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                                 J E S U S

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        By N., with significant additional text by Kelsos and Scott.
            Special thanks to George Poggemann, Tim Murphy, and
          Ed Stoebenau for their reviews of this article prior to
                     its release to the general public.
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                       Remember that song -- Kill Me?
                      Once sung by a man from Galilee
                           He had nothing to lose
                          He was King of the Jews
                      He assured his place in history
                     -- from Ce Soir by Golden Earring

          OUTLINE
             o The necessity of criticizing Jesus
             o Did Jesus exist?
                 1. Other writers and historians do not support the
                    gospels.
                 2. The gospels are inconsistent; they contradict
                    themselves and each other.
                 3. The gospels contain some true historical events,
                    but also give accounts of events that are known to
                    be false.
                 4. A great deal of the gospels are known to be taken
                    from the Old Testament.
                 5. The gospel authors are known to be liars.
             o Was Jesus divine?
                 1. The Gospels are legendary, and thus independent of
                    the historical Jesus.
                 2. The Gospels are the result of purposeful lying.
                 3. The testimony of witnesses can be attributed to
                    drug induced hallucinations or psychological
                    phenomenon.
                 4. The Gospels are the result of rumor mills, oral
                    history, exaggeration, hyperbole,
                    miss-translation, and misunderstanding.
                 5. The Gospels were purposefully altered.
             o Did Jesus have divine character?
                 1. He was not a great, charismatic leader.
                 2. He was not a brilliant speaker with a gift of
                    parable and epigram.
                 3. He did not love all unconditionally.
                 4. He was not a great moral prophet.
             o Is the Jesus Myth Valuable?
                 1. The story of Jesus is non-unique. It is neither
                    the first nor the best version of the christ
                    theme.
                 2. The christ theme is maladaptive when placed at the
                    center of a moral system.
                 3. Those who realize it is just a myth typically fail
                    to inform the mindless masses of this, which leads
                    to negative consequences.
             o Conclusion

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                     The necessity of criticizing Jesus

[A] persistent myth put forth by Christians is that the central figure of
    Christianity is divine. Even advanced Christian theologians who realize
that the divinity of Jesus is likely a falsehood still insist that Jesus
was the most perfect person who ever lived and is the best way of
understanding divinity available to human beings. Any detailed criticism of
Christianity must work to dispel these myths about the divine nature and
divine character of Jesus. This is because Christianity is to such a degree
a cult of this one individual's personality. There are several approaches
one can take toward dispelling the Jesus myth which include disproving his
existence, disproving his divine nature, disproving his divine character,
and demonstrating that the myth itself has no value.

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                             Did Jesus Exist?
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One way to dispel the Jesus myth is to deny that any person "Jesus"
existed. Surprisingly, this is an extremely plausible approach. One would
think, with the popularity of Christianity, that Jesus' mere existence
could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

There are 5 reasons why Jesus' existence is far from certain:

  1. Other writers and historians do not support the gospels.
  2. The gospels are inconsistent; they contradict themselves and each
     other.
  3. The gospels contain some true historical events, but also give
     accounts of events that are known to be false.
  4. A great deal of the gospels are known to be taken from the Old
     Testament.
  5. The gospel authors are known to be liars.

[1.]   While Christians often claim that Jesus is one of the best
documented figures in ancient history, this is simply not true. Writers and
historians of the time do not support the gospels on the topic of Jesus.
Suetonius (65-135) does not mention Jesus at all and Pliny the Younger does
not mention Jesus, but refers only to Christians. Tacitus comments on Jesus
in "Annals," but there is some indication that he may have merely been
commenting on unconfirmed stories that Christians had been circulating for
nearly a century. Tacitus may have been commenting on followers of some
other christ, as there were many christs with many followers. To make
matters worse, there is the distinct possibility (unconfirmed) that
Christians inserted Tacitus' remark about the followers of Christ into the
Tacitus text in order to make the existence of Jesus more plausible. The
reference to a "Chrestus" in Life of Claudius by Suetonius does not refer
to Jesus, contrary to some apologists' claims.

But what of Jesus' own people, the Jews? Surely Jewish historians would
record his story. They did not. The greatest Jewish historian Josephus
published his Jewish History. He mentions John the Baptist, Herod, and
Pilate, and even the most unimportant details of Jewish life at the time,
but does not mention Jesus. In the third century the Christians therefore
added content to a text by Josephus, the so-called Testimonium Flavianum,
which mentioned Jesus. Jewish Historian Justus of Tiberias does not mention
any Jesus, which is interesting since he would have been a neighbor of
Jesus, living in Tiberias, which is near Kapernaum, where Jesus is supposed
to have been quite often. Only one historically dependable Jewish document
mentions a Jesus, but only as the brother of James.

As a result I must say that the life of Jesus is extremely poorly
documented, even in comparison to ancient standards. According to
Christians, Jesus was the most important person ever to live, but there are
literally dozens if not hundreds of persons whose lives are much better
documented: for example Cicero, Caesar, Hecataeus of Abdera, Polybius, all
of which were born before Jesus. It is likely that he did not exist at all.

[2.]   The gospels are inconsistent; they contradict themselves and each
other. As an example, they cannot even agree on who the father of Joseph
was: Matthew and Luke give two contradictory genealogies for Joseph
(Matthew 1:2-17 and Luke 3:23-38). Apologists try to eliminate this
discrepancy by suggesting that the genealogy in Luke is actually Mary's,
even though Luke says explicitly that it is Joseph's genealogy (Luke 3:23).
The Secular Web has an extensive list of Biblical contradictions which you
may like to refer to:

Bible Contradictions by Jim Merritt
New Testament Bible Contradictions by Paul Carlson
Biblical Contradictions by Dan Barker

Are we to depend on a document that is so clearly confused? No.

[3.]   The gospels contain some true historical events, but also give
accounts of events that are known to be false. As an example, Matthew 2:1
says that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. According to
Luke, Jesus was born during the first census in Israel, while Quirinius was
governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). This is impossible because Herod died in
March of 4 BC and the census took place in 6 and 7 AD, about 10 years after
Herod's death. The Bible's stories, and the Gospels in particular, were
meant to be legends, not a history. That is, they are an historical
fiction; we can use them to infer some true historical events but they were
never meant for this purpose, and they can certainly not be depended on for
details about individuals. To illustrate, the popular television show The
X-files contains significant historical fiction; in one episode, the
arch-villain "Cancerman" is portrayed as the true assassin of President
John F. Kennedy. Cancerman is a fictitious character, just as Jesus is;
that fact that John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas in 1963 as
portrayed in the show does not mean that Cancerman shot him. Even if Jesus
truly existed, the account of him in the Gospel has been made completely
fictitious so that it bears no resemblance to this possible historical
figure (see Was Jesus Divine? below). The Gospels were meant as a piece of
propaganda to increase the morale of the early Christian cult. Once again,
there is no reason to depend on such a document to determine historical
fact.

[4.]   A great deal of the gospels are known to be taken from the Old
Testament. Usually, this was to make it look like events in Jesus' life
were the fulfillment of prophecies in the Old Testament as a means of
increasing the legitimacy of the Christians claim that he was a messiah. Of
course, even ancient authors were aware that prophecy gives no support for
the credibility of a given story (see Celsus, What Famous Pagans Thought of
Christianity by Guido, a.k.a. Kelsos). As examples: Matthew says that
Judas' payment and death were prophesied by Jeremiah, and then he quotes
Zechariah 11:12-13 as proof; both Matthew and Luke say that Jesus was born
in Bethlehem, then Matthew quotes Micah 5:2 to show that this was in
fulfillment of prophecy (See Note below). The same is true of other texts
in the new testaments, e.g. 1. Peter 2:21-24 is simply an adaptation of
Isaiah 53:4 and verses 9,11,5,6. Are we to depend on a document that has
simply been fabricated from another document in order to establish
historical fact? No.

Note: Actually, Matthew misquotes Micah (compare Micah 5:2 to Matthew 2:6).
Although this misquote is rather insignificant, Matthew's poor
understanding of Hebrew will have great significance later in his gospel as
is noted below.

[5.]   The gospel writers were lying consciously. This fact will come up
again in another context, but for now I'll simply give some examples.
Matthew says that Herod, in an attempt to kill the newborn Messiah, had all
the male children two years old and under put to death in Bethlehem, and
that this was in fulfillment of prophecy. This is pure invention. Herod was
guilty of many monstrous crimes, including the murder of several members of
his own family. However, ancient historians such as Josephus, who delighted
in listing Herod's crimes, do not mention what would have been Herod's
greatest crime by far. It simply didn't happen.

Matthew, in his zeal to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, searched the Old
Testament for passages (sometimes just phrases) that could be construed as
messianic prophecies and then created or modified events in Jesus' life to
fulfill those "prophecies." Fortunately for those who really want to know
the truth, Matthew made a colossal blunder which leaves no doubt at all.
His blunder involves what is known as Jesus' triumphant entry into
Jerusalem riding on a donkey (if you believe Mark, Luke or John) or riding
on two donkeys (if you believe Matthew). In Matthew 21:1-7, two animals are
mentioned in three of the verses, so this cannot be explained away as a
copying error. And Matthew has Jesus riding on both animals at the same
time, for verse 7 literally says, "on them he sat." Why does Matthew have
Jesus riding on two donkeys at the same time? Because he misread Zechariah
9:9 which reads in part, "mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a
donkey." This merely reflects Matthew's poor understanding of Hebrew: in
Hebrew an emphasis is expressed by the doubling of a word or a phrase, like
"and David's enemies were dead, and yes, very dead," so the original phrase
does not mean two animals at all (as is also clearly shown by Jewish
comments on the passage). This proves that Matthew consciously lied: he
created events in Jesus' life to fulfill Old Testament prophecies, even if
it meant creating an absurd event.

Are we to depend on the testimony of known liars to establish historical
fact? No.

Keep in mind that thus far I have only been writing about whether he
existed at all. I think I have established that the evidence of his mere
existence is tenuous at best. In fact, the question of the existence of
Jesus is much like asking whether Hercules, Odysseus, Helen of Troy, or
Odin actually existed in some sense. I have said nothing about the quality
of his existence. The second approach to dispelling the Jesus myth has to
do with whether or not he was divine, or, in Christian-speak, whether or
not he was the Christ, Messiah, or Savior.

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                             Was Jesus Divine?
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Clearly he was not divine. This may seem a strong statement given that the
Bible depicts Jesus rising from the grave, ascending into heaven,
performing miracles, and so forth. I will explain why all of his
supernatural qualities can be dismissed, but first I will note one argument
that does not work. You cannot say that the clear imperfection of Jesus
(which I will discuss later) reflects on his divinity. He could be mortal
and imperfect, divine and perfect, divine and imperfect (e.g., Lucifer,
Greek deities, and Roman deities), or even mortal and (in some sense)
perfect. There are six valid arguments against his divine nature which come
to my mind:

  1. The Gospels are legendary, and thus independent of the historical
     Jesus.
  2. The Gospels are the result of purposeful lying.
  3. The testimony of witnesses can be attributed to drug induced
     hallucinations or psychological phenomenon.
  4. The Gospels are the result of rumor mills, oral history, exaggeration,
     hyperbole, miss-translation, and misunderstanding.
  5. The Gospels were purposefully altered.
  6. All of the above.

If you chose option six, you are correct. I contend that all we can
plausibly say we know about Yeshua, as I will refer to the historical
Jesus, is:

     He was born in Palestine, probably within eight or ten years of
     the beginning of the present era. He grew up in Galilee, was
     baptized by John the Baptist, formed a band of his own followers,
     and went about with them mainly in Galilee, but at least once
     visited Jerusalem and there was arrested and crucified...
     [1, pg. 8]

Nothing else about Yeshua can be determined for certain.

[1]   The Gospels are legendary and, therefore, are independent of the
historical Jesus. We know this is true because the story of Jesus,
particularly the unconfirmable parts, follows pagan myths which preceded
the birth of Jesus. That is, the story of his life had been written several
times, in several versions, before he was born.

Perhaps this means these pagan myths were prophesies. It does not mean this
because these stories were written in the past tense about christs with
specific names and included stories that made them different in specific
ways from Jesus.

What this does mean is that pagans, particularly Paul (a.k.a., Saul)
applied the true story of Yeshua to these well-known pagan myths (see "The
story of Jesus is non-unique," under "Is the Jesus Myth Valuable?" below)
and determined, falsely, that Jesus was the living Christ (as opposed to
the mythical Christ). Anything supernatural occurring in pagan stories
pre-dating Jesus can be considered completely fraudulent. Non-supernatural
occurrences in both stories are likely what motivated the story tellers to
wed the two (unrelated) stories when creating the Gospels. Such
supernatural occurrences include the virgin birth, the miracles of Jesus,
and the resurrection.

Similarly, small details in the Jesus story which occur in the pagan
stories can be evaluated as fraudulent because human memory is completely
unreliable, particularly in regard to small details. For example, Jesus
says, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" copying a pagan Christ who said,
"My El, why have you forsaken me?" (El is a specific pagan god, and is the
word used in the original Biblical text). Another example is that three
women are at the crucifixion of Jesus and witness his resurrection; this is
not chance but a borrowing of the pagan Goddess trinity.

Doesn't this purposeful insertion of myth require, however, that at least
some of the original authors engaged in lying? Yes and no.

[2]   Authors known and unknown clearly said things that were not true.
These people, Paul being the most important, probably believed that, at
least in some sense, that they were telling the truth.

This assertion will be clarified in later points; however, for now keep in
mind that there is no proof that anyone who wrote any part of the Bible
ever thought that they were telling the truth. It is just as likely that
they were consciously lying (see 5 above). Importantly, conscious lying was
not necessary to produce an historical illegitimate document. For example,
Paul could have truly believed that, in some sense, Jesus "appeared" to him
and "spoke" to him.

Christians typically assert that there was no reason for anyone to lie
about the story of Jesus and that it follows that anything written about
Jesus is true. They claim that this is because these early Christians were
persecuted and the suffering and death that they endured could not be worth
the notoriety they gained by telling stories about Jesus. The persecution
of the followers of early Christianity in no way implies the persecution of
the architects of this new religion. I see Paul as a man who preached the
"good news" to his followers, who then went out into the streets annoying
the Romans and bringing on their persecution so that they could find Paul
more followers. There was no necessity for him to put himself into danger.
The Catholics claim that he was martyred in Rome, but there is no
historically valid evidence to this effect. In return for writing a few
chapters of a book, he has become one of the most famous individuals in
history. This seems like an excellent motivation for telling lies and
half-truths.

[3]   The testimony in the Gospels is the result of psychological
phenomenon and hallucinations. First of all, Jesus, if he was not divine,
certainly could have had delusions of grandeur; so his testimony as to his
greatness is of no consequence (but, as I will discuss later, he never
actually said that he was the son of God or even the Messiah). Secondly,
what people like Paul describe as a spiritual visit from Jesus is more
likely to be a product of their imaginations, given their poor grasp of the
difference between fantasy and reality. People in this time believed that
spirits, demons, gods and other miscellanea routinely visited mortals. A
particularly engaging daydream might seem very real to such a person,
particularly when coupled with a cognitive (not supernatural) revelation.

Paul is an excellent example of this. According to Acts, chapter 9, Paul
(Saul) claimed to have a vision of Jesus. If you are to keep in mind four
ideas that Paul (Saul) was dealing with before the "vision," it makes
perfect sense:

  1. His desire: He wanted to be a holy man.
  2. His reality: He was working as a hired goon.
  3. His culture: Greek myths of the christ; the pagan ritual sacrifice of
     the king (kings were assumed to rule by divine right) or his stand-in
     (an individual referred to as the "judas.")
  4. Recent events: Yeshua, a man who claimed to be king of Judea by divine
     right and who Paul admired despite working against Yeshua as part of
     his job (see Note 1), has been executed in a ritualistic way.

Because of the conflict between Paul's occupation and his desired
occupation, Paul is having a mid-life crisis. When he suddenly realizes
that the recent events in the life of Yeshua bear a striking resemblance to
the myths of his youth (see Note 2), it is no miracle that he puts the two
together in an absurd, self-serving way.

Of course, the resemblance between Yeshua the Jew and the pagan christs and
sacrificial kings is superficial. Pagan sacrificial kings were the
currently legitimate kings, not insurgents claiming the throne. Obviously,
they were pagans and not Jews. The resemblance was enough, however, for a
Greek of 2000 years ago to think it made sense that Jesus was a living
Christ.

Not only did it make sense to him, but he had every motivation to want to
believe it, that is, to have faith in Jesus Christ, his personally
constructed God-king-Christ. By believing that this sudden flash of insight
was placed in his mind by Jesus, he instantly became the holy man he
desired to be and was vindicated of all the wrong he had done in
persecuting Jesus. He was not without guilt, of course; so he changed his
name to Paul and declared himself born again as a new man.

By preaching a new covenant between God and the gentiles, Paul made himself
a great and holy man. He probably believed that the things he concocted
were revealed to him by God, even though they were not. Every additional
self-deceit made the overall illusion that much stronger and the next
self-deceit easier. Blatant self-deception is not the only psychological
phenomenon that explains the Gospels.

In the famous book When Prophecy Fails, Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken
and Stanley Schacter (1956) describe a psychological phenomenon (cognitive
dissonance) that may have had profound affects on the early creation of the
Jesus resurrection myth. The three conducted a participant observer study
of a group of people who followed a woman who had received messages from
aliens foretelling the end of the world. The woman said that anyone who
wanted to be saved must go to a certain place at a certain time to wait for
the aliens to arrive and rescue them. Her prophecy fails (the aliens do not
show up and the world does not end on schedule), so she receives a second
message from the aliens telling her that because of the group, the crisis
has been postponed (she includes Christian religious elements in the
prophecy). The group splits up. One half of the group becomes completely
disenchanted with her and no longer believes her. The other half becomes
even more devoted to her, and goes out proselytizing with even more vigor
than before. Similar events have happened over and over in the history of
Christendom. As Christian prophecies fail, one by one, over and over again,
the religion fractures into a more fanatical sect and a group of people
searching for a new belief system. Early Christians may have been
manipulated by Paul just as this woman manipulated the members of her
doomsday cult.

Thanks to the work of Elizabeth Loftus (see Note 3), it is now well-known
in the psychological community that eyewitness testimony is completely
unreliable. Ironically, it is also tends to be the most persuasive evidence
to a jury. The range of falsehoods created by witnesses, completely by
accident, goes from distortions to complete fabrications. Three general
findings exist in regard to the testimony of reliable witnesses (as opposed
to the unreliable witnesses found in the Bible): 1) eyewitnesses are
imperfect, 2) certain factors systematically affect their performance, and
3) those who make conclusions based on their testimony are not sufficiently
informed about those factors. To make matters worse, Loftus has found that
even when memories are stored in the most optimal fashion, they are stored
in an incomplete way and must be recontructed when the person is
remembering them making the memory extremely vulnerable to distortions and
insertions of other information (e.g., Hellenistic Greek myth). Certain
kinds of witnesses, and, in particular, small children, are extremely
likely to fabricate an event which did not happen when they are prompted by
a motivated interviewer; this has been called "false memory syndrome" and
seems to be extremely common in modern-day fundamentalist Christian sects
(see Diary of Madness for examples, such as the girl who believes she was
under Satanic influence) probably because they are motivated to suspend
their disbelief in regard to Christianity-related information.

Another psychologist, Melvin Lerner (see Note 3), has discovered that
people are powerfully motivated to believe that the world is just. This
causes people to blame victims for their lot in life, but it can also lead
them to deny an event which seems to be completely unfair, like a hero's
death (e.g., Jesus, Elvis, John F. Kennedy) or disgrace (e.g., O. J.
Simpson, Michael Jackson). Of course, this phenomenon is related to
cognitive dissonance, described above.

Notes:
1. For instance, Acts 8:3 says that Paul (Saul) was harrassing and
arresting the followers of Jesus.
2. This argument regarding Paul is based on the work of Hyam Maccoby [5].
Maccoby is a Fellow of Leo Baeck College, London, and is a specialist in
the study of Judeo-Christian relations and the author of The Day God
Laughted and The Sacred Executioner.
Paul may originally have been a follower of Mithraism, so it would be no
surprise that Christianity adopted many features of this cult (which must
also be considered more or less evil). Mithraism had sacraments (seven,
like the Catholic Church), baptism, and communion, with bread and water,
and the Eucharist hosts were signed with a cross, which had nothing to do
with crucifixion, but was an ancient phallic symbol which originated in
Egypt, and the Egyptian cross (the ankh) still shows the original form
which included the female symbol. The holy day was the day of the sun,
Sunday, in contrast to the holy day of Jews, Saturday, which Jesus would
have observed. In the fourth century Mithraism was more common and
prevalent than Christianity.
3. The work of Elizabeth Loftus and Melvin Lerner exists in a vast number
of journal articles and books. A good place to start researching their work
is at an academic library or in the following books:

     Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental
     delusion. New York: Plenum.
     Loftus, E. F. (1979). Eyewitness testimony. Cambridge, MA:
     Harvard University Press.
     Loftus, E. F. & Ketcham, K. (1991). Witness for the defense: The
     accused, the eyewitness, and the expert who puts memory on trial.
     New York: St. Martin's Press.

[4]   The Gospel stories are the result of rumor mills, oral history,
exaggeration, hyperbole, mistranslation, and misunderstandings. Once Paul's
revelation happened, it was inevitable that he would tell others, both for
metaphysical reasons, and for self-glorification. Imagine Paul's delight
when he comes back to town and hears that the body of Jesus is missing! His
first reaction would have been to shout out, "Christ has risen!"

Whether the first person to hear this believed it or not is beside the
point. Within a week, there would have been rumors that Jesus rose from the
dead. Complicated falsehoods would have developed and they would have been
urged on by Paul who began actively preaching about "Jesus Christ," both to
aid others by revealing what he believed to be the "truth" and also for
self-glorification. These stories are no more valid than rumors of Elvis
being seen at a dough-nut shop or the complicated conspiracy theories of
the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but they were recorded as the
"gospel" truth. Other charismatic preachers were undoubtedly crucified or
otherwise murdered (there were many such men claiming to be the messiah),
and rumors undoubtedly sprouted up about them, but there was no Paul
waiting to record their stories and they were soon forgotten as was
appropriate. Legitimate historians of the time took such rumors with a
grain of salt.

To the original followers of Yeshua, Paul was an annoyance, but they tried
to be nice. They talked to him when he asked what had happened, and he
wrote down their stories, inserting necessary detail and the appropriate
style into the documents. You will note that the gospels admit that the
apostles of Jesus did not believe that he was resurrected at the outset. I
would guess that they never believed this.

At this time, "history" was not what we think of today. In modern times, we
expect an historian to try to create an objective account of the events and
persons involved, even though we know any account will have subjective
qualities. In the time of Paul, an even was recorded in such a way as to
glorify the persons and events in question and to illustrate moral
precepts, which may or may not have been present in the historical event
(see Note 1). This "glorification" involved exaggeration, hyperbole,
insertion of mere rumors, and outright falsehoods, but this was the
standard procedure for recording an event. Additionally, this original
(falsehood filled) story was then broken up into chunks (verses) so that it
would be more easy to memorize.

The creation of the gospels as oral histories in this way would have taken
at least a few months, but not more than a few years. There are no
renditions of the story of Jesus that did not go through this process, and
there were never were. (There were other versions, but these were almost
entirely destroyed purposefully by the early Catholic church; see Note 2)
At latest, it is now only 10 years after the death of Yeshua and already
the truth of his life is entirely destroyed and unknowable.

We still have 20 years to go before the date when the oldest scraps of
biblical text that are known to have ever existed will be created. A story
can change drastically in 20 years.

The first translation error was made by Paul, when he mistook "Messiah" to
mean "Christ." This happened before anything was written down; it happened
during Paul's conversations with people as he was working through what had
happened. A messiah is a person who is a great leader who leads your people
to freedom. The title was taken by Jews from Persian culture. A christ is a
god-king who dies as an offering to some divine being as a sacrifice in
return for prosperity, especially agricultural prosperity. Both are
anointed with oil as a mystical, sexual rite. (See Christos.)

This mistranslation is particularly ironic considering that Yeshua never
even actually said that he was the Messiah (according to the gospels). He
does imply it on a few occasions. In addition, by failing to liberate the
Jewish people with the help of God, he demonstrated conclusively that he
was not the prophesied Messiah; at best, he was a failed Messiah. Yeshua
even failed to fulfill his own prophecy: he claimed that God would
intervene on behalf of himself and other Jews and re-establish Jewish rule
of Judea within the lifetime of at least some of the people he was speaking
to at the time (Matthew 16:28). He also never said that he was the son of
God. He said he was a son of God, a title that applies to any male Jew.

Of course, these mistranslations and misunderstandings continued hundreds
of years later. The phrase, "Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live," was
poorly translated as, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and this
resulted in the ongoing persecution of pagans by Christians. This mistake
made some sense, in that the word for "poisoner" would have been the same
as "witch" in Latin, and the translator may have been a bigot who believed
anyone who knew "magic," the art of medicine and pharmacology, had ill
intent. Similarly, "[Moses] was radiant," was mistranslated "[Moses] was
horned," which associated Jews with the old European pagan religions
(falsely) and contributed to their persecution (see Note 3).

Notes:
1. In ancient times writing false statements was quite common and was not
always considered forgery (and that has increased in Christian times,
especially in the medieval time). Even modern theologians admit that
letters of Paul are forged, (e.g. Timothy, Titus) and it must be taken into
account the gospel authors themselves give the reason to mistrust them,
e.g. Romans 3:7.
And of course there is the question, "Why were the gospels written at all?"
All the believers, including Jesus himself, thought the Second Coming would
occur before his original followers (apostles) would die, that is in his
disciples' lifetime (Mark 9:1, 13:30, Matthew 4:17, 10:7, 10:23, 16:28,
Luke 11:51 and others). The early communities were so sure of the Second
coming occurring during their lifetime that one time in Syria a bishop and
his parish marched into the desert, to meet the Messiah, and they were on
the verge of dying of thirst when pagan police rescued them (Hippol. in
Danielem, 4:18:1ff) So why should there be the need, for what purpose
should the gospels have been written at all?
They were of course written to increase faith in the early communities, who
were tired of waiting for the Second Coming, not to give an account of
historical events, and that is the reason the earliest gospels were written
about one generation after Jesus' death.
2. The other gospels (apocrypha) that existed in the early days of
Christianity were dismissed by the early church (council of Nicaea). These
have to be taken into account as well, since humans (catholic priests)
decided which gospels were to be taken as the word of God and included in
the bible, even if some of the later dismissed texts were older or more
common than Mark/Luke/Matthew/John before the New Testament was shaped.
3. In regard to the witch verse: Kelsos and I are at a disagreement as to
whether the original version of this Bible verse says that all users of
magic should be killed. He says:

     I've looked up several direct translations from Hebrew of the
     phrase in Exoudus 22:18 ("thou shalt not suffer a xyz to live").
     Since my knowledge of Hebrew is limited, I must of course rely on
     the editors of these, who say their intent was to give the text
     as true as possible to the original meaning. In two direct
     parallel word-to-word Hebrew-German translations it says (the
     German equivalent of) "sorceress." Also I've looked up two other
     translations by Jewish authors from Hebrew, the one of famous
     Jewish theologian Martin Buber and the other from Naftali Herz,
     which is the relevant Jewish German translation. Both say
     "sorceress." I must note here that "sorceress" is not the same as
     "witch," so it is true the usual Christian translation "witch" is
     poor, but I cannot find any reference to an original sense as
     "poisoner" (note the female gender). Like I said before, poison
     and medicine were considered magic in ancient times.

In regard to Moses: Many early European pagan religions included a horned
god. His horns were a sign of sexual virility. When Christians demonized
this horned god, they called him "Satan" or "Lucifer" after the Biblical
figure, even though this angel was supposed to be the most beautiful of the
angels and there is no reference to him having horns. In short, the popular
image of the devil is a bastardization of the early European pagan god
(e.g., Pan).

[5]   The Gospels were purposefully altered. This is generally the approach
taken by those disputing the content of the Bible. My impression is that
most purposeful alteration took the form of retranslating the Bible in a
way that more closely fits the current interpretation of the meaning of the
Bible. The current interpretation is, of course, a reflection of current
societal norms.

The real problem, in terms of alteration, is that whole books were
destroyed because those in power in the Catholic church did not like them.
Because of this, only a narrow view of Jesus exists. Not only were
documents destroyed, but entire groups of Christians were murdered (e.g.,
the Gnostic Christians and the Cathars, see Note) because they were
"heretical."

These purposeful deletions may have been based on "faith" or politics, but
in either case only a few scraps of those documents remain. These bits of
documents are, however, quite illuminating. In one, for instance, Jesus is
not crucified; Judas is killed in his place. Jesus stands on a nearby hill
laughing at the Romans' mistake.

Note: The Gnostics were not Christians (and therefore not heretical), but
there were Gnostic Christians (a combination of the two) who were
considered heretical. Both were persecuted. Gnostic Christians believed
that Sophia, the goddess who created the god Yahweh, sent Jesus Christ to
earth to undo Yahweh's evil treatment of humans, including the flood, which
was an unauthorized punishment of humanity; their gospels are some of the
ones that were ignored and destroyed by early Christians. The Gnostics had
probably existed some time before Christianity, but this is not entirely
sure. In any case some Gnostic elements persisted and were revived 1000
years later by the Cathars (Albigenses) and the Paulikians of Bulgaria and
Hungary.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think I have now established firmly that there is no reason to believe
that Jesus was of divine nature. That is, the odds of any one of the five
possibilities that I have listed are far more probable than the possibility
of Jesus having a divine nature. The only reason to believe that he had a
divine nature is not a reason at all: it is faith. Faith would require a
great deal of discussion which you will find elsewhere. I will mention now,
however, that faith is, by definition, irrational.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      Did Jesus have divine character?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many Christians are unwilling to believe in the strong version of
Christianity, so they reduce it to a way of life based on trying to emulate
Jesus, whom they presume to have had a divine character if not a divine
nature. Even most atheists are willing to grant that Jesus had a divine
character and they may even point him out as an individual that they
admire. Those who are employers of faith will be able to invent ways to
believe that the following arguments are invalid, so this discussion is
primarily geared toward those who find the previous discussion of the
non-divine nature of Jesus perfectly acceptable.

Because we are no longer talking about a divine Jesus, I will refer to this
character as Yeshua. Yeshua is a better way to pronounce the name of the
person in question, though it is not necessarily the correct one. In order
to decide whether Yeshua was of divine character (and thus an excellent
vehicle for understanding the nature of the God). I will evaluate several
of the typical claims of Christian about his character:

  1. He was a great, charismatic leader.
  2. He was a brilliant speaker with a gift of parable and epigram.
  3. He loved all unconditionally and was a picture of kindness preaching
     nothing but peace and love for all.
  4. He was a great moral prophet.

[1]   Yeshua was a great, charismatic leader. Yeshua was very likely
charismatic, but his greatness is his own time as a leader is questionable.
The cult of Jesus was primarily a creation of Paul and bears no reflection
on Yeshua. According to the Bible itself, he had only a dozen or so devoted
followers. The likely fact is that he was a mediocre, charismatic leader.

[2]   He was a brilliant speaker with a gift of parable and epigram.
Clearly, he must have said something that was inspirational or
entertaining, but what that was is unknown to modern society. The Sermon on
the Mount, often considered to be the corner stone of the Christian
religion, is an excellent example of how little we know about what he
actually said. "The very phrases of the Sermon on the Mount can be
paralleled one by one from the Jewish devotional literature of his time"
[2, pg. 107].

The author of the oldest Gospel, Mark (though Mark was not really the
author), was not even aware of the Sermon on the Mount. While he may have
spoken parts of the sermon (though we can't even confirm this), he
certainly didn't write the sermon. The sermon is part of the detail that
was filled in by others after his death. All of his parables were similarly
part of the Jewish culture of the time, and not his inventions. The likely
fact is that he was a passable speaker, but nothing exceptional.

Humanist writers such as Alan Watts (see The World's Most Dangerous Book)
insist that Yeshua was a great man because he independently came to the
same conclusion that Eastern mystics had arrived at in regard to the
oneness of humanity and divinity (see Note). It is possible that this is
true, but it is more likely that these deeper thoughts of Yeshua were part
of the detail inserted by non-Jewish authors when they created the detail
of his life. Additionally, Judaism is not without its own mystic tradition
and Yeshua certainly could have been aware of it. If he did discover the
basic concept of mysticism, then he failed to completely understand it
before his death, for he continued to preach about kingdoms and wars;
certainly he did not have the serenity that one expects from someone who
has attained enlightenment. To suggest that he was great because he
discovered something that millions of others had known about for years is a
weak argument, regardless of whether he actually discovered the basic
component of mysticism. We do not reward the second person or group to
invent something for its invention; we only reward the original inventor.

Note: This would explain his strange rantings about being God without
making him a megalomaniac, which I believe he probably was. In fact, I
would wager that if the historical figure Yeshua actually lived, that he
was somewhat unbalanced mentally.

[3]   He loved all unconditionally and was a picture of kindness preaching
nothing but peace and love for all. First of all, let's consider how he
felt toward the Jews:

He loved his fellow Jews and probably thought he was their Messianic King,
the heir to the Throne of David who would rule Judea with God right at his
side (though he never actually said this; it is only implied by him in the
Bible). He preached to the Jews that they should love each other and live
in peace. He was full of love and compassion for even the lowliest Jew and
went amongst them preaching his message of hope. This message was that, in
their lifetimes, God would intervene on behalf of Jews and they would once
again rule over Judea, with Yeshua on the throne. Yeshua would rule over
the Jews as David had, and with even more glory. Of course, he was wrong
but hope makes no promises. Like any normal human, Yeshua was also
occasionally a grumpy jerk. He was harsh and ill-tempered sometimes. And he
was as cruel as he was kind to his apostles.

What about the gentiles? Did he love them all unconditionally? Did he
preach peace and love for them? No, he did not. For the most part, he was
entirely unconcerned about them. He explicitly instructed his apostles not
to bear his message to gentiles: But he answered and said, I am not sent
but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:24; see also
Matthew 10:5-6). On at least one documented occasion, he was openly hostile
to a gentile:

     Jesus saith unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is
     not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the
     dogs. And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs
     under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And he said unto
     her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy
     daughter.
     [Mark 7:25-29]

By "children" he means the children of God, i.e., Jews. Christians will
respond that he preached that one should "love thy neighbor" (see Note) but
there is no reason to believe that he would include Romans, Greeks, and
Samaritans in his definition of "neighbor." In fact, the Old Testament
commandment to "love the stranger" was understood by Jewish sages of the
time to refer to Jewish strangers only, and specifically not to non-Jews.
We have only to look to the various Christian churches for examples of
people who advocated loving thy neighbor but murdering the enemies of God's
people, just as the Jews of Yeshua's day advocated. There is no reason to
think that Yeshua liked gentiles; there is every reason to think that he
did not like them. It was the apostle Paul (a man who never even met
Yeshua) who, against the express wishes of Yeshua, extended the gospel (his
own version) to the gentiles. The fact that these anti-gentile sentiments
are in the gospels is good evidence that these verses are relatively
authentic; if the authors and the early church had noticed them, these
verses would probably have been removed or edited.

With that in mind, consider what Yeshua's Utopia might have entailed.
Yeshua implied that he was a Messianic king of the Davidic line. He is
implying that the reign of King David is good to emulate. Most Christians
and Jews today see King David as having been an excellent, divinely guided
leader, although he had flaws like any other mortal man. In the time of
Yeshua, he was revered as well. God did criticize David for a number of his
actions, including killing a Hittite and taking his wife and not walking
fully with God (but not for having multiple wives or killing many, many
other people). God and the Jewish people stood firmly behind his murderous
behavior. His warlike ways began as a child when he was armor bearer to a
man he loved greatly. By request of the king, David delivered 200 foreskins
of the Philistines (100 more than requested) as a dowry for the king's
daughter. According to the Bible, David is responsible for the deaths of
331,269 people all with the blessing of God, with the exception of the
Hittite. Even the Hittite's murder was quickly forgiven, however.

If Yeshua felt he was a Messianic king who would rule in the style of
David, then he was clearly evil. Although there is no evidence that he
actually believed this, Christians say he did. If they are right, then he
is saying, "Let's bring back the good old days when the Jewish people were
the conquerors, not the conquered." The astute observer will note that in
the Bible, Yeshua never encourages such aggression, but he does believe in
Jewish law. He was only able to imply such things because the Jews were
outnumbered by the Romans who had a technologically and numerically
superior military force. Any such public statement would have resulted in
his death; he did not want to die.

The pacifism of Yeshua is often illustrated by the quote, "Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,"
(Matt 22:21, Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25), but the double entendre is clear if
you realize that Yeshua felt all belonged to God and thus nothing was
really Caesar's. He believed that God would soon intervene and put Caesar
in his place; so there was nothing to gain by violence or preaching
violence. Other less veiled things that he said include: "Think not that I
am come to send peace: I came not to send peace but a sword," (Matthew
10:34); "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one,"
(Luke 22:36); and "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should
reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me," (Luke 19:27, in a
parable, but spoken of favorably). Yeshua said, "He that is not with me is
against me," (Matthew 12:30) meaning that anyone who was not his follower
must die. This slogan was later adopted by the Nazis (see Responses to
Hitler Article).

Note: The invention of the "Golden Rule" is often attributed to Yeshua by
Christians. It was invented by Buddhists in Asia or India, spread to
Hellenism, and was adopted by Jews in the first century (Rabbi Hillel).
Confucius also said something similar long before Yeshua: "Do not unto
others that you would not have them do unto you." Christians also stole the
story of the poor widow (Mark 12:41) from Buddhism.

[4.]   He was a great moral prophet. Actually, Yeshua didn't say a single
new thing; he never went against Jewish scripture [2, pg. 107]. This fact
makes the agenda of Yeshua all the more dark. Jewish belief of the time was
genocidal and intolerant. Several of the Jewish laws specifically commanded
the genocide of specific groups of people. (See Why Judaism is Evil by
Kelsos.) These laws are still recognized by Orthodox Jews, but not the vast
majority of Jews who practice a religion which is best described as
agnostic.

In conclusion, Yeshua was an impressive figure with great aspirations, but
he was probably not much better than the people who executed him.
Certainly, he is not impressive or "good" enough to be the basis for an
entire religion. However, if one is to interpret the name "Christian" to
mean a person who tries to emulate Jesus the Christ, then the Christian
history of preaching "love thy neighbor" while murdering millions in cold
blood as heretics and unbelievers makes perfect sense and the true message
of Yeshua has been heard and understood. The suggestion that he advocated
peace and love for all is absurd.

Not only was Yeshua likely a proponent of genocide, as are his right-wing,
racist followers in the United States (see J. B. Stoner's, Praise God for
AIDS), but he was also of generally questionable moral character. Because
this topic has been covered extensively by other authors more capable than
myself, I have only covered it superficially (in 4, above), and I refer you
to them:
Why Jesus? by Dan Barker.
The Mistakes of Jesus by William Floyd
Bertrand Russell refers to the character of Jesus in Why I am Not a
Christian.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                        Is the Jesus Myth Valuable?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a final resort, one may suggest that Jesus probably didn't exist, that
his divinity is unlikely, that his true character was questionable, but
that the myth of Jesus and the message it gives to the reader is so
powerful that it is valuable regardless of its fictitiousness. Strangely,
this is the very approach that has been adopted by many Christian Bible
scholars. I have three reasons why I believe this approach fails:

  1. The story of Jesus is non-unique. It is neither the first nor the best
     version of the christ theme.
  2. The christ theme is maladaptive when placed at the center of a moral
     system.
  3. Those who realize it is just a myth typically fail to inform the
     mindless masses of this, which leads to negative consequences.

[1]   The story of Jesus is non-unique. It is neither the first nor the
best version of the christ theme. When I refer to the "christ theme," I am
referring to any story where the protagonist is killed or dies as a result
of his or her love or concern for another, but the forces of evil that
caused this are vanquished either by the protagonist's death or his or her
resurrection. This defeat of evil can occur either by direct or
metaphorical battle or by literal or metaphorical scapegoating. A martyr,
on the other hand, is killed but nothing good comes of it except the
admiration of others associated with the cause for which the martyr died.

The christ theme was inserted into the story of Yeshua (who was actually
just a martyr). It was taken from the Hellenistic Greek tradition (pagan).
A few examples of christ figures that preceded the Jesus myth are Attis,
Adonis, Tammuz, and Osiris. Here is a brief summary of the story of Attis
from 204 BC:

     He was the son of the goddess Nana's earthly incarnation. She was
     a virgin. "He grew up to become a sacrificial victim and savior,
     slain to bring salvation to mankind. His body was eaten by his
     worshippers in the form of bread. He was resurrected to become
     the most high god, who holds the universe together. Like his
     priests, he was castrated, then crucified on a pine tree, whence
     his holy blood poured down to redeem the earth" [3, pg. 77]

As examples of other myths resembling the Jesus myth:

   * Asklepios: 5th century B.C.E.
     Most of the miracles Jesus allegedly performed are actually Asklepios'
     miracles, healings etc. A blind healed by Asklepios see at first only
     trees, like the one healed by Jesus. Asklepios heals poor and rich,
     men and women, slaves and free, like Jesus. He raises the dead, the
     details being the same as in the Jesus stories.
   * Herakles: 5th century B.C.E.
     Like Jesus he was born of a virgin, like Jesus he walked on the
     waters, like Jesus he left mother and father to live a life of pains,
     was viewed as a savior, dies with the words "father, it is done" and
     rises to heaven, and there are many more parallels. There has even
     been a Herakles religion.
   * Dionysios: 8th century B.C.E.
     Like Jesus he is the son of a god (Zeus) and a mortal woman, like
     Jesus he was a healer, like Jesus he turned water into wine (the
     marriage at Kana) and like Jesus he was a mortal and resurrected god.
     There was also a Dionysios cult.

The christ theme has been rendered in ways that are more compelling to
modern audiences, higher in literary quality, and more true to the original
pagan version of the theme. I will be focusing on film because I feel
popular culture really gets at how the culture as a whole is changing more
than high art or literature, or the latest trends in academic and
theological thought.

As a piece of literature, the Bible's version of Jesus the Christ pales in
comparison to The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. This
version contains more interesting literary elements (e.g., the irony of
Jesus being the carpenter who makes the crosses on which Jews are
crucified) and is a far better written work generally. Christians,
motivated to believe that the story of Jesus in the Bible is true, were
appalled at the film version of this book by Martin Scorsese even though it
portrayed all of the values of the Jesus myth in a more compelling way.

In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the sexual aspect of the christ theme is
restored. While there is no hope for the star-crossed lovers, their deaths
and their love for each other ends the feud between their families.

The most obvious rendition of this theme in popular culture is in the
graphic novel The Crow by James O'Barr, which has been made into a motion
picture I'm sure you have all heard of. In this story, the christ figure
returns from the dead to avenge the death of his beloved, empowered by a
magical crow. This rendition of the christ theme both restores the sexual
aspect of the christ and offers a christ figure who is active rather than
passive as in the Jesus myth. It is, in my opinion, the most powerful pagan
reclaiming of the christ theme in the twentieth century.

In The Professional, a hitman witnesses the murder of an entire family, and
then eventually sacrifices his life to save the only survivor, a young
girl. As in Kazantzakis's version of the christ, the protagonist starts out
as an unhappy cog in a social system that breeds evil who has a personal
revelation which leads him to rebel against that system. Unlike
Kazantzakis's christ figure, the hitman in The Professional is battling
real life evil. This is a significant change in the modern, neo-pagan
christ from the classical christ of the Christian religion. Modern people
no longer need supernatural evil because they have learned (often with the
assistance of Christianity) that real-life, human evil is enough. There
certainly needs to be no apocalypse sent by an angry deity when humans
could do just as good a job of destroying the earth by themselves.

[2]   The christ theme is maladaptive when placed at the center of a moral
system. Sacrifice can certainly be used to express love and the christ
theme (total sacrifice for a loved one) certainly has a place in
literature, film and culture. However, it is, to me, self-evident that
other forms of love are more important to emphasize: love that is mutual
and expressed by mutual pleasure and/or happiness, not suffering. By
placing the christ theme squarely at the center of morality, Christianity
implies that all love entails sacrifice; it creates a sadomasochistic ideal
of love. Sadomasochistic love is supported by other parts of the Bible as
well, as in the many sacrifices by humans to God. To summarize, humans show
their love for God by making sacrifices to him (foregoing pleasure or
inviting suffering) and God shows his love for humans by sending his only
begotten son to die for them (John 3:16). At least the sadomasochistic
relationship isn't one-sided.

One of the evils of Christianity derives from the idea there is an
afterlife, an idea reinforced by the resurrection theme in the Jesus myth
(the Jews also believed in an afterlife, but this was really unimportant to
Jewish religion, as it is today, and the same is true for the idea of hell,
which furthermore in the Jewish view is not a place for the unfaithful to
be punished). If there is an afterlife, any killing is of less importance,
since only temporary life is destroyed. In fact, the originator of the
well-known saying, "Kill them all -- let God sort them out," is Pope
Innocent II (1209ce; the direct quote was, "Kill them all; God will know
his own.") The reason for the Inquisition victims to be burned was the
intention to make the resurrection of their bodies (on Judgment day)
impossible, therefore their bodies were destroyed completely (even medieval
Christians believed in bodily resurrection). That's probably one reason why
the United States still have capital punishment, even though most civilized
nations abolished it decades ago.

[3]   Those who realize it is just a myth typically fail to inform the
mindless masses of this, which leads to negative consequences. I have
either read statements or been told by well-educated Christians on many
occasions that the institution of Christianity, that is, the theologians
and managerial figures, realize that Jesus didn't really die for anyone's
sins and that he should be considered a mythological figure but that his
story is an excellent metaphor for certain moral truths and that his story
is the best way to know "God."

I've broken this situation down into several components:

  1. "The story is an excellent metaphor for certain moral truths."
  2. "The character in the story is the best way to know God."
  3. Educated theologians fail to make well-known that the story of Jesus
     is a myth.

[------------------]

  1. "The story of Jesus is an excellent metaphor for certain moral truths.

     As long as you are taking Jesus as a mythological figure, and you omit
     certain aspects of his behavior which have been recorded in the Bible
     (which is your prerogative if you consider the story a myth and not
     history) then yes, indeed, the story of Jesus is an excellent metaphor
     for certain moral truths. Where I disagree with the Christian
     approach, however, is the placement of the Jesus metaphor (christ
     theme) at the center of their ethical system. Certainly, the good of
     the many outweighs the good of the few or the one, but the example of
     suffering and death provided in the story is rarely necessary, and in
     real life means that someone should be fighting back because a human
     rights violation is occurring.

     So while slaves, abused women, and gays are better than slave masters,
     abusive husbands, and gay bashers, submitting to abuse is not what
     makes them better and, in most cases, fighting back is the optimal
     course of action if it will reduce the amount of abuse that will occur
     in the future. In real life, when some force of evil decides to
     execute you, it means you are dead and evil is in no way depleted by
     your death; it is made stronger. This is not to suggest that victims
     of oppression should resort to the same evil practices as their
     oppressors. Certainly, it is best not to. However, allowing oneself to
     be killed never does anyone any good. A famous American general once
     said, "You don't win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by
     making some other poor son-of-a-bitch die for his country." The christ
     theme (with its resurrection and metaphysical hocus-pocus) is best
     viewed as a fantasy, not as a useful metaphor for moral behavior.

  2. "The character in the Jesus story is the best way to know God."

     I think it is certainly true that a mythological figure manufactured
     by humans for various social reasons could be an excellent way to
     understand an abstract, meaningless concept also manufactured by
     humans. There is no "God" in a literal sense, and similarly there is
     no literal "Jesus Christ." That one might aid understanding of the
     other is of no practical interest. If your academic field has
     something to do with contemplating God, i.e., you are a theologian,
     then I'm sure this relationship is interesting to you. I am also sure
     that there is no necessary relationship between the character Jesus
     and the concept of a supreme being. Theologians obviously have a great
     deal of motivation to keep the masses interested in this relationship,
     even though it is of very little usefulness.

  3. Educated theologians fail to make well-known that the story of Jesus
     is a myth.

     I hate to let you know this, my dear theologian, but your
     congregations of mindless masses think that Jesus really existed and
     that you know he did. As a result, they are doing many really
     ignorant, judgmental and absurd things. Why don't you tell them? I
     think it is fairly important. Do you think they won't understand? Do
     you think you won't be needed if there is no Jesus for you to
     interpret or conjure messages from? Do you think it will crush them
     worse than revealing that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are myths?
     You may be right, but it is your moral obligation to inform them.

     Why? Because believing that Jesus is real requires faith and faith is
     dangerous to human, animal, and vegetative life. It is the greatest
     destroyer that has ever been. Of course, faith allows hope, but should
     only be employed in situations where there is no other source of hope.
     When taken literally, the Jesus story is incredibly dangerous, and
     supports immoral actions far better than moral actions. The murders
     that have been supported by the literal belief in Jesus are too
     numerous to list (though Kelsos has given it a good try in Victims of
     the Christian Faith).

     One way of interpreting the literally taken story if Jesus is the
     approach of Grigori Rasputin, who reasoned that, if the jusification
     of God's death is my sin, then I owe it to God to justify his death to
     the utmost. He, therefore, sinned gloriously for God. His severed
     penis is kept as sacred relic by a religious sect that considers him a
     saint [4].

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                 In Review
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is not enough evidence to say that Jesus definitely existed. Jesus
was definitely not divine, if he did exist, and he certainly did not have a
perfect character. In fact, the possible historical figure Yeshua is
relatively common: he was kind and cruel, good and evil. As for the Jesus
myth, it is maladaptive when placed at the center of a belief system, it is
not unique, and it is not the best version of the christ theme for modern
audiences. Additionally, theologians are reluctant to reveal the
mythological nature of the Jesus story and so countless Christians continue
to take it literally.

I will put this all another way to be certain that I am understood: There
certainly never was a person "Jesus" who died for the sins of the world;
this character is purely fabricated. There may have been a person "Yeshua"
who was a Jewish preacher who was put to death, but this is unlikely. There
is no reason to put either the mythical Jesus or the potentially real
Yeshua at the center of a belief system because both have negative aspects
that are unavoidable. To depend solely on either of these two for spiritual
or moral guidance is to be lost spiritually and morally, because they
provide a compass that, instead of designating true north, spins without
reason. Jesus is a narrow, sadomasochistic myth. Yeshua is an unremarkable,
genocidal historical figure.

Any person who "follows" the "teachings" of either of these fellows is
potentially dangerous. Christianity, the religion centered on either of
these two characters, is, therefore, a dangerous religion with no moral
compass. Additionally, the religion Christianity, because it depends on one
of these two characters for its existence, is an absurd religion. To use
the Bible or the teachings of Jesus/Yeshua as a means of governance is to
pile absurdity upon absurdity. To suggest that either of these is the path
to enlightenment is not only absurd, but ignorant. To suggest that people
who follow this "ethic" are trustworthy or good, is na‹ve at best.

To vote for political candidates who support the religious right (Christian
Coalition, Campus Crusade for Christ, Promise Keepers, etc.) is just plain
wrong.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
References not listed in the text:
1. Jesus the Magician by Morton Smith, Ph.D., Th.D. (San Francisco: Harper,
1978)
2. Basic Judaism by Milton Steinberg (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1947)
3. Women's Book of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker (San Francisco:
Harper, 1983)
4. Rasputin: The Man Behind the Myth by Maria Rasputin and Patte Barham
(New York: Warner, 1977)
5. The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity by Hyam Maccoby
(San Francisco: Harper, 1986)

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