Was there a man named Jesus, who was called the Christ, living in Palestine approximately twenty centuries ago, whose life and teachings are represented correctly in the account in the New Testament?
Even a believer will often say NO. So let me soften that. Forget whether the Bible was correct. Was there a man who was really the son of God (or God himself) living in Palestine? Did he command nature, itself? Even more basic, did a man who claimed to be the son of God exist, whose life became the basis of the new testament stories?
The Christian religions have absorbed, for many centuries, some of the best energies of mankind. Christianity has shown itself to be one of the greatest enemies of knowledge, of freedom, of social and industrial improvement, and of the genuine brotherhood of mankind. The question, "Did Jesus Christ Really Live?" goes to the root of the conflict between reason and faith.
Claims of contact by the spirit world in various ways cannot be verified. Whether Christ lived or not, has nothing at all to do with what the churches teach, or with what we believe, It is wholly a matter of evidence. If no verifiable evidence for his existence can be found, he will have to take his place with other demigods whose lives and deeds make up the mythology of the world. He will be the equivalent of Hercules.
I dismiss Paul's writings in considering the questions. Paul wrote of a timeless Christ and wrote nothing of the stories of the baby, the man at the temple, or the man put to death. His Christ was already dead and reborn.
The main stories, the Gospels themselves, do not claim to have been written by the men whose names are inscribed. No human being knows when they were written, or where, or by whom they were written. Biblical scholarship has established the (argueable) fact that the Gospel of Mark is the oldest of the four. The chief reasons for this conclusion are that this Gospel is shorter, simpler, and more natural, than any of the other three. It is shown that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were enlarged from the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Mark knows nothing of the virgin birth, of the Sermon on the Mount, of the Lord's prayer, or of other important facts of the supposed life of Christ. These features were added by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
According to scholars, the Gospel of Mark, as we have it, is not an original writing from inspiration or imagination. In the same way that the writers of Matthew and Luke copied and enlarged the Gospel of Mark, the writer of Mark copied and enlarged an earlier document which is called the "original Mark." This original source perished in the early age of the Church. What it was, who wrote it, where it was written, nobody knows. The Gospel of John is admitted by Christian scholars to be an unhistorical document. They acknowledge that it is not a life of Christ, but an interpretation of him; that it gives us an idealized and spiritualized picture of what Christ is supposed to have been, and that it is largely composed of the speculations of Greek philosophy. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are called the "Synoptic Gospels," on the one hand, and the Gospel of John, on the other, stand at opposite extremes of thought. So complete is the difference between the teaching of the first three Gospels and that of the fourth, that every critic admits that if Jesus taught as the Synoptics relate, he could not possibly have taught as John declares. Indeed, in the first three Gospels and in the fourth, we meet with (at least) two entirely different Christs.
I mention the above information because, while believers will dismiss what scholars believe, it has merit that the Gospels are just nothing more than written stories of a mythical Jesus. There are stories just as well written about Hercules or Achilles. There is not the smallest fragment of trustworthy evidence to show that any of the four Gospels were in existence earlier than a hundred years after the time at which Christ is supposed to have died. Christian scholars, having no means by which to set the date of their writing, assign as early an age as their calculations and their guesses will allow, but even their dates are beyond the age of Christ or his apostles. We are told that Mark was written some time after the year 70, Luke about 110, Matthew about 130, and John not earlier than 140 A.D. These dates are as early as possible.
Evidence suggests even later dates. Regardless, how can Gospels which were not written until at least somewhere between thirty-five (very generous number) and one hundred-fifty years after Christ is supposed to have died, and which do not rest on any trustworthy testimony, have the slightest value as evidence that he really lived?
We cannot rely on Pat Garret's account of the shooting of Billy the Kid, which was written by an eye witness while the events were fresh in his memory. He had reasons to mislead and was selling his writings. History is full of misleading hero stories about people like George Washington or the man called the Buddha. But to dare question the validity of the Gospels, why is that likened to blasphemy?
Christ is supposed to have been a Jew, and his disciples are said to have been Jewish fishermen. His language, and the language of his followers was Aramaic. But the Gospels are written in Greek--every one of them. Every leading Christian scholar has stated that they were originally written in Greek. Foreign Gospels, written by unknown men, in a foreign tongue, one to several generations after the events- that is the evidence relied upon to prove that Jesus lived.
Further, the oldest Gospels that we have are supposed to be copies of copies of copies that were made from the original Gospels. We do not know who made these copies, we do not know when they were made; nor do we know whether they were honestly made. Between the earliest Gospels and the oldest existing manuscripts of the New Testament, there is three hundred years. The only way to reduce that gap is to accept a later writing of the first Gospels. It is, therefore, impossible to say what the original Gospels contained.
Uncomfortable facts came out for Christians that have not had to be dealt with during most of the centuries that have passed since the writing of the "four" Gospels. There were many Gospels in circulation in the early centuries, and a large number of them were forgeries. Among these were the "Gospel of Paul," the Gospel of Bartholomew," the "Gospel of Judas Iscariot," the "Gospel of the Egyptians," the "Gospel or Recollections of Peter," the "Oracles or Sayings of Christ," and others. Obscure men wrote Gospels and attached the names of prominent Christian characters to them, to give them the appearance of importance. Works were forged in the names of the apostles, and even in the name of Christ. The early church was flooded with religious writings. From this mass of literature, the four Gospels were selected by priests and called "the inspired word of God." Could these Gospels also also be forged?
Do the four Gospels even agree on everything, or on basic things like when or where Jesus was born? I know that Watchtower does a good job of merging the stories, but there are discrepancies that are simply ignored. Let me just say that getting Jesus to be born in the City of David's birth, getting Joseph and Mary there, yet retaining "Jesus of Nazareth" and Jesus coming out of Egypt, that was some creative writing. His home was Nazareth. It cannot even be proved that there was yet a city of Nazareth in that age? On Jesus' ministry, John tells us that the driving of the money-changers from the Temple occurred at the beginning of Christ's ministry; and nothing is said of any serious consequences following it. But Matthew, Mark and Luke declare that the Temple incident took place at the close of his career, and that this act brought upon him the wrath of the priests, who sought to destroy him. John indicates a ministry of about 3 years and the others indicate a much shorter time. Maybe we will just throw John out and have the 3 Gospels.
After his birth, Christ, as it were, vanishes out of existence, and with the exception of a single incident recorded in Luke, we hear absolutely nothing of him until he has reached the age of thirty years. If the writers of the Gospels knew the facts of the life of Christ (or were 'inspired' to write accurately), why is it that they tell us absolutely nothing of thirty years of that life? If Christ was the greatest teacher the world has known, if he came to redeem mankind from everlasting pain and death, was there nothing worth remembering in the first thirty years of his existence among men? If the one incident in Luke where Jesus was left behind in the temple were true, then there must have been many things worth remembering about such a remarkable young man.
I will go with my belief that the writings chosen to be the Gospels were chosen from those that refrained from inventing a childhood, youth and early manhood for him because it was not necessary to the purposes of those choosing such writings.
Christ is said to have been many times in Jerusalem. It is said that he preached daily in the Temple. He was followed by his twelve disciples, and by many people eager to hear his wisdom or receive his miracles. All this shows that he must have been well known to the authorities, or at least easily identified when he moved about. Indeed, he must have been one of the best known men in Jerusalem. Why was it necessary for the priests to bribe one of his disciples to betray him? Only an obscure man, whose identity was uncertain, or a man who was in hiding, would need to be betrayed. A man who appeared daily in the streets, who preached daily in the Temple, a man who was continually before the public eye, could have been arrested at any moment. The priests would not have bribed a man to identify a man everybody knew. If the accounts of Christ's betrayal are true, the declarations about his public appearances in Jerusalem must be false.
The accounts of the virgin birth of Christ, of his feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes, of his cleansing the leprous, of his walking on the water, of his raising the dead, and of his own resurrection after his life had been destroyed, are as untrue as any stories that were ever told in this world. The miraculous element in the Gospels is proof that they were written by men who were not writing accurate history. The stories and miracles of the Gospels were invented.
Go back to Paul. I will state my opinion that the story of the virgin birth had not yet been invented when Paul wrote. The details of the miracles had yet to be invented. The details of Christ's death had yet to be invented. Not even a single saying of Jesus is written in what is believed to be Paul's writings, no Sermon on the Mount, no account of throwing the money-changers out of the temple, no famous prayer is recited.
The Christ of Paul and the Jesus of the Gospels are two entirely different beings. Paul was a missionary, a successful one. But just as sure as Joseph Rutherford changed the teachings of Charles Russell to continue the following, the writers changed the teachings about Jesus Christ for their own purposes. The virgin-born, miracle-working, preaching Christ was unknown to the world in Paul's day. But he was invented afterward. The Christ Paul knew a figure in a vision while on his way to Damascus- an apparition, not a living human being who preached and worked among men.
The Jesus Christ of the Gospels could not possibly have been a real person. There may have lived in Palestine, a man whose name was Jesus, who went about doing good, who was followed by admiring associates, and who in the end met a violent death. But of this possible person, not a line was written when he lived, and of his life and character the world of today knows absolutely nothing. This Jesus, if he lived, was a man; and if he was a reformer, he was but one of many that have lived and died in every age of the world.
I made a new year's resolution to stop reading anything from Watchtower and to cut back on discussions of this sort. Instead, I will seek personal peace. I know that writing as I did above will only start arguments with believers. So I jumped in one last time before my resolution kicks in for January. My reasons for staying the course this long are that I truly believer that when the world finally learns and accepts that the Christ of the Gospels is a myth, that Christianity is untrue, it will turn its attention from the religious fictions of the past to the vital problems of today, and endeavor to solve them for the improvement of the well-being of the real men and women whom we know, and whom we ought to help and love. I believe we will succeed in that endeavor (one day).
But since that day has not arrived, I join the believers in wishing people a Merry Christmas or a Festive Festivus. I exchange gifts with loved ones because they choose this time of year. I love my SECULAR CHRISTMAS along with the Japanese, the Buddhists, even the Jews, who exchange gifts in mid to late December. Thanks for the enjoyable thread. Tear apart what I said above, I might read what you say. But I won't rejoin this type of debate for the back-and-forth arguments. You enjoy your Jesus and I will enjoy Santa Claus, just as real but much more fun.
