them of her forthcoming "immaculate conception" and "virgin birth" to the "Son of God," the "Messiah." When compared with the way Jesus’ family and neighbors treated him, it is absurd to believe that "angels" really visited them:
Mark 3:21: Upon hearing of it, his family went out to seize him, for they said, "He is beside himself."
To offset the startling fact that Jesus’ family thought that he was insane, some New Testament editions replace "they" with "people," although "they" is in the original Greek text.
John 7:5: For even his brothers did not believe in him.
Luke 4:16: And Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the Sabbath day…
There, Jesus hinted to his friends and neighbors that he was the Messiah, however:
Luke 4:28: When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up, and put him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down headlong.
How very strange it is, that during all the years in which Yeshu grew up with them, his brothers, friends, and neighbors did not notice that he was a "divine being." And could it have been that his parents forgot or didn’t tell anyone what they experienced? This stretches one’s imagination.
Origins of the Jesus Mythos
Christianity is based on the unique belief that Jesus was God's Son, born of a virgin, sacrificed for the Salvation of man. In reality, as sacrificed virgin-born Savior Son of God, Jesus was not unique. Not even close. The Jesus mythos simply followed the traditional model of the ancient pagan savior-gods.
At the time of Jesus of Nazareth, as for centuries before, the Mediterranean world roiled with a happy diversity of creeds and rituals. Details varied according to location and culture, but the general outlines of these faiths were astonishingly similar. Roughly speaking the ancients' gods:
Were born on or very near our Christmas Day
Were born of a Virgin-Mother
Were born in a Cave or Underground Chamber
Led a life of toil for Mankind
Were called by the names of Light-bringer, Healer, Mediator, Savior, Deliverer
Were however vanquished by the Powers of Darkness
And descended into Hell or the Underworld
Rose again from the dead, and became the pioneers of mankind to the Heavenly world
Founded Communions of Saints, and Churches into which disciples were received by Baptism
Were commemorated by Eucharistic meals
Krishna was born of the virgin Devaki; the Savior Dionysus was born of the virgin Semele. Buddha too was born of a virgin, as were the Egyptian Horus and Osiris. The old Teutonic goddess Hertha was a virgin impregnated by the heavenly Spirit and bore a son. Scandinavian Frigga was impregnated by the All-Father Odin and bore Balder, the healer and savior of mankind.
Mithras was born in a cave, on December 25th, of a virgin mother. He came from heaven to be born as a man, to redeem men from their sin. He was know as "Savior," "Son of God," "Redeemer," and "Lamb of God." With twelve disciples he traveled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. He was buried in a tomb from which he rose again from the dead -- an event celebrated yearly with much rejoicing. His followers kept the Sabbath holy, holding sacramental feasts in remembrance of Him. The sacred meal of bread and water, or bread and wine, was symbolic of the body and blood of the sacred bull.
The celebration of Christmas on December 25 was originally the pagan birthday of Mithras, the sun god, whose day of the week is still known as "Sunday." The halo of light which is usually shown surrounding the face of Jesus and Christian saints, is another concept taken from the sun god. The theme of temptation by a devil-like creature was also found in pagan mythology. In particular, the story of Jesus's temptation by Satan resembles the temptation of Osiris by the devil-god Set in Egyptian mythology.
The Source of the Original Gospels
Theologians have also observed for many decades that two of the synoptic gospels (Matthew and Luke) have many points of similarity. In fact, the writings have many dozens of phrases and sentences that are identical. This observation led to the theory that both gospels were based largely on an earlier document called "Q" meaning "Quelle," which is German for "source," and is comprised of three distinct documents:
Q1 described Jesus as a Jewish philosopher-teacher, written circa 50 CE.
Q2 viewed Jesus as a Jewish apocalyptic prophet, written circa 60 CE.
Q3 described Jesus as a near-deity who converses directly with God and Satan, written circa 70 CE during a time of great turmoil in Palestine.
The authors of the Gospels of Matthew (circa 80 CE) and Luke (circa 90 CE) wrote their books using text from Q, Mark and their own unique traditions. The author of the Gospel of Thomas also used portions of Q1 and Q2 in his writing, but seems to have been unaware of Q3. This gospel was widely circulated within the early Christian movement but did not make it into the Christian Scriptures.
What is remarkable about Q1 is that the original Christians appeared to be centered totally on concerns about their relationships with God and with other people, and their preparation for the Kingdom of God on earth. Totally absent from their spiritual life are almost all of the factors that we associate with Christianity today. There is absolutely no mention of (in alphabetic order):
adultery
angels
apostles
baptism
church
clergy
confirmation
crucifixion
demons
disciples
divorce
Eucharist
healing
great commission to convert the world
heaven
hell
incarnation
infancy stories
John the Baptist
Last Supper
life after death
Mary and Joseph and the rest of Jesus' family
magi
miracles
Jewish laws concerning behavior
marriage
Messiah
restrictions on sexual behavior
resurrection
roles of men and women
Sabbath
salvation
Satan
second coming
signs of the end of the age
sin
speaking in tongues
temple
tomb
transfiguration
trial of Jesus
trinity
virgin birth
There is no reference to Jesus' death having any redeeming function; in fact, there is no mention of the crucifixion at all. John E. Remsburg's The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidence of His Existence, lists the following writers who lived during the time, or within a century after the time, that Jesus is supposed to have lived:
Josephus
Philo-Judææus
Seneca
Pliny Elder
Arrian
Petronius
Dion Pruseus
Paterculus
Suetonius
Juvenal
Martial
Persius
Plutarch
Pliny Younger
Tacitus
Justus of Tiberius
Apollonius
Quintilian
Lucanus
Epictetus
Hermogones Silius Italicus
Statius
Ptolemy
Appian
Phlegon
Phæædrus
Valerius Maximus
Lucian
Pausanias
Florus Lucius
Quintius Curtius
Aulus Gellius
Dio Chrysostom
Columella
Valerius Flaccus
Damis
Favorinus
Lysias
Pomponius Mela
Appion of Alexandria
Theon of Smyrna
Enough of the writings of the authors named in the foregoing list remains to form a library. Yet in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, according to Remsburg, "aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ." Nor, do any of these authors make note of the Disciples or Apostles -- increasing the embarrassment from the silence of history concerning the foundation of Christianity.
A Jewish Messiah
Judaism, unlike the Christianity, does not believe that the Messiah is Jesus. The noun moshiach (translated as messiah) annotatively means "annointed one;" it does not, however, imply "savior." The notion of an innocent, semi-divine being who will sacrifice himself to save us from the consequences of our own sins is a purely Christian concept that has no basis in Jewish thought or scripture. In Judaic texts, the term messiah was used for all kings, high priests, certain warriors, but never eschatological figures. In the Tanach, moshiach is used 38 times: two patriarchs, six high priests, once for Cyrus, 29 Israelite kings such as Saul and David. Not once is the word moshiach used in reference to the awaited Messiah. Even in the apocalyptic book of Daniel, the only time moshiach is mentioned is in connection to a murdered high priest. The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Pseudepigrapha, and Apocrypha never mention the Messiah.
The man destined to be the Messiah will be a direct descendant of King David (Isaiah 11:1) through the family of Solomon, David's son (1 Chronicles 22:9-l0). He will cause all the world to serve God together (Isaiah 11:2), be wiser than Solomon (Mishnah Torah Repentance 9:2), greater than the patriarchs and prophets (Aggadah Genesis 67), and more honored than kings (Mishnah Sanhedrin 10), for he will reign as king of the world (Pirkei Eliezer).
Amongst the most basic missions that the Messiah will accomplish during his lifetime (Isaiah 42:4) are to:
Oversee the rebuilding of Jerusalem, including the Third Temple, in the event that it has not yet been rebuilt (Michah 4:1 and Ezekiel 40-45)
Gather the Jewish people from all over the world and bring them home to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 11:12; 27:12-13)
Influence every individual of every nation to abandon and be ashamed of their former beliefs (or non-beliefs) and acknowledge and serve only the One True God of Israel (Isaiah 11:9-10; 40:5 and Zephaniah 3:9)
Bring about global peace throughout the world (Isaiah 2:4; 11:5-9 and Michah 4:3-4).
There are over a dozen additional prophecies which the Messiah will also achieve (there is no mention of any “second coming” in the Tanach or the New Testament). In order to avoid identifying the wrong individual as Messiah, the Code of Jewish Law dictates criteria for establishing the Messiah's identity (Mishnah Torah Kings 11:4):
"If a king arises from the House of David who meditates on the Torah, occupies himself with the commandments as did his ancestor King David, observes the commandments of the Written and Oral Law, prevails upon all Israel to walk in the way of the Torah and to follow its direction, and fights the wars of God, it may be assumed that he is the Messiah.
If he does these things and is fully successful, rebuilds the Third Temple on its location, and gathers the exiled Jews, he is beyond doubt the Messiah. But if he is not fully successful, or if he is killed, he is not the Messiah."
Over 1,000 years before the attributed birth of the historical Jesus, it was recorded in the Tanach:
Numbers 23:19: God is not a man, that He should be deceitful, nor the son of man, that He should repent. Would He say and not do, or speak and not confirm?
Psalms 146:3: Do not rely on princes nor in the son of man, for he holds no salvation.
Even the New Testament concurs that Jesus, in fact, is not the Messiah:
Matthew 20:28: Just as the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve.
Counter-Missionary Training
When confronted by a Christian missionary or a member of the Messianic movement, one should remember that the very existence of Jesus, and events surrounding him significant to the Christian mythos, are entirely absent from every historical record. Missionary arguments usually appeal to emotion rather than to reason; they will attempt to make you feel embarrassed about denying the historicity of Jesus. The usual response is something like "Isn't denying the existence of Jesus just as silly as denying the existence of Julius Caesar or denying the Holocaust?" One should then point out that there are ample historical sources confirming the existence of who or whatever else is named, while there exists no corresponding evidence for Jesus.
Christian scholar Rt. Rev. George Arthur Butterick, in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, a book written by to prove the validity of the New Testament, states:
"A study of 150 Greek [manuscripts] of the Gospel of Luke has revealed more than 30,000 different readings.... It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the New Testament in which the [manuscript] is wholly uniform."
There are 304,805 letters (approximately 79,000 words) in the Torah. In the over 3,000 years since Moses received the original Scripture from Mt. Sinai and wrote the 13 copies (twelve of which were distributed among the Tribes), spelling variants have emerged on a total of nine words -- with absolutely no effect on their meaning. The Christian Bible, in comparison, has over 200,000 variants and in 400 instances, the variants change the meaning of the text; 50 of these are of great significance.
When countering Christian Missionaries it is important to always base one's arguments on actual Scripture – the original Hebrew text (public domain applications and software are available if your browser is not Hebrew-enabled). Remember that the English translation of the Tanach (which they call the “Old Testament”) in nearly every Christian Bible is taken from the Septuagint, one of many Greek translations that differed considerably from the Masoretic text. It is this Greek Septuagint, not the original Hebrew, that was the main basis for the Old Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and part of the Arabic translations of the Old Testament.
Even the earliest English translation of the JPS Tanach (Jewish Publication Society) was a slightly modified version of the Old Testament found in the King James Bible, instead of a direct translation of the original Hebrew which accompanied it. Christian Missionaries will almost always use the English translation of the JPS Tanach as a "proof text." Far more accurate English translations of the Masoretic text are found in Koren's The Jerusalem Bible and Artscroll's Stone Edition Tanach.
The Messiah Truth Project sponsors weekly on-line Video Conferences in Counter-Missionary and Torah Education six nights a week on VirtualYeshiva.com. Participation is free, and downloadable handouts are provided. Follow-up questions will be answered through our Discussion Forums; you can participate by linking here. You can also access our ever-growing library of original educational material by clicking one of our four topic areas below:
Counter-Missionary Links and Literature
(Additional links and add your own link here)
Outreach Judaism: A national organization that responds directly and positively to the issues raised by missionaries and cults by exploring Judaism in contradistinction to Christianity. The organization's goal is to generate a lasting connection between Jewish families and Judaism through building immediate awareness of the current Hebrew-Christian movement in the USA, Canada and Israel.
The Task Force on Missionaries and Cults: A counter-missionary and counter-cult organization in North America that provides information and assistance to individuals and communities in the U.S., Europe, and Israel.
Australian Anti-Missionary Web Site: A user-friendly, easy-to-navigate presentation of resources, articles, and links designed to aid the navigator in his pursuit of the truth behind missionary activities.
Messianic Verses in Tanach: Missionaries quote Hebrew Scriptures to support their contention that "Jesus fulfilled 300 prophecies from the Old Testament." Here you can read how these quotes are either mistranslated, taken out of context, or both.
The Real Truth About The Talmud: There are many lies circulating the internet about the Jewish Talmud. These allegations are supported by misquotations from the Talmud, frequently wrong or taken out of context. These are the real truths.
Project Truth: Shmuel ben Avraham provides common words and language used by Missionaries, and how to talk to a Missionary with answers to specific verses and concepts commonly used.
Shomrai HaBrit: Keepers of the Covenant homrai HaBrit-Keepers: An organization dedicated to keeping Jewish people true to the eternal covenant with God. Included are prophecies used by Christian Missionaries and their actual interpretation.
The Anti-Missionary Website: This page is dedicated to the resistance of Christian Missionaries. It calls for an official, public opposition to Christian missionary, are describes ways to protest their goal of world conversion.
What Jews Believe: An excellent site explaining Jewish beliefs concerning life, death, sin, forgiveness, and atonement and their difference from Christian beliefs. It shows how missionaries who often claim to be Jews, hold beliefs that are distinctly Christian.
Counter-Missionary Reference: An index to various "proof texts" used by missionaries and discussions on those verses by various counter missionary websites.
Torah Atlanta: Educating Jews on the issues raised by missionaries and the tactics they use.
The Truth of Judaism: A vast resource of links for Judaic terms, Torah and Chumash, news and media, and Jewish references.
Articles on Missionary Groups and Religion
Why Don't Jews believe in Jesus?: For 2,000 years, Jews have rejected the Christian idea of Jesus as messiah; Rabbi Shraga Simmons explains why.
Jews for Jesus: Rabbi Shraga Simmons describes underhanded tactics used to trick unsuspecting Jews into joining a Christian movement.
Evangelizing The Jews (Part 1): To bring about the Second Coming, fundamentalist Christians believe they must convert the Jews. Having failed in the past, they are now armed with a new arsenal of deceptive techniques, detailed by Rabbi Tovia Singer.
Evangelizing The Jews (Part 2): Jews who are lonely and know the least about Judaism are the most susceptible to Christian missionaries. Rabbi Tovia Singer explains why college kids and the elderly are their prime targets.
Jesus Codes: The Real Story: A recent book being used to proselytize Jews to Christianity claims that hidden messages have been found in the Bible proving that Jesus is the Messiah. Rabbi Daniel Mechanic focuses on misuses and misrepresentations of the Codes phenomenon, especially when they are aimed at proselytizing Jews.
The Jesus Puzzle: Was There No Historical Jesus? This article by Earl Doherty appeared in the Journal of Higher Criticism, published by the Institute for Higher Critical Studies based at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.
Portable Document Format Downloads
(Get your free Adobe PDF reader here)
Messiah Truth: A Jewish response to the Messianic movement and other missionary groups using passages from both Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament. This four-page printable document contains nearly all of the counter-missionary text from this page. Print, copy and share!
The Problem With Matthew: A Guide For Refuting Missionaries: The purpose of this eBook is to empower Jews to protect themselves against Christian missionaries, whether they call themselves Southern Baptists, Jews for Jesus, or any other organization bent on the assimilation of Jews into the Christian religion. There is also an on-line edition available.
How the King James Version (KJV) Bible Originated: A simplified history documenting the KJV as essentially a handful of late and haphazardly collected minuscule manuscripts supported by no known Greek witness.There is also an on-line edition available.
Judaism 101: An encyclopedia of Judaism, covering Jewish beliefs, people, places, things, language, scripture, holidays, practices and customs. It includes a wide variety of basic, general information about Judaism, written from a traditional perspective in plain English. There is also an on-line edition available.
Judaic Glossary: A concise glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish terms and their meanings.
Messianic Glossary: A 250-page expository glossary of terms used in Christian Messianic teaching (a zip of all fonts used may be downloaded here).
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Christianizing of the Heathen – on the point of a sword
Christianizing of the Heathen – on the point of a sword
"That force was often used in the conversion of northern peoples is undeniable, and it was used with a ferocity and violence beyond anything the conquistadors did in the Americas and far beyond anything that happened in modern Africa or Asia ..."– Andrew Walls (The Missionary Movement in Christian History, p72)
Part of Christian mythology relates to the "winning for Christ" of the fierce Germanic tribesmen who purportedly destroyed ancient civilization. In very broad brush terms, we are given a comforting image of the heroic priest, armed only with his Bible and Christian forbearance, who subdues the savage warriors with homilies from the Good Book. (We are, of course, being offered an early-day version of how European colonial "missionaries" saw their own activity).
As if by magic (or rather, miracle, such is the efficacy of the Lord's word) whole tribal confederations and vast tracks of Europe are baptised to Christ. Where the legions of Caesar had failed to vanquish, a humble monk with bell, book and candle triumphs. In a trice, Europe becomes a patchwork of "Christian kingdoms" and history becomes a story of the consolidation of regal power, the mopping up of a few recalcitrant pagans and suppression of the odd heresy.
As ever in the history of Christianity, the truth is far darker and far bloodier.
Gem encrusted Bibles– just the thing for an illiterate king.
CHRIST MAGIC – Not for Reading
Christian literature: precious gems on the cover – nonsense within.The few remaining books had become "sacred objects".Such objects filled the illiterate tribesmen with awe. Special shrines ("cumdachs") were built to house these dazzling artifacts, regarded as having talismanic properties.
"Bede related how scrapings from Irish manuscripts were used to treat snakebites, while popular superstition suggested that the Book of Durrow had the ability to cure sick cattle."– I. Zaczek (Celtic Art and Design, p10)
Why did barbarian chieftains convert?
Barbarian 'aristocracy' was the highest echelon of an 'heroic' social structure. Raids into neighbouring territories were an essential part of the barbarian economy. By acquiring 'prestige goods' – such as slaves, jewelry, gold pieces, fine weapons – the barbarian ruling elite preserved its rule and raised its social status. Success at raiding strengthened the link between a chief and his warriors.
Yet tribal leadership itself was always threatened by the great social mobility of tribal society. At any time, any bold and able warrior could raise his own status and become a new member of the elite or even a chieftain. High Kings (or Great Khans) were effectively the result of an election held by clan or tribal elders in time of emergency. The claims of a barbarian 'king' to legitimacy were fragile and leaderships changed often and violently.
This 'aristocratic vulnerability' became especially acute during the period of migrations in the 3rd to 5th centuries, when tribal territories were ill-defined and ever-changing, tribal alliances continuously made and remade, and warriors of the same tribe fought both for and against the Romans.
In a word, barbarian leadership was neither well-defined nor secure.
Contact with Rome meant influence from a world which was everything barbarian society was not: a stable 'kingdom' that seemingly embraced the whole world and existed 'forever'. Roman society by the 5th century was becoming ever more rigid and hierarchical, with eroding social and geographic mobility and an immense and widening gulf between rich and poor. Rome's urban middle class was being taxed out of existence, freedmen were being confined in indentured labour and hereditary employments and the soldiery was being reduced to a peasant-farmer militia.
By emulation, these characteristics helped to accentuate the growth and the power of a more rigid and stable barbarian aristocracy.
In short, tribal chieftains wanted to rule like Romans:
"Every Goth wishes to be like a Roman, " said Theodoric, "but only the humblest Roman wants to be like a Goth."
So strong was barbarian desire to establish a 'Roman' legitimacy for their new kingdoms that the illiterate Charlemagne, centuries later, styled himself "King of Franks and Lombards and Patrician of the Romans." He was crowned Emperor and Augustus.
Follow My Leader ...
Once a warrior king embraced 'Christianity' – an adoption of form and formality with little or no regard to content – the warrior aristocracy followed its king. Thus, for example, when Clovis accepted Christ as his new god, he compelled 3000 of his retainers to follow him into the baptismal font.
Among the common tribesmen religious allegiance was not an issue of conscience. This was not an age of individual opinion or preference. When the tribal leadership adopted a new god the tribe followed suit. Not to have done so would have been tantamount to rebellion. When Charlemagne insisted on baptism as the sign of submission, he punished with appalling barbarity any resistance, as when, in cold blood, he beheaded, in a single day, 4500 Saxons at Verden, in 782 AD.
Having adopted Christ as their new god, the warrior aristocracies forced the new faith on their peoples.
The Lost World of "Gothica"
(c. 450-550)
Much of Roman civilization was actually restored by the Goths.
Theodoric ruled the Gothic world from a palace at Ravenna, modelled on Diocletian's palace at Spalato. His administrators were Roman; he maintained the senate; he made Roman patricians, like Boethius, consuls. He also checked the expansion of the Franks and brought peace to the west.
His many dynastic links included a marriage to Audofleda, the sister of Clovis, king of Franks. He ruled Spain on behalf of his infant grandson; pacified the Vandals and protected the coasts with a fleet of a thousand vessels. In Rome he presided over games in traditional Roman manner; the dole was still distributed and the aqueducts still flowed.
Theodoric was Arian, but he tolerated all sects of Christianity. He was even called upon to arbitrate between warring popes – Symmachus and Lawrence! In the last year of his life he moved against the Catholics when they attacked Jewish traders and conspired with Constantinople.
After his death in 526, his daughter Amalasuntha ruled the Ostrogothic kingdom as regent. His grand daughter Matasuntha married Germanus, nephew of the Eastern Roman Emperor – but that was after Romano-Gothic Italy had been destroyed by Catholic armies from the east.
Invasion by Justinian and 30 years of warfare (Rome changed hands four times) destroyed urban civilization in Italy and brought whole regions to famine.
"Byzantine rule lasted just 14 years before an invasion of Lombards under Alboin swept it away. Instead of a powerful and virile Gothic state that might have fought off the barbarians, Italy had no resistance to offer. Rome became a backwater, and the victories of Justinian a disaster for the Christians of the West."
– Geoffrey Regan (Decisive Battles, p40)
Theodoric's Mausoleum, Ravenna.Built in 526 by his daughter Amalasuntha.
Worthy of the age of Augustus or Hadrian, the 30' central 'chapel' is crowned by a single piece of granite weighing 450 tons. Under the Goths, Roman intellect had not yet disappeared.
"The professors of grammar, rhetoric and jurisprudence were maintained in their privileges and pensions by the liberality of the Goths."– Gibbon (Decline & Fall, ch 39)
Justinian (another Christian "Great") – bankrupted the East by destroying the West!
Church of the Holy Wisdom – (Istanbul)
Justinian starved and robbed his troops and was merciless in his rapacious taxation – but he did build a big church.
Millions died as a result of his greed and vanity. Edward Gibbon estimated that the number of lives lost during the half century of his reign might have approached a hundred million. Procopius, in The Secret History, put the number even higher.
But then, we do have that big church ...
Enter the Christian Bishop...
Rome – as represented by the local aristocrat-cum-bishop – could bestow legitimacy, and with it all the pomp and ceremonial that filled subject people with awe and obedience. As the empire decayed, its rituals and regalia became ever more ornate and overbearing.
The barbarian kings delighted in Roman titles –which they put on their coinage, modelled very closely on Roman coinage. From 382 onwards barbarian tribes had been granted the status of 'federate of the Romans' (foedus) and their chieftains had been accorded patrician status. Some barbarian chiefs (for example, Fravitta, in 401) were even raised to the status of consul. When there were no longer emperors to bestow some grand honorific, the occasion fell into the hands of the bishop.
The barbarian kings sought marriage into the imperial bloodlines.
In a notable example, the Empress Galla Placidia was carried off to Gaul by the Goths, and in 414 she was married (in a Roman-style wedding ceremony) to the Visigothic chieftain Athaulf at Narbonne. The bridegroom wore a toga! 'Catholic princesses' were conveniently found at many convenient moments: Ingund married to Hermengild in 583 (intensifying the Gothic civil war in Spain); Bertha married to the Saxon Aethelbert in 600 (levering the Catholic church into Kent); and of course Clotilda, married to the hero Clovis.
The barbarian kings wanted Roman patricians in their entourage, men who could advise them in the governance of their newly acquired peoples. Everywhere, the indigenous 'Romans' outnumbered their warrior overlords.
The outstanding example is the court of Theodoric, Ostrogothic king of Italy. His administration was modelled on that of his imperial predecessors and was staffed by Romans. Among 'men of letters' at his court was Aurelius Cassiodorus, senator, statesman, monk and writer. As the local "statesman" the Bishops "spoke" for the native people and offered "administration" of cities and districts on behalf of the alien king.
Thus arose the Dark Age elite – a fusion of ex-pagan chiefs, who were in awe of all things Roman (including its Christianity), and degenerate Roman landowners who survived by foisting Christianity on to superstitious tribesmen.
Civil and ecclesiastical power coalesced. Saying much the same thing in Christ-speak, Bishop Isodore of Seville (560-636):
"Those who will not practice virtue by the admonition of the priest, may be kept from doing evil by the power of the king."(Isidore, Sententiae, I, 16).
The very heart of this veneer of legitimising romanitas was the religion by which the emperors had legitimised and made 'divine' their own rule – Christianity. Hence the rise and rise of the Christian bishops and, in particular, the Bishop of Rome – the custodian of the corpse of the empire and self-styled bestower of its legacy.
With his book of Christian spells and the inheritance of more than a thousand years of Roman 'gravitas' behind him, the patrician-bishop easily swayed the untutored mind of a barbarian king.As well as "Christ magic" he offered "legitimacy" and the power of the written word for kingly diplomacy. With his help, an upstart king's authority could now be proclaimed everywhere. With bribes and baubles, he gained access; he took on the role of ambassador and agent; he lent support to one side against another in fratricidal conflict; he advised; he provided 'virgin brides' and officiated at royal weddings and ceremonials; he governed the locals on behalf of his barbarian overlord.
Through it all, his own wealth and authority grew. And the nonsense he peddled – Christianity – became official dogma.
How the West was Won: The Rise and Rise of the Franks
Before the closing years of the 5th century the Christian Church showed no interest in converting barbarians. God, it seems, had chosen the Roman Empire to spread his Word. Yet when the fierce tribesmen arrived at the city gates, that event was "God's Judgement" and the Christian bishops were all too ready to abandon the empire and throw in their lot with the invader.
Despite the '3-day wonder' of the sack of Rome in 410 by the Visigoths, it was Gaul that was in dire straits in the 5th century, not Italy (which enjoyed a late 'Indian summer' under its Gothic king.)
In the late 5th century Salian Franks under Clovis began three centuries of expansion by absorbing the other Frankish tribes. In 486 Clovis defeated the Roman general Syagrius and the last Gallo-Roman region of Gaul – Soissons – was overrun. Subjugation of the Thuringians and Bavarians, followed.
The Franks were a heathen German tribe, almost the only one untouched by Arianism, spreading from the east. While the primitive Franks continued to give homage to their old Germanic gods, other, more Romanised, tribes had adopted Arian Christianity as a 'national' religion.
Backward and barbarous they may have been but for the beleaguered Catholic bishops, the Franks were the great hope. In the Franks, the papal agents found a fierce but malleable tribe and they spared nothing to bring the Frankish overlords under their sway. The dominion of the Franks in the west ensured the triumph of Roman Catholicism.
Thus, the "conversion" of Clovis is a crucial event, comparable to the "conversion" of Constantine – and equally is surrounded by the same fanciful mythology.
Clovis's conversion, like Constantine's, was no "inward experience of grace" but was a military matter. He was convinced that victory in battle lay in the gift of the god of the Christians. Christ for him was a talismanic war god.
According to the myth, in 496, after a close call against the Alamanni, the day had been 'saved' by a prayer either from Clovis himself, or the Catholic Bishop Gregory of Tours (or maybe both!) A grateful Clovis took baptism, to become the first "Catholic" ruler in the west.
Of course, he had been softened up somewhat by marriage in 493 to a Catholic princess, the Burgundian Clotilda, put forward as his bride 'on account of her beauty and wisdom' (and no doubt her Catholicism!) Clovis, like Constantine a century and a half earlier, was also aware of the political advantage of posing as a liberator of "those oppressed by religious heresy":
"It grieves me to see that the Arians possess the fairest portion of Gaul. Let us march against them, vanquish the heretics, and share out their fertile lands."
In 507 Clovis took Aquitaine from the weak Visigothic king Alaric II, and then subjugated Burgundy. Both areas were forcibly converted to Catholicism – to the delight of the local bishops.
At Clovis' death in 511, Clotilda went into a monastery at Tours where she stayed until her death in 545. No surprises that she made the sainthood!
In the half century after Clovis, the belligerent Franks advanced eastward as far as the Elbe and took advantage of the preoccupation of the Ostrogoths with Justinian's invasion of Italy to seize Gothic territories in Gaul and the north.
The religious war – such a fine innovation of Christianity! – would never end. In the 8th century, Frankish conquest carried the sword of Christ to the throat of the Thuringians and Bavarians, and halted the armies of Islam that had overwhelmed the Visigoths in Spain. Towards the end of the century, in forty bloody years of continuous aggression, Charlemagne's Franks slaughtered tens of thousands of Saxons, Avars and Slavs in order that they might know God's loving kindness.
"That force was often used in the conversion of northern peoples is undeniable, and it was used with a ferocity and violence beyond anything the conquistadors did in the Americas and far beyond anything that happened in modern Africa or Asia ..."– Andrew Walls (The Missionary Movement in Christian History, p72)
Part of Christian mythology relates to the "winning for Christ" of the fierce Germanic tribesmen who purportedly destroyed ancient civilization. In very broad brush terms, we are given a comforting image of the heroic priest, armed only with his Bible and Christian forbearance, who subdues the savage warriors with homilies from the Good Book. (We are, of course, being offered an early-day version of how European colonial "missionaries" saw their own activity).
As if by magic (or rather, miracle, such is the efficacy of the Lord's word) whole tribal confederations and vast tracks of Europe are baptised to Christ. Where the legions of Caesar had failed to vanquish, a humble monk with bell, book and candle triumphs. In a trice, Europe becomes a patchwork of "Christian kingdoms" and history becomes a story of the consolidation of regal power, the mopping up of a few recalcitrant pagans and suppression of the odd heresy.
As ever in the history of Christianity, the truth is far darker and far bloodier.
Gem encrusted Bibles– just the thing for an illiterate king.
CHRIST MAGIC – Not for Reading
Christian literature: precious gems on the cover – nonsense within.The few remaining books had become "sacred objects".Such objects filled the illiterate tribesmen with awe. Special shrines ("cumdachs") were built to house these dazzling artifacts, regarded as having talismanic properties.
"Bede related how scrapings from Irish manuscripts were used to treat snakebites, while popular superstition suggested that the Book of Durrow had the ability to cure sick cattle."– I. Zaczek (Celtic Art and Design, p10)
Why did barbarian chieftains convert?
Barbarian 'aristocracy' was the highest echelon of an 'heroic' social structure. Raids into neighbouring territories were an essential part of the barbarian economy. By acquiring 'prestige goods' – such as slaves, jewelry, gold pieces, fine weapons – the barbarian ruling elite preserved its rule and raised its social status. Success at raiding strengthened the link between a chief and his warriors.
Yet tribal leadership itself was always threatened by the great social mobility of tribal society. At any time, any bold and able warrior could raise his own status and become a new member of the elite or even a chieftain. High Kings (or Great Khans) were effectively the result of an election held by clan or tribal elders in time of emergency. The claims of a barbarian 'king' to legitimacy were fragile and leaderships changed often and violently.
This 'aristocratic vulnerability' became especially acute during the period of migrations in the 3rd to 5th centuries, when tribal territories were ill-defined and ever-changing, tribal alliances continuously made and remade, and warriors of the same tribe fought both for and against the Romans.
In a word, barbarian leadership was neither well-defined nor secure.
Contact with Rome meant influence from a world which was everything barbarian society was not: a stable 'kingdom' that seemingly embraced the whole world and existed 'forever'. Roman society by the 5th century was becoming ever more rigid and hierarchical, with eroding social and geographic mobility and an immense and widening gulf between rich and poor. Rome's urban middle class was being taxed out of existence, freedmen were being confined in indentured labour and hereditary employments and the soldiery was being reduced to a peasant-farmer militia.
By emulation, these characteristics helped to accentuate the growth and the power of a more rigid and stable barbarian aristocracy.
In short, tribal chieftains wanted to rule like Romans:
"Every Goth wishes to be like a Roman, " said Theodoric, "but only the humblest Roman wants to be like a Goth."
So strong was barbarian desire to establish a 'Roman' legitimacy for their new kingdoms that the illiterate Charlemagne, centuries later, styled himself "King of Franks and Lombards and Patrician of the Romans." He was crowned Emperor and Augustus.
Follow My Leader ...
Once a warrior king embraced 'Christianity' – an adoption of form and formality with little or no regard to content – the warrior aristocracy followed its king. Thus, for example, when Clovis accepted Christ as his new god, he compelled 3000 of his retainers to follow him into the baptismal font.
Among the common tribesmen religious allegiance was not an issue of conscience. This was not an age of individual opinion or preference. When the tribal leadership adopted a new god the tribe followed suit. Not to have done so would have been tantamount to rebellion. When Charlemagne insisted on baptism as the sign of submission, he punished with appalling barbarity any resistance, as when, in cold blood, he beheaded, in a single day, 4500 Saxons at Verden, in 782 AD.
Having adopted Christ as their new god, the warrior aristocracies forced the new faith on their peoples.
The Lost World of "Gothica"
(c. 450-550)
Much of Roman civilization was actually restored by the Goths.
Theodoric ruled the Gothic world from a palace at Ravenna, modelled on Diocletian's palace at Spalato. His administrators were Roman; he maintained the senate; he made Roman patricians, like Boethius, consuls. He also checked the expansion of the Franks and brought peace to the west.
His many dynastic links included a marriage to Audofleda, the sister of Clovis, king of Franks. He ruled Spain on behalf of his infant grandson; pacified the Vandals and protected the coasts with a fleet of a thousand vessels. In Rome he presided over games in traditional Roman manner; the dole was still distributed and the aqueducts still flowed.
Theodoric was Arian, but he tolerated all sects of Christianity. He was even called upon to arbitrate between warring popes – Symmachus and Lawrence! In the last year of his life he moved against the Catholics when they attacked Jewish traders and conspired with Constantinople.
After his death in 526, his daughter Amalasuntha ruled the Ostrogothic kingdom as regent. His grand daughter Matasuntha married Germanus, nephew of the Eastern Roman Emperor – but that was after Romano-Gothic Italy had been destroyed by Catholic armies from the east.
Invasion by Justinian and 30 years of warfare (Rome changed hands four times) destroyed urban civilization in Italy and brought whole regions to famine.
"Byzantine rule lasted just 14 years before an invasion of Lombards under Alboin swept it away. Instead of a powerful and virile Gothic state that might have fought off the barbarians, Italy had no resistance to offer. Rome became a backwater, and the victories of Justinian a disaster for the Christians of the West."
– Geoffrey Regan (Decisive Battles, p40)
Theodoric's Mausoleum, Ravenna.Built in 526 by his daughter Amalasuntha.
Worthy of the age of Augustus or Hadrian, the 30' central 'chapel' is crowned by a single piece of granite weighing 450 tons. Under the Goths, Roman intellect had not yet disappeared.
"The professors of grammar, rhetoric and jurisprudence were maintained in their privileges and pensions by the liberality of the Goths."– Gibbon (Decline & Fall, ch 39)
Justinian (another Christian "Great") – bankrupted the East by destroying the West!
Church of the Holy Wisdom – (Istanbul)
Justinian starved and robbed his troops and was merciless in his rapacious taxation – but he did build a big church.
Millions died as a result of his greed and vanity. Edward Gibbon estimated that the number of lives lost during the half century of his reign might have approached a hundred million. Procopius, in The Secret History, put the number even higher.
But then, we do have that big church ...
Enter the Christian Bishop...
Rome – as represented by the local aristocrat-cum-bishop – could bestow legitimacy, and with it all the pomp and ceremonial that filled subject people with awe and obedience. As the empire decayed, its rituals and regalia became ever more ornate and overbearing.
The barbarian kings delighted in Roman titles –which they put on their coinage, modelled very closely on Roman coinage. From 382 onwards barbarian tribes had been granted the status of 'federate of the Romans' (foedus) and their chieftains had been accorded patrician status. Some barbarian chiefs (for example, Fravitta, in 401) were even raised to the status of consul. When there were no longer emperors to bestow some grand honorific, the occasion fell into the hands of the bishop.
The barbarian kings sought marriage into the imperial bloodlines.
In a notable example, the Empress Galla Placidia was carried off to Gaul by the Goths, and in 414 she was married (in a Roman-style wedding ceremony) to the Visigothic chieftain Athaulf at Narbonne. The bridegroom wore a toga! 'Catholic princesses' were conveniently found at many convenient moments: Ingund married to Hermengild in 583 (intensifying the Gothic civil war in Spain); Bertha married to the Saxon Aethelbert in 600 (levering the Catholic church into Kent); and of course Clotilda, married to the hero Clovis.
The barbarian kings wanted Roman patricians in their entourage, men who could advise them in the governance of their newly acquired peoples. Everywhere, the indigenous 'Romans' outnumbered their warrior overlords.
The outstanding example is the court of Theodoric, Ostrogothic king of Italy. His administration was modelled on that of his imperial predecessors and was staffed by Romans. Among 'men of letters' at his court was Aurelius Cassiodorus, senator, statesman, monk and writer. As the local "statesman" the Bishops "spoke" for the native people and offered "administration" of cities and districts on behalf of the alien king.
Thus arose the Dark Age elite – a fusion of ex-pagan chiefs, who were in awe of all things Roman (including its Christianity), and degenerate Roman landowners who survived by foisting Christianity on to superstitious tribesmen.
Civil and ecclesiastical power coalesced. Saying much the same thing in Christ-speak, Bishop Isodore of Seville (560-636):
"Those who will not practice virtue by the admonition of the priest, may be kept from doing evil by the power of the king."(Isidore, Sententiae, I, 16).
The very heart of this veneer of legitimising romanitas was the religion by which the emperors had legitimised and made 'divine' their own rule – Christianity. Hence the rise and rise of the Christian bishops and, in particular, the Bishop of Rome – the custodian of the corpse of the empire and self-styled bestower of its legacy.
With his book of Christian spells and the inheritance of more than a thousand years of Roman 'gravitas' behind him, the patrician-bishop easily swayed the untutored mind of a barbarian king.As well as "Christ magic" he offered "legitimacy" and the power of the written word for kingly diplomacy. With his help, an upstart king's authority could now be proclaimed everywhere. With bribes and baubles, he gained access; he took on the role of ambassador and agent; he lent support to one side against another in fratricidal conflict; he advised; he provided 'virgin brides' and officiated at royal weddings and ceremonials; he governed the locals on behalf of his barbarian overlord.
Through it all, his own wealth and authority grew. And the nonsense he peddled – Christianity – became official dogma.
How the West was Won: The Rise and Rise of the Franks
Before the closing years of the 5th century the Christian Church showed no interest in converting barbarians. God, it seems, had chosen the Roman Empire to spread his Word. Yet when the fierce tribesmen arrived at the city gates, that event was "God's Judgement" and the Christian bishops were all too ready to abandon the empire and throw in their lot with the invader.
Despite the '3-day wonder' of the sack of Rome in 410 by the Visigoths, it was Gaul that was in dire straits in the 5th century, not Italy (which enjoyed a late 'Indian summer' under its Gothic king.)
In the late 5th century Salian Franks under Clovis began three centuries of expansion by absorbing the other Frankish tribes. In 486 Clovis defeated the Roman general Syagrius and the last Gallo-Roman region of Gaul – Soissons – was overrun. Subjugation of the Thuringians and Bavarians, followed.
The Franks were a heathen German tribe, almost the only one untouched by Arianism, spreading from the east. While the primitive Franks continued to give homage to their old Germanic gods, other, more Romanised, tribes had adopted Arian Christianity as a 'national' religion.
Backward and barbarous they may have been but for the beleaguered Catholic bishops, the Franks were the great hope. In the Franks, the papal agents found a fierce but malleable tribe and they spared nothing to bring the Frankish overlords under their sway. The dominion of the Franks in the west ensured the triumph of Roman Catholicism.
Thus, the "conversion" of Clovis is a crucial event, comparable to the "conversion" of Constantine – and equally is surrounded by the same fanciful mythology.
Clovis's conversion, like Constantine's, was no "inward experience of grace" but was a military matter. He was convinced that victory in battle lay in the gift of the god of the Christians. Christ for him was a talismanic war god.
According to the myth, in 496, after a close call against the Alamanni, the day had been 'saved' by a prayer either from Clovis himself, or the Catholic Bishop Gregory of Tours (or maybe both!) A grateful Clovis took baptism, to become the first "Catholic" ruler in the west.
Of course, he had been softened up somewhat by marriage in 493 to a Catholic princess, the Burgundian Clotilda, put forward as his bride 'on account of her beauty and wisdom' (and no doubt her Catholicism!) Clovis, like Constantine a century and a half earlier, was also aware of the political advantage of posing as a liberator of "those oppressed by religious heresy":
"It grieves me to see that the Arians possess the fairest portion of Gaul. Let us march against them, vanquish the heretics, and share out their fertile lands."
In 507 Clovis took Aquitaine from the weak Visigothic king Alaric II, and then subjugated Burgundy. Both areas were forcibly converted to Catholicism – to the delight of the local bishops.
At Clovis' death in 511, Clotilda went into a monastery at Tours where she stayed until her death in 545. No surprises that she made the sainthood!
In the half century after Clovis, the belligerent Franks advanced eastward as far as the Elbe and took advantage of the preoccupation of the Ostrogoths with Justinian's invasion of Italy to seize Gothic territories in Gaul and the north.
The religious war – such a fine innovation of Christianity! – would never end. In the 8th century, Frankish conquest carried the sword of Christ to the throat of the Thuringians and Bavarians, and halted the armies of Islam that had overwhelmed the Visigoths in Spain. Towards the end of the century, in forty bloody years of continuous aggression, Charlemagne's Franks slaughtered tens of thousands of Saxons, Avars and Slavs in order that they might know God's loving kindness.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
WHY DON'T JEWS BELIEVE IN JESUS?
For 2,000 years, Jews have rejected the Christian idea of Jesus as messiah. Why?
It is important to understand why Jews don't believe in Jesus. The purpose is not to disparage other religions, but rather to clarify the Jewish position. The more data that's available, the better-informed choices people can make about their spiritual path.
Jews do not accept Jesus as the messiah because:
1) Jesus did not fulfill the messianic prophecies.
2) Jesus did not embody the personal qualifications of the Messiah.
3) Biblical verses "referring" to Jesus are mistranslations.
4) Jewish belief is based on national revelation.
At the end of this article, we will examine these additional topics:
5) Christianity contradicts Jewish theology
6) Jews and Gentiles
7) Bringing the Messiah
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1) JESUS DID NOT FULFILL THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES
What is the Messiah supposed to accomplish? The Bible says that he will:
A. Build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28).
B. Gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6).
C. Usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. As it says: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore." (Isaiah 2:4)
D. Spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one. As it says: "God will be King over all the world -- on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One" (Zechariah 14:9).
The historical fact is that Jesus fulfilled none of these messianic prophecies.
Christians counter that Jesus will fulfill these in the Second Coming, but Jewish sources show that the Messiah will fulfill the prophecies outright, and no concept of a second coming exists.
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2) JESUS DID NOT EMBODY THE PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS OF MESSIAH
A. MESSIAH AS PROPHET
Jesus was not a prophet. Prophecy can only exist in Israel when the land is inhabited by a majority of world Jewry. During the time of Ezra (circa 300 BCE), when the majority of Jews refused to move from Babylon to Israel, prophecy ended upon the death of the last prophets -- Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
Jesus appeared on the scene approximately 350 years after prophecy had ended.
B. DESCENDENT OF DAVID
The Messiah must be descended on his father's side from King David (see Genesis 49:10 and Isaiah 11:1). According to the Christian claim that Jesus was the product of a virgin birth, he had no father -- and thus could not have possibly fulfilled the messianic requirement of being descended on his father's side from King David!
C. TORAH OBSERVANCE
The Messiah will lead the Jewish people to full Torah observance. The Torah states that all mitzvot remain binding forever, and anyone coming to change the Torah is immediately identified as a false prophet. (Deut. 13:1-4)
Throughout the New Testament, Jesus contradicts the Torah and states that its commandments are no longer applicable. (see John 1:45 and 9:16, Acts 3:22 and 7:37)
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3) MISTRANSLATED VERSES "REFERRING" TO JESUS
Biblical verses can only be understood by studying the original Hebrew text -- which reveals many discrepancies in the Christian translation.
A. VIRGIN BIRTH
The Christian idea of a virgin birth is derived from the verse in Isaiah 7:14 describing an "alma" as giving birth. The word "alma" has always meant a young woman, but Christian theologians came centuries later and translated it as "virgin." This accords Jesus' birth with the first century pagan idea of mortals being impregnated by gods.
B. CRUCIFIXION
The verse in Psalms 22:17 reads: "Like a lion, they are at my hands and feet." The Hebrew word ki-ari (like a lion) is grammatically similar to the word "gouged." Thus Christianity reads the verse as a reference to crucifixion: "They pierced my hands and feet."
C. SUFFERING SERVANT
Christianity claims that Isaiah chapter 53 refers to Jesus, as the "suffering servant."
In actuality, Isaiah 53 directly follows the theme of chapter 52, describing the exile and redemption of the Jewish people. The prophecies are written in the singular form because the Jews ("Israel") are regarded as one unit. The Torah is filled with examples of the Jewish nation referred to with a singular pronoun.
Ironically, Isaiah's prophecies of persecution refer in part to the 11th century when Jews were tortured and killed by Crusaders who acted in the name of Jesus.
From where did these mistranslations stem? St. Gregory, 4th century Bishop of Nanianzus, wrote: "A little jargon is all that is necessary to impose on the people. The less they comprehend, the more they admire."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) JEWISH BELIEF IS BASED SOLELY ON NATIONAL REVELATION
Of the 15,000 religions in human history, only Judaism bases its belief on national revelation -- i.e. God speaking to the entire nation. If God is going to start a religion, it makes sense He'll tell everyone, not just one person.
Judaism, unique among all of the world's major religions, does not rely on "claims of miracles" as the basis for its religion. In fact, the Bible says that God sometimes grants the power of "miracles" to charlatans, in order to test Jewish loyalty to the Torah (Deut. 13:4).
Maimonides states (Foundations of Torah, ch. 8):
The Jews did not believe in Moses, our teacher, because of the miracles he performed. Whenever anyone's belief is based on seeing miracles, he has lingering doubts, because it is possible the miracles were performed through magic or sorcery. All of the miracles performed by Moses in the desert were because they were necessary, and not as proof of his prophecy.
What then was the basis of [Jewish] belief? The Revelation at Mount Sinai, which we saw with our own eyes and heard with our own ears, not dependent on the testimony of others... as it says, "Face to face, God spoke with you..." The Torah also states: "God did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us -- who are all here alive today." (Deut. 5:3)
Judaism is not miracles. It is the personal eyewitness experience of every man, woman and child, standing at Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago.
See "Did God Speak at Mount Sinai" for further reading.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5) CHRISTIANITY CONTRADICTS JEWISH THEOLOGY
The following theological points apply primarily to the Roman Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination.
A. GOD AS THREE?
The Catholic idea of Trinity breaks God into three separate beings: The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19).
Contrast this to the Shema, the basis of Jewish belief: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE" (Deut. 6:4). Jews declare the Shema every day, while writing it on doorposts (Mezuzah), and binding it to the hand and head (Tefillin). This statement of God's One-ness is the first words a Jewish child is taught to say, and the last words uttered before a Jew dies.
In Jewish law, worship of a three-part god is considered idolatry -- one of the three cardinal sins that a Jew should rather give up his life than transgress. This explains why during the Inquisitions and throughout history, Jews gave up their lives rather than convert.
B. MAN AS GOD?
Roman Catholics believe that God came down to earth in human form, as Jesus said: "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30).
Maimonides devotes most of the "Guide for the Perplexed" to the fundamental idea that God is incorporeal, meaning that He assumes no physical form. God is Eternal, above time. He is Infinite, beyond space. He cannot be born, and cannot die. Saying that God assumes human form makes God small, diminishing both His unity and His divinity. As the Torah says: "God is not a mortal" (Numbers 23:19).
Judaism says that the Messiah will be born of human parents, and possess normal physical attributes like other people. He will not be a demi-god, and will not possess supernatural qualities. In fact, an individual is alive in every generation with the capacity to step into the role of the Messiah. (see Maimonides - Laws of Kings 11:3)
C. INTERMEDIARY FOR PRAYER?
The Catholic belief is that prayer must be directed through an intermediary -- i.e. confessing one's sins to a priest. Jesus himself is an intermediary, as Jesus said: "No man cometh unto the Father but by me."
In Judaism, prayer is a totally private matter, between each individual and God. As the Bible says: "God is near to all who call unto Him" (Psalms 145:18). Further, the Ten Commandments state: "You shall have no other gods BEFORE ME," meaning that it is forbidden to set up a mediator between God and man. (see Maimonides - Laws of Idolatry ch. 1)
D. INVOLVEMENT IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD
Catholic doctrine often treats the physical world as an evil to be avoided. Mary, the holiest woman, is portrayed as a virgin. Priests and nuns are celibate. And monasteries are in remote, secluded locations.
By contrast, Judaism believes that God created the physical world not to frustrate us, but for our pleasure. Jewish spirituality comes through grappling with the mundane world in a way that uplifts and elevates. Sex in the proper context is one of the holiest acts we can perform.
The Talmud says if a person has the opportunity to taste a new fruit and refuses to do so, he will have to account for that in the World to Come. Jewish rabbinical schools teach how to live amidst the bustle of commercial activity. Jews don't retreat from life, we elevate it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6) JEWS AND GENTILES
Judaism does not demand that everyone convert to the religion. The Torah of Moses is a truth for all humanity, whether Jewish or not. King Solomon asked God to heed the prayers of non-Jews who come to the Holy Temple (Kings I 8:41-43). The prophet Isaiah refers to the Temple as a "House for all nations."
The Temple service during Sukkot featured 70 bull offerings, corresponding to the 70 nations of the world. The Talmud says that if the Romans would have realized how much benefit they were getting from the Temple, they'd never have destroyed it.
Jews have never actively sought converts to Judaism because the Torah prescribes a righteous path for gentiles to follow, known as the "Seven Laws of Noah." Maimonides explains that any human being who faithfully observes these basic moral laws earns a proper place in heaven.
For further study of the Seven Laws of Noah, see:
Bnei Noah of Fort Worthhttp://www.fastlane.net/~bneinoah/
Path of the Righteous Gentilehttp://www.chabad.org/gopher/outlook/7laws/index.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7) BRINGING THE MESSIAH
Maimonides states that the popularity of Christianity (and Islam) is part of God's plan to spread the ideals of Torah throughout the world. This moves society closer to a perfected state of morality and toward a greater understanding of God. All this is in preparation for the Messianic age.
Indeed, the world is in desperate need of Messianic redemption. War and pollution threaten our planet; ego and confusion erode family life. To the extent we are aware of the problems of society, is the extent we will yearn for redemption. As the Talmud says, one of the first questions a Jew is asked on Judgment Day is: "Did you yearn for the arrival of the Messiah?"
How can we hasten the coming of the Messiah? The best way is to love all humanity generously, to keep the mitzvot of the Torah (as best we can), and to encourage others to do so as well.
Despite the gloom, the world does seem headed toward redemption. One apparent sign is that the Jewish people have returned to the Land of Israel and made it bloom again. Additionally, a major movement is afoot of young Jews returning to Torah tradition.
The Messiah can come at any moment, and it all depends on our actions. God is ready when we are. For as King David says: "Redemption will come today -- if you hearken to His voice."
It is important to understand why Jews don't believe in Jesus. The purpose is not to disparage other religions, but rather to clarify the Jewish position. The more data that's available, the better-informed choices people can make about their spiritual path.
Jews do not accept Jesus as the messiah because:
1) Jesus did not fulfill the messianic prophecies.
2) Jesus did not embody the personal qualifications of the Messiah.
3) Biblical verses "referring" to Jesus are mistranslations.
4) Jewish belief is based on national revelation.
At the end of this article, we will examine these additional topics:
5) Christianity contradicts Jewish theology
6) Jews and Gentiles
7) Bringing the Messiah
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) JESUS DID NOT FULFILL THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES
What is the Messiah supposed to accomplish? The Bible says that he will:
A. Build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28).
B. Gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6).
C. Usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. As it says: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore." (Isaiah 2:4)
D. Spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one. As it says: "God will be King over all the world -- on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One" (Zechariah 14:9).
The historical fact is that Jesus fulfilled none of these messianic prophecies.
Christians counter that Jesus will fulfill these in the Second Coming, but Jewish sources show that the Messiah will fulfill the prophecies outright, and no concept of a second coming exists.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) JESUS DID NOT EMBODY THE PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS OF MESSIAH
A. MESSIAH AS PROPHET
Jesus was not a prophet. Prophecy can only exist in Israel when the land is inhabited by a majority of world Jewry. During the time of Ezra (circa 300 BCE), when the majority of Jews refused to move from Babylon to Israel, prophecy ended upon the death of the last prophets -- Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
Jesus appeared on the scene approximately 350 years after prophecy had ended.
B. DESCENDENT OF DAVID
The Messiah must be descended on his father's side from King David (see Genesis 49:10 and Isaiah 11:1). According to the Christian claim that Jesus was the product of a virgin birth, he had no father -- and thus could not have possibly fulfilled the messianic requirement of being descended on his father's side from King David!
C. TORAH OBSERVANCE
The Messiah will lead the Jewish people to full Torah observance. The Torah states that all mitzvot remain binding forever, and anyone coming to change the Torah is immediately identified as a false prophet. (Deut. 13:1-4)
Throughout the New Testament, Jesus contradicts the Torah and states that its commandments are no longer applicable. (see John 1:45 and 9:16, Acts 3:22 and 7:37)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3) MISTRANSLATED VERSES "REFERRING" TO JESUS
Biblical verses can only be understood by studying the original Hebrew text -- which reveals many discrepancies in the Christian translation.
A. VIRGIN BIRTH
The Christian idea of a virgin birth is derived from the verse in Isaiah 7:14 describing an "alma" as giving birth. The word "alma" has always meant a young woman, but Christian theologians came centuries later and translated it as "virgin." This accords Jesus' birth with the first century pagan idea of mortals being impregnated by gods.
B. CRUCIFIXION
The verse in Psalms 22:17 reads: "Like a lion, they are at my hands and feet." The Hebrew word ki-ari (like a lion) is grammatically similar to the word "gouged." Thus Christianity reads the verse as a reference to crucifixion: "They pierced my hands and feet."
C. SUFFERING SERVANT
Christianity claims that Isaiah chapter 53 refers to Jesus, as the "suffering servant."
In actuality, Isaiah 53 directly follows the theme of chapter 52, describing the exile and redemption of the Jewish people. The prophecies are written in the singular form because the Jews ("Israel") are regarded as one unit. The Torah is filled with examples of the Jewish nation referred to with a singular pronoun.
Ironically, Isaiah's prophecies of persecution refer in part to the 11th century when Jews were tortured and killed by Crusaders who acted in the name of Jesus.
From where did these mistranslations stem? St. Gregory, 4th century Bishop of Nanianzus, wrote: "A little jargon is all that is necessary to impose on the people. The less they comprehend, the more they admire."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) JEWISH BELIEF IS BASED SOLELY ON NATIONAL REVELATION
Of the 15,000 religions in human history, only Judaism bases its belief on national revelation -- i.e. God speaking to the entire nation. If God is going to start a religion, it makes sense He'll tell everyone, not just one person.
Judaism, unique among all of the world's major religions, does not rely on "claims of miracles" as the basis for its religion. In fact, the Bible says that God sometimes grants the power of "miracles" to charlatans, in order to test Jewish loyalty to the Torah (Deut. 13:4).
Maimonides states (Foundations of Torah, ch. 8):
The Jews did not believe in Moses, our teacher, because of the miracles he performed. Whenever anyone's belief is based on seeing miracles, he has lingering doubts, because it is possible the miracles were performed through magic or sorcery. All of the miracles performed by Moses in the desert were because they were necessary, and not as proof of his prophecy.
What then was the basis of [Jewish] belief? The Revelation at Mount Sinai, which we saw with our own eyes and heard with our own ears, not dependent on the testimony of others... as it says, "Face to face, God spoke with you..." The Torah also states: "God did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us -- who are all here alive today." (Deut. 5:3)
Judaism is not miracles. It is the personal eyewitness experience of every man, woman and child, standing at Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago.
See "Did God Speak at Mount Sinai" for further reading.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5) CHRISTIANITY CONTRADICTS JEWISH THEOLOGY
The following theological points apply primarily to the Roman Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination.
A. GOD AS THREE?
The Catholic idea of Trinity breaks God into three separate beings: The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19).
Contrast this to the Shema, the basis of Jewish belief: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE" (Deut. 6:4). Jews declare the Shema every day, while writing it on doorposts (Mezuzah), and binding it to the hand and head (Tefillin). This statement of God's One-ness is the first words a Jewish child is taught to say, and the last words uttered before a Jew dies.
In Jewish law, worship of a three-part god is considered idolatry -- one of the three cardinal sins that a Jew should rather give up his life than transgress. This explains why during the Inquisitions and throughout history, Jews gave up their lives rather than convert.
B. MAN AS GOD?
Roman Catholics believe that God came down to earth in human form, as Jesus said: "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30).
Maimonides devotes most of the "Guide for the Perplexed" to the fundamental idea that God is incorporeal, meaning that He assumes no physical form. God is Eternal, above time. He is Infinite, beyond space. He cannot be born, and cannot die. Saying that God assumes human form makes God small, diminishing both His unity and His divinity. As the Torah says: "God is not a mortal" (Numbers 23:19).
Judaism says that the Messiah will be born of human parents, and possess normal physical attributes like other people. He will not be a demi-god, and will not possess supernatural qualities. In fact, an individual is alive in every generation with the capacity to step into the role of the Messiah. (see Maimonides - Laws of Kings 11:3)
C. INTERMEDIARY FOR PRAYER?
The Catholic belief is that prayer must be directed through an intermediary -- i.e. confessing one's sins to a priest. Jesus himself is an intermediary, as Jesus said: "No man cometh unto the Father but by me."
In Judaism, prayer is a totally private matter, between each individual and God. As the Bible says: "God is near to all who call unto Him" (Psalms 145:18). Further, the Ten Commandments state: "You shall have no other gods BEFORE ME," meaning that it is forbidden to set up a mediator between God and man. (see Maimonides - Laws of Idolatry ch. 1)
D. INVOLVEMENT IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD
Catholic doctrine often treats the physical world as an evil to be avoided. Mary, the holiest woman, is portrayed as a virgin. Priests and nuns are celibate. And monasteries are in remote, secluded locations.
By contrast, Judaism believes that God created the physical world not to frustrate us, but for our pleasure. Jewish spirituality comes through grappling with the mundane world in a way that uplifts and elevates. Sex in the proper context is one of the holiest acts we can perform.
The Talmud says if a person has the opportunity to taste a new fruit and refuses to do so, he will have to account for that in the World to Come. Jewish rabbinical schools teach how to live amidst the bustle of commercial activity. Jews don't retreat from life, we elevate it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6) JEWS AND GENTILES
Judaism does not demand that everyone convert to the religion. The Torah of Moses is a truth for all humanity, whether Jewish or not. King Solomon asked God to heed the prayers of non-Jews who come to the Holy Temple (Kings I 8:41-43). The prophet Isaiah refers to the Temple as a "House for all nations."
The Temple service during Sukkot featured 70 bull offerings, corresponding to the 70 nations of the world. The Talmud says that if the Romans would have realized how much benefit they were getting from the Temple, they'd never have destroyed it.
Jews have never actively sought converts to Judaism because the Torah prescribes a righteous path for gentiles to follow, known as the "Seven Laws of Noah." Maimonides explains that any human being who faithfully observes these basic moral laws earns a proper place in heaven.
For further study of the Seven Laws of Noah, see:
Bnei Noah of Fort Worthhttp://www.fastlane.net/~bneinoah/
Path of the Righteous Gentilehttp://www.chabad.org/gopher/outlook/7laws/index.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7) BRINGING THE MESSIAH
Maimonides states that the popularity of Christianity (and Islam) is part of God's plan to spread the ideals of Torah throughout the world. This moves society closer to a perfected state of morality and toward a greater understanding of God. All this is in preparation for the Messianic age.
Indeed, the world is in desperate need of Messianic redemption. War and pollution threaten our planet; ego and confusion erode family life. To the extent we are aware of the problems of society, is the extent we will yearn for redemption. As the Talmud says, one of the first questions a Jew is asked on Judgment Day is: "Did you yearn for the arrival of the Messiah?"
How can we hasten the coming of the Messiah? The best way is to love all humanity generously, to keep the mitzvot of the Torah (as best we can), and to encourage others to do so as well.
Despite the gloom, the world does seem headed toward redemption. One apparent sign is that the Jewish people have returned to the Land of Israel and made it bloom again. Additionally, a major movement is afoot of young Jews returning to Torah tradition.
The Messiah can come at any moment, and it all depends on our actions. God is ready when we are. For as King David says: "Redemption will come today -- if you hearken to His voice."
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Jewish Position on Jesus
The first thing you have to recognize whenever you are discussing the Jewish position on Jesus is that it is the Christians who must prove their case, not the Jews. The Jewish religion existed for thousands of years before Christianity, and Christianity accepts the truth of the Torah and other Jewish Scriptures as Divinely revealed truth. As such, there is no need to enter into any debate regarding the truth of Judaism per se when dealing with Christians. However, Christians maintain that their god, Jesus, came to the world and annulled the laws of the Torah, replacing them with a "New Covenant" that demands belief in Jesus. This is an extraordinary and untenable claim on several grounds:
The claim that a human being is actually God, or part of God, is clearly a very serious claim. Most of us, if presented with such a claim, would reject it out of hand as an utter absurdity, even bordering on madness. Yet, Christianity claims that Jesus, a human being, is God. Obviously they have to prove this before we should be expected to accept it. But what do they actually offer us as proof? A few miracle tales written by his disciples. Yet, despite the rather dramatic claims made by these few followers, we find little or no mention of Jesus in any of the historical sources from the period he supposedly lived in. Every religious movement makes such claims about its founder, yet obviously they cannot all be true. Why should we pick the stories of Jesus over the stories of Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed, or any other such legendary figure?
(Just as an aside, some may respond that the same accusation could be leveled at Judaism. However, this is incorrect. Judaism, alone among all religions, is based upon events that happened in the presence of hundreds of thousands of eyewitnesses, primarily the Exodus and the Sinai Revelation. These events, which are the foundation stones of Judaism, were witnessed by the entire Jewish people and qualify as objective historical events. No other religion claims to have had similar experiences, because such claims would be obviously false. The Jews, however, can make this claim because these events really happened (as any Christian or Muslim will agree).)
The idea that God would take physical form (as in the physical form of Jesus) is clearly repugnant to the Bible, as we see from Deuteronomy 4:15-16 and innumerable other places. It is this concept which is the basis of the prohibition against idolatry, one of the worst sins. If we would accept the premise that God could or would take physical form, then any form of idolatry could be justified by its followers as legitimate and the prohibition against idolatry would be meaningless.
The Torah, which Christians believe to be God's word, states in several places that the laws of the Torah are eternal. See, for example, Deuteronomy 4:2, 29:13-14 (KJV 14-15), and 29:28 (KJV 29:29). In particular, see Deuteronomy 13:1-6 (KJV 12:32-13:5) where we are taught that we are not permitted to add to or detract from God's laws, and that if a prophet arises who teaches us to worship a new god we may not listen to him, even if he performs miracles. Yet, Christians believe that Jesus declared himself to be God, and that the laws of the Torah are no longer binding. How can Christianity claim to accept the Torah (the "Old" Testament) while rejecting its most basic principle?
Christians claim that Jesus was the Messiah which the Torah tells will someday come. Yet, contrary to the claims of Christianity, Jesus never fulfilled any of these prophecies. Briefly, these are:
He will return all Jews to the service of God in all its details.
He will rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
He will gather in the dispersed Jews to the land of Israel.
He will bring the entire world to serve God in unity.
Clearly, Jesus did not accomplish any of these things. In the past I have encountered Christians who have argued that Jesus has not failed to fulfill these conditions since he will fulfill them at the time of the "Second Coming". This is a meaningless argument. As the conditions clearly have not been fulfilled, there is no reason to assume he is the Messiah simply because some of his followers say he will do so at some undetermined point in the future. I could as easily make the same argument for myself, I will fulfill the conditions in the future so believe I am the Messiah now.
Even if we would reduce the claim for the legitimacy of Jesus from that of deity to that of a prophet, we would still be faced with a serious problem. The Torah lays out clear guidelines for determining who is a prophet. Jesus never qualified according to these rules, particularly since one of these laws is that a prophet cannot claim to abrogate God's laws and Jesus sought to do just this. It is for this reason that Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides, one of the greatest leaders of the Jewish people, applied to Jesus the verse in Daniel 7:25, "He will speak words against the Most High, and he will wear down the saints of the Most High, attempting to change the seasons and the Law" (Igeres Teiman).
For all these reasons, and others as well, Judaism cannot accept the claims of Christianity. As these opinions are all firmly based in the Bible, which Christians claim to believe in, it is upon them to prove beyond a doubt that their god is a true god and not simply an idol. They have never done this because it cannot be done. Jesus was clearly not God, not the Messiah, and not a prophet.
Nevertheless, the opinion of most historical scholars, including religious Jews, is that Jesus was an actual historical personage though he may not have lived at the time the New Testament claims. In any event, whether he ever lived is very secondary, the tales told of him in the New Testament are almost certainly all fictional and are completely unsupported by any other historical text from that period.
The claim that a human being is actually God, or part of God, is clearly a very serious claim. Most of us, if presented with such a claim, would reject it out of hand as an utter absurdity, even bordering on madness. Yet, Christianity claims that Jesus, a human being, is God. Obviously they have to prove this before we should be expected to accept it. But what do they actually offer us as proof? A few miracle tales written by his disciples. Yet, despite the rather dramatic claims made by these few followers, we find little or no mention of Jesus in any of the historical sources from the period he supposedly lived in. Every religious movement makes such claims about its founder, yet obviously they cannot all be true. Why should we pick the stories of Jesus over the stories of Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed, or any other such legendary figure?
(Just as an aside, some may respond that the same accusation could be leveled at Judaism. However, this is incorrect. Judaism, alone among all religions, is based upon events that happened in the presence of hundreds of thousands of eyewitnesses, primarily the Exodus and the Sinai Revelation. These events, which are the foundation stones of Judaism, were witnessed by the entire Jewish people and qualify as objective historical events. No other religion claims to have had similar experiences, because such claims would be obviously false. The Jews, however, can make this claim because these events really happened (as any Christian or Muslim will agree).)
The idea that God would take physical form (as in the physical form of Jesus) is clearly repugnant to the Bible, as we see from Deuteronomy 4:15-16 and innumerable other places. It is this concept which is the basis of the prohibition against idolatry, one of the worst sins. If we would accept the premise that God could or would take physical form, then any form of idolatry could be justified by its followers as legitimate and the prohibition against idolatry would be meaningless.
The Torah, which Christians believe to be God's word, states in several places that the laws of the Torah are eternal. See, for example, Deuteronomy 4:2, 29:13-14 (KJV 14-15), and 29:28 (KJV 29:29). In particular, see Deuteronomy 13:1-6 (KJV 12:32-13:5) where we are taught that we are not permitted to add to or detract from God's laws, and that if a prophet arises who teaches us to worship a new god we may not listen to him, even if he performs miracles. Yet, Christians believe that Jesus declared himself to be God, and that the laws of the Torah are no longer binding. How can Christianity claim to accept the Torah (the "Old" Testament) while rejecting its most basic principle?
Christians claim that Jesus was the Messiah which the Torah tells will someday come. Yet, contrary to the claims of Christianity, Jesus never fulfilled any of these prophecies. Briefly, these are:
He will return all Jews to the service of God in all its details.
He will rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
He will gather in the dispersed Jews to the land of Israel.
He will bring the entire world to serve God in unity.
Clearly, Jesus did not accomplish any of these things. In the past I have encountered Christians who have argued that Jesus has not failed to fulfill these conditions since he will fulfill them at the time of the "Second Coming". This is a meaningless argument. As the conditions clearly have not been fulfilled, there is no reason to assume he is the Messiah simply because some of his followers say he will do so at some undetermined point in the future. I could as easily make the same argument for myself, I will fulfill the conditions in the future so believe I am the Messiah now.
Even if we would reduce the claim for the legitimacy of Jesus from that of deity to that of a prophet, we would still be faced with a serious problem. The Torah lays out clear guidelines for determining who is a prophet. Jesus never qualified according to these rules, particularly since one of these laws is that a prophet cannot claim to abrogate God's laws and Jesus sought to do just this. It is for this reason that Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides, one of the greatest leaders of the Jewish people, applied to Jesus the verse in Daniel 7:25, "He will speak words against the Most High, and he will wear down the saints of the Most High, attempting to change the seasons and the Law" (Igeres Teiman).
For all these reasons, and others as well, Judaism cannot accept the claims of Christianity. As these opinions are all firmly based in the Bible, which Christians claim to believe in, it is upon them to prove beyond a doubt that their god is a true god and not simply an idol. They have never done this because it cannot be done. Jesus was clearly not God, not the Messiah, and not a prophet.
Nevertheless, the opinion of most historical scholars, including religious Jews, is that Jesus was an actual historical personage though he may not have lived at the time the New Testament claims. In any event, whether he ever lived is very secondary, the tales told of him in the New Testament are almost certainly all fictional and are completely unsupported by any other historical text from that period.
Basic Difference between Judaism and Christianity
Some of the basic differences between Judaism and Christianity (please note that different Christian sects may differ with regards to certain issues discussed here):
Judaism believes that God is a perfect unity, completely indivisible. Christianity believes in the Trinity.
Judaism believes the God has no physical form. Christianity believes that Jesus was God (or part of God) in physical form.
Judaism believes all the laws of the Bible are eternal and immutable. Christianity believes that Jesus ended, or at least changed, the binding nature of Biblical law.
Judaism rejects the need for any intermediary between man and God. Christianity requires the use of Jesus as an intermediary.
Judaism believes that sins can be atoned for through repentance. Christianity believes that repentance accomplishes nothing without belief in Jesus, and many groups believe that with such belief repentance is actually unnecessary.
Judaism teaches that every person is born with a clean slate. Christianity believes in an Original Sin doctrine which maintains that every person is born guilty of sin.
Judaism believes that Satan is a servant of God, entirely subservient to His will. Most Christians believe that the Devil is an enemy of God's who struggles with God for power in the world.
There are many more differences, but these points illustrate that there is a major theological gap between the two religions.
Judaism believes that God is a perfect unity, completely indivisible. Christianity believes in the Trinity.
Judaism believes the God has no physical form. Christianity believes that Jesus was God (or part of God) in physical form.
Judaism believes all the laws of the Bible are eternal and immutable. Christianity believes that Jesus ended, or at least changed, the binding nature of Biblical law.
Judaism rejects the need for any intermediary between man and God. Christianity requires the use of Jesus as an intermediary.
Judaism believes that sins can be atoned for through repentance. Christianity believes that repentance accomplishes nothing without belief in Jesus, and many groups believe that with such belief repentance is actually unnecessary.
Judaism teaches that every person is born with a clean slate. Christianity believes in an Original Sin doctrine which maintains that every person is born guilty of sin.
Judaism believes that Satan is a servant of God, entirely subservient to His will. Most Christians believe that the Devil is an enemy of God's who struggles with God for power in the world.
There are many more differences, but these points illustrate that there is a major theological gap between the two religions.
Canabalism Communion Eucharist
Think about Communion
Because Christians have been participating in the communion rite for many years, they tend to forget just how bizarre this ritual is. The whole idea of "eating Jesus' body" and "drinking his blood" is grotesque in the extreme.
Have you ever wondered where this ritual came from, or why billions of people would participate in a ritual that is this bizarre? First, let's look at the part of the Bible that prescribes the ritual. You find it in Mark, Chapter 14:
And as they were eating, he took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, "Take; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. There are a few lines in Luke chapter 22 that are nearly identical.
Jesus gets far more graphic, however, in John chapter 6:53-55:
So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. To any normal person, this sounds very much like the script of a gruesome horror film. It sounds like some sort of revolting satanic ritual. It definitely does not sound like the words of the all-loving creator of the universe.
Imagine that you are a normal person, and you have never been exposed to Christianity before. Now imagine that a Christian comes up to you and quotes John 6:53. Any normal adult would rightfully assume the Christian to be insane. Thus, you never see a bumper sticker that says "John 6:53."
However, the assumption is accurate. The dictionary describes cannibalism in the following way:
The usually ritualistic eating of human flesh by a human being What Jesus is demanding is cannibalism.
What does your common sense tell you about all of this? What we are talking about here is cannibalism, and what Christians are doing looks exactly like a pagan/satanic ritual. If you are a Christian, the two questions you may be asking yourself right now are:
Why in the world am I, as a sane individual, participating in ritualistic cannibalism? How in the world did I stoop to this point?
Why would an all-powerful, all-loving God demand that I do this? What sort of God am I worshipping?
The source of the ritual
If you are curious, here is why Christianity contains this bizarre ritual. It is not the case that an all-powerful God in heaven demands this behavior. All of the rituals in Christianity are completely man-made. Christianity is a snow ball that rolled over a dozen pagan religions. As the snowball grew, it freely attached pagan rituals in order to be more palatable to converts. The process is described succinctly and accurately in the book "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. The book offers these two accounts of the acretion process:
"The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable. Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. And virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual - the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of "God-eating" - were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions."
"Nothing in Christianity is original. The pre-Christian God Mithras - called the Son of God and the Light of the World - was born on December 25, died was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days. By the way, December 25 is also the birthday or Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus. The newborn Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Even Christianity's weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans." To any normal person, the practice of communion is one of the most bizarre things that Christians do. Jesus' cannibalistic tendencies offer explicit evidence that Jesus is not God.
When you research it historically, you realize that the Jesus character was a human being like any other. The mythology of his birth, life and death are pagan stories that are all man-made because Jesus of Nazereth is imaginary.
Because Christians have been participating in the communion rite for many years, they tend to forget just how bizarre this ritual is. The whole idea of "eating Jesus' body" and "drinking his blood" is grotesque in the extreme.
Have you ever wondered where this ritual came from, or why billions of people would participate in a ritual that is this bizarre? First, let's look at the part of the Bible that prescribes the ritual. You find it in Mark, Chapter 14:
And as they were eating, he took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, "Take; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. There are a few lines in Luke chapter 22 that are nearly identical.
Jesus gets far more graphic, however, in John chapter 6:53-55:
So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. To any normal person, this sounds very much like the script of a gruesome horror film. It sounds like some sort of revolting satanic ritual. It definitely does not sound like the words of the all-loving creator of the universe.
Imagine that you are a normal person, and you have never been exposed to Christianity before. Now imagine that a Christian comes up to you and quotes John 6:53. Any normal adult would rightfully assume the Christian to be insane. Thus, you never see a bumper sticker that says "John 6:53."
However, the assumption is accurate. The dictionary describes cannibalism in the following way:
The usually ritualistic eating of human flesh by a human being What Jesus is demanding is cannibalism.
What does your common sense tell you about all of this? What we are talking about here is cannibalism, and what Christians are doing looks exactly like a pagan/satanic ritual. If you are a Christian, the two questions you may be asking yourself right now are:
Why in the world am I, as a sane individual, participating in ritualistic cannibalism? How in the world did I stoop to this point?
Why would an all-powerful, all-loving God demand that I do this? What sort of God am I worshipping?
The source of the ritual
If you are curious, here is why Christianity contains this bizarre ritual. It is not the case that an all-powerful God in heaven demands this behavior. All of the rituals in Christianity are completely man-made. Christianity is a snow ball that rolled over a dozen pagan religions. As the snowball grew, it freely attached pagan rituals in order to be more palatable to converts. The process is described succinctly and accurately in the book "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. The book offers these two accounts of the acretion process:
"The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable. Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. And virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual - the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of "God-eating" - were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions."
"Nothing in Christianity is original. The pre-Christian God Mithras - called the Son of God and the Light of the World - was born on December 25, died was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days. By the way, December 25 is also the birthday or Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus. The newborn Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Even Christianity's weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans." To any normal person, the practice of communion is one of the most bizarre things that Christians do. Jesus' cannibalistic tendencies offer explicit evidence that Jesus is not God.
When you research it historically, you realize that the Jesus character was a human being like any other. The mythology of his birth, life and death are pagan stories that are all man-made because Jesus of Nazereth is imaginary.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Jewish Defense against Missionaries
Much concern has been expressed in the Jewish media regarding the activity of "Jews for Jesus" and other missionary organizations who go out of their way to convert Jews to Christianity. Unfortunately, many Jews are ill equipped to deal with Christian missionaries and their arguments. Hopefully this article will contribute to remedying this situation.
When countering Christian missionaries it is important to base one's arguments on correct facts. Arguments based on incorrect facts can easily backfire and end up strengthening the arguments of the missionaries.
It is rather unfortunate that many well-meaning Jewish Studies teachers have unwittingly aided missionaries by teaching Jewish pupils incorrect information about the origins of Christianity. I can recall being taught the following story about Jesus at the Jewish day school I attended:
"Jesus was a famous first century rabbi whose Hebrew name was Rabbi Yehoshua. His father was a carpenter named Joseph and his mother's name was Mary. Mary became pregnant before she married Joseph. Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem during a Roman census. Jesus grew up in Nazareth and became a learned rabbi. He traveled all over Israel preaching that people should love one another. Some people thought that he was the Messiah and he did not deny this, which made the other rabbis very angry. He caused so much controversy that the Roman governor Pontius Pilate had him crucified. He was buried in a tomb and later his body was found to be missing since it had probably been stolen by his disciples."A few years after being taught this seemingly innocent story, I became interested in the origins of Christianity and decided to do some further reading on the "famous Rabbi Yehoshua." Much to my dismay, I discovered that there was no historical evidence of this Rabbi Yehoshua. The claim that Jesus was a rabbi named Yehoshua and the claim that his body was probably stolen both turned out to be pure conjecture. The rest of the story was nothing more than a watered down version of the story which Christians believe as part of the Christian religion but which is not supported by any legitimate historical source.
There was absolutely no historical evidence that Jesus, Joseph or Mary ever existed, let alone that Joseph was a carpenter or that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth.
Despite the lack of evidence for Jesus's existence many Jews have made the tragic mistake of assuming that the New Testament story is largely correct and have tried to refute Christianity by attempting to rationalize the various miracles that allegedly occurred during Jesus's life and after his death. Numerous books have been written which take this approach to Christianity. This approach however is hopelessly flawed and is in fact dangerous since it encourages belief in the New Testament.
When the Israelites were confronted with the worship of Baal they did not blindly accept the ancient West Semitic myths as history. When the Maccabees were confronted with Greek religion they did not blindly accept Greek mythology as history. Why do so many modern Jews blindly accept Christian mythology? The answer to this question seems to be that many Christians do not know themselves where the distinction between established history and Christian belief lies and they have passed their confusion on to the Jewish community. Browsing through the religion section of a local bookstore, I recently came across a book which claimed to be an objective biography of Jesus. It turned out to be nothing more than a summary of the usual New Testament story. It even included claims that Jesus's miracles had been witnessed but that rational explanations for them might exist. Many history books written by Christians take a similar approach. Some Christian authors will suggest that perhaps the miracles are not completely historical but they nevertheless follow the general New Testament story. The idea that there was a real historical Jesus has thus become entrenched in Christian society and Jews living in the Christian world have come to blindly accept this belief because they have never seen it seriously challenged.
Despite the widespread belief in Jesus the fact remains that there is no historical Jesus. In order to understand what is meant by an "historical Jesus," consider King Midas in Greek mythology. The story that King Midas turned everything he touched into gold is clearly nonsense, yet despite this we know that there was a real King Midas. Archaeologists have excavated his tomb and found his skeletal remains. The Greeks who told the story of Midas and his golden touch clearly intended people to identify him with the real Midas. So although the story of the golden touch is fictional, the story is about a person whose existence is known as a fact--the "historical Midas." In the case of Jesus, however, there is no single person whose existence is known as a fact and who is also intended to be the subject of the Jesus stories, i.e. there is no historical Jesus.
When confronted by a Christian missionary, one should immediately point out that the very existence of Jesus has not been proven. When missionaries argue they usually appeal to emotions rather than to reason and they will attempt to make you feel embarrassed about denying the historicity of Jesus. The usual response is something like "Isn't denying the existence of Jesus just as silly as denying the existence of Julius Caesar or Queen Elizabeth?" A popular variation of this response used especially against Jews is "Isn't denying the existence of Jesus like denying the Holocaust?" One should then point out that there are ample historical sources confirming the existence of Julius Caesar, Queen Elizabeth or whoever else is named, while there is no corresponding evidence for Jesus.
To be perfectly thorough you should take time to do some research on the historical personalities mentioned by the missionaries and present hard evidence of their existence. At the same time you should challenge the missionaries to provide similar evidence of Jesus's existence. You should point out that although the existence of Julius Caesar, or Queen Elizabeth, etc., is accepted worldwide, the same is not true of Jesus. In the Far East where the major religions are Buddhism, Shinto, Taoism and Confucianism, Jesus is considered to be just another character in Western religious mythology, on a par with Thor, Zeus and Osiris. Most Hindus do not believe in Jesus, but those who do consider him to be one of the many avatars of the Hindu god Vishnu. Muslims certainly believe in Jesus but they reject the New Testament story and consider him to be a prophet who announced the coming of Muhammed. They explicitly deny that he was ever crucified.
To sum up, there is no story of Jesus which is uniformly accepted worldwide. It is this fact which puts Jesus on a different level to established historical personalities. If the missionaries use the "Holocaust reply," you should point out that the Holocaust is well-documented and that there are numerous eyewitness reports. It should be pointed out that most of the people who deny the Holocaust have turned out to be antisemitic hate-mongers with fraudulent credentials. On the other hand, millions of honest people in Asia, who make up the majority of the world's population, have failed to be convinced by the Christian story of Jesus since there is no compelling evidence for its authenticity. The missionaries will insist that the story of Jesus is a well-established fact and will argue that there is "plenty of evidence supporting it." One should then insist on seeing this evidence and refuse to listen any further until they produce it.
If Jesus was not an historical person, where did the whole New Testament story come from in the first place? The Hebrew name for Christians has always been Notzrim. This name is derived from the Hebrew word neitzer, which means a shoot or sprout--an obvious Messianic symbol. There were already people called Notzrim at the time of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah (c. 100 B.C.E.). Although modern Christians claim that Christianity only started in the first century C.E., it is clear that the first century Christians in Israel considered themselves to be a continuation of the Notzri movement which had been in existence for about 150 years. One of the most notorious Notzrim was Yeishu ben Pandeira, also known as Yeishu ha-Notzri. Talmudic scholars have always maintained that the story of Jesus began with Yeishu. The Hebrew name for Jesus has always been Yeishu and the Hebrew for "Jesus the Nazarene" has always been "Yeishu ha-Notzri." (The name Yeishu is a shortened form of the name Yeishua, not Yehoshua.) It is important to note that Yeishu ha-Notzri is not an historical Jesus since modern Christianity denies any connection between Jesus and Yeishu and moreover, parts of the Jesus myth are based on other historical people besides Yeishu.
We know very little about Yeishu ha-Notzri. All modern works that mention him are based on information taken from the Tosefta and the Baraitas - writings made at the same time as the Mishna but not contained in it. Because the historical information concerning Yeishu is so damaging to Christianity, most Christian authors (and even some Jewish ones) have tried to discredit this information and have invented many ingenious arguments to explain it away. Many of their arguments are based on misunderstandings and misquotations of the Baraitas and in order to get an accurate picture of Yeishu one should ignore Christian authors and examine the Baraitas directly.
The skimpy information contained in the Baraitas is as follows: Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah once repelled Yeishu with both hands. People believed that Yeishu was a sorcerer and they considered him to be a person who had led the Jews astray. As a result of charges brought against him (the details of which are not known, but which probably involved high treason) Yeishu was stoned and his body hung up on the eve of Passover. Before this he was paraded around for forty days with a herald going in front of him announcing that he would be stoned and calling for people to come forward to plead for him. Nothing was brought forward in his favor however. Yeishu had five disciples: Mattai, Naqai, Neitzer, Buni, and Todah.
In the Tosefta and the Baraitas, Yeishu's father is named Pandeira or Panteiri. These are Hebrew-Aramaic forms of a Greek name. In Hebrew the third consonant of the name is written either with a dalet or a tet. Comparison with other Greek words transliterated into Hebrew shows that the original Greek must have had a delta as its third consonant and so the only possibility for the father's Greek name is Panderos. Since Greek names were common among Jews during Hashmonean times it is not necessary to assume that he was Greek, as some authors have done.
The connection between Yeishu and Jesus is corroborated by the the fact that Mattai and Todah, the names of two of Yeishu's disciples, are the original Hebrew forms of Matthew and Thaddaeus, the names of two of Jesus's disciples in Christian mythology.
The early Christians were also aware of the name "ben Pandeira" for Jesus. The pagan philosopher Celsus, who was famous for his arguments against Christianity, claimed in 178 C.E. that he had heard from a Jew that Jesus's mother, Mary, had been divorced by her husband, a carpenter, after it had been proved that she was an adultress. She wandered about in shame and bore Jesus in secret. His real father was a soldier named Pantheras. According to the Christian writer Epiphanius (c. 320 - 403 C.E.), the Christian apologist Origen (c.185 – 254 C.E.) had claimed that "Panther" was the nickname for Jacob the father of Joseph, the stepfather of Jesus. It should be noted that Origen's claim is not based on any historical information. It is purely a conjecture aimed at explaining away the Pantheras story of Celsus. That story is also not historical. The claim that the name of Jesus's mother was Mary and the claim that her husband was a carpenter is taken directly from Christian belief. The claim that Jesus's real father was named Pantheras is based on an incorrect attempt at reconstructing the original form of Pandeira. This incorrect reconstruction was probably influenced by the fact that the name Pantheras was found among Roman soldiers.
Why did people believe that Jesus's mother was named Mary and her husband named Joseph? Why did non-Christians accuse Mary of being an adultress while Christians believed she was a virgin? To answer these questions one must examine some of the legends surrounding Yeishu. We cannot hope to obtain the absolute truth concerning the origins of the Jesus myth but we can show that reasonable alternatives exist to blindly accepting the New Testament.
The name Joseph for Jesus's stepfather is easy to explain. The Notzri movement was particularly popular with the Samaritan Jews. While the Pharisees were waiting for a Messiah who would be a descendant of David, the Samaritans wanted a Messiah who would restore the northern kingdom of Israel. The Samaritans emphasized their partial descent from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, who were descended from the Joseph of the Torah. The Samaritans considered themselves to be "Bnei Yoseph" i.e. "sons of Joseph," and since they believed that Jesus had been their Messiah, they would have assumed that he was a "son of Joseph." The Greek speaking population, who had little knowledge of Hebrew and true Jewish traditions, could have easily misunderstood this term and assumed that Joseph was the actual name of Jesus's father. This conjecture is corroborated by the fact that according to the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph's father is named Jacob, just like the Torah Joseph. Later, other Christians, who followed the idea that the Messiah was to be descended from David, tried to trace Joseph back to David. They came up with two contradictory genealogies for him, one recorded in Matthew and the other in Luke. When the idea that Mary was a virgin developed, the mythical Joseph was relegated to the position of simply being her husband and the stepfather of Jesus.
To understand where the Mary story came from we have to turn to another historical character who contributed to the Jesus myth, namely ben Stada. All the information we have on ben Stada again comes from the Tosefta and the Baraitas. There is even less information about him than about Yeishu. Some people believed that he had brought spells out of Egypt in a cut in his flesh, others thought that he was a madman. He was a beguiler and was caught by the method of concealed witnesses. He was stoned in Lod.
In the Tosefta, ben Stada is called ben Sotera or ben Sitera. Sotera seems to be the Hebrew-Aramaic form of the Greek name Soteros. The forms "Sitera" and "Stada" seem have arisen as misreadings and spelling mistakes (yod replacing vav and dalet replacing reish).
Since there was so little information concerning ben Stada, many conjectures arose as to who he was. It is known from the Gemara that he was confused with Yeishu. This probably resulted from the fact that both were executed for treasonous teachings and were associated with sorcery. People who confused ben Stada with Yeishu had to explain why he was also called ben Pandeira. Since the name "Stada" resembles the Aramaic expression "stat da," meaning "she went astray" it was thought that "Stada" referred to the mother of Yeishu and that she was an adultress. Consequently, people began to think that Yeishu was the illegitimate son of Pandeira. These ideas are in fact mentioned in the Gemara and are probably much older. Since ben Stada lived in Roman times and the name Pandeira resembled the name Pantheras found among Roman soldiers, it was assumed that Pandeira had been a Roman soldier stationed in Israel. This certainly explains the story mentioned by Celsus.
The Tosefta mentions a famous case of a woman named Miriam bat Bilgah marrying a Roman soldier. The idea that Yeishu had been born to a Jewish woman who had had an affair with a Roman soldier probably resulted in Yeishu's mother being confused with this Miriam. The name "Miriam" is of course the original form of the name "Mary." It is in fact known from the Gemara that some of the people who confused Yeishu with ben Stada believed that Yeishu's mother was "Miriam the women's hairdresser."
The story that Mary (Miriam) the mother of Jesus was an adulteress was certainly not acceptable to the early Christians. The virgin birth story was probably invented to clear Mary's name. The early Christians did not suck this story out of their thumbs. Virgin birth stories were fairly common in pagan myths. The following mythological characters were all believed to have been born to divinely impregnated virgins: Romulus and Remus, Perseus, Zoroaster, Mithras, Osiris-Aion, Agdistis, Attis, Tammuz, Adonis, Korybas, Dionysus. The pagan belief in unions between gods and women, regardless of whether they were virgins or not, is even more common. Many characters in pagan mythology were believed to be sons of divine fathers and human females. The Christian belief that Jesus was the son of God born to a virgin, is typical of Greco-Roman superstition. The Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria (c. 30 B.C.E - 45 C.E.), warned against the widespread superstitious belief in unions between male gods and human females which returned women to a state of virginity.
The god Tammuz, worshipped by pagans in northern Israel, was said to have been born to the virgin Myrrha. The name "Myrrha" superficially resembles "Mary/Miriam" and it is possible that this particular virgin birth story influenced the Mary story more than the others. Like Jesus, Tammuz was always called Adon, meaning "Lord." (The character Adonis in Greek mythology is based on Tammuz.) As we will see later, the connection between Jesus and Tammuz goes much further than this.
The idea that Mary had been an adultress never completely disappeared in Christian mythology. Instead, the character of Mary was split into two: Mary the mother of Jesus, believed to be a virgin, and Mary Magdalene, believed to be a woman of ill repute. The idea that the character of Mary Magdalene is also derived from Miriam the mythical mother of Yeishu, is corroborated by the fact that the strange name "Magdalene" clearly resembles the Aramaic term "mgadla nshaya," meaning "womens' hairdresser." As mentioned before, there was a belief that Yeishu's mother was "Miriam the women's hairdresser." Because the Christians did not know what the name "Magdalene" meant, they later conjectured that it meant that she had come from a place called Magdala on the west of Lake Kinneret. The idea of the two Marys fitted in well with the pagan way of thinking. The image of Jesus being followed by the two Marys is strongly reminiscent of Dionysus being followed by Demeter and Persephone.
The Gemara contains an interesting legend concerning Yeishu which attempts to elucidate the Beraita which says that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah repelled Yeishu with both hands. The legend claims that when the Hashmonean king Yannai was killing the Pharisees, Rabbi Yehoshua and Yeishu fled to Egypt. When returning they came upon an inn. The Aramaic word "aksanya" means both "inn" or "innkeeper." Rabbi Yehoshua remarked how beautiful the "aksanya" was (meaning the inn). Yeishu (meaning the innkeeper) replied that her eyes were too narrow. Rabbi Yehoshua was very angry with Yeishu and excommunicated him. Yeishu asked many times for forgiveness but Rabbi Yehoshua would not forgive him. Once when Rabbi Yehoshua was reciting the Shema, Yeishu came up to him. He made a sign to him that he should wait. Yeishu misunderstood and thought that he was being rejected again. He mocked Rabbi Yehoshua by setting up a brick and worshipping it. Rabbi Yehoshua told him to repent but he refused to, saying that he had learned from him that anyone who sins and causes many to sin, is not given the opportunity to repent.
The above story, up to the events at the inn, closely resembles another legend in which the protagonist is not Rabbi Yehoshua but his disciple Yehuda ben Tabbai. In this legend, Yeishu is not named. One may thus question whether Yeishu really went to Egypt or not. It is possible that Yeishu was confused with some other disciple of either Rabbi Yehoshua or Rabbi Yehuda. The confusion might have resulted from the fact that Yeishu was confused with ben Stada who had returned from Egypt. On the other hand, Yeishu might have really fled to Egypt and returned, and this in turn could have contributed to the confusion between Yeishu and ben Stada. Whatever the case, the belief that Yeishu fled to Egypt to escape being killed by a cruel king, appears to be the origin of the Christian belief that Jesus and his family fled to Egypt to escape King Herod.
Since the early Christians believed that Jesus had lived in Roman times it is natural that they would have confused the evil king who wanted to kill Jesus with Herod, since there were no other suitable evil kings during the Roman period. Yeishu was an adult at the time that the rabbis fled from Yannai; why did the Christians believe that Jesus and his family had fled to Egypt when Jesus was an infant? Why did the Christians believe that Herod had ordered all baby boys born in Bethlehem to be killed, when there is no historical evidence of this? To answer these questions we again have to look at pagan mythology.
The theme of a divine or semi-divine child who is feared by an evil king is very common in pagan mythology. The usual story is that the evil king receives a prophecy that a certain child will be born who will usurp the throne. In some stories the child is born to a virgin and usually he is son of a god. The mother of the child tries to hide him. The king usually orders the slaying of all babies who might be the prophecied king. Examples of myths which follow this plot are the birth stories of Romulus and Remus, Perseus, Krishna, Zeus, and Oedipus. Although Torah literalists will not like to admit it, the story of Moses's birth also resembles these myths (some of which claim that the mother put the child in a basket and placed him in a river). There were probably several such stories circulating in the Levant which have been lost. The Christian myth of the slaughter of the innocents by Herod is simply a Christain version of this theme. The plot was so well known that one Midrashic scholar could not resist using it for an apocryphal account of Abraham's birth.
The early Christians believed that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. This belief is based on a misunderstanding of Micah 5.2 which simply names Bethlehem as the town where the Davidic lineage began. Since the early Christians believed that Jesus was the Messiah, they automatically believed that he was born in Bethlehem. But why did the Christians believe that he lived in Nazareth? The answer is quite simple. The early Greek speaking Christians did not know what the word "Nazarene" meant. The earliest Greek form of this word is "Nazoraios," which is derived from "Natzoriya," the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew "Notzri." (Recall that "Yeishu ha-Notzri" is the original Hebrew for "Jesus the Nazarene.") The early Christians conjectured that "Nazarene" meant a person from Nazareth and so it was assumed that Jesus lived in Nazareth. Even today, Christians blithely confuse the Hebrew words "Notzri" (Nazarene, Christian), "Natzrati" (Nazarethite) and "nazir" (nazarite), all of which have completely different meanings.
The information in the Talmud (which contains the Baraitas and the Gemara), concerning Yeishu and ben Stada, is so damaging to Christianity that Christians have always taken drastic measures against it. When the Christians first discovered the information they immediately tried to wipe it out by censoring the Talmud. The Basle edition of the Talmud (c. 1578 - 1580) had all the passages relating to Yeishu and ben Stada deleted by the Christians. Even today, editions of the Talmud used by Christian scholars lack these passages!
During the first few decades of this century, fierce academic battles raged between atheist and Christian scholars over the true origins of Christianity. The Christians were forced to face up to the Talmudic evidence. They could no longer ignore it and so they decided to attack it instead. They claimed that the Talmudic Yeishu was a distortion of the "historical Jesus." They claimed that the name "Pandeira" was simply a Hebrew attempt at pronouncing the Greek word for virgin--"parthenos." Although there is a superficial resemblence between the words, one should note that in order for "Pandeira" to be derived from "parthenos," the "n" and "r" have to be interchanged. However, the Jews did not suffer from any speech impediment which would cause this to happen! The Christian response is that possibly the Jews purposefully altered the word "parthenos" to either the name "Pantheras" (found in Celsus's story) or to "pantheros" meaning a panther, and "Pandeira" is derived from the deliberately altered word. This argument also fails since the third consonant of both the altered and unaltered "parthenos" is theta. This letter is always transliterated by the Hebrew letter tav, whose pronunciation during classical times most closely resembled that of the Greek letter. However, the name "Pandeira" is never spelled with a tav but with either a dalet or a tet which show that the original Greek form had a delta as its third consonant, not a theta. The Christian argument can also be turned on its head: maybe the Christians deliberately altered "Pantheras" to "parthenos" when they invented the virgin birth story. It should also be noted that the resemblence between "Pantheras" (or "pantheros") and "parthenos" is actually much less when written in Greek since in the original Greek spelling their second vowels are completely different.
The Christians also did not accept that Mary Magdalene was connected to Miriam the alleged mother of Yeishu in the Talmud. They argued that the name "Magdalene" does mean a person from Magdala and that the Jews invented "Miriam the women’s hairdresser mgadla nshaya)" either to mock the Christians, or out of their own misunderstanding of the name "Magdalene." This argument is also false. Firstly, it ignores Greek grammar: the correct Greek for "of Magdala" is "Magdales" and the correct Greek for a person from Magdala is "Magdalaios." The original Greek root of "Magdalene" is "Magdalen-," with a conspicuous "n" showing that the word has nothing to do with Magdala. Secondly, Magdala only got its name after the Gospels were written. Before that it was called Magadan or Dalmanutha. (Although "Magadan" has an "n," it lacks an "l" and so it cannot be the derivation of "Magdalene.") In fact, the ruins of this area were renamed Magdala by the Christian community because they believed that Mary Magdalene had come from there.
The Christians also claimed that the word "Notzri" means a person from Nazareth. This is of course false since the original Hebrew for Nazareth is "Natzrat" and a person from Nazareth is a "Natzrati." The name "Notzri" lacks the letter tav from "Natzrat" as so it cannot be derived from it. The Christians argue that perhaps the Aramaic name for Nazareth was "Natzarah" or "Natzirah" (like the modern Arabic name) which explains the missing tav in "Notzri." This is also nonsense since the Aramaic word for a person from Nazareth would then be "Natzaratiya" or "Natziratiya" (with a tav since the feminine ending "-ah" would become "-at-" when the suffix "-iya" is added), and besides, the Aramaic form would not be used in Hebrew. The Christians also came up with various other arguments which can be dismissed since they confuse the Hebrew words "Notzri" and "nazir" or ignore the fact that "Notzri" is the earliest form of the word "Nazarene."
To sum up, all the Christian arguments were based on impossible phonetic changes and grammatical forms, and were consequently dismissed. Moreover, although the legends in the Gemara cannot be taken as fact, the evidence in the Baraitas and Tosefta concerning Yeishu can be traced back directly to Yehoshua ben Perachyah, Shimon ben Shetach and Yehuda ben Tabbai and their disciples who were contemporaries of Yeishu, while the evidence in the Baraitas and Tosefta concerning ben Stada can be traced to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and his disciples who were ben Stada's contempories. Consequently the evidence can be regarded as historically accurate. Therefore modern Christians no longer attack the Talmud but instead deny any connection between Jesus and Yeishu or ben Stada. They dismiss the similarities as pure coincidence. However, one must still be aware of the false attacks on the Talmud since many Christian books still mention them and they can and do resurface from time to time.
Many parts of the Jesus story are not based on Yeishu or ben Stada. Most Christian denominations claim that Jesus was born on 25 December. Originally the eastern Christains believed that he was born on 6 January. The Armenian Christians still follow this early belief while most Christians consider it to be the date of the visit of the Magi. As pointed out already, Jesus was probably confused with Tammuz born of the virgin Myrrha. We know that in Roman times, the gods Tammuz, Aion and Osiris were identified. Osiris-Aion was said to be born of the virgin Isis on the 6 January and this explains the earlier date for Christmas. Isis was sometimes represented as a sacred cow and her temple as a stable which is probably the origin of the Christian belief that Jesus was born in a stable. Although some might find this claim to be farfetched, it is known as a fact that certain early Christian sects identified Jesus and Osiris in their writings. The date of 25 December for Christmas was originally the pagan birthday of the sun god, whose day of the week is still known as Sunday. The halo of light which is usually shown surrounding the face of Jesus and Christian saints, is another concept taken from the sun god.
The theme of temptation by a devil-like creature was also found in pagan mythology. In particular the story of Jesus's temptation by Satan resembles the temptation of Osiris by the devil-god Set in Egyptian mythology.
We have already hinted that there was also a connection between Jesus and the pagan god Dionysus. Like Dionysus, the infant Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger; like Dionysus, Jesus could turn water into wine; like Dionysus, Jesus rode on an ass and fed a multitude in the wilderness; like Dionysus, Jesus suffered and was mocked. Some early Christians claimed that Jesus had in fact been born, not in a stable, but in a cave--just like Dionysus.
Where did the story that Jesus was crucified come from? It appears to have resulted from a number of sources. Firstly there were three historical characters during the Roman period who people thought were Messiahs and who were crucified by the Romans, namely Yehuda of Galilee (6 C.E.), Theudas (44 C.E.), and Benjamin the Egyptian (60 C.E.). Since these three people were all thought to be the Messiah, they were naturally confused with Yeishu and ben Stada. Yehuda of Galilee had preached in Galilee and had collected many followers before being crucified by the Romans. The story of Jesus's ministry in Galilee appears to be based on the life of Yehuda of Galilee. This story and the belief that Jesus lived in Nazareth in Galilee, reinforced each other. The belief that some of Jesus's disciples were killed in c. 44 C.E. by Agrippa appears to be based the fate of Theudas's disciples. Since ben Stada had come from Egypt it is natural that he would have been confused with Benjamin the Egyptian. They were probably also contemporaries. Even some modern authors have suggested that they were the same person, although this is not possible since the stories of their deaths are completely different. In the New Testament book of Acts, which uses Josephus's book Jewish Antiquities (93 - 94 C.E.) as a reference, it is made clear that the author considered Jesus, Yehuda of Galilee, Theudas and Benjamin the Egyptian, to be four different people. However, by that time it was too late to undo the confusions which had already taken place before the New Testament was written, and the idea of Jesus's crucifixion had become an integral part of the myth.
Secondly, the idea arose that Jesus had been executed on the eve of Passover. This belief is apparently based on Yeishu's execution. Passover occurs at the time of the Vernal Equinox, an event considered important by astrologers during the Roman Empire. The astrologers thought of this time as the time of the crossing of two astrological celestial circles, and this event was symbolized by a cross. Thus there was a belief that Jesus had died on "the cross." The misunderstanding of this term by those who were not initiated into the astrological cults, was another factor contributing to the belief that Jesus was crucified. In one of the earliest Christian documents (the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) there is no mention of Jesus being crucified yet the sign of a cross in the sky is used to represent Jesus's coming. It should be noted that the center of astrological superstition in the Roman Empire was the city of Tarsus in Asia Minor - the place where the legendary missionary Paul came from. The idea that a special star had heralded the birth of Jesus, and that a solar eclipse occurred at his death, is typical of Tarsian astrological superstition.
The third factor contributing to the crucifixion story is again pagan mythology. The theme of a divine or semi-divine being sacrificed against a tree, pole or cross, and then being resurrected, is very common in pagan mythology. It was found in the mythologies of all western civilizations stretching from as far west as Ireland and as far east as India. In particular it is found in the mythologies of Osiris and Attis, both of whom were often identified with Tammuz. Osiris landed up with his arms stretched out on a tree like Jesus on the cross. This tree was sometimes shown as a pole with outstretched arms - the same shape as the Christian cross. In the worship of Serapis (a composite of Osiris and Apis) the cross was a religious symbol. Indeed, the Christian "Latin cross" symbol seems to be based directly on the cross symbol of Osiris and Serapis. The Romans never used this traditional Christian cross for crucifixions, they used crosses shaped either like an X or a T. The hieroglyph of a cross on a hill was associated with Osiris. This heiroglyph stood for the "Good One," in Greek "Chrestos," a name applied to Osiris and other pagan gods. The confusion of this name with "Christos" (Messiah, Christ) strengthened the confusion between Jesus and the pagan gods.
At the Vernal Equinox, pagans in northern Israel would celebrate the death and resurrection of the virgin-born Tammuz-Osiris. In Asia Minor (where the earliest Christian churches were established) a similar celebration was held for the virgin-born Attis. Attis was shown as dying against a tree, being buried in a cave and then being resurrected on the third day. We thus see where the Christian story of Jesus's resurrection comes from. In the worship of Baal, it was believed that Baal cheated Mavet (the god of death) at the time of the Vernal Equinox. He pretended to be dead but later appeared alive. He accomplished this ruse by giving his only son as a sacrifice.
The occurrence of Passover at the same time of year as the pagan "Easter" festivals is not coincidental. Many of the Pessach customs were designed as Jewish alternatives to pagan customs. The pagans believed that when their nature god (such as Tammuz, Osiris or Attis) died and was resurrected, his life went into the plants used by man as food. The matza made from the spring harvest was his new body and the wine from the grapes was his new blood. In Judaism, matza, was not used to represent the body of a god but the poor man's bread which the Jews ate before leaving Egypt. The pagans used the paschal sacrifice to represent the sacrifice of a god or his only son, but Judaism used it to represent the meal eaten before leaving Egypt. Instead of telling stories about Baal sacrificing his first born son to Mavet, the Jews told how mal'ach ha-mavet (the angel of death) slew the first born sons of the Egyptians. The pagans ate eggs to represent the resurrection and rebirth of their nature god, but the egg on the seder plate represents the rebirth of the Jewish people escaping captivity in Egypt. When the early Christians noticed the similarities between Pessach customs and pagan customs, they came full circle and converted the Pessach customs back to their old pagan interpretations. The seder became the last supper of Jesus, similar to the last supper of Osiris commemorated at the Vernal Equinox. The matza and wine once again became the body and blood of a false god, this time Jesus. Easter eggs are again eaten to commemorate the resurrection of a "god" and also the "rebirth" obtained by accepting his sacrifice on the cross.
The Last Supper myth is particularly interesting. As mentioned, the basic idea of last supper occurring at the Vernal Equinox comes from the story of the last supper of Osiris. In the Christian story, Jesus is present with twelve apostles. Where did the story of the twelve apostles come from? It appears that in its earliest version, the story was understood to be an allegory. The first time that twelve apostles are mentioned is in the document known as the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. This document apparently originated as a sectarian Jewish document written in the first century C.E., but it was adopted by Christians who altered it substantially and added Christian ideas to it. In the earliest versions it is clear that the "twelve apostles" are the twelve sons of Jacob representing the twelve tribes of Israel. The Christians later considered the "twelve apostles" to be allegorical disciples of Jesus.
In Egyptian mythology, Osiris was betrayed at his last supper by the evil god Set, whom the Greeks identified with Typhon. This seems to be the origin of the idea that Jesus's betrayer was present at his last supper. The idea that this betrayer was named "Judas" goes back to the time when the twelve apostles were still understood to be the sons of Jacob. The idea of Judas (Judah, Yehuda) betraying Jesus (the "son" of Joseph) is strongly reminiscent of the story of the Torah Joseph being betrayed by his brothers with Yehuda as the ringleader. This allegory would have been particulary appealing to the Samaritan Notzrim who considered themselves to be sons of Joseph betrayed by mainstream Jews (represented by Judas/Yehuda).
However, the story of the twelve apostles lost its original allegorical interpretation and the Christians began to think that the "twelve apostles" were twelve real people who followed Jesus. The Christians attempted to find names for these twelve apostles. Matthew and Thaddaeus were based on Mattai and Todah, two of Yeishu's disciples. One or both of the apostles named Jacobus (James) is possibly based on Jacob of Kfar Sekanya, an early Christian known to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, but this is just a guess. As we have seen, the character of Judas is mostly based on the Judah of the Torah but there might also be a connection with Yeishu's contemporary, Yehuda ben Tabbai the disciple of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah. As already mentioned, the idea of the betrayer at the last supper is derived from the mythology of Osiris who was betrayed by Set-Typhon. Set-Typhon had red hair and this is probably the origin of the claim that Judas had red hair. This idea has led to the Christian stereotypical portrayal of Jews as having red hair, despite the fact that in reality, red hair is far more common among Aryans than among Jews.
Judas is often given the nickname "Iscariot." In some places where English New Testaments have "Iscariot," the Greek text actually has "apo Kariotou" which means "from Karyot." Karyot was the name of a town in Israel, probably the modern site known in Arabic as Karyatein. We thus see that the name Iscariot is derived from the Hebrew "ish Karyot" meaning "man from Karyot." This is in fact the accepted modern Christian understanding of the name. However, in the past, the Christians misunderstood this name and legends arose that Judas was from the town of Sychar, that he was a member of the extremist party known as the Sicarii and that he was from the tribe of Issacher. The most interesting misunderstanding of the name is its early confusion with the word scortea meaning a leather money bag. This led to the New Testament myth that Judas carried such a bag, which in turn led to the belief that he was the treasurer of the apostles.
The apostle Peter appears to be a largely fictitious character. According to Christian mythology, Jesus chose him to be the "keeper of the keys to the kingdom of heaven." This is clearly based on the Egyptian pagan deity, Petra, who was the door-keeper of heaven and the afterlife ruled over by Osiris. We must also doubt the story of Luke "the good healer" who was supposed to be a friend of Paul. The original Greek for "Luke" is "Lykos" which was another name for Apollo, the god of healing.
John the Baptist is largely based on an historical person who practiced ritual immersion in water as a physical symbol for repentance. He did not perform Christian style sacramental baptisms to cleanse people's souls - such an idea was totally foreign to Judaism. He was put to death by Herod Antipas, who feared that he was about to start a rebellion. John's name in Greek was "Ioannes" and in Latin "Johannes." Although these names were usually used for the Hebrew name Yochanan, it is unlikely that this was John's actual Hebrew name. "Ioannes" closely resembles "Oannes" the Greek name for the pagan god Ea. Oannes was the "God of the House of Water." Sacramental baptism for magically cleansing souls was a practice which apparently originated in the worship of Oannes. The most likely explanation of John's name and its connection with Oannes is that John probably bore the nickname "Oannes" since he practised baptism which he had adapted from the worship of Oannes. The name "Oannes" was later confused with "Ioannes." (In fact, the New Testament legend concerning John provides a clue that his real name might have been Zacharia.) It is known from Josephus's writings that the historical John rejected the pagan "soul-cleansing" interpretation of baptism. The Christians, however, returned to this original pagan interpretation.
The god Oannes was associated with the constellation Capricorn. Both Oannes and the constellation Capricorn were associated with water. (The constellation is supposed to depict a mythical sea-creature with the body of a fish and the foreparts of a goat.) We have already seen that Jesus was given the same birthday as the sun god (25 December), when the sun is in the constellation of Capricorn. The pagans thought of this period as one where the sun god is immersed in the waters of Oannes and emerges reborn. (The Winter Solstice, when days start getting longer, occurs near 25 December.) This astrological myth is apparently the origin of the story that Jesus was baptized by John. It probably started as an allegorical astrological story, but it appears that the god Oannes later became confused with the historical person nicknamed Oannes (John).
The belief that Jesus had met John contributed to the belief that Jesus's ministry and crucifixion occurred when Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judaea. It should be noted that most dates for Jesus quoted by Christians are completely nonsense. Jesus was partly based on Yeishu and ben Stada who probably lived more than a century apart. He was also based on the three false Messiahs, Yehuda, Theudas and Benjamin, who were crucified by the Romans at various different times. Another fact that contributed to confused dating of Jesus was that Jacob of Kfar Sekanya and probably other Notzrim as well, used expressions like "thus was I taught by Yeishu ha-Notzri," even though he had not been taught by Yeishu in person. We know from the Gemara that Jacob's statement led Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus to incorrectly conclude that Jacob was a disciple of Yeishu. This suggests that there were rabbis who were unaware of the fact that Yeishu had lived in Hashmonean times. Even after Christians placed Jesus in the first century C.E., confusion continued among non-Christians. There was a contemporary of Rabbi Akiva named Pappus ben Yehuda who used to lock up his unfaithful wife. We know from the Gemara that some people who confused Yeishu and ben Stada confused the wife of Pappus with Miriam the unfaithful mother of Yeishu. This would place Yeishu more than two centuries after he actually lived!
The New Testament story confuses so many historical periods that there is no way of reconciling it with history. The traditional year of Jesus's birth is 1 C.E. Jesus was supposed to be not more than two years old when Herod ordered the slaughter of the innocents. However, Herod died before April 12, 4 B.C.E. This has led some Christians to redate the birth of Jesus in 6 - 4 B.C.E. However, Jesus was also supposed have been born during the census of Quirinius. This census took place after Archelaus was deposed in 6 C.E., ten years after Herod's death. Jesus was supposed to have been baptized by John soon after John had started baptizing and preaching in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias, i.e. 28-29 C.E., when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea i.e. 26-36 C.E. According to the New Testament, this also happened when Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene and Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. But Lysanias ruled Abilene from c. 40 B.C.E until he was executed in 36 B.C.E by Mark Antony, about 60 years before the date for Tiberias and about 30 years before the supposed birth of Jesus! Also, there were never two joint high priests, in particular, Annas was not a joint high priest with Caiaphas. Annas was removed from the office of high priest in 15 C.E after holding office for some nine years. Caiaphas only became high priest in c. 18 C.E, about three years after Annas. (He held this office for about eighteen years, so his dates are consistent with Tiberias and Pontius Pilate, but not with Annas or Lysanias.) Although the book of Acts presents Yehuda of Galilee, Theudas and Jesus as three different people, it incorrectly places Theudas (crucified 44 C.E.) before Yehuda who it correctly mentions as being crucified during the census (6 C.E.). Many of these chronological absurdities seem to be based on misreadings and misunderstandings of Josephus's book Jewish Antiquities, which was used as reference by the author of Luke and Acts.
The story of Jesus's trial is also highly suspicious. It clearly tries to placate the Romans while defaming the Jews. The historical Pontius Pilate was arrogant and despotic. He hated the Jews and never delegated any authority to them. However, in Christian mythology, he is portrayed as a concerned ruler who distanced himself from the accusations against Jesus and who was coerced into obeying the demands of the Jews. According to Christian mythology, every Passover, the Jews would ask Pilate to free any one criminal they chose. This is of course a blatant lie. Jews never had a custom of freeing guilty criminals at Passover or any other time of the year. According the myth, Pilate gave the Jews the choice of freeing Jesus the Christ or a murderer named Jesus Barabbas. The Jews are alleged to have enthusiastically chosen Jesus Barabbas. This story is a vicious antisemitic lie, one of many such lies found in the New Testament (largely written by antisemites). What is particularly disgusting about this rubbish story is that it is apparently a distortion of an earlier story which claimed that the Jews demanded that Jesus Christ be set free. The name "Barabbas" is simply the Greek form of the Aramaic "bar Abba" which means "son of the Father." Thus "Jesus Barabbas" originally meant "Jesus the son of the Father," in other words, the usual Christian Jesus. When the earlier story claimed that the Jews wanted Jesus Barabbas to be set free it was referring to the usual Jesus. Somebody distorted the story by claiming that Jesus Barabbas was a different person to Jesus Christ and this fooled the Roman and Greek Christians who did not know the meaning of the name "Barabbas."
Lastly, the claim that the resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples is also based on pagan superstition. In Roman mythology, the virgin born Romulus appeared to his friend on the road before he was taken up to heaven. (The theme of being taken up to heaven is found in scores of pagan myths and legends and even in Jewish stories.) It was claimed that Apollonius of Tyana had also appeared to his disciples after having been resurrected. It is interesting to note that the historical Apollonius was born more or less at the same time as the mythical Jesus was supposed to have been born. In legends people claimed that he had performed many miracles which were identical to those also ascribed to Jesus, such as exorcisms of demons and the raising to life of a dead girl.
When confronted with Christian missionaries one should point out as much information as possible about the origins of Christianity and the Jesus myth. You will almost never succeed in convincing them that Christianity is a false religion. You will not be able to prove beyond all doubt that the story of Jesus arose in the way we have claimed it has, since most of the evidence is circumstantial. Indeed we cannot be certain about the precise origin of many particular points in the story of Jesus. This does not matter. What is important is that you yourself realize that logical alternatives exist to blind belief in Christian myths and that reasonable doubt can be cast on the New Testament narrative.
PART 2: THE LACK OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR JESUS
The usual Christian response to those who question the historicity of Jesus is to palm off various documents as "historical evidence" for the existence of Jesus. They usually start with the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The usual claim is that these are "eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus made by his disciples." The reply to this argument can be summed up in one word--pseudepigraphic. This term refers to works of writing whose authors conceal their true identities behind the names of legendary characters from the past. Pseudepigraphic writing was particularly popular among the Jews during Hashmonean and Roman periods and this style of writing was adopted by the early Christians.
The canonical gospels are not the only gospels. For example, there are also gospels of Mary, Peter, Thomas and Philip. These four gospels are recognized as being pseudepigraphic by both Christian and non-Christian scholars. They provide no legitimate historical information since they were based on rumors and belief. The existence of these obviously pseudepigraphic gospels makes it quite reasonable to suspect that the canonical gospels might also be pseudepigraphic. The very fact that early Christians wrote pseudepigraphic gospels suggests that this was in fact the norm. It is thus the missionaries' claim that the canonical gospels are not pseudepigraphic which requires proof.
The Gospel of Mark is written in the name of Mark, the disciple of the mythical Peter. (Peter is largely based on the pagan god Petra, who was door-keeper of heaven and the afterlife in Egyptian religion.) Even in Christian mythology, Mark was not a disciple of Jesus, but a friend of Paul and Luke. Mark was written before Matthew and Luke (c. 100 C.E.) but after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., which it mentions. Most Christians believe it was written in c. 75 C.E. This date is not based on history but on the belief that an historical Mark wrote the gospel in his old age. This is not possible since the style of language used in Mark shows that it was written (probably in Rome) by a Roman convert to Christianity whose first language was Latin and not Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic. Indeed, since all the other gospels are written in the name of legendary characters from the past, Mark was probably written long after any historical Mark (if there was one) had died. The content of Mark is a collection of myths and legends put together to form a continuous narrative. There is no evidence that it was based on any reliable historical sources. Mark was altered and edited many times and the modern version probably dates to about 150 C.E. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 C.E. - c. 215 C.E.) complained about the alternative versions of this gospel which were still circulating in his lifetime. (The Carpocratians, an early Christian sect, considered pederasty to be a virtue and Clement complained about their versions of Mark which told of Jesus's homosexual exploits with young boys!)
The Gospel of Matthew was certainly not written by the apostle Matthew. The character of Matthew is based on the historical person named Mattai who was a disciple of Yeishu ben Pandeira. (Yeishu, who lived in Hashmonean times, was one of several historical people upon whom the character Jesus is based.) The Gospel of Matthew was originally anonymous and was only assigned the name Matthew some time during the first half of the second century C.E. The earliest form was probably written at more or less the same time as the Gospel of Luke (c. 100 C.E.), since neither seems to know of the other. It was altered and edited until about 150 C.E. The first two chapters, dealing with the virgin birth, were not in the original version and the Christians in Israel of Jewish descent preferred this earlier version. For its sources it used Mark and a collection of teachings referred to as the Second Source (or the Q Document). The Second Source has not survived as a separate document, but its full contents are found in Matthew and Luke. All the teachings contained in it can be found in Judaism. The more reasonable teachings can be found in mainstream Judaism, while the less reasonable ones can be found in sectarian Judaism. There is nothing in it which would require us to suppose the existence of a real historical Jesus. Although Matthew and Luke attribute the teachings in it to Jesus, the Epistle of James attributes them to James. Thus Matthew provides no historical evidence for Jesus.
The Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts (which were two parts of a single work) were written in the name of the Christian mythological character Luke the healer (who was probably not an historical person but a Christian adaptation of the Greek healer god Lykos). Even in Christian mythology, Luke was not a disciple of Jesus but a friend of Paul. Luke and Acts use Josephus's Jewish Antiquities as a reference, and so they could not have been written before 93 C.E. At this time, any friend of Paul would be either dead or well into senility. Indeed, both Christian and non-Christian scholars agree that the earliest versions of the two books were written by an anonymous Christian in c. 100 C.E and were altered and edited until c. 150 - 175 C.E. Besides Josephus's book, Luke and Acts also use the Gospel of Mark and the Second Source as references. Although Josephus is considered to be more or less reliable, the anonymous author often misread and misunderstood Josephus and moreover, none of the information about Jesus in Luke and Acts comes from Josephus. Thus Luke and Acts are of no historical value.
The Gospel of John was written in the name of the apostle John the brother of James, son of Zebedee. The author of Luke used as many sources as he could get hold of but he was unaware of John. Thus John more than likely could not have been written before Luke (c. 100 C.E.) Consequently John could not have been written by the semi-mythical character John the Apostle who was supposed to have been killed by Herod Agrippa shortly before his own death in 44 C.E. (John the Apostle is apparently based on an historical disciple of the false Messiah Theudas who was crucified by the Romans in 44 C.E. and whose disciples were murdered.) The real author of the Gospel of John was in fact an anonymous Christian from Ephesus in Asia Minor. The oldest surviving fragment of John dates to c. 125 C.E. and so we can date the gospel to c. 100 - 125 C.E. Based on stylistic considerations many scholars narrow down the date to c. 110 - 120 C.E. The earliest version of John did not contain the last chapter which deals with Jesus appearing to his disciples. Like the other gospels, John probably only attained its present form around 150 - 175 C.E. The author of John used Mark sparingly and so one suspects that he did not trust it. He either had not read Matthew and Luke or he did not trust them since he does not use any information from them which was not found in Mark. Most of John consists of legends with obvious underlying allegorical interpretations and one suspects that the author never intended them to be history. John does not contain any information from reliable historical sources.
Christians will claim that the Gospel of John itself states that it is an historical document written by John. This claim is based on the verses John 19.34-35 and John 21.20 - 24. John 19.34-35 does not claim that the gospel was written by John. It claims that the events described in the immediately preceding verses were accurately reported by a witness. The passage is ambiguous and it is not clear whether the witness is supposed to be the same person as the author. Many scholars are of the opinion that the ambiguity is deliberate and that the author of John is trying to tease his readers in this passage as well as in the passages which tell miraculous stories with allegorical interpretations. John 21.20-24 also does not claim that the author is John. It claims that the disciple mentioned in the passage is the one who witnessed the events described. It is again notably ambiguous as regards the question of whether the disciple is the same person as the author. It should be noted that this passage is in the last chapter of John which was not part of the original gospel but was added on as an epilogue by an anonymous redactor. One should beware the fact that many "easy to understand" translations of the New Testament distort the passages mentioned so as to remove the ambiguity found in the original Greek. (Ideally one needs to be familiar with the original Greek text of the New Testament in order to avoid biased and distorted translations used by fundamentalist Christians and missionaries.)
In order to back up their claims that the gospels of Mark and Matthew were written by the "real" apostles Mark and Matthew and that Jesus is an historical person, missionaries often point to the so-called "testimony of Papias." Papias was the bishop of Hierapolis (near Ephesus) during the middle of the second century C.E. None of his writings have survived but the Christian historian Eusebius (c. 260 - 339 C.E.) in his book, Ecclesiastical History (written c. 311 - 324 C.E.) paraphrased certain passages from Papias's book Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord (written c. 140 - 160 C.E.). In these passages, Papias claimed that he had known the daughters of the apostle Philip and also reported several stories which he claimed came from people named Aristion and John the Elder, who had still been alive during his own lifetime. Eusebius appears to have thought that Aristion and John the Elder were disciples of Jesus. Papias claimed that John the Elder had said that Mark had been Peter's interpreter and had written down accurately everything that Peter had to tell about Jesus. Papias also claimed that Matthew had compiled all the "oracles" in Hebrew and everyone had interpreted them as best they could. None of this, however, provides any legitimate historical evidence of Jesus nor does it back up the belief that Mark and Matthew were really written by apostles bearing those names. Papias was a name-dropper and it is by no means certain that he was honest when he claimed that he had met Philip's daughters. Even if he had, this would at most prove that the apostle Philip in Christian mythology was based on an historical person. Papias never explicitly claimed that he had met Aristion and John the Elder. Moreover, just because Eusebius in the 4th century believed that they were disciples of Jesus does not mean that they were. Nothing at all is known about who on earth Aristion actually was. He is certainly not one of the disciples in the usual Christian tradition. I have seen books in which certain fundamentalist Christians claim that John the Elder was the apostle John the son of Zebedee and that he was still alive when Papias was young. They also claim that Papias lived in c. 60 - 130 C.E. and that he wrote his book in c. 120 C.E. These dates are not based on any legitimate evidence and are complete nonsense: Papias was bishop of Hierapolis in c. 150 C.E and as already mentioned his book was written sometime in the period c. 140 - 160 C.E. Pushing the date for Papias back to 60 C.E. still does not place him during the lifetime of the apostle John who according to standard Christian legends was killed in 44 C.E. Besides, it is unlikely that John the Elder had anything to do with John the Apostle. According to Epiphanius (c. 320 - 403 C.E.), an early Christian named John the Elder had died in 117 C.E. We will have more to say about him when we discuss the three epistles named after John. Whatever the case, the stories which Papias collected were being told at least a decade after the gospels and Acts had been written and reflect unfounded rumors and superstition about the origins of these books. In particular, the story about Mark obtained from John the Elder is nothing more than a slight elaboration of the legend about Mark found in Acts and so it tells us nothing about the true origins of the Gospel of Mark. The story about Matthew writing the "oracles" is simply a rumor, and besides, it does not have anything to do with the Gospel of Matthew. The term "oracles" can only be understood as a reference to the collection of writings known as the Oracles of the Lord which is referred to in the title of Papias's book and which in all likelyhood is the same thing as the Second Source, not the Gospel of Matthew.
Besides the canonical gospels and Acts, missionaries also try to use the various Christian epistles as proof of the Jesus story. They claim that the epistles are letters written by Jesus's disciples and followers. However, epistles (from the Greek epistol q e, meaning message or order) are books, written in the form of letters (usually from legendary characters from the past), which expound religious doctrines and instructions. This form of religious writing was used by the Jews in Greco-Roman times. (The most famous Jewish epistle is the Epistle of Jeremiah, which is a lengthy condemnation of idolatry written during the Hellenistic period in the form of a letter from the prophet Jeremiah to the people of Jerusalem just before they were exiled to Babylon.) As in the case of the gospels, there are Christian epistles not contained in the New Testament which both Christian and non-Christian scholars agree are pseudepigraphic and of no historical value since they expound beliefs and not history. The existence of pseudepigraphic epistles and indeed the whole concept of an epistle, suggests that epistles were normally pseudepigraphic. Thus again it is the claims by missionaries and Christian fundamentalists, that the canonical epistles are genuine letters, which requires proof.
The Epistle of Jude is written in the name of Jude (Judas) the brother of James. According to Mark and Matthew, Jesus had brothers named Judas and James. Comparison with other writings shows that the Epistle of Jude was written in c. 130 C.E. and so it is obviously pseudepigraphic. There is no evidence however that its author used any legitimate historical sources as regards Jesus.
Two of the canonical epistles are written in the name of Peter. Since Peter is a mythical Christian adaptation of the Egyptian pagan deity Petra, these epistles were certainly not written by him. The style and character of the First Epistle of Peter alone shows that it could not have been written earlier than c. 80 C.E. Even according to Christian legend, Peter was supposed to have died following the persecutions instigated by Nero in c. 64 C.E. and so he could not have written the epistle. The author of Luke and Acts used all written sources he could get hold of and tended to use them indiscriminately, however he did not mention any epistles by Peter. This shows that the First Epistle of Peter was probably written after Luke and Acts (c. 100 C.E.). No references to Jesus in the First Epistle of Peter are taken from historical sources but instead reflect beliefs and superstition. The Second Epistle of Peter speaks out against the Marcionists and so it must have been written c. 150 C.E. It is thus clearly pseudepigraphic. The Second Epistle of Peter uses as sources: the story of Jesus's transfiguration found in Mark, Matthew and Luke, the Apocalypse of Peter and the Epistle of Jude. The non-canonical Apocalypse of Peter (written some time in the first quarter of the second century C.E.) is recognized as being non-historical even by fundamentalist Christians. Thus the Second Epistle of Peter also does not use any legitimate historical sources.
We now turn to the epistles supposedly written by Paul. The First Epistle of Paul to Timothy warns against the Marcionist work known as the Antithesis. Marcion was expelled from the Church of Rome in c. 144 C.E. and the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy was written shortly afterwards. Thus we again have a clear case of pseudepigraphy. The Second Epistle of Paul to Timothy and the Epistle of Paul to Titus were written by the same author and date to about the same period. These three epistles are known as the "pastoral epistles." The ten remaining "non-pastoral" epistles written in the name of Paul were known to Marcion by c. 140 C.E. Some of them were not written in Paul's name alone but are in the form of letters written by Paul in collaboration with various friends such as Sosthenes, Timothy, and Silas. The author of Luke and Acts, went out of his way to obtain all sources available and tended to use them indiscriminately, but he used nothing from the Pauline epistles. We can thus conclude that the non-pastoral epistles were written after Luke and Acts in the period c. 100 - 140 C.E. The non-canonical First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (written c. 125 C.E.) uses the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians as a source and so we can narrow down the date for that epistle to c. 100 - 125 C.E. However, we are left with the conclusion that that all the Pauline epistles are pseudepigraphic. (The semi-mythical Paul was supposed to have died during the persecutions instigated by Nero in c. 64 C.E.) Some of the Pauline epistles appear to be have been altered and edited numerous times before reaching their modern forms. As sources they use each other, Acts, the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke and the First Epistle of Peter. We may thus conclude that they provide no historical evidence of Jesus.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is a particularly interesting epistle since it is not pseudepigraphic but completely anonymous. Its author neither reveals his own name nor does he write in the name of a Christian mythological character. Fundamentalist Christians claim that it is another epistle by Paul and in fact call it the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. This idea, apparently dating to the late fourth century C.E., is not accepted by all Christians however. As a source for its information on Jesus it uses material common to Mark, Matthew and Luke, but no legitimate sources. The author of the First Epistle of Clement used it as a source and so it must have been written before that epistle (c. 125 C.E.) but after at least the Gospel of Mark (c. 75 – 100 C.E.).
The Epistle of James is written in the name of a servant of Jesus called James (or Jacobus). However, in Christian mythology there were two apostles named James and Jesus also had a brother named James. It is not clear which James is intended and there is no agreement among Christians themselves. It quotes sayings from the Second Source but unlike Matthew and Luke it does not attribute these sayings to Jesus but presents them as sayings of James. It contains an important argument against the doctrine of "salvation through faith" expounded in the Epistle of Paul to the Romans. We can thus conclude that it was written during the first half of the second century C.E., after Romans but before the time that Matthew and Luke were accepted by all Christians. Thus regardless of which James is intended, the Epistle of James is pseudepigraphic. It says almost nothing about Jesus and there is no evidence that the author had any historical sources for him.
There are three epistles named after the apostle John. None of them are in fact written in the name of John and were probably only ascribed to him some time after they had been written. The First Epistle of John, like the Epistle to the Hebrews, is completely anonymous. The idea that it was written by John arises from the fact that it used the Gospel of John as a source. The other two epistles named after John are written by a single author who, instead of writing in the name of an apostle, chose simply to call himself "the Elder." The idea that these two epistles were written by John arose from the beliefs that "the Elder" referred to John the Elder and that he was the same person as the apostle John. In the case of the Second Epistle of John this belief was reinforced by the fact that that epistle also uses the Gospel of John as a source. We can thus conclude that the first two epistles ascribed to John were written after the Gospel of John (c. 110 – 120 C.E.). Consequently none of the three epistles could have been written by the apostle John. It should be pointed out that it is quite possible that the pseudonym "the Elder" does refer to the person named John the Elder, but if this is so, he is certainly not the apostle John. The first two John epistles use only the Gospel of John as a source for Jesus; they do not use any legitimate sources. The Third Epistle of John barely mentions "Christ" and there is no evidence that it used any historical sources for him.
Besides the epistles named after John, the New Testament also contains a book known as the Revelation to John. This book combines two forms of religious writing, that of the epistle and that of the apocalypse. (Apocalypses are religious works which are written in the form of revelations about the future made by a famous character from the past. These revelations usually describe unfortunate events occurring at the time of writing and also offer some hope to the reader that things will improve.) It is not certain how much editing the Revelation to John underwent and so it is difficult to date it precisely. Since it mentions the persecutions instigated by Nero we can say with certainty that it was not written earlier than 64 C.E, thus it cannot have been written by the "real" John. The first few verses form an introduction which is clearly not intended to be by John and which provides a vague admission that the book is pseudepigraphic even though the author feels that his message is inspired by God. The style of writing and the references to the practice of kriobolium (baptism in sheep’s blood) suggests that the author was one of those people of Jewish descent who mixed Judaism with pagan practices. There were many such "pagan Jews" during Roman times and it was these people who become the first converts to Christianity, established the first churches, and who were probably also responsible for introducing pagan myths into the story of Jesus. (They are also remembered for their ridiculous belief that "Adonai Tzevaot" was the same as the pagan god "Sebazios.") The references to Jesus in the book are few and there is no evidence that they are based on anything but belief.
Besides the epistles accepted in the New Testament and the epistles which are unanimously recognized as being of no value (such as the Epistle of Barnabas), there are also several epistles which although not accepted in the New Testament, are considered of value by some Christians. Firstly there are the epistles named after Clement. In Christian legend, Clement was the third in succession of Peter as bishop of Rome. The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians is not in fact written in the name of Clement but in the name of the "Church of God which sojourns in Rome." It refers to a persecution which is generally thought to have occurred in 95 C.E. under Domitian, and it refers to the dismissal of the elders of the Church of Corinth in c. 96 C.E. Christians believe that Clement was bishop of Rome during this time and this is apparently the reason why the epistle was later named after him. Fundamentalist Christians believe that the epistle was in fact written in c. 96 C.E. This date is not possible since the epistle refers to bishops and priests as separate groups; a division which had not taken place yet. Stylistic considerations show that it was written in c. 125 C.E. As references it used the Epistle to the Hebrews and The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians but no legitimate historical sources. The Second Epistle of Clement is by a different author to the first and was written later. We may thus conclude that it was also not written by Clement. (There is no evidence that either of these epistles were named after Clement before their incorporation into the collection of books known as the Codex Alexandrinus in the fifth century C.E.) As sources for Jesus, the Second Epistle of Clement uses the Gospel of the Egyptians, a document which is rejected by even the most fundamentalist Christians, and also the New Testament books which we have shown to be valueless. Thus again we have no legitimate evidence of Jesus.
Next we have the epistles written in the name of Ignatius. According to legend, Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch who was killed under Trajan's rule c. 110 C.E. (Although he is probably based on a real historical person, the legends about his martyrdom are largely fictional.) There are fifteen epistles written in his name. Of these, eight are unanimously recognized as being pseudepigraphic and of no value as regards Jesus. The remaining seven each have two forms, a longer and a shorter. The longer forms are clearly altered and edited versions of the shorter forms. Fundamentalist Christians claim that the shorter forms are genuine letters written by Ignatius. The Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans mentions the threefold ordering of bishops, priests and deacons which had not yet taken place by Ignatius's death which occurred no later than 117 C.E. and which probably took place c. 110 C.E. All seven shorter epistles attack various Christian beliefs, now considered heretical, which only became prevalent c. 140 – 150 C.E. The shorter Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans contains a quote from the writings of Irenaeus, written after 170 C.E. and published c. 185 C.E. We can thus conclude that the seven shorter epistles are also pseudepigraphic. The shorter Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans was certainly written after 170 C.E. (In fact, if it was not written by Irenaeus then it was probably written after c. 185 C.E.) The other six were written no earlier than the period c. 140 - 150 C.E., if not later. There are no sources for Jesus in the Ignatian epistles other than the New Testament books and the writings of Irenaeus which only use the New Testament. Thus they contain no legitimate evidence of Jesus.
There are two more epistles which Christians claim are genuine letters, namely the Epistle of Polycarp and the Martyrdom of Polycarp. The Ignatian epistles and the epistles concerning Polycarp have always been closely associated. It is quite possible that they were all written by the Christian writer Irenaeus and his disciples. There certainly was a real historical early Christian named Polycarp. He was bishop of Smyrna and was killed by the Romans sometime in the period 155 - 165 C.E. When Irenaeus was a boy he knew Polycarp. Fundamentalist Christians claim that Polycarp was the disciple of the apostle John. However, even if we accept the legend that Polycarp lived to the age of 86, he could not have been born earlier than 67 C.E and therefore could not have been a disciple of John. (It is possible that he was a disciple of the enigmatic John the Elder.) Since Irenaeus had known Polycarp they also assume that Irenaeus was in fact his disciple, a claim for which there is no evidence. The Epistle of Polycarp uses most New Testament books and the Ignatian epistles as references but it uses no legitimate sources for Jesus. Those Christians who reject the Ignatian epistles but believe the Epistle of Polycarp is a genuine letter, claim that the references to the Ignatian epistles are a later interpolation. This idea is based on personal bias, not on any genuine evidence. Based on the blind belief that this epistle is a genuine letter, some Christians date it to around the middle of the second century C.E., shortly before Polycarp's death. However, the references to the Ignatian epistles suggest that it was in fact written some time in the last few decades of the second century C.E., at least about a decade after Polycarp's death if not later.
The Martyrdom of Polycarp is written in the name of "the Church of God that sojourns in Smyrna." It starts off in the form of a letter but its main body is written in the form of an ordinary story. It tells the tale of Polycarp's martyrdom. Like the Epistle of Polycarp, it was written some time during the last few decades of the second century C.E. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that it used any reliable sources for its story, only rumors and hearsay. The story in fact appears to be highly fictionalized. The references to Jesus are not taken from any reliable source.
We have thus seen that the epistles used by missionaries as "evidence" are just as spurious as the gospels. Again, the reader should beware "easy to understand" translations of the New Testament since they call the epistles "letters," thereby incorrectly implying that they are really letters written by the people after whom they are named.
Now, besides the books of the New Testament, and besides the epistles relating to Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp, there is only one more Christian religious work which Christians claim as historical evidence of Jesus, namely the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles also known as the Didache. All other early Christian religious works are either wholly rejected by modern Christians or are at least recognized as not being primary sources as regards Jesus. The Didache began as a sectarian Jewish document, probably written during the period of turmoil in c. 70 C.E. Its earliest form consisted of moral teachings and predictions of the destruction of the current world order. This earliest version, which obviously did not mention Jesus, was taken over by Christians who heavily edited and altered it, adding a story of Jesus and rules of worship for early Christian communities. Scholars estimate that the earliest Christian version of the _Didache_ could not have been written much later than 95 C.E. It probably only reached its final form around c. 120 C.E. It appears to have served an isolated Christian community in Syria as a "Church Order" during the period c. 100 - 130 C.E. However, there is no evidence that its story of Jesus was based on any reliable sources, and as we have mentioned, the earliest Jewish version had nothing to do with Jesus. In fact, this document provides evidence that the myth of Jesus grew gradually. Like the Gospel of Mark and the early versions of Gospel of Matthew, the Jesus story in the Didache makes no mention of a virgin birth. It makes no mention of the fantastic miracles which were later attributed to Jesus. Although Jesus is referred to as a "son" of God, it appears that this term is being used figuratively. The evidence we have concerning the origin of the crucifixion myth suggests that one of the things leading to this myth was the fact that the cross was the astrological symbol of the Vernal Equinox which occurs near Passover, when Jesus was believed to have been killed. It is thus not surprising to find that the story in the Didache makes no mention of Jesus being crucified, although it mentions a cross in the sky as a sign of Jesus. The twelve apostles mentioned in the full title of the Didache do not appear as twelve real disciples of Jesus and the term clearly refers to the twelve sons of Jacob representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Thus the Didache provides vital clues concerning the growth of the Jesus myth, but it certainly does not provide any evidence of an historical Jesus.
Since none of the Christian religious texts provide any acceptable evidence of Jesus, missionaries turn next to non-Christian texts. Christians claim that several reliable historians recorded information about Jesus. Although some of these historians are more or less accepted, we shall see that they do not provide any information about Jesus.
Firstly, Christians claim that the Jewish historian Josephus recorded information about Jesus in his book Jewish Antiquities (published c. 93 - 94 C.E.) It is true that this book contains information about the three false Messiahs, Yehuda of Galilee, Theudas and Benjamin the Egyptian, and it is true that the character of Jesus appears to be based on all of them in part, but none of them can be regarded as the historical Jesus. Moreover, in the book of Acts, these people are mentioned as being different people to Jesus and so modern Christianity actually rejects any connection between them and Jesus. In the Christian edited versions of the Jewish Antiquities there are two passages dealing with Jesus as portrayed in Christian religious works. Neither of these passages are found in the original version of the Jewish Antiquities which was preserved by the Jews. The first passage (XVII, 3, 3) was quoted by Eusebius writing in c. 320 C.E. and so we can conclude that it was added in some time between the time Christians got hold of the Jewish Antiquities and c. 320 C.E. It is not known when the other passage (XX, 9, 1) was added in. Neither passage is based on any reliable sources. It is fraudulent to claim that these passages were written by Josephus and that they provide evidence for Jesus. They were written by Christian redactors and were based purely on Christian belief.
Next the Christians will point to the Annals by Tacitus. In the Annals XV,44, Tacitus describes how Nero blamed the Christians for the fire of Rome in 64 C.E. He mentions that the name "Christians" originated from a person named Christus who had been executed by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberias. It is certainly true that the name "Christians" is derived from Christ or Christus (Messiah), but Tacitus' claim that he was executed by Pilate during the reign of Tiberias is based purely on the claims being made by the Christians themselves. They appeared in the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, which had already been widely circulated when the Annals were being written. (The Annals were published after 115 C.E. and were certainly not written before 110 C.E.) Thus, although the Annals contains a sentence in which "Christus" is spoken of as a real person, this sentence was based purely on Christian claims and beliefs which are of no historical value. It is quite ironic that modern Christians use Tacitus to back up their beliefs since he was the least accurate of all Roman historians. He justifies hatred of Christians by saying that they committed abominations. Besides "Christus" he also speaks of various pagan gods as if they really exist. His summary of Middle East history in his book the Histories is so distorted as to be laughable. We may conclude that his single mention of Christus cannot be taken as reliable evidence of an historical Jesus.
Once Tacitus is dismissed, the Christians will claim that one of the younger Pliny's letters to the emperor Trajan provides evidence of an historical Jesus. (Letters X, 96.) This is nonsense. The letter in question simply mentions that certain Christians had cursed "Christ" to avoid being punished. It does not claim that this Christ really existed. The letter in question was written before Pliny's death in c. 114 C.E. but after he was sent to Bithynia in 111 C.E., probably in the year 112 C.E. Thus it provides nothing more than a confirmation of the trivial fact that around the beginning of the twelfth decade C.E. Christians did not normally curse something called "Christ" although some had done it to avoid punishment. It provides no evidence of an historical Jesus.
Christians will also claim that Suetonius recorded evidence of Jesus in his book Lives of the Caesars (also known as The Twelve Caesars). The passage in question is Claudius 25, where he mentions that the emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome (apparently in 49 C.E.) because they caused continual disturbances at the instigation of a certain Chrestus. If one blindly assumes that "Chrestus" refers to Jesus then, if anything, this passage contradicts the Christian story of Jesus. Jesus was supposed to have been crucified when Pontius Pilate was procurator (26 - 36 C.E.) during the reign of Tiberias and, moreover, he was never supposed to have been in Rome! Suetonius lived during the period c. 75 - 150 C.E. and his book, Lives of the Caesars, was published during the period 119 - 120 C.E., having been written some time after Domitian's death in 96 C.E. Thus the event he describes occurred at least 45 years before he was writing about it and so we cannot be certain of its accuracy. The name Chrestus is derived from the Greek Chrestos meaning "good one" and it is not the same as Christ or Christus which are derived from the Greek Christos meaning "anointed one/Messiah." If we take the passage at face value it refers to a person named Chrestus who was in Rome and who had nothing to do with Jesus or any other "Christ." The term Chrestos was often applied to pagan gods and many of the people in Rome called "Jews" were actually people who mixed Jewish beliefs with pagan beliefs and who were not necessarily of Jewish descent. Thus it is also possible that the passage refers to conflicts involving these pagan "Jews" who worshipped a pagan god (such as Sebazios) titled Chrestos. On the other hand, the words Chrestos and Christos were often confused and so the passage might even be referring to some conflict involving Jews who believed that some person was the Messiah. This person may or may not have actually been in Rome and for all we know, he may not even have been a real historical person. One should bear in mind that the described event took place just several years after the crucifixion of the false Messiah Theudas in 44 C.E., and the passage may be referring to his followers in Rome. Christians claim that the passage refers to Jesus and conflicts arising after Paul brought news of him to Rome and that Suetonius was only mistaken about Jesus himself being in Rome. However, this interpretation is based on blind belief in Jesus and the myths about Paul and there is nothing to suggest that it is the correct interpretation. Thus we may conclude that Suetonius also fails to provide any reliable evidence of an historical Jesus.
All other writers who mention Jesus, from Justin Martyr in the second century C.E. to the latest expounders of Christian myth in the twentieth century, have all based their references to Jesus on the sources we have discredited above. Consequently their claims are worthless as historical evidence. We are thus left with the conclusion that there is absolutely no reliable and acceptable historical evidence of Jesus. All references to Jesus are derived from the superstitious beliefs and myths of the early Christian community. The majority of these beliefs only came into existence after the persecution by Nero and the tragedy of 70 C.E. Many of these beliefs are based on the pagan legends about the gods Tammuz, Osiris, Attis, Dionysus and the sun god Mithras. Other myths about Jesus appear to be based on various different historical people such as the convicted criminals Yeishu ben Pandeira and ben Stada, and the crucified false Messiahs Yehuda, Theudas and Benjamin, but none of these people can be regarded as an historical Jesus.
*FURTHER READING*
1) J. Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth, Prometheus Books, reprinted 1991. (Examines how ancient myths were misused by the early church and misrepresented as history.)
2) J. Campbell, Occidental Mythology, Penguin Books, reprinted 1985. (An exposition of religious mythology in western civilization. Includes important evidence concerning the borrowing of pagan myths by Christianity.)
3) E.D. Cohen, The Mind of the Bible-Believer, Prometheus Books, reprinted 1991. (Uncovers the psychological ploys around which the New Testament is built and exposes the adverse effects of Christian fundamentalism.)
4) R. Helms, Gospel Fictions, Prometheus Books, reprinted 1991. (Exposes the gospels as being largely fictional documents composed as a culmination to an extensive mythological tradition.)
5) S. Levine, You Take Jesus and I'll Take God: How to Refute Christian Missionaries, revised edition, Hamoroh Press, Los Angeles, 1980. (Exposes the tricks used by missionaries and the misquotations of the Tanach in the New Testament.)
6) J.M. Robertson, A Short History of Christianity, 2nd Ed., Watts & Co., London 1913. (One of the first serious academic investigations into the origins of Christianity. Exposes the elements of the Jesus story borrowed from pagan myths.)
7) The Talmud, should be compulsory reading for all Jews although it is unfortunately neglected in modern times!
When countering Christian missionaries it is important to base one's arguments on correct facts. Arguments based on incorrect facts can easily backfire and end up strengthening the arguments of the missionaries.
It is rather unfortunate that many well-meaning Jewish Studies teachers have unwittingly aided missionaries by teaching Jewish pupils incorrect information about the origins of Christianity. I can recall being taught the following story about Jesus at the Jewish day school I attended:
"Jesus was a famous first century rabbi whose Hebrew name was Rabbi Yehoshua. His father was a carpenter named Joseph and his mother's name was Mary. Mary became pregnant before she married Joseph. Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem during a Roman census. Jesus grew up in Nazareth and became a learned rabbi. He traveled all over Israel preaching that people should love one another. Some people thought that he was the Messiah and he did not deny this, which made the other rabbis very angry. He caused so much controversy that the Roman governor Pontius Pilate had him crucified. He was buried in a tomb and later his body was found to be missing since it had probably been stolen by his disciples."A few years after being taught this seemingly innocent story, I became interested in the origins of Christianity and decided to do some further reading on the "famous Rabbi Yehoshua." Much to my dismay, I discovered that there was no historical evidence of this Rabbi Yehoshua. The claim that Jesus was a rabbi named Yehoshua and the claim that his body was probably stolen both turned out to be pure conjecture. The rest of the story was nothing more than a watered down version of the story which Christians believe as part of the Christian religion but which is not supported by any legitimate historical source.
There was absolutely no historical evidence that Jesus, Joseph or Mary ever existed, let alone that Joseph was a carpenter or that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth.
Despite the lack of evidence for Jesus's existence many Jews have made the tragic mistake of assuming that the New Testament story is largely correct and have tried to refute Christianity by attempting to rationalize the various miracles that allegedly occurred during Jesus's life and after his death. Numerous books have been written which take this approach to Christianity. This approach however is hopelessly flawed and is in fact dangerous since it encourages belief in the New Testament.
When the Israelites were confronted with the worship of Baal they did not blindly accept the ancient West Semitic myths as history. When the Maccabees were confronted with Greek religion they did not blindly accept Greek mythology as history. Why do so many modern Jews blindly accept Christian mythology? The answer to this question seems to be that many Christians do not know themselves where the distinction between established history and Christian belief lies and they have passed their confusion on to the Jewish community. Browsing through the religion section of a local bookstore, I recently came across a book which claimed to be an objective biography of Jesus. It turned out to be nothing more than a summary of the usual New Testament story. It even included claims that Jesus's miracles had been witnessed but that rational explanations for them might exist. Many history books written by Christians take a similar approach. Some Christian authors will suggest that perhaps the miracles are not completely historical but they nevertheless follow the general New Testament story. The idea that there was a real historical Jesus has thus become entrenched in Christian society and Jews living in the Christian world have come to blindly accept this belief because they have never seen it seriously challenged.
Despite the widespread belief in Jesus the fact remains that there is no historical Jesus. In order to understand what is meant by an "historical Jesus," consider King Midas in Greek mythology. The story that King Midas turned everything he touched into gold is clearly nonsense, yet despite this we know that there was a real King Midas. Archaeologists have excavated his tomb and found his skeletal remains. The Greeks who told the story of Midas and his golden touch clearly intended people to identify him with the real Midas. So although the story of the golden touch is fictional, the story is about a person whose existence is known as a fact--the "historical Midas." In the case of Jesus, however, there is no single person whose existence is known as a fact and who is also intended to be the subject of the Jesus stories, i.e. there is no historical Jesus.
When confronted by a Christian missionary, one should immediately point out that the very existence of Jesus has not been proven. When missionaries argue they usually appeal to emotions rather than to reason and they will attempt to make you feel embarrassed about denying the historicity of Jesus. The usual response is something like "Isn't denying the existence of Jesus just as silly as denying the existence of Julius Caesar or Queen Elizabeth?" A popular variation of this response used especially against Jews is "Isn't denying the existence of Jesus like denying the Holocaust?" One should then point out that there are ample historical sources confirming the existence of Julius Caesar, Queen Elizabeth or whoever else is named, while there is no corresponding evidence for Jesus.
To be perfectly thorough you should take time to do some research on the historical personalities mentioned by the missionaries and present hard evidence of their existence. At the same time you should challenge the missionaries to provide similar evidence of Jesus's existence. You should point out that although the existence of Julius Caesar, or Queen Elizabeth, etc., is accepted worldwide, the same is not true of Jesus. In the Far East where the major religions are Buddhism, Shinto, Taoism and Confucianism, Jesus is considered to be just another character in Western religious mythology, on a par with Thor, Zeus and Osiris. Most Hindus do not believe in Jesus, but those who do consider him to be one of the many avatars of the Hindu god Vishnu. Muslims certainly believe in Jesus but they reject the New Testament story and consider him to be a prophet who announced the coming of Muhammed. They explicitly deny that he was ever crucified.
To sum up, there is no story of Jesus which is uniformly accepted worldwide. It is this fact which puts Jesus on a different level to established historical personalities. If the missionaries use the "Holocaust reply," you should point out that the Holocaust is well-documented and that there are numerous eyewitness reports. It should be pointed out that most of the people who deny the Holocaust have turned out to be antisemitic hate-mongers with fraudulent credentials. On the other hand, millions of honest people in Asia, who make up the majority of the world's population, have failed to be convinced by the Christian story of Jesus since there is no compelling evidence for its authenticity. The missionaries will insist that the story of Jesus is a well-established fact and will argue that there is "plenty of evidence supporting it." One should then insist on seeing this evidence and refuse to listen any further until they produce it.
If Jesus was not an historical person, where did the whole New Testament story come from in the first place? The Hebrew name for Christians has always been Notzrim. This name is derived from the Hebrew word neitzer, which means a shoot or sprout--an obvious Messianic symbol. There were already people called Notzrim at the time of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah (c. 100 B.C.E.). Although modern Christians claim that Christianity only started in the first century C.E., it is clear that the first century Christians in Israel considered themselves to be a continuation of the Notzri movement which had been in existence for about 150 years. One of the most notorious Notzrim was Yeishu ben Pandeira, also known as Yeishu ha-Notzri. Talmudic scholars have always maintained that the story of Jesus began with Yeishu. The Hebrew name for Jesus has always been Yeishu and the Hebrew for "Jesus the Nazarene" has always been "Yeishu ha-Notzri." (The name Yeishu is a shortened form of the name Yeishua, not Yehoshua.) It is important to note that Yeishu ha-Notzri is not an historical Jesus since modern Christianity denies any connection between Jesus and Yeishu and moreover, parts of the Jesus myth are based on other historical people besides Yeishu.
We know very little about Yeishu ha-Notzri. All modern works that mention him are based on information taken from the Tosefta and the Baraitas - writings made at the same time as the Mishna but not contained in it. Because the historical information concerning Yeishu is so damaging to Christianity, most Christian authors (and even some Jewish ones) have tried to discredit this information and have invented many ingenious arguments to explain it away. Many of their arguments are based on misunderstandings and misquotations of the Baraitas and in order to get an accurate picture of Yeishu one should ignore Christian authors and examine the Baraitas directly.
The skimpy information contained in the Baraitas is as follows: Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah once repelled Yeishu with both hands. People believed that Yeishu was a sorcerer and they considered him to be a person who had led the Jews astray. As a result of charges brought against him (the details of which are not known, but which probably involved high treason) Yeishu was stoned and his body hung up on the eve of Passover. Before this he was paraded around for forty days with a herald going in front of him announcing that he would be stoned and calling for people to come forward to plead for him. Nothing was brought forward in his favor however. Yeishu had five disciples: Mattai, Naqai, Neitzer, Buni, and Todah.
In the Tosefta and the Baraitas, Yeishu's father is named Pandeira or Panteiri. These are Hebrew-Aramaic forms of a Greek name. In Hebrew the third consonant of the name is written either with a dalet or a tet. Comparison with other Greek words transliterated into Hebrew shows that the original Greek must have had a delta as its third consonant and so the only possibility for the father's Greek name is Panderos. Since Greek names were common among Jews during Hashmonean times it is not necessary to assume that he was Greek, as some authors have done.
The connection between Yeishu and Jesus is corroborated by the the fact that Mattai and Todah, the names of two of Yeishu's disciples, are the original Hebrew forms of Matthew and Thaddaeus, the names of two of Jesus's disciples in Christian mythology.
The early Christians were also aware of the name "ben Pandeira" for Jesus. The pagan philosopher Celsus, who was famous for his arguments against Christianity, claimed in 178 C.E. that he had heard from a Jew that Jesus's mother, Mary, had been divorced by her husband, a carpenter, after it had been proved that she was an adultress. She wandered about in shame and bore Jesus in secret. His real father was a soldier named Pantheras. According to the Christian writer Epiphanius (c. 320 - 403 C.E.), the Christian apologist Origen (c.185 – 254 C.E.) had claimed that "Panther" was the nickname for Jacob the father of Joseph, the stepfather of Jesus. It should be noted that Origen's claim is not based on any historical information. It is purely a conjecture aimed at explaining away the Pantheras story of Celsus. That story is also not historical. The claim that the name of Jesus's mother was Mary and the claim that her husband was a carpenter is taken directly from Christian belief. The claim that Jesus's real father was named Pantheras is based on an incorrect attempt at reconstructing the original form of Pandeira. This incorrect reconstruction was probably influenced by the fact that the name Pantheras was found among Roman soldiers.
Why did people believe that Jesus's mother was named Mary and her husband named Joseph? Why did non-Christians accuse Mary of being an adultress while Christians believed she was a virgin? To answer these questions one must examine some of the legends surrounding Yeishu. We cannot hope to obtain the absolute truth concerning the origins of the Jesus myth but we can show that reasonable alternatives exist to blindly accepting the New Testament.
The name Joseph for Jesus's stepfather is easy to explain. The Notzri movement was particularly popular with the Samaritan Jews. While the Pharisees were waiting for a Messiah who would be a descendant of David, the Samaritans wanted a Messiah who would restore the northern kingdom of Israel. The Samaritans emphasized their partial descent from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, who were descended from the Joseph of the Torah. The Samaritans considered themselves to be "Bnei Yoseph" i.e. "sons of Joseph," and since they believed that Jesus had been their Messiah, they would have assumed that he was a "son of Joseph." The Greek speaking population, who had little knowledge of Hebrew and true Jewish traditions, could have easily misunderstood this term and assumed that Joseph was the actual name of Jesus's father. This conjecture is corroborated by the fact that according to the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph's father is named Jacob, just like the Torah Joseph. Later, other Christians, who followed the idea that the Messiah was to be descended from David, tried to trace Joseph back to David. They came up with two contradictory genealogies for him, one recorded in Matthew and the other in Luke. When the idea that Mary was a virgin developed, the mythical Joseph was relegated to the position of simply being her husband and the stepfather of Jesus.
To understand where the Mary story came from we have to turn to another historical character who contributed to the Jesus myth, namely ben Stada. All the information we have on ben Stada again comes from the Tosefta and the Baraitas. There is even less information about him than about Yeishu. Some people believed that he had brought spells out of Egypt in a cut in his flesh, others thought that he was a madman. He was a beguiler and was caught by the method of concealed witnesses. He was stoned in Lod.
In the Tosefta, ben Stada is called ben Sotera or ben Sitera. Sotera seems to be the Hebrew-Aramaic form of the Greek name Soteros. The forms "Sitera" and "Stada" seem have arisen as misreadings and spelling mistakes (yod replacing vav and dalet replacing reish).
Since there was so little information concerning ben Stada, many conjectures arose as to who he was. It is known from the Gemara that he was confused with Yeishu. This probably resulted from the fact that both were executed for treasonous teachings and were associated with sorcery. People who confused ben Stada with Yeishu had to explain why he was also called ben Pandeira. Since the name "Stada" resembles the Aramaic expression "stat da," meaning "she went astray" it was thought that "Stada" referred to the mother of Yeishu and that she was an adultress. Consequently, people began to think that Yeishu was the illegitimate son of Pandeira. These ideas are in fact mentioned in the Gemara and are probably much older. Since ben Stada lived in Roman times and the name Pandeira resembled the name Pantheras found among Roman soldiers, it was assumed that Pandeira had been a Roman soldier stationed in Israel. This certainly explains the story mentioned by Celsus.
The Tosefta mentions a famous case of a woman named Miriam bat Bilgah marrying a Roman soldier. The idea that Yeishu had been born to a Jewish woman who had had an affair with a Roman soldier probably resulted in Yeishu's mother being confused with this Miriam. The name "Miriam" is of course the original form of the name "Mary." It is in fact known from the Gemara that some of the people who confused Yeishu with ben Stada believed that Yeishu's mother was "Miriam the women's hairdresser."
The story that Mary (Miriam) the mother of Jesus was an adulteress was certainly not acceptable to the early Christians. The virgin birth story was probably invented to clear Mary's name. The early Christians did not suck this story out of their thumbs. Virgin birth stories were fairly common in pagan myths. The following mythological characters were all believed to have been born to divinely impregnated virgins: Romulus and Remus, Perseus, Zoroaster, Mithras, Osiris-Aion, Agdistis, Attis, Tammuz, Adonis, Korybas, Dionysus. The pagan belief in unions between gods and women, regardless of whether they were virgins or not, is even more common. Many characters in pagan mythology were believed to be sons of divine fathers and human females. The Christian belief that Jesus was the son of God born to a virgin, is typical of Greco-Roman superstition. The Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria (c. 30 B.C.E - 45 C.E.), warned against the widespread superstitious belief in unions between male gods and human females which returned women to a state of virginity.
The god Tammuz, worshipped by pagans in northern Israel, was said to have been born to the virgin Myrrha. The name "Myrrha" superficially resembles "Mary/Miriam" and it is possible that this particular virgin birth story influenced the Mary story more than the others. Like Jesus, Tammuz was always called Adon, meaning "Lord." (The character Adonis in Greek mythology is based on Tammuz.) As we will see later, the connection between Jesus and Tammuz goes much further than this.
The idea that Mary had been an adultress never completely disappeared in Christian mythology. Instead, the character of Mary was split into two: Mary the mother of Jesus, believed to be a virgin, and Mary Magdalene, believed to be a woman of ill repute. The idea that the character of Mary Magdalene is also derived from Miriam the mythical mother of Yeishu, is corroborated by the fact that the strange name "Magdalene" clearly resembles the Aramaic term "mgadla nshaya," meaning "womens' hairdresser." As mentioned before, there was a belief that Yeishu's mother was "Miriam the women's hairdresser." Because the Christians did not know what the name "Magdalene" meant, they later conjectured that it meant that she had come from a place called Magdala on the west of Lake Kinneret. The idea of the two Marys fitted in well with the pagan way of thinking. The image of Jesus being followed by the two Marys is strongly reminiscent of Dionysus being followed by Demeter and Persephone.
The Gemara contains an interesting legend concerning Yeishu which attempts to elucidate the Beraita which says that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah repelled Yeishu with both hands. The legend claims that when the Hashmonean king Yannai was killing the Pharisees, Rabbi Yehoshua and Yeishu fled to Egypt. When returning they came upon an inn. The Aramaic word "aksanya" means both "inn" or "innkeeper." Rabbi Yehoshua remarked how beautiful the "aksanya" was (meaning the inn). Yeishu (meaning the innkeeper) replied that her eyes were too narrow. Rabbi Yehoshua was very angry with Yeishu and excommunicated him. Yeishu asked many times for forgiveness but Rabbi Yehoshua would not forgive him. Once when Rabbi Yehoshua was reciting the Shema, Yeishu came up to him. He made a sign to him that he should wait. Yeishu misunderstood and thought that he was being rejected again. He mocked Rabbi Yehoshua by setting up a brick and worshipping it. Rabbi Yehoshua told him to repent but he refused to, saying that he had learned from him that anyone who sins and causes many to sin, is not given the opportunity to repent.
The above story, up to the events at the inn, closely resembles another legend in which the protagonist is not Rabbi Yehoshua but his disciple Yehuda ben Tabbai. In this legend, Yeishu is not named. One may thus question whether Yeishu really went to Egypt or not. It is possible that Yeishu was confused with some other disciple of either Rabbi Yehoshua or Rabbi Yehuda. The confusion might have resulted from the fact that Yeishu was confused with ben Stada who had returned from Egypt. On the other hand, Yeishu might have really fled to Egypt and returned, and this in turn could have contributed to the confusion between Yeishu and ben Stada. Whatever the case, the belief that Yeishu fled to Egypt to escape being killed by a cruel king, appears to be the origin of the Christian belief that Jesus and his family fled to Egypt to escape King Herod.
Since the early Christians believed that Jesus had lived in Roman times it is natural that they would have confused the evil king who wanted to kill Jesus with Herod, since there were no other suitable evil kings during the Roman period. Yeishu was an adult at the time that the rabbis fled from Yannai; why did the Christians believe that Jesus and his family had fled to Egypt when Jesus was an infant? Why did the Christians believe that Herod had ordered all baby boys born in Bethlehem to be killed, when there is no historical evidence of this? To answer these questions we again have to look at pagan mythology.
The theme of a divine or semi-divine child who is feared by an evil king is very common in pagan mythology. The usual story is that the evil king receives a prophecy that a certain child will be born who will usurp the throne. In some stories the child is born to a virgin and usually he is son of a god. The mother of the child tries to hide him. The king usually orders the slaying of all babies who might be the prophecied king. Examples of myths which follow this plot are the birth stories of Romulus and Remus, Perseus, Krishna, Zeus, and Oedipus. Although Torah literalists will not like to admit it, the story of Moses's birth also resembles these myths (some of which claim that the mother put the child in a basket and placed him in a river). There were probably several such stories circulating in the Levant which have been lost. The Christian myth of the slaughter of the innocents by Herod is simply a Christain version of this theme. The plot was so well known that one Midrashic scholar could not resist using it for an apocryphal account of Abraham's birth.
The early Christians believed that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. This belief is based on a misunderstanding of Micah 5.2 which simply names Bethlehem as the town where the Davidic lineage began. Since the early Christians believed that Jesus was the Messiah, they automatically believed that he was born in Bethlehem. But why did the Christians believe that he lived in Nazareth? The answer is quite simple. The early Greek speaking Christians did not know what the word "Nazarene" meant. The earliest Greek form of this word is "Nazoraios," which is derived from "Natzoriya," the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew "Notzri." (Recall that "Yeishu ha-Notzri" is the original Hebrew for "Jesus the Nazarene.") The early Christians conjectured that "Nazarene" meant a person from Nazareth and so it was assumed that Jesus lived in Nazareth. Even today, Christians blithely confuse the Hebrew words "Notzri" (Nazarene, Christian), "Natzrati" (Nazarethite) and "nazir" (nazarite), all of which have completely different meanings.
The information in the Talmud (which contains the Baraitas and the Gemara), concerning Yeishu and ben Stada, is so damaging to Christianity that Christians have always taken drastic measures against it. When the Christians first discovered the information they immediately tried to wipe it out by censoring the Talmud. The Basle edition of the Talmud (c. 1578 - 1580) had all the passages relating to Yeishu and ben Stada deleted by the Christians. Even today, editions of the Talmud used by Christian scholars lack these passages!
During the first few decades of this century, fierce academic battles raged between atheist and Christian scholars over the true origins of Christianity. The Christians were forced to face up to the Talmudic evidence. They could no longer ignore it and so they decided to attack it instead. They claimed that the Talmudic Yeishu was a distortion of the "historical Jesus." They claimed that the name "Pandeira" was simply a Hebrew attempt at pronouncing the Greek word for virgin--"parthenos." Although there is a superficial resemblence between the words, one should note that in order for "Pandeira" to be derived from "parthenos," the "n" and "r" have to be interchanged. However, the Jews did not suffer from any speech impediment which would cause this to happen! The Christian response is that possibly the Jews purposefully altered the word "parthenos" to either the name "Pantheras" (found in Celsus's story) or to "pantheros" meaning a panther, and "Pandeira" is derived from the deliberately altered word. This argument also fails since the third consonant of both the altered and unaltered "parthenos" is theta. This letter is always transliterated by the Hebrew letter tav, whose pronunciation during classical times most closely resembled that of the Greek letter. However, the name "Pandeira" is never spelled with a tav but with either a dalet or a tet which show that the original Greek form had a delta as its third consonant, not a theta. The Christian argument can also be turned on its head: maybe the Christians deliberately altered "Pantheras" to "parthenos" when they invented the virgin birth story. It should also be noted that the resemblence between "Pantheras" (or "pantheros") and "parthenos" is actually much less when written in Greek since in the original Greek spelling their second vowels are completely different.
The Christians also did not accept that Mary Magdalene was connected to Miriam the alleged mother of Yeishu in the Talmud. They argued that the name "Magdalene" does mean a person from Magdala and that the Jews invented "Miriam the women’s hairdresser mgadla nshaya)" either to mock the Christians, or out of their own misunderstanding of the name "Magdalene." This argument is also false. Firstly, it ignores Greek grammar: the correct Greek for "of Magdala" is "Magdales" and the correct Greek for a person from Magdala is "Magdalaios." The original Greek root of "Magdalene" is "Magdalen-," with a conspicuous "n" showing that the word has nothing to do with Magdala. Secondly, Magdala only got its name after the Gospels were written. Before that it was called Magadan or Dalmanutha. (Although "Magadan" has an "n," it lacks an "l" and so it cannot be the derivation of "Magdalene.") In fact, the ruins of this area were renamed Magdala by the Christian community because they believed that Mary Magdalene had come from there.
The Christians also claimed that the word "Notzri" means a person from Nazareth. This is of course false since the original Hebrew for Nazareth is "Natzrat" and a person from Nazareth is a "Natzrati." The name "Notzri" lacks the letter tav from "Natzrat" as so it cannot be derived from it. The Christians argue that perhaps the Aramaic name for Nazareth was "Natzarah" or "Natzirah" (like the modern Arabic name) which explains the missing tav in "Notzri." This is also nonsense since the Aramaic word for a person from Nazareth would then be "Natzaratiya" or "Natziratiya" (with a tav since the feminine ending "-ah" would become "-at-" when the suffix "-iya" is added), and besides, the Aramaic form would not be used in Hebrew. The Christians also came up with various other arguments which can be dismissed since they confuse the Hebrew words "Notzri" and "nazir" or ignore the fact that "Notzri" is the earliest form of the word "Nazarene."
To sum up, all the Christian arguments were based on impossible phonetic changes and grammatical forms, and were consequently dismissed. Moreover, although the legends in the Gemara cannot be taken as fact, the evidence in the Baraitas and Tosefta concerning Yeishu can be traced back directly to Yehoshua ben Perachyah, Shimon ben Shetach and Yehuda ben Tabbai and their disciples who were contemporaries of Yeishu, while the evidence in the Baraitas and Tosefta concerning ben Stada can be traced to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and his disciples who were ben Stada's contempories. Consequently the evidence can be regarded as historically accurate. Therefore modern Christians no longer attack the Talmud but instead deny any connection between Jesus and Yeishu or ben Stada. They dismiss the similarities as pure coincidence. However, one must still be aware of the false attacks on the Talmud since many Christian books still mention them and they can and do resurface from time to time.
Many parts of the Jesus story are not based on Yeishu or ben Stada. Most Christian denominations claim that Jesus was born on 25 December. Originally the eastern Christains believed that he was born on 6 January. The Armenian Christians still follow this early belief while most Christians consider it to be the date of the visit of the Magi. As pointed out already, Jesus was probably confused with Tammuz born of the virgin Myrrha. We know that in Roman times, the gods Tammuz, Aion and Osiris were identified. Osiris-Aion was said to be born of the virgin Isis on the 6 January and this explains the earlier date for Christmas. Isis was sometimes represented as a sacred cow and her temple as a stable which is probably the origin of the Christian belief that Jesus was born in a stable. Although some might find this claim to be farfetched, it is known as a fact that certain early Christian sects identified Jesus and Osiris in their writings. The date of 25 December for Christmas was originally the pagan birthday of the sun god, whose day of the week is still known as Sunday. The halo of light which is usually shown surrounding the face of Jesus and Christian saints, is another concept taken from the sun god.
The theme of temptation by a devil-like creature was also found in pagan mythology. In particular the story of Jesus's temptation by Satan resembles the temptation of Osiris by the devil-god Set in Egyptian mythology.
We have already hinted that there was also a connection between Jesus and the pagan god Dionysus. Like Dionysus, the infant Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger; like Dionysus, Jesus could turn water into wine; like Dionysus, Jesus rode on an ass and fed a multitude in the wilderness; like Dionysus, Jesus suffered and was mocked. Some early Christians claimed that Jesus had in fact been born, not in a stable, but in a cave--just like Dionysus.
Where did the story that Jesus was crucified come from? It appears to have resulted from a number of sources. Firstly there were three historical characters during the Roman period who people thought were Messiahs and who were crucified by the Romans, namely Yehuda of Galilee (6 C.E.), Theudas (44 C.E.), and Benjamin the Egyptian (60 C.E.). Since these three people were all thought to be the Messiah, they were naturally confused with Yeishu and ben Stada. Yehuda of Galilee had preached in Galilee and had collected many followers before being crucified by the Romans. The story of Jesus's ministry in Galilee appears to be based on the life of Yehuda of Galilee. This story and the belief that Jesus lived in Nazareth in Galilee, reinforced each other. The belief that some of Jesus's disciples were killed in c. 44 C.E. by Agrippa appears to be based the fate of Theudas's disciples. Since ben Stada had come from Egypt it is natural that he would have been confused with Benjamin the Egyptian. They were probably also contemporaries. Even some modern authors have suggested that they were the same person, although this is not possible since the stories of their deaths are completely different. In the New Testament book of Acts, which uses Josephus's book Jewish Antiquities (93 - 94 C.E.) as a reference, it is made clear that the author considered Jesus, Yehuda of Galilee, Theudas and Benjamin the Egyptian, to be four different people. However, by that time it was too late to undo the confusions which had already taken place before the New Testament was written, and the idea of Jesus's crucifixion had become an integral part of the myth.
Secondly, the idea arose that Jesus had been executed on the eve of Passover. This belief is apparently based on Yeishu's execution. Passover occurs at the time of the Vernal Equinox, an event considered important by astrologers during the Roman Empire. The astrologers thought of this time as the time of the crossing of two astrological celestial circles, and this event was symbolized by a cross. Thus there was a belief that Jesus had died on "the cross." The misunderstanding of this term by those who were not initiated into the astrological cults, was another factor contributing to the belief that Jesus was crucified. In one of the earliest Christian documents (the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) there is no mention of Jesus being crucified yet the sign of a cross in the sky is used to represent Jesus's coming. It should be noted that the center of astrological superstition in the Roman Empire was the city of Tarsus in Asia Minor - the place where the legendary missionary Paul came from. The idea that a special star had heralded the birth of Jesus, and that a solar eclipse occurred at his death, is typical of Tarsian astrological superstition.
The third factor contributing to the crucifixion story is again pagan mythology. The theme of a divine or semi-divine being sacrificed against a tree, pole or cross, and then being resurrected, is very common in pagan mythology. It was found in the mythologies of all western civilizations stretching from as far west as Ireland and as far east as India. In particular it is found in the mythologies of Osiris and Attis, both of whom were often identified with Tammuz. Osiris landed up with his arms stretched out on a tree like Jesus on the cross. This tree was sometimes shown as a pole with outstretched arms - the same shape as the Christian cross. In the worship of Serapis (a composite of Osiris and Apis) the cross was a religious symbol. Indeed, the Christian "Latin cross" symbol seems to be based directly on the cross symbol of Osiris and Serapis. The Romans never used this traditional Christian cross for crucifixions, they used crosses shaped either like an X or a T. The hieroglyph of a cross on a hill was associated with Osiris. This heiroglyph stood for the "Good One," in Greek "Chrestos," a name applied to Osiris and other pagan gods. The confusion of this name with "Christos" (Messiah, Christ) strengthened the confusion between Jesus and the pagan gods.
At the Vernal Equinox, pagans in northern Israel would celebrate the death and resurrection of the virgin-born Tammuz-Osiris. In Asia Minor (where the earliest Christian churches were established) a similar celebration was held for the virgin-born Attis. Attis was shown as dying against a tree, being buried in a cave and then being resurrected on the third day. We thus see where the Christian story of Jesus's resurrection comes from. In the worship of Baal, it was believed that Baal cheated Mavet (the god of death) at the time of the Vernal Equinox. He pretended to be dead but later appeared alive. He accomplished this ruse by giving his only son as a sacrifice.
The occurrence of Passover at the same time of year as the pagan "Easter" festivals is not coincidental. Many of the Pessach customs were designed as Jewish alternatives to pagan customs. The pagans believed that when their nature god (such as Tammuz, Osiris or Attis) died and was resurrected, his life went into the plants used by man as food. The matza made from the spring harvest was his new body and the wine from the grapes was his new blood. In Judaism, matza, was not used to represent the body of a god but the poor man's bread which the Jews ate before leaving Egypt. The pagans used the paschal sacrifice to represent the sacrifice of a god or his only son, but Judaism used it to represent the meal eaten before leaving Egypt. Instead of telling stories about Baal sacrificing his first born son to Mavet, the Jews told how mal'ach ha-mavet (the angel of death) slew the first born sons of the Egyptians. The pagans ate eggs to represent the resurrection and rebirth of their nature god, but the egg on the seder plate represents the rebirth of the Jewish people escaping captivity in Egypt. When the early Christians noticed the similarities between Pessach customs and pagan customs, they came full circle and converted the Pessach customs back to their old pagan interpretations. The seder became the last supper of Jesus, similar to the last supper of Osiris commemorated at the Vernal Equinox. The matza and wine once again became the body and blood of a false god, this time Jesus. Easter eggs are again eaten to commemorate the resurrection of a "god" and also the "rebirth" obtained by accepting his sacrifice on the cross.
The Last Supper myth is particularly interesting. As mentioned, the basic idea of last supper occurring at the Vernal Equinox comes from the story of the last supper of Osiris. In the Christian story, Jesus is present with twelve apostles. Where did the story of the twelve apostles come from? It appears that in its earliest version, the story was understood to be an allegory. The first time that twelve apostles are mentioned is in the document known as the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. This document apparently originated as a sectarian Jewish document written in the first century C.E., but it was adopted by Christians who altered it substantially and added Christian ideas to it. In the earliest versions it is clear that the "twelve apostles" are the twelve sons of Jacob representing the twelve tribes of Israel. The Christians later considered the "twelve apostles" to be allegorical disciples of Jesus.
In Egyptian mythology, Osiris was betrayed at his last supper by the evil god Set, whom the Greeks identified with Typhon. This seems to be the origin of the idea that Jesus's betrayer was present at his last supper. The idea that this betrayer was named "Judas" goes back to the time when the twelve apostles were still understood to be the sons of Jacob. The idea of Judas (Judah, Yehuda) betraying Jesus (the "son" of Joseph) is strongly reminiscent of the story of the Torah Joseph being betrayed by his brothers with Yehuda as the ringleader. This allegory would have been particulary appealing to the Samaritan Notzrim who considered themselves to be sons of Joseph betrayed by mainstream Jews (represented by Judas/Yehuda).
However, the story of the twelve apostles lost its original allegorical interpretation and the Christians began to think that the "twelve apostles" were twelve real people who followed Jesus. The Christians attempted to find names for these twelve apostles. Matthew and Thaddaeus were based on Mattai and Todah, two of Yeishu's disciples. One or both of the apostles named Jacobus (James) is possibly based on Jacob of Kfar Sekanya, an early Christian known to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, but this is just a guess. As we have seen, the character of Judas is mostly based on the Judah of the Torah but there might also be a connection with Yeishu's contemporary, Yehuda ben Tabbai the disciple of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah. As already mentioned, the idea of the betrayer at the last supper is derived from the mythology of Osiris who was betrayed by Set-Typhon. Set-Typhon had red hair and this is probably the origin of the claim that Judas had red hair. This idea has led to the Christian stereotypical portrayal of Jews as having red hair, despite the fact that in reality, red hair is far more common among Aryans than among Jews.
Judas is often given the nickname "Iscariot." In some places where English New Testaments have "Iscariot," the Greek text actually has "apo Kariotou" which means "from Karyot." Karyot was the name of a town in Israel, probably the modern site known in Arabic as Karyatein. We thus see that the name Iscariot is derived from the Hebrew "ish Karyot" meaning "man from Karyot." This is in fact the accepted modern Christian understanding of the name. However, in the past, the Christians misunderstood this name and legends arose that Judas was from the town of Sychar, that he was a member of the extremist party known as the Sicarii and that he was from the tribe of Issacher. The most interesting misunderstanding of the name is its early confusion with the word scortea meaning a leather money bag. This led to the New Testament myth that Judas carried such a bag, which in turn led to the belief that he was the treasurer of the apostles.
The apostle Peter appears to be a largely fictitious character. According to Christian mythology, Jesus chose him to be the "keeper of the keys to the kingdom of heaven." This is clearly based on the Egyptian pagan deity, Petra, who was the door-keeper of heaven and the afterlife ruled over by Osiris. We must also doubt the story of Luke "the good healer" who was supposed to be a friend of Paul. The original Greek for "Luke" is "Lykos" which was another name for Apollo, the god of healing.
John the Baptist is largely based on an historical person who practiced ritual immersion in water as a physical symbol for repentance. He did not perform Christian style sacramental baptisms to cleanse people's souls - such an idea was totally foreign to Judaism. He was put to death by Herod Antipas, who feared that he was about to start a rebellion. John's name in Greek was "Ioannes" and in Latin "Johannes." Although these names were usually used for the Hebrew name Yochanan, it is unlikely that this was John's actual Hebrew name. "Ioannes" closely resembles "Oannes" the Greek name for the pagan god Ea. Oannes was the "God of the House of Water." Sacramental baptism for magically cleansing souls was a practice which apparently originated in the worship of Oannes. The most likely explanation of John's name and its connection with Oannes is that John probably bore the nickname "Oannes" since he practised baptism which he had adapted from the worship of Oannes. The name "Oannes" was later confused with "Ioannes." (In fact, the New Testament legend concerning John provides a clue that his real name might have been Zacharia.) It is known from Josephus's writings that the historical John rejected the pagan "soul-cleansing" interpretation of baptism. The Christians, however, returned to this original pagan interpretation.
The god Oannes was associated with the constellation Capricorn. Both Oannes and the constellation Capricorn were associated with water. (The constellation is supposed to depict a mythical sea-creature with the body of a fish and the foreparts of a goat.) We have already seen that Jesus was given the same birthday as the sun god (25 December), when the sun is in the constellation of Capricorn. The pagans thought of this period as one where the sun god is immersed in the waters of Oannes and emerges reborn. (The Winter Solstice, when days start getting longer, occurs near 25 December.) This astrological myth is apparently the origin of the story that Jesus was baptized by John. It probably started as an allegorical astrological story, but it appears that the god Oannes later became confused with the historical person nicknamed Oannes (John).
The belief that Jesus had met John contributed to the belief that Jesus's ministry and crucifixion occurred when Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judaea. It should be noted that most dates for Jesus quoted by Christians are completely nonsense. Jesus was partly based on Yeishu and ben Stada who probably lived more than a century apart. He was also based on the three false Messiahs, Yehuda, Theudas and Benjamin, who were crucified by the Romans at various different times. Another fact that contributed to confused dating of Jesus was that Jacob of Kfar Sekanya and probably other Notzrim as well, used expressions like "thus was I taught by Yeishu ha-Notzri," even though he had not been taught by Yeishu in person. We know from the Gemara that Jacob's statement led Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus to incorrectly conclude that Jacob was a disciple of Yeishu. This suggests that there were rabbis who were unaware of the fact that Yeishu had lived in Hashmonean times. Even after Christians placed Jesus in the first century C.E., confusion continued among non-Christians. There was a contemporary of Rabbi Akiva named Pappus ben Yehuda who used to lock up his unfaithful wife. We know from the Gemara that some people who confused Yeishu and ben Stada confused the wife of Pappus with Miriam the unfaithful mother of Yeishu. This would place Yeishu more than two centuries after he actually lived!
The New Testament story confuses so many historical periods that there is no way of reconciling it with history. The traditional year of Jesus's birth is 1 C.E. Jesus was supposed to be not more than two years old when Herod ordered the slaughter of the innocents. However, Herod died before April 12, 4 B.C.E. This has led some Christians to redate the birth of Jesus in 6 - 4 B.C.E. However, Jesus was also supposed have been born during the census of Quirinius. This census took place after Archelaus was deposed in 6 C.E., ten years after Herod's death. Jesus was supposed to have been baptized by John soon after John had started baptizing and preaching in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias, i.e. 28-29 C.E., when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea i.e. 26-36 C.E. According to the New Testament, this also happened when Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene and Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. But Lysanias ruled Abilene from c. 40 B.C.E until he was executed in 36 B.C.E by Mark Antony, about 60 years before the date for Tiberias and about 30 years before the supposed birth of Jesus! Also, there were never two joint high priests, in particular, Annas was not a joint high priest with Caiaphas. Annas was removed from the office of high priest in 15 C.E after holding office for some nine years. Caiaphas only became high priest in c. 18 C.E, about three years after Annas. (He held this office for about eighteen years, so his dates are consistent with Tiberias and Pontius Pilate, but not with Annas or Lysanias.) Although the book of Acts presents Yehuda of Galilee, Theudas and Jesus as three different people, it incorrectly places Theudas (crucified 44 C.E.) before Yehuda who it correctly mentions as being crucified during the census (6 C.E.). Many of these chronological absurdities seem to be based on misreadings and misunderstandings of Josephus's book Jewish Antiquities, which was used as reference by the author of Luke and Acts.
The story of Jesus's trial is also highly suspicious. It clearly tries to placate the Romans while defaming the Jews. The historical Pontius Pilate was arrogant and despotic. He hated the Jews and never delegated any authority to them. However, in Christian mythology, he is portrayed as a concerned ruler who distanced himself from the accusations against Jesus and who was coerced into obeying the demands of the Jews. According to Christian mythology, every Passover, the Jews would ask Pilate to free any one criminal they chose. This is of course a blatant lie. Jews never had a custom of freeing guilty criminals at Passover or any other time of the year. According the myth, Pilate gave the Jews the choice of freeing Jesus the Christ or a murderer named Jesus Barabbas. The Jews are alleged to have enthusiastically chosen Jesus Barabbas. This story is a vicious antisemitic lie, one of many such lies found in the New Testament (largely written by antisemites). What is particularly disgusting about this rubbish story is that it is apparently a distortion of an earlier story which claimed that the Jews demanded that Jesus Christ be set free. The name "Barabbas" is simply the Greek form of the Aramaic "bar Abba" which means "son of the Father." Thus "Jesus Barabbas" originally meant "Jesus the son of the Father," in other words, the usual Christian Jesus. When the earlier story claimed that the Jews wanted Jesus Barabbas to be set free it was referring to the usual Jesus. Somebody distorted the story by claiming that Jesus Barabbas was a different person to Jesus Christ and this fooled the Roman and Greek Christians who did not know the meaning of the name "Barabbas."
Lastly, the claim that the resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples is also based on pagan superstition. In Roman mythology, the virgin born Romulus appeared to his friend on the road before he was taken up to heaven. (The theme of being taken up to heaven is found in scores of pagan myths and legends and even in Jewish stories.) It was claimed that Apollonius of Tyana had also appeared to his disciples after having been resurrected. It is interesting to note that the historical Apollonius was born more or less at the same time as the mythical Jesus was supposed to have been born. In legends people claimed that he had performed many miracles which were identical to those also ascribed to Jesus, such as exorcisms of demons and the raising to life of a dead girl.
When confronted with Christian missionaries one should point out as much information as possible about the origins of Christianity and the Jesus myth. You will almost never succeed in convincing them that Christianity is a false religion. You will not be able to prove beyond all doubt that the story of Jesus arose in the way we have claimed it has, since most of the evidence is circumstantial. Indeed we cannot be certain about the precise origin of many particular points in the story of Jesus. This does not matter. What is important is that you yourself realize that logical alternatives exist to blind belief in Christian myths and that reasonable doubt can be cast on the New Testament narrative.
PART 2: THE LACK OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR JESUS
The usual Christian response to those who question the historicity of Jesus is to palm off various documents as "historical evidence" for the existence of Jesus. They usually start with the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The usual claim is that these are "eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus made by his disciples." The reply to this argument can be summed up in one word--pseudepigraphic. This term refers to works of writing whose authors conceal their true identities behind the names of legendary characters from the past. Pseudepigraphic writing was particularly popular among the Jews during Hashmonean and Roman periods and this style of writing was adopted by the early Christians.
The canonical gospels are not the only gospels. For example, there are also gospels of Mary, Peter, Thomas and Philip. These four gospels are recognized as being pseudepigraphic by both Christian and non-Christian scholars. They provide no legitimate historical information since they were based on rumors and belief. The existence of these obviously pseudepigraphic gospels makes it quite reasonable to suspect that the canonical gospels might also be pseudepigraphic. The very fact that early Christians wrote pseudepigraphic gospels suggests that this was in fact the norm. It is thus the missionaries' claim that the canonical gospels are not pseudepigraphic which requires proof.
The Gospel of Mark is written in the name of Mark, the disciple of the mythical Peter. (Peter is largely based on the pagan god Petra, who was door-keeper of heaven and the afterlife in Egyptian religion.) Even in Christian mythology, Mark was not a disciple of Jesus, but a friend of Paul and Luke. Mark was written before Matthew and Luke (c. 100 C.E.) but after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., which it mentions. Most Christians believe it was written in c. 75 C.E. This date is not based on history but on the belief that an historical Mark wrote the gospel in his old age. This is not possible since the style of language used in Mark shows that it was written (probably in Rome) by a Roman convert to Christianity whose first language was Latin and not Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic. Indeed, since all the other gospels are written in the name of legendary characters from the past, Mark was probably written long after any historical Mark (if there was one) had died. The content of Mark is a collection of myths and legends put together to form a continuous narrative. There is no evidence that it was based on any reliable historical sources. Mark was altered and edited many times and the modern version probably dates to about 150 C.E. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 C.E. - c. 215 C.E.) complained about the alternative versions of this gospel which were still circulating in his lifetime. (The Carpocratians, an early Christian sect, considered pederasty to be a virtue and Clement complained about their versions of Mark which told of Jesus's homosexual exploits with young boys!)
The Gospel of Matthew was certainly not written by the apostle Matthew. The character of Matthew is based on the historical person named Mattai who was a disciple of Yeishu ben Pandeira. (Yeishu, who lived in Hashmonean times, was one of several historical people upon whom the character Jesus is based.) The Gospel of Matthew was originally anonymous and was only assigned the name Matthew some time during the first half of the second century C.E. The earliest form was probably written at more or less the same time as the Gospel of Luke (c. 100 C.E.), since neither seems to know of the other. It was altered and edited until about 150 C.E. The first two chapters, dealing with the virgin birth, were not in the original version and the Christians in Israel of Jewish descent preferred this earlier version. For its sources it used Mark and a collection of teachings referred to as the Second Source (or the Q Document). The Second Source has not survived as a separate document, but its full contents are found in Matthew and Luke. All the teachings contained in it can be found in Judaism. The more reasonable teachings can be found in mainstream Judaism, while the less reasonable ones can be found in sectarian Judaism. There is nothing in it which would require us to suppose the existence of a real historical Jesus. Although Matthew and Luke attribute the teachings in it to Jesus, the Epistle of James attributes them to James. Thus Matthew provides no historical evidence for Jesus.
The Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts (which were two parts of a single work) were written in the name of the Christian mythological character Luke the healer (who was probably not an historical person but a Christian adaptation of the Greek healer god Lykos). Even in Christian mythology, Luke was not a disciple of Jesus but a friend of Paul. Luke and Acts use Josephus's Jewish Antiquities as a reference, and so they could not have been written before 93 C.E. At this time, any friend of Paul would be either dead or well into senility. Indeed, both Christian and non-Christian scholars agree that the earliest versions of the two books were written by an anonymous Christian in c. 100 C.E and were altered and edited until c. 150 - 175 C.E. Besides Josephus's book, Luke and Acts also use the Gospel of Mark and the Second Source as references. Although Josephus is considered to be more or less reliable, the anonymous author often misread and misunderstood Josephus and moreover, none of the information about Jesus in Luke and Acts comes from Josephus. Thus Luke and Acts are of no historical value.
The Gospel of John was written in the name of the apostle John the brother of James, son of Zebedee. The author of Luke used as many sources as he could get hold of but he was unaware of John. Thus John more than likely could not have been written before Luke (c. 100 C.E.) Consequently John could not have been written by the semi-mythical character John the Apostle who was supposed to have been killed by Herod Agrippa shortly before his own death in 44 C.E. (John the Apostle is apparently based on an historical disciple of the false Messiah Theudas who was crucified by the Romans in 44 C.E. and whose disciples were murdered.) The real author of the Gospel of John was in fact an anonymous Christian from Ephesus in Asia Minor. The oldest surviving fragment of John dates to c. 125 C.E. and so we can date the gospel to c. 100 - 125 C.E. Based on stylistic considerations many scholars narrow down the date to c. 110 - 120 C.E. The earliest version of John did not contain the last chapter which deals with Jesus appearing to his disciples. Like the other gospels, John probably only attained its present form around 150 - 175 C.E. The author of John used Mark sparingly and so one suspects that he did not trust it. He either had not read Matthew and Luke or he did not trust them since he does not use any information from them which was not found in Mark. Most of John consists of legends with obvious underlying allegorical interpretations and one suspects that the author never intended them to be history. John does not contain any information from reliable historical sources.
Christians will claim that the Gospel of John itself states that it is an historical document written by John. This claim is based on the verses John 19.34-35 and John 21.20 - 24. John 19.34-35 does not claim that the gospel was written by John. It claims that the events described in the immediately preceding verses were accurately reported by a witness. The passage is ambiguous and it is not clear whether the witness is supposed to be the same person as the author. Many scholars are of the opinion that the ambiguity is deliberate and that the author of John is trying to tease his readers in this passage as well as in the passages which tell miraculous stories with allegorical interpretations. John 21.20-24 also does not claim that the author is John. It claims that the disciple mentioned in the passage is the one who witnessed the events described. It is again notably ambiguous as regards the question of whether the disciple is the same person as the author. It should be noted that this passage is in the last chapter of John which was not part of the original gospel but was added on as an epilogue by an anonymous redactor. One should beware the fact that many "easy to understand" translations of the New Testament distort the passages mentioned so as to remove the ambiguity found in the original Greek. (Ideally one needs to be familiar with the original Greek text of the New Testament in order to avoid biased and distorted translations used by fundamentalist Christians and missionaries.)
In order to back up their claims that the gospels of Mark and Matthew were written by the "real" apostles Mark and Matthew and that Jesus is an historical person, missionaries often point to the so-called "testimony of Papias." Papias was the bishop of Hierapolis (near Ephesus) during the middle of the second century C.E. None of his writings have survived but the Christian historian Eusebius (c. 260 - 339 C.E.) in his book, Ecclesiastical History (written c. 311 - 324 C.E.) paraphrased certain passages from Papias's book Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord (written c. 140 - 160 C.E.). In these passages, Papias claimed that he had known the daughters of the apostle Philip and also reported several stories which he claimed came from people named Aristion and John the Elder, who had still been alive during his own lifetime. Eusebius appears to have thought that Aristion and John the Elder were disciples of Jesus. Papias claimed that John the Elder had said that Mark had been Peter's interpreter and had written down accurately everything that Peter had to tell about Jesus. Papias also claimed that Matthew had compiled all the "oracles" in Hebrew and everyone had interpreted them as best they could. None of this, however, provides any legitimate historical evidence of Jesus nor does it back up the belief that Mark and Matthew were really written by apostles bearing those names. Papias was a name-dropper and it is by no means certain that he was honest when he claimed that he had met Philip's daughters. Even if he had, this would at most prove that the apostle Philip in Christian mythology was based on an historical person. Papias never explicitly claimed that he had met Aristion and John the Elder. Moreover, just because Eusebius in the 4th century believed that they were disciples of Jesus does not mean that they were. Nothing at all is known about who on earth Aristion actually was. He is certainly not one of the disciples in the usual Christian tradition. I have seen books in which certain fundamentalist Christians claim that John the Elder was the apostle John the son of Zebedee and that he was still alive when Papias was young. They also claim that Papias lived in c. 60 - 130 C.E. and that he wrote his book in c. 120 C.E. These dates are not based on any legitimate evidence and are complete nonsense: Papias was bishop of Hierapolis in c. 150 C.E and as already mentioned his book was written sometime in the period c. 140 - 160 C.E. Pushing the date for Papias back to 60 C.E. still does not place him during the lifetime of the apostle John who according to standard Christian legends was killed in 44 C.E. Besides, it is unlikely that John the Elder had anything to do with John the Apostle. According to Epiphanius (c. 320 - 403 C.E.), an early Christian named John the Elder had died in 117 C.E. We will have more to say about him when we discuss the three epistles named after John. Whatever the case, the stories which Papias collected were being told at least a decade after the gospels and Acts had been written and reflect unfounded rumors and superstition about the origins of these books. In particular, the story about Mark obtained from John the Elder is nothing more than a slight elaboration of the legend about Mark found in Acts and so it tells us nothing about the true origins of the Gospel of Mark. The story about Matthew writing the "oracles" is simply a rumor, and besides, it does not have anything to do with the Gospel of Matthew. The term "oracles" can only be understood as a reference to the collection of writings known as the Oracles of the Lord which is referred to in the title of Papias's book and which in all likelyhood is the same thing as the Second Source, not the Gospel of Matthew.
Besides the canonical gospels and Acts, missionaries also try to use the various Christian epistles as proof of the Jesus story. They claim that the epistles are letters written by Jesus's disciples and followers. However, epistles (from the Greek epistol q e, meaning message or order) are books, written in the form of letters (usually from legendary characters from the past), which expound religious doctrines and instructions. This form of religious writing was used by the Jews in Greco-Roman times. (The most famous Jewish epistle is the Epistle of Jeremiah, which is a lengthy condemnation of idolatry written during the Hellenistic period in the form of a letter from the prophet Jeremiah to the people of Jerusalem just before they were exiled to Babylon.) As in the case of the gospels, there are Christian epistles not contained in the New Testament which both Christian and non-Christian scholars agree are pseudepigraphic and of no historical value since they expound beliefs and not history. The existence of pseudepigraphic epistles and indeed the whole concept of an epistle, suggests that epistles were normally pseudepigraphic. Thus again it is the claims by missionaries and Christian fundamentalists, that the canonical epistles are genuine letters, which requires proof.
The Epistle of Jude is written in the name of Jude (Judas) the brother of James. According to Mark and Matthew, Jesus had brothers named Judas and James. Comparison with other writings shows that the Epistle of Jude was written in c. 130 C.E. and so it is obviously pseudepigraphic. There is no evidence however that its author used any legitimate historical sources as regards Jesus.
Two of the canonical epistles are written in the name of Peter. Since Peter is a mythical Christian adaptation of the Egyptian pagan deity Petra, these epistles were certainly not written by him. The style and character of the First Epistle of Peter alone shows that it could not have been written earlier than c. 80 C.E. Even according to Christian legend, Peter was supposed to have died following the persecutions instigated by Nero in c. 64 C.E. and so he could not have written the epistle. The author of Luke and Acts used all written sources he could get hold of and tended to use them indiscriminately, however he did not mention any epistles by Peter. This shows that the First Epistle of Peter was probably written after Luke and Acts (c. 100 C.E.). No references to Jesus in the First Epistle of Peter are taken from historical sources but instead reflect beliefs and superstition. The Second Epistle of Peter speaks out against the Marcionists and so it must have been written c. 150 C.E. It is thus clearly pseudepigraphic. The Second Epistle of Peter uses as sources: the story of Jesus's transfiguration found in Mark, Matthew and Luke, the Apocalypse of Peter and the Epistle of Jude. The non-canonical Apocalypse of Peter (written some time in the first quarter of the second century C.E.) is recognized as being non-historical even by fundamentalist Christians. Thus the Second Epistle of Peter also does not use any legitimate historical sources.
We now turn to the epistles supposedly written by Paul. The First Epistle of Paul to Timothy warns against the Marcionist work known as the Antithesis. Marcion was expelled from the Church of Rome in c. 144 C.E. and the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy was written shortly afterwards. Thus we again have a clear case of pseudepigraphy. The Second Epistle of Paul to Timothy and the Epistle of Paul to Titus were written by the same author and date to about the same period. These three epistles are known as the "pastoral epistles." The ten remaining "non-pastoral" epistles written in the name of Paul were known to Marcion by c. 140 C.E. Some of them were not written in Paul's name alone but are in the form of letters written by Paul in collaboration with various friends such as Sosthenes, Timothy, and Silas. The author of Luke and Acts, went out of his way to obtain all sources available and tended to use them indiscriminately, but he used nothing from the Pauline epistles. We can thus conclude that the non-pastoral epistles were written after Luke and Acts in the period c. 100 - 140 C.E. The non-canonical First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (written c. 125 C.E.) uses the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians as a source and so we can narrow down the date for that epistle to c. 100 - 125 C.E. However, we are left with the conclusion that that all the Pauline epistles are pseudepigraphic. (The semi-mythical Paul was supposed to have died during the persecutions instigated by Nero in c. 64 C.E.) Some of the Pauline epistles appear to be have been altered and edited numerous times before reaching their modern forms. As sources they use each other, Acts, the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke and the First Epistle of Peter. We may thus conclude that they provide no historical evidence of Jesus.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is a particularly interesting epistle since it is not pseudepigraphic but completely anonymous. Its author neither reveals his own name nor does he write in the name of a Christian mythological character. Fundamentalist Christians claim that it is another epistle by Paul and in fact call it the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. This idea, apparently dating to the late fourth century C.E., is not accepted by all Christians however. As a source for its information on Jesus it uses material common to Mark, Matthew and Luke, but no legitimate sources. The author of the First Epistle of Clement used it as a source and so it must have been written before that epistle (c. 125 C.E.) but after at least the Gospel of Mark (c. 75 – 100 C.E.).
The Epistle of James is written in the name of a servant of Jesus called James (or Jacobus). However, in Christian mythology there were two apostles named James and Jesus also had a brother named James. It is not clear which James is intended and there is no agreement among Christians themselves. It quotes sayings from the Second Source but unlike Matthew and Luke it does not attribute these sayings to Jesus but presents them as sayings of James. It contains an important argument against the doctrine of "salvation through faith" expounded in the Epistle of Paul to the Romans. We can thus conclude that it was written during the first half of the second century C.E., after Romans but before the time that Matthew and Luke were accepted by all Christians. Thus regardless of which James is intended, the Epistle of James is pseudepigraphic. It says almost nothing about Jesus and there is no evidence that the author had any historical sources for him.
There are three epistles named after the apostle John. None of them are in fact written in the name of John and were probably only ascribed to him some time after they had been written. The First Epistle of John, like the Epistle to the Hebrews, is completely anonymous. The idea that it was written by John arises from the fact that it used the Gospel of John as a source. The other two epistles named after John are written by a single author who, instead of writing in the name of an apostle, chose simply to call himself "the Elder." The idea that these two epistles were written by John arose from the beliefs that "the Elder" referred to John the Elder and that he was the same person as the apostle John. In the case of the Second Epistle of John this belief was reinforced by the fact that that epistle also uses the Gospel of John as a source. We can thus conclude that the first two epistles ascribed to John were written after the Gospel of John (c. 110 – 120 C.E.). Consequently none of the three epistles could have been written by the apostle John. It should be pointed out that it is quite possible that the pseudonym "the Elder" does refer to the person named John the Elder, but if this is so, he is certainly not the apostle John. The first two John epistles use only the Gospel of John as a source for Jesus; they do not use any legitimate sources. The Third Epistle of John barely mentions "Christ" and there is no evidence that it used any historical sources for him.
Besides the epistles named after John, the New Testament also contains a book known as the Revelation to John. This book combines two forms of religious writing, that of the epistle and that of the apocalypse. (Apocalypses are religious works which are written in the form of revelations about the future made by a famous character from the past. These revelations usually describe unfortunate events occurring at the time of writing and also offer some hope to the reader that things will improve.) It is not certain how much editing the Revelation to John underwent and so it is difficult to date it precisely. Since it mentions the persecutions instigated by Nero we can say with certainty that it was not written earlier than 64 C.E, thus it cannot have been written by the "real" John. The first few verses form an introduction which is clearly not intended to be by John and which provides a vague admission that the book is pseudepigraphic even though the author feels that his message is inspired by God. The style of writing and the references to the practice of kriobolium (baptism in sheep’s blood) suggests that the author was one of those people of Jewish descent who mixed Judaism with pagan practices. There were many such "pagan Jews" during Roman times and it was these people who become the first converts to Christianity, established the first churches, and who were probably also responsible for introducing pagan myths into the story of Jesus. (They are also remembered for their ridiculous belief that "Adonai Tzevaot" was the same as the pagan god "Sebazios.") The references to Jesus in the book are few and there is no evidence that they are based on anything but belief.
Besides the epistles accepted in the New Testament and the epistles which are unanimously recognized as being of no value (such as the Epistle of Barnabas), there are also several epistles which although not accepted in the New Testament, are considered of value by some Christians. Firstly there are the epistles named after Clement. In Christian legend, Clement was the third in succession of Peter as bishop of Rome. The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians is not in fact written in the name of Clement but in the name of the "Church of God which sojourns in Rome." It refers to a persecution which is generally thought to have occurred in 95 C.E. under Domitian, and it refers to the dismissal of the elders of the Church of Corinth in c. 96 C.E. Christians believe that Clement was bishop of Rome during this time and this is apparently the reason why the epistle was later named after him. Fundamentalist Christians believe that the epistle was in fact written in c. 96 C.E. This date is not possible since the epistle refers to bishops and priests as separate groups; a division which had not taken place yet. Stylistic considerations show that it was written in c. 125 C.E. As references it used the Epistle to the Hebrews and The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians but no legitimate historical sources. The Second Epistle of Clement is by a different author to the first and was written later. We may thus conclude that it was also not written by Clement. (There is no evidence that either of these epistles were named after Clement before their incorporation into the collection of books known as the Codex Alexandrinus in the fifth century C.E.) As sources for Jesus, the Second Epistle of Clement uses the Gospel of the Egyptians, a document which is rejected by even the most fundamentalist Christians, and also the New Testament books which we have shown to be valueless. Thus again we have no legitimate evidence of Jesus.
Next we have the epistles written in the name of Ignatius. According to legend, Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch who was killed under Trajan's rule c. 110 C.E. (Although he is probably based on a real historical person, the legends about his martyrdom are largely fictional.) There are fifteen epistles written in his name. Of these, eight are unanimously recognized as being pseudepigraphic and of no value as regards Jesus. The remaining seven each have two forms, a longer and a shorter. The longer forms are clearly altered and edited versions of the shorter forms. Fundamentalist Christians claim that the shorter forms are genuine letters written by Ignatius. The Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans mentions the threefold ordering of bishops, priests and deacons which had not yet taken place by Ignatius's death which occurred no later than 117 C.E. and which probably took place c. 110 C.E. All seven shorter epistles attack various Christian beliefs, now considered heretical, which only became prevalent c. 140 – 150 C.E. The shorter Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans contains a quote from the writings of Irenaeus, written after 170 C.E. and published c. 185 C.E. We can thus conclude that the seven shorter epistles are also pseudepigraphic. The shorter Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans was certainly written after 170 C.E. (In fact, if it was not written by Irenaeus then it was probably written after c. 185 C.E.) The other six were written no earlier than the period c. 140 - 150 C.E., if not later. There are no sources for Jesus in the Ignatian epistles other than the New Testament books and the writings of Irenaeus which only use the New Testament. Thus they contain no legitimate evidence of Jesus.
There are two more epistles which Christians claim are genuine letters, namely the Epistle of Polycarp and the Martyrdom of Polycarp. The Ignatian epistles and the epistles concerning Polycarp have always been closely associated. It is quite possible that they were all written by the Christian writer Irenaeus and his disciples. There certainly was a real historical early Christian named Polycarp. He was bishop of Smyrna and was killed by the Romans sometime in the period 155 - 165 C.E. When Irenaeus was a boy he knew Polycarp. Fundamentalist Christians claim that Polycarp was the disciple of the apostle John. However, even if we accept the legend that Polycarp lived to the age of 86, he could not have been born earlier than 67 C.E and therefore could not have been a disciple of John. (It is possible that he was a disciple of the enigmatic John the Elder.) Since Irenaeus had known Polycarp they also assume that Irenaeus was in fact his disciple, a claim for which there is no evidence. The Epistle of Polycarp uses most New Testament books and the Ignatian epistles as references but it uses no legitimate sources for Jesus. Those Christians who reject the Ignatian epistles but believe the Epistle of Polycarp is a genuine letter, claim that the references to the Ignatian epistles are a later interpolation. This idea is based on personal bias, not on any genuine evidence. Based on the blind belief that this epistle is a genuine letter, some Christians date it to around the middle of the second century C.E., shortly before Polycarp's death. However, the references to the Ignatian epistles suggest that it was in fact written some time in the last few decades of the second century C.E., at least about a decade after Polycarp's death if not later.
The Martyrdom of Polycarp is written in the name of "the Church of God that sojourns in Smyrna." It starts off in the form of a letter but its main body is written in the form of an ordinary story. It tells the tale of Polycarp's martyrdom. Like the Epistle of Polycarp, it was written some time during the last few decades of the second century C.E. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that it used any reliable sources for its story, only rumors and hearsay. The story in fact appears to be highly fictionalized. The references to Jesus are not taken from any reliable source.
We have thus seen that the epistles used by missionaries as "evidence" are just as spurious as the gospels. Again, the reader should beware "easy to understand" translations of the New Testament since they call the epistles "letters," thereby incorrectly implying that they are really letters written by the people after whom they are named.
Now, besides the books of the New Testament, and besides the epistles relating to Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp, there is only one more Christian religious work which Christians claim as historical evidence of Jesus, namely the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles also known as the Didache. All other early Christian religious works are either wholly rejected by modern Christians or are at least recognized as not being primary sources as regards Jesus. The Didache began as a sectarian Jewish document, probably written during the period of turmoil in c. 70 C.E. Its earliest form consisted of moral teachings and predictions of the destruction of the current world order. This earliest version, which obviously did not mention Jesus, was taken over by Christians who heavily edited and altered it, adding a story of Jesus and rules of worship for early Christian communities. Scholars estimate that the earliest Christian version of the _Didache_ could not have been written much later than 95 C.E. It probably only reached its final form around c. 120 C.E. It appears to have served an isolated Christian community in Syria as a "Church Order" during the period c. 100 - 130 C.E. However, there is no evidence that its story of Jesus was based on any reliable sources, and as we have mentioned, the earliest Jewish version had nothing to do with Jesus. In fact, this document provides evidence that the myth of Jesus grew gradually. Like the Gospel of Mark and the early versions of Gospel of Matthew, the Jesus story in the Didache makes no mention of a virgin birth. It makes no mention of the fantastic miracles which were later attributed to Jesus. Although Jesus is referred to as a "son" of God, it appears that this term is being used figuratively. The evidence we have concerning the origin of the crucifixion myth suggests that one of the things leading to this myth was the fact that the cross was the astrological symbol of the Vernal Equinox which occurs near Passover, when Jesus was believed to have been killed. It is thus not surprising to find that the story in the Didache makes no mention of Jesus being crucified, although it mentions a cross in the sky as a sign of Jesus. The twelve apostles mentioned in the full title of the Didache do not appear as twelve real disciples of Jesus and the term clearly refers to the twelve sons of Jacob representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Thus the Didache provides vital clues concerning the growth of the Jesus myth, but it certainly does not provide any evidence of an historical Jesus.
Since none of the Christian religious texts provide any acceptable evidence of Jesus, missionaries turn next to non-Christian texts. Christians claim that several reliable historians recorded information about Jesus. Although some of these historians are more or less accepted, we shall see that they do not provide any information about Jesus.
Firstly, Christians claim that the Jewish historian Josephus recorded information about Jesus in his book Jewish Antiquities (published c. 93 - 94 C.E.) It is true that this book contains information about the three false Messiahs, Yehuda of Galilee, Theudas and Benjamin the Egyptian, and it is true that the character of Jesus appears to be based on all of them in part, but none of them can be regarded as the historical Jesus. Moreover, in the book of Acts, these people are mentioned as being different people to Jesus and so modern Christianity actually rejects any connection between them and Jesus. In the Christian edited versions of the Jewish Antiquities there are two passages dealing with Jesus as portrayed in Christian religious works. Neither of these passages are found in the original version of the Jewish Antiquities which was preserved by the Jews. The first passage (XVII, 3, 3) was quoted by Eusebius writing in c. 320 C.E. and so we can conclude that it was added in some time between the time Christians got hold of the Jewish Antiquities and c. 320 C.E. It is not known when the other passage (XX, 9, 1) was added in. Neither passage is based on any reliable sources. It is fraudulent to claim that these passages were written by Josephus and that they provide evidence for Jesus. They were written by Christian redactors and were based purely on Christian belief.
Next the Christians will point to the Annals by Tacitus. In the Annals XV,44, Tacitus describes how Nero blamed the Christians for the fire of Rome in 64 C.E. He mentions that the name "Christians" originated from a person named Christus who had been executed by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberias. It is certainly true that the name "Christians" is derived from Christ or Christus (Messiah), but Tacitus' claim that he was executed by Pilate during the reign of Tiberias is based purely on the claims being made by the Christians themselves. They appeared in the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, which had already been widely circulated when the Annals were being written. (The Annals were published after 115 C.E. and were certainly not written before 110 C.E.) Thus, although the Annals contains a sentence in which "Christus" is spoken of as a real person, this sentence was based purely on Christian claims and beliefs which are of no historical value. It is quite ironic that modern Christians use Tacitus to back up their beliefs since he was the least accurate of all Roman historians. He justifies hatred of Christians by saying that they committed abominations. Besides "Christus" he also speaks of various pagan gods as if they really exist. His summary of Middle East history in his book the Histories is so distorted as to be laughable. We may conclude that his single mention of Christus cannot be taken as reliable evidence of an historical Jesus.
Once Tacitus is dismissed, the Christians will claim that one of the younger Pliny's letters to the emperor Trajan provides evidence of an historical Jesus. (Letters X, 96.) This is nonsense. The letter in question simply mentions that certain Christians had cursed "Christ" to avoid being punished. It does not claim that this Christ really existed. The letter in question was written before Pliny's death in c. 114 C.E. but after he was sent to Bithynia in 111 C.E., probably in the year 112 C.E. Thus it provides nothing more than a confirmation of the trivial fact that around the beginning of the twelfth decade C.E. Christians did not normally curse something called "Christ" although some had done it to avoid punishment. It provides no evidence of an historical Jesus.
Christians will also claim that Suetonius recorded evidence of Jesus in his book Lives of the Caesars (also known as The Twelve Caesars). The passage in question is Claudius 25, where he mentions that the emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome (apparently in 49 C.E.) because they caused continual disturbances at the instigation of a certain Chrestus. If one blindly assumes that "Chrestus" refers to Jesus then, if anything, this passage contradicts the Christian story of Jesus. Jesus was supposed to have been crucified when Pontius Pilate was procurator (26 - 36 C.E.) during the reign of Tiberias and, moreover, he was never supposed to have been in Rome! Suetonius lived during the period c. 75 - 150 C.E. and his book, Lives of the Caesars, was published during the period 119 - 120 C.E., having been written some time after Domitian's death in 96 C.E. Thus the event he describes occurred at least 45 years before he was writing about it and so we cannot be certain of its accuracy. The name Chrestus is derived from the Greek Chrestos meaning "good one" and it is not the same as Christ or Christus which are derived from the Greek Christos meaning "anointed one/Messiah." If we take the passage at face value it refers to a person named Chrestus who was in Rome and who had nothing to do with Jesus or any other "Christ." The term Chrestos was often applied to pagan gods and many of the people in Rome called "Jews" were actually people who mixed Jewish beliefs with pagan beliefs and who were not necessarily of Jewish descent. Thus it is also possible that the passage refers to conflicts involving these pagan "Jews" who worshipped a pagan god (such as Sebazios) titled Chrestos. On the other hand, the words Chrestos and Christos were often confused and so the passage might even be referring to some conflict involving Jews who believed that some person was the Messiah. This person may or may not have actually been in Rome and for all we know, he may not even have been a real historical person. One should bear in mind that the described event took place just several years after the crucifixion of the false Messiah Theudas in 44 C.E., and the passage may be referring to his followers in Rome. Christians claim that the passage refers to Jesus and conflicts arising after Paul brought news of him to Rome and that Suetonius was only mistaken about Jesus himself being in Rome. However, this interpretation is based on blind belief in Jesus and the myths about Paul and there is nothing to suggest that it is the correct interpretation. Thus we may conclude that Suetonius also fails to provide any reliable evidence of an historical Jesus.
All other writers who mention Jesus, from Justin Martyr in the second century C.E. to the latest expounders of Christian myth in the twentieth century, have all based their references to Jesus on the sources we have discredited above. Consequently their claims are worthless as historical evidence. We are thus left with the conclusion that there is absolutely no reliable and acceptable historical evidence of Jesus. All references to Jesus are derived from the superstitious beliefs and myths of the early Christian community. The majority of these beliefs only came into existence after the persecution by Nero and the tragedy of 70 C.E. Many of these beliefs are based on the pagan legends about the gods Tammuz, Osiris, Attis, Dionysus and the sun god Mithras. Other myths about Jesus appear to be based on various different historical people such as the convicted criminals Yeishu ben Pandeira and ben Stada, and the crucified false Messiahs Yehuda, Theudas and Benjamin, but none of these people can be regarded as an historical Jesus.
*FURTHER READING*
1) J. Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth, Prometheus Books, reprinted 1991. (Examines how ancient myths were misused by the early church and misrepresented as history.)
2) J. Campbell, Occidental Mythology, Penguin Books, reprinted 1985. (An exposition of religious mythology in western civilization. Includes important evidence concerning the borrowing of pagan myths by Christianity.)
3) E.D. Cohen, The Mind of the Bible-Believer, Prometheus Books, reprinted 1991. (Uncovers the psychological ploys around which the New Testament is built and exposes the adverse effects of Christian fundamentalism.)
4) R. Helms, Gospel Fictions, Prometheus Books, reprinted 1991. (Exposes the gospels as being largely fictional documents composed as a culmination to an extensive mythological tradition.)
5) S. Levine, You Take Jesus and I'll Take God: How to Refute Christian Missionaries, revised edition, Hamoroh Press, Los Angeles, 1980. (Exposes the tricks used by missionaries and the misquotations of the Tanach in the New Testament.)
6) J.M. Robertson, A Short History of Christianity, 2nd Ed., Watts & Co., London 1913. (One of the first serious academic investigations into the origins of Christianity. Exposes the elements of the Jesus story borrowed from pagan myths.)
7) The Talmud, should be compulsory reading for all Jews although it is unfortunately neglected in modern times!
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