Jesus Christ, fiction and belief…

On most Saturday mornings, a variety of Christian sects come calling door-to-door, seeking, I suppose, new converts to their faith, souls for the saving, in the name of Christ. Why they should single out this particular locality, is beyond me? Perhaps, living on the edge of wild moorland, as we do, we give an impression of self-contained individualism, that strikes others as irreligious?

Ummm. Well, whatever the reason, last Saturday two charming ladies presented me with a bright glossy leaflet on my front doorstep. ‘Christ died for you,’ proclaimed one, with a certainty I found quite intimidating. ‘He died,’ declared her companion, knowingly. ‘To free us all from sin.’

Not wishing to appear churlish or outright rude, I gave them both a faint smile. Thanked them for their gift of a leaflet, which had a representation of an emancipated figure (Christ?) on a cross, head raised in adulation (at his martyrdom?) on its cover.

‘But will you read it?’ asked one of them.

Usually, I simply point out that I’m a Buddhist. Usually, these door-to-door fundamentalists recoil in horror at this – it’s as if I’d proclaimed myself to be a disciple and worshiper of Satan! That I practiced human sacrifice! That I hadn’t changed my underwear in ten years! But not today. Instead I replied with a question of my own:

‘What contemporaneous evidence,’ I asked gently, ‘is there for the historical figure, Jesus Christ?’

‘The Bible,’ came their joint reply, both voices joyous with certainty.

‘But the Bible,’ I said, ‘is not a contemporaneous document. It was composed much later.’

These two soldiers of the Lord responded immediately, without hesitation, citing ancient authorities, dates, times, places. It was easy to see they’d been trained for just such an eventuality as this – a pagan soul asking difficult questions. Like a pair of Christ’s commandos, they gave no quarter in their verbal attack.

Carefully, gently I explained that the beliefs of half-crazed, semi-nomadic fanatics living in the desert thousands of years ago, to my mind, had little relevancy on life in a modern “technological” society, with its many and varied complexities. Christ as prophet, as son of God is fine as metaphor, but absurd in any other context. He is, when all’s said and done, a fiction.

‘Not so,’ they declared, one of them waving a copy of the bible in the air, as if to ward off evil.

‘What about Father Enrico Righi?’ I asked.

A few years ago in Italy during a court case against Father Enrico Righi, the good Father was called upon to enter the courtroom and PROVE the existence of Jesus Christ. Details here. The task was too much for the good priest; he could only state the Bible was filled with references to Jesus. The Judge dismissed the prosecution. Of course Christ existed. Everyone knew that. To say otherwise was absurd. And what other outcome could be expected in a solidly Catholic country where the Pope resided amid papal splendour?

‘It’s important to recognize that in 70 A.D., the Romans invaded and destroyed Jerusalem and most of Israel, slaughtering its inhabitants. Entire cities were literally burned to the ground! We shouldn’t be surprised, then, if much evidence of Jesus’ existence was destroyed. Many of the eye-witnesses of Jesus would have been killed. These facts likely limited the amount of surviving eyewitness testimony of Jesus.” They both smiled at me, having delivered this explanation.

‘There must be some contemporary evidence of Christ’s existence?’ I reply.

‘Yes, there is. The first-century Roman, Tacitus, who is considered one of the more accurate historians of the ancient world, mentioned superstitious “Christians” (”named after Christus”, Latin for Christ), who suffered under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. Suetonius, chief secretary to Emperor Hadrian, wrote that there was a man named Chrestus (or Christ)who lived during the first century(Annals 15.44). Proof enough?

‘Don’t worry, there’s more,’ they proclaim gleefully. ‘ Flavius Josephus is the most famous Jewish historian. In his Antiquities he refers to James, “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.” There is a controversial verse (18:3) that says, “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats. . . . He was [the] Christ . . . he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him.” One version reads, “At this time there was a wise man named Jesus. His conduct was good and [he] was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who became his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive; accordingly he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.”

‘Now, that’s evidence for the “real” Jesus, isn’t it?’

They think they have me, but they’re wrong:

‘Unfortunately, no, it isn’t!’ I tell them. ‘Let’s look briefly at the historical facts:

‘Josephus was a native of Judea in the 1st Century. He was governor of Galilee prior to 70AD which is where Jesus performed his miracles. Although he wasn’t born until 37AD and therefore wasn’t a contemporary of Jesus, he surely would have heard something of him.

‘In Josephus’s History of The Jewish War and The Antiquities of the Jews he mentions every noted personage of Palestine and describes every important event which occurred there during the first seventy years of the Christian era. Apparently, as noted above, he confirms Christ’s existence. But wait. “Not a single writer before the 4th century – not Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius – in all their defences against pagan hostility, makes a single reference to Josephus’ wondrous words.” This, despite the fact each of them was aware of Josephus’s works!

‘ The third century Church ‘Father’ Origen, for example, spent half his life and a quarter of a million words contending against the pagan writer Celsus. Origen drew on all sorts of proofs and witnesses to his arguments in his fierce defence of Christianity. He quotes from Josephus extensively. Yet even he makes no reference to this ‘golden paragraph’ from Josephus, which would have been the ultimate rebuttal. In fact, Origen actually said that Josephus was “not believing in Jesus as the Christ.”

‘Origen did not quote the ‘golden paragraph’ because this paragraph had not yet been written.

‘It was absent from early copies of the works of Josephus and did not appear in Origen’s third century version of Josephus, referenced in his Contra Celsum. “

‘Interestingly Josephus tells us a great deal more about John the Baptist than Jesus! He also reports in great detail the antics of other self-proclaimed messiahs, including Judas of Galilee, Theudas the Magician, and the unnamed ‘Egyptian Jew’ messiah! “The passage is out of context. Book 18 starts with the Roman taxation under Cyrenius in 6 AD, talks about various Jewish sects at the time, including the Essenes, and a sect of Judas the Galilean.” Follows with the “sedition against Pilate who planned to slaughter all the Jews but changed his mind. Pilate then used sacred money to supply water to Jerusalem, and the Jews protested. Pilate sent spies among the Jews with concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre.”

‘Then comes the paragraph about Jesus, and immediately after it, Josephus continues:

‘ “And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews …”

‘Josephus, an orthodox Jew, would not have thought the Christian story to be ‘another terrible misfortune.’ It’s only a Christian who’d have considered this to be a Jewish tragedy. It should also be noted that Josephus as an orthodox Jew couldn’t have believed “He was [the] Christ”, the Messiah! How could he?

‘Josephus’s mention of James, brother of Jesus, is from The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, Chapter 9 and is a red herring. The passage actually translates as: “Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest”!

‘As far as Caius Suetonius’s writings are concerned there’s no mention of Jesus of Nazareth. He did write in the “Twelve Caesars” about the Emperor Claudius: “As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome”. This was 54BC so could not have been “our” Jesus.

‘Even Suetonius’s description of Nero’s persecution of Christians is suspect: ‘Punishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief …’ (16.2). Nero reigned 54-68AD. Where on earth did these Christians come from? None of the Gospels had been written. So what would they have believed?

‘Early Christ-followers called themselves ’Saints’, ‘Brethren’, ‘Brothers of the Lord’ and their critics used various names: Nazoreans, Ebionites, ‘God fearers’, Atheists. The Jewish association remained strong throughout the first century and when Christian sects got going in Rome in the second century they were identified by their rival leaders – Valentinians, Basilidians, Marcionites, etc.

‘So little were Christ-worshippers known in the Roman world that as late as the 90s Dio Cassio refers to ‘atheists’ and ‘those adopting Jewish manners’. Christians as a distinct group from the Jews appear only late in the 1st century, not long before the Jewish curse on heretics at the council of Jamnia (85-ish AD). The label ‘Christian’ itself only appears with the 2nd century Acts – with the story that the term ‘began in Antioch’ (11.26).

‘The mention in Tacitus of “Christus” is a forgery. “Ultraviolet photography of a critical word from the earliest known extant manuscript of Tacitus (second Medicean, Laurentian library, Italy), reveals that the word purportedly used by Tacitus in Annals 15.44, chrestianos (”the good”), has been overwritten as christianos (”the Christians”) by a later hand. The entire “torched Christians” passage of Tacitus is not only fake, it has been repeatedly “worked over” by fraudsters to improve its value as evidence for Jesus’ existence.

‘So, the situation is there’s not a single contemporaneous reference to Jesus Christ. So what about the New Testament? Well, obviously, the Gospels aren’t contemporaneous, but were written much later by a variety of hands. See here for the story.

‘ “There’s absolutely nothing to show that these Gospels–the ONLY sources of authority as to the existence of Christ – were written until a hundred and fifty years AFTER the events they describe.” Christ was a Jew and his disciples were Jewish fishermen. They would have spoken Aramaic, yet the Gospels are written in Greek! “Every leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, four hundred years ago, has maintained that they were originally written in Greek. This PROVES that they were not written by Christ’s disciples, or by any of the early Christians. Foreign Gospels, written by unknown men, in a foreign tongue, several generations after the death of those who are supposed to have known the facts – such is the evidence relied upon to prove that Jesus lived.” ‘

Finally, a truce is declared. My two callers care not one whit about ‘TRUTH’ or ‘EVIDENCE’. They BELIEVE and THAT is their reality. Their only reality.

So Jesus Christ is a fiction or a construct? Most probably. But this lack of historicity affects belief in him not at all. People will believe what they will believe. And in that I see no harm at all. What is harmful is the fanatic, the fundamentalist who knows “Christ’s will” and wishes to impose it regardless on others.

I can only conclude by quoting Albert Einstein:

“The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.

“It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear–that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms–it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.”

Another thought, another day…

“Only 2 things are infinite – the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not so sure about the universe.”

Albert Einstein