Searching for an ‘historical Jesus'
Part 1 : What is history?

Each Easter, I have established a tradition of writing critical commentaries on the holiday season, and this Easter is no different. My theme for this year is the ‘search for the historical Jesus'. In part one, I will lay the ground work for the actual search by exploring the question ‘what is history?'

The claim has been made that the new Mel Gibson film on the ‘Passion of the Christ' presents the most ‘historically accurate' portrayal of Yeshua (Jesus) ever captured on celluloid. This claim is false, and it would be better to say that this is the most ‘dogmatically correct' presentation of Christian doctrine in recent times, and this assessment is supported by the wide spread acclaim granted to the film by the conservative religious right elements of the church (the response from the more ‘main line' or ‘liberal' churches has been more critical). As my theme for this Easter, It seemed good to me to examine this issue of the ‘historical Christ', both as an illustration of ‘historical method' (and only one possible method) and also to point out that simply repeating a gospel verbatim does not make for an ‘historically accurate' presentation.

What is history?

One definition of the term ‘history' would state that history is a collection of facts that give a literal description of certain events that have taken place in the past. If history is to be thought of as a science, and it uses a scientific method, then this cannot be true (and this explains why historians often disagree). Instead what we have are probabilities, we have theories, we have hypotheses. The reason for this is that the source documents on which historical research relies consist of such things as political propaganda, spin doctoring, opinion, speculation, superstition, and even forgeries and deliberate deception, as well as rumor, myth, legend, including urban legends, and hearsay. The task of the historian is to work with this pile of highly questionable material and attempt to recreate a reasonable history of events, this ‘history' then being only more or less probable, and never sure and certain.

One good, modern example of this sort of thing is the study of the Napoleonic Era in Europe. The historian is well aware that Napoleon was a devious forger, and for this reason the war diaries and the French military documents are highly suspect as historical source materials (after a battle Napoleon would do the Orwellian thing, described in the book 1984, by removing documents, even removing the names of inconvenient generals at times, and then change the military orders and forge papers, all in order to make it seem like he was a genius who always correctly anticipated the outcome of every skirmish and thus everything he did was the result of a plan executed to perfection).

The problem is compounded as we go back further in time. One useful example of historical documentation from ancient times are the earliest Jewish writings in the Bible. Here we find myth, urban legend, superstition, and political propaganda which all revolve around real events, which actually took place, but in no way give what we would call an historically accurate description of events. We know that events described in the Bible took place because there is independent confirmation (the product of archeology) but these facts do not ‘prove the accuracy of the Bible' (as Christian apologists are so fond of proclaiming). They only prove that an event took place, and then the task of the historian is to attempt to reconstruct what really happened, which is not simple, and never results in one hundred per cent certainty, but in the end ‘history' consists only of probabilities.

In the Bible we are told of the siege of Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah (2nd Kings 19:32) during which we are told that there was a heavenly divine intervention, and "That very night the angel of the LORD set out and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; when morning dawned, they were all dead bodies. Then King Sennacherib of Assyria left." Archeologists have uncovered many, many remnants of what would have been the Assyrian chronicles (the equivalent of the chronicles in the Jewish Bible). Here we are told the story of Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem from the Assyrian point of view. Like the writings in the Bible of the time, this is ‘history' which is heavily spin doctored, full of political propaganda, superstition and legend. The tone of the Assyrian writings are boastful, triumphal, and tell the story of how the Assyrians placed a siege upon Jerusalem, and then got bought off for a fortune in gold and other precious items. They even took the sacred objects from the religious temple and then the triumphant Sennacherib boasted of placing these relics of a ‘defeated god' in subordinate positions in his own temple.

Both the Bible and the Assyrian writings describe actual historical events, but the task of an historian is to attempt to unravel what really happened when confronted with all the spin doctoring and propaganda that constitute the source materials. In this example the most probable outcome is that Sennacherib did indeed extract a ransom from Jerusalem. The least probable outcome is that an angered angel slaughtered close to 200,000 Assyrians, especially given that the average size of an army at the time was about 6,000 (and centuries later, Alexander led the Greek superpower of the time with what was then a large army of 60,000...no one fielded armies of a quarter of a million at that time, so the Bible account is also ridiculous for this reason). Whether or not Sennacherib also demanded and received all the symbolic religious items from the temple is more questionable, but it is possible. Just as political propagandists boasted about the feats of their war gods in the Bible, so Sennacherib and other rulers of the nations also did their boasting and bragging about their gods. In the Bible we are told stories of how the symbols of gods were desecrated, and so the practice was not unheard of, but generally when these various sources start bragging about the prowess of their war gods it is usually time to assign a low probability to their exploits, as the example from the Bible above indicates.

It could have been possible that this one time, Sennacherib's boast of the powers of his god related to a real event, in that he also extracted a ransom in religious artifacts. But we really can never know for sure, and some will hold that it is most probable that he did just that, while others will always be found in opposition, and where there is a commonly held opinion, such and such a thing becomes ‘accepted history', at least until such a time as someone makes a compelling argument that some other outcome was even more probable, and then what we think of as accepted history changes.

And that is all history really is at the end of it all. Things are possible. Anything is possible. But some things are probable and some things are improbable. It just doesn't get any more certain than that. So then to reconstruct history the task is not to definitively prove what did or did not occur, which is impossible, but rather to establish what is probable, and accepted history will then become whatever has the highest probability.

The role of ideology

In theory, history should be a pure vocation, where individual bias and personal emotionalism play no role, but it never is, and it never will be as long as people are doing history. And this is particularly true when it comes to discussing ‘the historical Yeshua.' (Note that because of my own powerful bias, I just hate using the term ‘Jesus', except when I am referring to what I would call Jesus Zeus Apollo Christ, the mythological creature created by the church. So rather than always writing ‘the Jesus Christ figure' or ‘the composite Christ character' I will use ‘Yeshua', the Hebrew version of the name to refer to ‘an historical person' and I will use ‘Jesus Christ' to refer to the mythological legend.)

I have discovered in my life that if you want to evoke passionate, instant vitriol in people, just mention Christianity, or that most hated of names ‘Jesus Christ.' The response is visceral, and for this reason people become stubbornly wedded to ideological positions which make any real historical discussion just about impossible. People cheat. They indulge themselves in some of the most unfair and obviously erroneous scholarship, and all this not because this is ‘history', but rather because of a deep passionate reactionary loathing that one can conjure up just by giving a piece a title such as ‘Searching for the Historical Jesus'. That will bring the angered mobs and the sarcastic stone throwers out of the wood work, because of powerful emotional hatred, a defensive response to the invasive assault on the human personality which is Christianity, which most people have experienced at one time or another, and obviously have never forgotten, given how angered they become, how rigid, how inflexible, how defensive.

This reaction to Christianity, or to the term "Jesus Christ' is due to the fact that classic Christianity is a form of Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). Historical Christianity is a classic example of RWA thought. RWA personalities have been damaged by their life experience, due to the ruthless way people organize human societies, and the dog eat dog ethos of competition and war fare in all its many forms that have characterized human societies for thousands of years. This leads to a belief that other human beings are extremely dangerous. This is a learned belief. Small babies come into the world full of trust, loving everyone, gurgling and happy, and they only become the shell shocked adults they become after having experienced constant acts of brutalization from human society. This process of socialization leads some to develop the Right Wing Authoritarian personality style, which holds that human beings are dangerous, inherently evil. This RWA belief is encapsulated in the theological doctrine of ‘original sin'. According to RWA thought, the only solution to the problem is to establish a brutally punitive right wing government, ruled over by a kind of dictatorial system, where firm rules are established. The role of government is to ruthlessly enforce the rules, thus constraining human evil. Jesus Christ is then a proxy for this brutal dictatorship, and the vile threats of the gruesome torture chambers of the Christ government, the singular intolerance for diversity or dissent, the threats of the Christ government to make anyone different disappear permanently, all these are just grossly exaggerated examples of the way RWA states work on earth (with a brutal crushing of dissent, with Gestapo and torture chambers, and people disappearing, or dumped into mass graves).

Christians like to say that this passionate loathing of the tyrannical Jesus figure is ‘proof that humanity is sinful.' Actually, this fear of the RWA dictatorship is what arouses such passionate hatred in people at the very mention of the words ‘Jesus Christ'. This ruthless dictator Christ represents everything that is so passionately loathed by most people, who have made the dictators of the earth, such as Hitler, Khan, or Stalin into emblems of loathsomeness, and naturally they also include that other fascist, Jesus, on the list of mortal enemies of human kind, with the difference being that they detest Jesus even more than Hitler. The extraordinary hatred evoked by the RWA term ‘Jesus Christ' is due to this fictional character's extraordinary cruelty, and the threat he symbolically poses to human individuality, to human dignity and liberty. Just as he is a caricature of a despot, with every characteristic taken to ridiculously exaggerated extremes, so the hatred for this particular theological despot increases in direct proportion to his despicable nature.

The world needs ‘salvation' and in RWA thought, and in Christian theology, which is religious propaganda as an expression of RWA political theory, ‘salvation' comes by the ‘terrible swift sword' of a ruthless tyrant, whose threats of ghastly grisly tortures is supposed to keep people in line. (Try holding your finger over a match for, say, ten seconds, and then one can appreciate just what a monstrous psychopath is Jesus. A bullet in the head would do just as well, but that thing must be viciously cruel if he is to rigidly control human thinking and human life the way he has for thousands of years...simple death does not conjure up the level of terror and thus engender the level of blind obedience to authority that this RWA ideology demands, and so instead the Jesus Hitler figure turns to endless torture).

RWA ideology, with all its genocidal intentions (‘all humanity exists in damnation') is nevertheless presented as ‘salvation ideology'. This is typical of all RWA systems of thought. Hitler came to ‘save Germany.' The Khan was going to create a world empire, and thus end war, and bring peace to the world. Jesus is going to viciously torture anyone who doesn't toe the line, thus ending evil so as to save humanity. The cruel irony of RWA thinking, is that RWA types have unconsciously entered into a kind of passive, submissive bargain with dangerous authoritarians, who wind up posing the very threat to humanity which is so feared by the RWA (thus completing a kind of vicious circle). Just as they speak of ‘surrendering to Jesus' they surrender their wills to Hitler, and wind up being torched in some Gotterdammerung. These iron fisted ‘leaders' of theirs, they imagine, will keep them safe because only an iron fist can maintain the law and order required to restrain human evil. Actually it is these dictators, who are psychopaths, who do so much to create the very social system that brutalizes the planet, a process which then creates submissive RWA types, who then support dangerous right wing authoritarians, who then brutalize the planet, creating more RWA types, and the cycle continues endlessly from generation to generation.

As for Jesus Christ, he is just another one of those torturing psychopaths, taken to such an extreme that he is actually a caricature of despot, a kind of self parody. Like all powerful psychopaths, he oppresses and crushes those who are weaker than he is, and he cruelly dominates over the powerless, taking advantage of their helplessness to impose his iron will. It is because he is a dangerous despot that Jesus Christ is hated with a passion that is so deep, so profound, that throughout my life I have found this instant visceral reactionary hate response to be just remarkable. It is also encouraging, for if the human race actually loved such a despot there would something to really worry about (almost all professions of love for Jesus Christ are deeply hypocritical, as you can well imagine how happy and thankful people claim to be to have been terrorized by Jesus into giving up their ‘filthy flesh', as just one example...having become prudish about sexuality they then ‘thank Jesus' for saving them from ‘filthy sins', while their rage against the larger society is motivated by a deeply repressed envy, and certainly not by ‘morality').

. As for Christians, they like to say that people hate that Jesus Hitler figure because ‘they are sinners, and they won't stop' but that isn't true. Jesus Christ is hated for what he so obviously is (and is it not painfully obvious?) - a vicious right wing despot, who crushes the weak beneath his powerful boots, attempts brain washing and mind control, allows no liberties or freedom of belief, action, or deed, and runs a death squad state. Jesus Christ also wants people to remain ‘pure', and perhaps it would be better for them to slice off their genitals and toss them into the fire, you know to escape a flaming eternity in hell fires. Apparently that flesh hating Jesus never thought to not create any flesh, thus avoiding filth in the world. They say that Jesus never tempts anyone, but it would have been Jesus who created those evil genitals, filthy and unfortunate things that they are (and so we see a ridiculous hysteria embedded in Christian doctrine, which collides with simple common sense and the observation of the natural world), It is no sin to hate something so offensive. Better that they hate him, and they do...

With that having been said, I mention it all just because it is almost impossible to discuss ‘the historical Yeshua' without being confronted with all this quarreling, sarcasm, and raging anger, which is uncomfortable, although understandable. This sort of behavior is not rational. It certainly isn't the way to do ‘history'. It is driven by emotion, powerful visceral feelings of disgust and I feel it would be best to bring to the surface and acknowledge it before carrying on...

Historical problems

There are remarkable similarities between the development of the Buddha myth and that of the Christ mythology, and classes are devoted to the study of the subject in university religious study courses. There are also some noteworthy differences, one of the principle differences being that as the Christ myth developed along lines similar to the development of the Buddha mythology, there was a sudden divergence, as the Christ cult was co-opted and then twisted to become a right wing authoritarian ideology. This never happened with Buddhism, and it would seem to me that the best explanation for this key difference is that Buddhism as ideology is more detached from the world, while Christianity was an ideology which intended to change the world. Thus Christianity posed more of a threat, and was co-opted.

In Buddhism we are led towards a dispassionate detachment from the world. Consequently all icons of the Buddha show a tranquil, undisturbed, contented visage..

He who sees Dukkha sees also the arising of Dukkha, sees also the cessation of Dukkha, and sees also the path leading to the cessation of Dukkha...the spiritual holy life is conducive to aversion, detachment, cessation, tranquility, deep penetration, full realization, Nirvana...Nirvana (the cessation of birth, death, old age, suffering) I declare in this very life...All conditioned things are suffering, when one sees this in wisdom then one becomes dispassionate towards suffering.''

The Christian doctrine is not like this, but rather is actively engaged in the world, and the end result of application of Christian social doctrine would be political transformation of the world.

So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen! Luke 14:33

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." Mark 10:25

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. Luke 1:52

No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common...There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold...and it was distributed to each as any had need. Acts 4:32

Buddhism focuses on achieving ‘liberation from the world' thus ending the cycle of birth and rebirth, and this leads to a detachment from the world, while the message of Christianity focused on changing the world, by banning wealth and ending poverty through the equitable distribution of resources. It is a characteristic of the statements attributed to the Christ figure in the gospels that he never had a good thing to say about anyone who was rich, he was harshly critical of all the religious, economic and political powers of the time, and later documents describe the rise of an egalitarian social system where private property was abolished and humanity returned to something resembling the co-operative tribal system of earlier times. Before the rise of the state led to the destruction of the extended tribal family unit, and then to the rise of the nuclear family, and thus to private property, people lived communally, in extended tribal units, much like our ancestors the primate apes and monkeys, and much like American Native peoples were still living just a couple of centuries ago.

(SIDEBAR : Contrary to dogma being spread around lately, marriage has never been ‘the oldest institution' of human society, but rather most societies, throughout history, have practiced various forms of polygany - the form practiced in the earliest times described in the Bible was male dominated polygamy (one man, many women). Women were not married but rather were commodities, and were traded for goats and sheep and various other pieces of property. Since human beings are primates, they lived in tribal groups, and had sex with multiple partners, as primates always do, but the fear of sexual diseases led to male dominated patriarchy, whereby men could have sex with many women, and by making harems private property, they could ensure that no sexually transmitted diseases befell them while they indulged their love of sex with multiple partners. Marriage was, and still is, a property relationship, in that the invention of ‘marriage' and the isolated nuclear family, which followed the break down of human tribal society, also resulted in the protection of ‘private property' since marriage is the property relationship which arose with the state which was then the way to keep everyone else in the tribe away from touching any of your stuff. It then logically followed that the concept of ‘wealth' arose, which requires private property, which requires the destruction of the tribe, which requires marriage, and thus the tribe became ‘rich' and ‘poor'.

Just as another side bar here, I am really no big supporter of this latest ‘gay marriage' business, since it perpetuates the older oppressive property relationship, known as marriage, and indeed, about the only really good reason for gay marriage are reasons of property (health insurance, estate planning, shared benefits, and so on). Human beings are primates, and some form of polygany would always be preferable to the artificial constraints imposed on human nature in service of the ideology of private property by that institution of the state known as ‘marriage'. This tribal expression of sexuality would allow people to live their lives without being the hypocrites they are today in that they have to struggle or simply fake and pretend that they like monogamy, when the truth be told they detest it, and only pretend to be monogamous. As Freud put it, if you want to find out the truth about human nature, you should study the religious prohibitions, since things are only prohibited since it is human nature to do want to do those things and thus the need for the prohibition. You do not need to prohibit cows from eating pigs, but it would be pointless to prohibit cows from eating grass, and this prohibition against eating grass is just what conventional religion attempts to impose upon humanity, violating every natural principle in the process, and justifying it all through a doctrine of ‘original sin' that declares that human nature is ‘naturally evil' and thus requires such curbs, an irrational position in philosophy, since it indicts and condemns the God who created them in such a ‘sinful evil' natural condition. Gay Marriage is just the extension of the same old taboo, with its prohibition of natural human polygamous tribal sexuality in exchange for social respectability and a bunch of extra property.

And I am not heterosexual myself, by the way. Just thought I would mention that in case someone wants to say, ‘oh that oppressive straight.' I have known some gay couples who lived together for years, and every now and then, they would have someone over, and in fact that is quite common for gay couples. So I can see how it would be quite possible for those who participate in gay marriageto do so in order to gain more mainstream acceptability and also all those extra property rights society offers in order to perpetuate the non-tribal distribution of property which is the true basis of the state (not ‘marriage and the family' as religious propagandists keep saying...marriage is an anti-tribal institution designed to perpetuate the inequality of wealth by breaking down the natural tribal order, and thus is not the basis of all human civilization, as they like to say it, but the destructive termite eating away at true human social relationships, which existed for a very long time before the state destroyed this natural relationship in order to foster private property so as to create ‘rich' and ‘poor'. And thus we see that the preservation of this unnatural relationship is the true purpose of marriage. I know that I do not want to marry some guy, and the reason why I am so blunt in expressing my disgust with the idea is that I am not a hypocrite, and instead I just state that I would, like most people, prefer the extended tribal polygamous sexuality which was practiced by human beings throughout the greatest part of history. This would also be true of most people (if anyone really loves monogamy, put up your hands, and that would include all you people out there who are pretending to be monogamous right now, but really aren't - you know who you are, and that would be the majority of you, based on those statistics, so why bother to perpetuate a fraud?)

Early Christianity was not always an RWA ideology, but rather became an RWA ideology because the radical political transformation inherent in politicizing Christian doctrines of the time threatened the status quo by threatening established inequality in property relationships. Because Christianity was a doctrine which threatened the social and political order of things, Christianity was co-opted, while Buddhism was not, but before this time, both religions developed along similar lines ( there is that peculiar myth making and the spinning of legends that takes place for some peculiar reason).

While scholars agree that an historical Buddha figure most likely existed, they also know that it is almost impossible to disentangle history from myth and legend. The problem is identical to that faced by anyone looking for an historical Yeshua. All 'history' of Buddha must be painstakingly reassembled by being disengaged from a hodge podge of myth and legend that have accreted around the historical figure, and all that can be reconstructed is a probable biography. There are no absolutes in history, and that is just a fact of life. No one can say with absolute certainty, ‘there was no historical Buddha' just as not one can say with absolute certainty ‘there was no historical Yeshua.' The converse is also true since history does not consist of certain facts, but rather of establishing probabilities.

The similarities between the Buddha myth and the mythology surrounding the legend of the Christ figure are striking...both myths claimed that the religious figure was a kind of divine being, whose existence was eternal in some heavenly realm...both then were born in a form of divine miracle...both then showed their divine nature in early childhood...both incarnated in human form in order to bring 'salvation' to the world (the Buddha incarnating in human form due to his compassion for humanity, and God so loving the world that the Christ god figure was born in the Christian version of the same myth). There are some noteworthy similarities in doctrine as well as some differences. Both advocated a type of renunciation of desires. In the case of Buddhism this seems more abstract (a kind of withdrawal from desire in preparation for the cessation of existence and suffering that came from the desires of existence). In the case of the gospels, this renunciation was a political act which was rooted firmly in this world (the wealth of the world was to be renounced, so that it could be given to the poor - this is hardly a full renunciation of the world, since the wealth has only been redistributed. There is this other-worldly spirituality in the Christian doctrine as well - if you do this, renouncing treasures on earth, then you will ‘have treasures in heaven')

As you study the early documents of Christianity, you find that this belief system was put into practice in the real world, in the form of what I would call ‘Trojan horse socialism' (a type of socialist political system was established within the larger surrounding Roman Empire - this strategy was obviously unsuccessful, since no trace of this remained in very short order, and rather Christianity quickly became a Right Wing Authoritarian religion, and its politics shifted with this change in theology). It is because the Christian doctrine was so political that this dramatic shift took place in Christianity, while Buddhism did not experience this process of being co-opted, since it posed less a threat to the established order, being more passive in regards to the world, more concerned with ‘escape' from the world, than transforming the world, which is the logical outcome of Christian social doctrines, which is why Christianity was quickly destroyed by those known as ‘the Church Fathers'.

Questionable Scholarship

. Because Christianity is a much hated expression of RWA political propaganda, there is much questionable scholarship out there (especially now, during the age of internet), and this process is driven by passionate emotionalism, which wishes to debunk even the historical existence of Yeshua. This drive to wipe out the existence of an ‘historical Jesus' seems to be the single most important tactical maneuver being used to accomplish the goal of subverting the RWA religious impulse. There are numerous examples of bad scholarship which is presented to a gullible public as fact, when the truth of the matter the claims are specious. (The motivation of those attempting to blot out the ‘historical Jesus' are understandable, but their methods do not bear up under scrutiny, since their scholarship is either ‘devious' (a question of motives) or misinformed.

One of the worst methods employed is to use the canard of equating the ‘historical Yeshua' with the mythological creature ‘Jesus Christ.' This is a not very clever rhetorical stunt (one could accept that an ‘historical Buddha existed' while admitting from the start that there is no relationship between the god being and the actual person, since a process of creating a mythology took place). By refusing to separate ‘Jesus Hercules Christ' from an historical person (‘Yehsua') this rhetorical stunt allows for all sorts of bad arguments to be made, which might be convincing, and actually are very good attacks on ‘Jesus Christ', but have nothing to do with ‘Yeshua'. This is the principle error being made by these questionable scholars, and in the end they have not ‘disproved the existence of the historical person', but rather all they have done is debunked a myth. Proving that a mythological figure never existed is hardly proof of anything, since it is apparent that mythological figures do not exist. By refusing to separate an historical Yeshua from ‘Jesus Christ' a rhetorical stunt is then attempted which it is suggested proves that no such person existed. The argument is specious, and really gets tiresome after a while.

And as for that ideologically driven modus operandi (wipe Yeshua from history) it is clearly driven not by the love of pure history, but rather by emotionalism, and a visceral hatred, and while these emotions are understandable, and while the desire to finally at long last cleanse the earth from the pollution of Jesus (Hitler) Christ is truly a noble and good cause, this still does not excuse polluting the historical method with emotionalism, nor does it excuse the use of clever seeming rhetorical stunts (such as equating the man with the myth, debunking the myth, and then claiming to have disproved the existence of the man...watch out for this very common rhetorical stunt...this is not history, but rather a stunt, and is the source of this activity is emotionalism, not a love of history per se)...

Another method employed out on the internet, in an attempt to achieve the desired result (wipe the historical Yeshua out of existence) consists of spreading misinformation and erroneous facts. The internet being what it is those errors will then be quoted as fact and spread more and more, until they come to be regarded as some kind of gospel truth.

A good example of this is the doctrine being spread over the internet which claims that ‘all ancient gods were born of a virgin.' This would include the Buddha, Hercules, and any other ancient god like being of mythology. Actually there is no ancient god figure of mythology that was born of a virgin, and certainly not the Buddha, since his mother already had other children. It is suggested that ‘Horus was born of a virgin', but iconography shows Isis impaled on the erect penis of Osiris, hardly a virgin birth (this is important since the icon of Isis cradling Horus is now known to us the image of the Madonna, Mary cradling baby Jesus...you could confuse and trick a Catholic by showing them an icon of Isis and Horus and they would think it was Mary and Jesus).

It is false to state that the virgin birth story was ‘borrowed' and this sexual obsession with virginity is uniquely Christian. I have written a page in the past examining the origins of this ‘virgin birth story' and the motivation for this tall tale was to deny David, since Kind David and Solomon qualify as Samaritans (they were thus not Jewish, you see). The virgin birth is a racist polemic, invented by the author of Matthew's gospel, and it is tied to the denial of David (explicit in Matthew's gospel, and also unique to this gospel) and it is also tied to the claim (also unique to Matthew) that ‘Christ was only sent to the Jews' and that the Gentiles were ‘dogs'. Matthew tells us explicitly that Yeshua was not a descendant of David (and thus introduces one of those notorious Biblical contradictions, since the rest of the church writings tell us he was a descendant of David...apologists tell us that ‘Mary was descended from David' and then attempt to torture one of those genealogies of Joseph, so that, while it is a genealogy of Joseph, it was actually a genealogy of Mary, although it if you read those things, they mention Joseph, being, after all, a genealogy of Joseph. Furthermore, we are told that Mary was a Levite, introducing another contradiction, because she could not then be a descendant of David, but all this irrelevant, since Matthew explicitly tells us that Yeshua was not related to David, was not a descendant of David, and thus when we read that ‘Mary got pregnant by a ghost' and then we are explicitly told that ‘Joseph did not have sex with Mary until after the birth', what we are told here is that Christ was not a descendant of David, since Joseph was a descendant of David. This would have made Yeshua one of those ‘Samaritans', rather than being Jewish, and keep in mind that in those days ‘Samaritan' meant the same thing as ‘nigger' means today. No god of antiquity was ‘born of a virgin' and Matthew did not borrow the story from the Greeks or anyone else, but made the whole thing up himself for his own reasons. Legitimate scholars will tell you that the virgin birth tall tale is uniquely Christian, while those repeating ad infinitum the same erroneous internet material will tell you that Buddha, or Horus, or Hercules were ‘born of a virgin'.

Similarly no other god figure of history was crucified, even though there is this endlessly repeated nonsense spreading over the internet that suggests that ‘all ancient gods were crucified'. Once again, you cannot find an example of even one single ‘god' being crucified. No, Hercules was not crucified. Buddha was not crucified. Horus or Osiris were not crucified.

One way to try to win a debate is to resort to rhetorical stunts, and there are many of these worthless arguments flying around the internet which might seem superficially convincing, but only if you are lacking certain facts. Typically these sorts of arguments revolve around distorting the true nature of history and historical documents. We know that historical documents are spin doctored political propaganda. However the suggestion will be made that documents refer to the Christ figure are ‘spin doctored' and thus worthless for research. An attempt is then made to validate other historical records, while debunking any historical record that refers to this historical Yeshua, and anyone who is ignorant of just what history really is might find such a rhetorical stunt to be convincing (the truth is that history relies on all kinds of spin doctored junk, and is only probable and never certain...nevertheless, even though this argument which attempts to invalidate any inconvenient document, thus removing it from history, is nothing more than a rhetorical stunt, Christian apologists are never able to properly respond, since they remain wedded to presenting spin doctored church junk as ‘inerrant history', thus leaving themselves wide open to the charge that they are peddling spin doctored junk instead of history...as I said, this stunt convinces a lot of people, but the truth of the matter is that all historical documents, including church historical documents, are nothing but spin doctored junk, full of hearsay, urban legends, sometimes even deliberate fraud and deceptions (re: the virgin birth story) and if apologists would just admit this fact they could dispose of the stunt easily, but instead they carry on trying to prove that church junk is extremely accurate history, and thus they shoot themselves in the foot again and again, and lose the argument to someone else who is merely employing a rhetorical stunt).

Let us just get the truth straightened out here...Historical documents are all spin doctored pieces of political propaganda, riddled with urban legends, rumors, deliberate falsehoods, and stories that someone told someone else who told someone else, and so on, and the truth of the matter is that in this sense a gospel is every bit as valid as any of that other junk that historians are forced to work with every day. The problems of working with the kind of spin doctored junk left by Assyrians, or ancient Israelites, or gospel writers for that matter, are the same in each case, and so the attempt to forestall a search for history by debunking the value of the source materials is a rhetorical stunt (one must then assume that history presents us with wonderful material to work with, and gospels represent an exception to what is otherwise the general rule, and that is false, and so the argument is pointless, as well as being dishonest, since it depends on deceiving people by leading them to believe that historical source materials do not consist of untrustworthy junk. And they do, and that is a fact of life.)

A big deal is also made about the lack of reference to Yeshua in the historical records, and once again this relies on the employment of two different types of rhetorical stunts. We can equate Yeshua (a real person) with ‘Jesus Zeus Christ' (a mythological creation of the church) and then we can note how famous and important Jesus Zeus Christ is to world history. Then we can note how much history we have describing Alexander of Greece or Julius Caesar, and then we can note how history tells us nothing of the equally famous and important Jesus Zeus Christ. We can then claim that Jesus Zeus Christ did not exist (which is true, and obvious, since mythological creatures do not, by definition, exist),. Then comes the stunt, where we equate some obscure peasant from the middle east (Yeshua) with Jesus Zeus Christ (a fiction invented by the RWA church) and then to complete the task we say that because Jesus Zeus Christ did not exist, leaving no trace, this Yeshua did not exist either, since he also left no trace. This is not an historical argument, but rather it is stunt, and once again it is an argument that church apologists lose again and again and again, since they stubbornly try to argue for the historical existence of that Zeus character. This form of argument is like comparing apples and oranges. Some obscure peasant cannot be compared to Alexander, and it is some obscure peasant we are looking for, ‘the historical Yeshua'. We are not looking for a world famous figure, ‘Jesus Apollo Christ', who, being as famous as Alexander, should be judged by the same yard stick.

Another trick often used is to subject those historical references to the historical Yeshua to a much stricter standard than other references from history. References by Josephus, Roman writers, or contemporaneous Jewish writers can be declared ‘hearsay'. They don't count, and we can go right back to saying ‘there is no objective historical evidence for the existence of the historical figure.' Now if this is true, then it means that the only time anyone could write ‘history' is if they were present themselves and witnessed the events. So the Roman historical writers must never be listened to, since, like historians today, they worked from other sources. No Josephus was not personally present at all the history he relates. No those Roman authors were not personally present to report on all those events they relate. Their entire works are worthless as history, for the simple reason that mixed in with all their other second hand information are very brief references to an historical Yeshua. Now that the references are so brief just goes to show you how unimportant this Yeshua really was (nothing at all like that ever so famous, ever so important Jesus Horus Christ). Or then again, these writers are worthwhile historical sources, provided that they don't mention the historical Yeshua, in which case they become unreliable since they are passing on hearsay. In that case, then, no one must ever write the history of the Napoleonic age, since no one was there themselves, and must work from secondary sources, and thus pass on ‘hearsay'. Actually history should no longer be done, since according to the definition embedded in this rhetorical stunt, what we know of history is actually nothing but worthless hearsay, coming from a variety of secondary sources.

Contrary to what you so often hear, there are references to the ‘historical Yeshua' scattered here and there throughout the historical record. Debunkers use a variety of strategies to attempt to wipe every last trace of Yeshua from history (as I said, this novel approach, this modern approach, seems to be the cause celebre at the moment, and is actually a form of political action, targeting the RWA, and not a form of history, which explains why it is so riddled with rhetorical stunts and bad scholarship, since it really isn't about history at all). One method to use is to suggest that ‘that was a different Jesus from Nazareth'. Whenever you read about ‘Jesus from Nazareth' in the various Jewish writings, when you read about his sorcery, how his mother was a whore who slept with a Roman soldier, when you read about how "Jesus of Nazareth' was nailed up for ‘leading Israel astray', you are expected to accept the far fetched hypothesis that these early Jewish writers were talking about ‘some other Jesus from Nazareth'. You know, not the notorious troublesome "Jesus of Nazareth', but some other person with the same name. This other person, with the same name, who was also troublesome, and also came from Nazareth, well he is allowed to exist. The only Jesus of Nazareth who must not be allowed to exist is the one we are looking for...that won't be allowed. It is ridiculous to suggest that these early Jewish writers were talking about ‘somebody else, who also happened to be named ‘Jesus of Nazareth', and who also happened to be crucified (remarkable parallel existence here, between those two fellows from Nazareth, both named Yeshua, but one of which can be allowed to exist, even be condemned and then be crucified, because he has our permission to exist, since he isn't the one we are looking for...)

This fashion to wipe ‘Jesus of Nazareth' from history is a modern novelty, and is really gathering steam now that the internet has been invented. The earliest Jewish writers on this matter never denied that ‘Jesus of Nazareth' actually existed. Rather they said he was a sorcerer, they told all kinds of bad stories about him, they suggested that his mother was a whore, that his father was a Roman soldier, and all kinds of other naughty things, but they never denied that he existed, and given how troublesome they found that ‘Jesus of Nazareth', if he had never existed, if they had never heard of him, they could have dealt with that problem of theirs by just telling everyone ‘who? Jesus who? From where?'

Another means employed to purge the historical record of any last trace of Yeshua is to suugest that all references that inconveniently prove the opposite are forgeries and thus can be disposed of for that reason. So they can be ‘hearsay', but then all history is ‘hearsay', and so if that doesn't work, they can be ‘spin doctored', but all history is spin doctored, so if that doesn't work, then they can be ‘about some other guy, named Jesus of Nazareth', an entirely different person, who was troublesome and also got crucified (but I guess it was true what they said, ‘can anything good come out of Nazareth?'). If none of these rhetorical stunts work, then as a last fall back position it can be stated that the records were forgeries.

There are historical references to the historical Yeshua, from around the time contemporary with his existence, but some of them are obvious forgeries, probably inserted into older documents by Eusebius in the third century. There are two references in Josephus, one of which is an obvious forgery. However a second version of the forged reference occurs in an Arabic translation of Josephus, and some scholars believe that this version of the passage, which is absent the doctored insertions obviously included by someone, more than likely Eusebius, is probably authentic (perhaps Eusebius was not able to read and write Arabic).We find in Roman writings, an early reference to Christians, and to an historical Jesus who was crucified by Pilate, which points to the existence of a church movement already in existence during the 40s C.E. during the reign of Nero. This description is fairly matter of fact, and absent the theology obviously inserted into Josephus. There are also other Romans writings, one of which was written by a Roman elitist, who poured scorn and contempt on the early church movement (they followed a vile superstition and heresy, which taught that the one they followed, who was crucified by the state, had risen from the dead). He also gave a very interesting social description of this rotten new movement (none of the elite had joined, he stated, which proved how worthless that rotten superstition really was, for the only members they could get were from the lowest of the lower classes - the movement at that time being composed mostly of slaves, who, you might know, were punished for rebellion against Rome by being crucified, the torture death reserved for all rebellious slaves...this helps to explain why slaves all over the Roman empire were apparently warming to this particular superstition, while the Roman elite were fuming with anger at the insulting political metaphor, and writing up scathing attacks on what they referred to as a ‘rotten superstition' , attacks which survive to this day. Such things could only have been written before Christianity was co-opted and became corrupted.)

Now this having been said, it still remains a possibility that ‘those passages were just forgeries.' And this is history we are dealing with here, where nothing is ever certain, and so we are left with probabilities. Given that it would have been more convenient for Jewish writers to do the modern thing, and insist that ‘there never was a Jesus of Nazareth', we can assume that these passages were authentic (what historians would refer to as the ‘argument from embarrassment'). Given how insulting the Roman elite found that slave movement, and their risen hero, who, after being crucified by the Roman elite, rose from the dead, we can assume that this passage was authentic (once again using the historical argument from embarrassment). What I am saying is that it is more probable that such statements were authentic than to insist that they were forgeries. The attempt to introduce doubt is once again a rhetorical stunt, driven by emotionalism. All these rhetorical stunts have one thing in common. The intention is to create an impossible standard, whenever anything refers to that unwanted ‘historical Yeshua', and then demand that this impossible standard be met, while at the same time exempting all other historical reporting from the same harsh standards (or else it would be the end of history, since nothing in history can ever achieve that level of certitude, and can only be more or less probable).

Political Propaganda masquerading as Scholarship

All the rhetorical stunts employed, and all the false facts spread about, in the attempt to disprove the existence of the ‘historical Yeshua' are not examples of the ‘historical method', but rather are a form of political propaganda masquerading as historical scholarship. This explains why the methodology does not resemble the historical method, but rather, like political arguments, consists of rhetorical tricks, and even deceptive or incomplete information, which is designed to convince a person to adopt a certain political point of view (and this is not history as a scientific method). Given that this is not history, but rather ideology, this also explains why this point of view is spread about with all the zeal of an evangelist for an ideology, and why those who hold to this point of view are not first loyal to history and the scientific method, but rather hold to their narrow point of view with a dogmatism that is typically characteristic of so many Christians, who also hold to a narrow ideology, and refuse to question either their own methods or the beliefs that result from applying this methods (and are not the methods the same in either case...at both ends of this extreme we find evangelists using tricky arguments, deceptive information, incomplete information, rhetorical stunts, all designed to convince a person to adopt an ideology, and in both cases the principles of history are trammeled under foot in the process).

The political purpose supposedly being served by debunking the existence of the historical Yeshua is the resistance to the Right Wing Authoritarian system, of which Jesus Hermes Christ is the symbolic representation encapsulated in the form of a theological doctrine. And theology is just politics concealed, in that as in heaven, so on earth, and so in the end, all theology finds its expression in the formation of a human society and political order here on earth. In the case of Jesus Jupiter Christ this political system would be an extreme right wing theocratic dictatorship, with ruthless enforcement of law and order, torture chambers, death squads, intolerance of dissent or difference, no freedom of speech, no tolerance for unconventional thought or unconventional lifestyle choices. In the symbol of Yeshua we find that we are invited, as the Roman slaves were invited, to transfer our conscience to the victims of state sponsored terrorism and torture. This was not only insulting to the Roman elite, who were thus equated with the devil powers (the torturers, the crucifiers, the oppressors of slaves). All this is turned upside down in the RWA theology of Jesus Zeus Christ. Here we are invited to transfer our conscience to the perpetrators of torture and state sponsored terrorism, and the symbolic proxy for this transfer is Jesus Osiris Christ. We are invited to identify with the torturer, so in a weird way, the one wielding the whip is a proxy for God Almighty, the one pounding in the nails is a proxy for God Almighty. Those who made protesting teenagers and young twenty somethings disappear in Argentina are proxies for God Almighty. One need not identify with the victims of terror or torture, since, if they did not accept the RWA system ‘into their hearts before they died' then that Jesus Adolph Christ is going to torture them a lot worse than what they got down here, so why bother humanizing them, or making a connection with them, and thus getting emotionally involved with the condemned, the damned. I have heard Christians say during a famine the most important thing is to get over there before the starved waste away and die and go to hell ‘without Jesus'. The most important thing was to get over to Iraq and save Muslims who might die during the invasion, because they did not ‘accept Jesus before they died in that bombing.' This type of twisted morality always results when people identify with the torturer rather than identifying with the victim of torture, for through Jesus Khan Christ the believer is led to identify with Caesar, and with the torturers, for as anyone can clearly see, Jesus Mengele Christ is a torturer and brutal tyrant. As on heaven, so on earth.

And it is this great evil, the great evil of Christian theology, and the great destruction known as Christian salvation (how Orwellian) that is the real target of those who keep using stunts and tricks and falsehoods to undermine the ‘historical Yeshua'. In the end this a type of political argument, and like the arguments of the Christian apologists they oppose, their arguments are not strong enough to be subjected to real criticism, and rely on either ignorance or the desire to believe if they are to be convincing. The reason for this is that, all questions of motives and objectives aside (they may be good motives, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions) the arguments themselves are similar in both cases, and are driven by ideology, and thus consist of similar tactics (like all political arguments, consisting of rhetorical stunts, bad information, with the only criteria governing the argument being to win at all costs...with the debunkers determined to undermine the Right Wing Authoritarian system by destroying the pillar of support, and this they suppose they will do by destroying the historical Yeshua, and all is fair in love and scholarship of this sort...while their opponents, the apologists, are determined to prop up the RWA system by making ridiculous arguments designed to prove the historical Jesus Zeus Christ, because all is fair when it comes time to save a soul from the torture chambers of Jesus Hitler Christ).

These are two flip sides of the coin here, and we should keep in mind that this is not an historical argument, but rather a political battle, with some first century slave movement caught in the middle of the tug of war. To qualify as a genuine historical debate, it would be necessary that some ground rules be adhered to, but both sides of that quarrel remain stubbornly entrenched in their ideology, for the purposes of ‘winning', which is what politics is always about (while in history, in theory at least, as in all science, you are supposed to be more wedded to the truth than you are wedded to ‘winning').


---END OF PART ONE--- --LINKS-- Included here are links to further discussion of some of the issues I touched on above.

As I mentioned, each Christmas and each Easter I write protest pieces, just to get myself into the ‘Holiday mood'. Since Christmas is a holiday which celebrates a racist myth, typically at Christmas I focus on racism, while at Easter I focus on that curious upside down thing known as ‘salvation' and ‘theology', whereby we are all invited to identify with the torturer, using the symbol of a victim of torture to effect this transfer of conscience to the torturer (in the form of Jesus Mengele Christ, who, after having been tortured to death by the state, then turned around and set up his own torture state, with himself as the principle state terrorist...this curious example of co-opting a movement is going to be my theme for next Easter, in that by studying theology we can study the process of how the oppressors and the torturers of slaves go about that dirty job of turning everything upside down...the Church Fathers were quite explicit in describing in their letters to each other exactly this RWA agenda, and so these voluminous letters are a gold mine of material, and I now have a year to do research, and ponder and think and learn all the general principles of how the RWA movement corrupts and co-opts counter movements, which will be my big theme for next Easter...

A discussion of the racism which is the true explanation of the ‘virgin birth myth', the theme of my previous Christmas writings, can be found on pages from previous years, such as the following...

The origins of the Virgin Birth Story

The racist origins of the Christmas myth