Gospel Index





The crucifixion stories
the passion narratives


Urban legends and myths in the gospels


     The gospels are notorious for presenting inconsistent contradictory accounts in the passion narratives of what was said to have taken place after the crucifixion , and the testimony of Paul conflicts with them all. As just a few examples of these myths and urban legends consider the following.

" But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet ... Jesus said to her, "Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week (note the Sunday after the crucifixion_, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit." John 20:11

"And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?" And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back; —it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you." And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid." Mark 16:1 (note that the verses following this passage do not exist in the earliest manuscripts and were added later by the church (chosen out of a number of possible alternate endings that began circulating at a later time) and these additional passages only create further contradictions and historical inconsistencies.)

"But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise." And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told this to the apostles." (Luke 24:1)

"Jesus said to her, "Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her." John 20:17

"Now after the sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulchre ... The angel said ... ‘Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I have told you.' So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, "Hail!" And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him." Matthew 28:1

"On the evening of that day, the first day of the week (the Sunday right after the crucifixion) ... Jesus came and stood among them ...As the Father sent me I now send you ... he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit." John 20:19

"(Forty days after the crucifixion) Jesus said to them, "You will receive the Holy Spirit in not many days from now ... (the disciples are instructed to not preach but to rather wait for Pentecost day to receive the Holy Spirit) ... And when the day of Pentecost (fifty days after the crucifixion) had fully arrived ... they were all filled with the Holy Spirit..." Acts 1:5, Acts 2:1

     Now this sort of thing could go on and on but just considering the conflicting testimony collected above should be enough to illustrate that the stories surrounding the events of the crucifixion were based on urban legends and rumors going around, and are no more historical than the urban legends and tall tales surrounding Judas. (A favorite apologetic dodge consists of holding a mock trial in which the gospels are put on the stand and a jury is thoroughly convinced by the testimony that the testimony was infallible and convincing. Testimony just on the matter of Judas would be thrown out of court, and when you add on the rest of these things it only makes matters even worse, so this is just a propaganda ploy, as you should be able to tell just by considering the matters above.) The problems are only compounded when we compare the earlier testimony of Paul.

      Paul's description of the events surrounding the crucifixion conflicts with the gospel narratives. For example, in the gospels Christ appeared to the women first, although the gospel accounts are inconsistent concerning which women were present and how events unfolded. Paul states that he ‘appeared to the twelve', indicating that Paul was unfamiliar with the traditions concerning Judas. According to the first chapter of Acts Christ rose to heaven, and the immediately after this Judas was replaced, making the eleven disciples twelve once again. According to the gospel account, Judas threw the money down into the temple, and then went out and hung himself before any resurrection took place, leaving eleven disciples and no Judas to witness the post resurrection experiences of the other eleven disciples. According to Acts, immediately after the ascension, Peter tells the other disciples that Judas bought a field with his blood money, and then tripped and his guts spilled out and he died (an alternate tradition of the death of Judas, but, nevertheless, he was already dead). This Judas tradition seemed to be spread among churches by word of mouth, becoming something similar to those 'urban legends' that people hear so much about, and eventually entered into the gospel in variant and conflicting forms (depending on which church was spreading around which tale and which gospel tradition was then produced by that church). Paul knew nothing of Judas.

     Paul claims to have met the disciples (see Galatians). If Paul was familiar with the story of Judas, and how could he not be, then he should have mentioned that he appeared to the eleven, not to the twelve. In the following passage ‘James' is mentioned separately, as though he were not one of the twelve. The passage then goes on to discuss whether or not the dead are raised, this apparently being a subject of controversy, and Paul makes no mention of Lazarus, or of the great crowds of dead people who supposedly rose up out of their graves with Christ, as mentioned in the gospel of Matthew, and you would think that, if Paul was familiar with these stories, and was arguing in favor of the raising of the dead, that this would be perfect time to mention such ‘evidence', but he knows nothing of such matters. This indicates that the gospels were composed later than the time of Paul, who was unfamiliar with the details of the passion narratives.

"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also. For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God." (1 Corinthians 15:3)

     The key phrase in the above passage is ‘what I received'. Paul was himself not an actual witness to the historical Christ. Paul then was only in a better position than the churches which produced the gospel accounts out of what they had also received in that Paul could check matters out with apostles, who were still alive at the time he wrote, and whom he claimed to have met in person.

     I find it interesting that Paul, who lived during the time of Christ, was unfamiliar with the man. The gospel of Mark was the earliest composed and the author refers to the ‘messianic secret'. Christ is continually portrayed as telling his disciples to keep his identity secret. Scholars have had a lot to say about Mark's ‘messianic secret' (theories abound) but to me it would appear to be a polemical reference to Christ as an unknown figure in his time. Apparently people were saying, ‘Christ? Who is that?' Mark's polemical response to Christ's lack of notoriety was to suggest then that he was unknown because ‘it was a secret'. (This is not necessarily a fact, but to my ears sounds a lot like a polemical justification.) It would appear then that outside of Palestine the fame of Christ was a post mortem phenomena (Paul was from Tarsus, outside the area of Judea, and had no testimony to deliver about Christ that was not post mortem and therefore, Paul's testimony is of what ‘he received' from others).

     The story of Judas is clearly an urban legend and the stories surrounding the crucifixion are also clearly urban legends and composites of various myths, tales and stories that were circulating in churches in later years when the gospels were actually composed. No disciple, or eye witnesses, could have ever composed such variant testimony as what we find here, and certainly something as memorable as the death of Judas we would expect to be remembered exactly as it happened. What is more than likely true is that Judas never actually existed, and was in fact a polemical character invented by Mark to make another one of his points in parable form. He then became the subject of urban legends, and then as now, people are often led to believe that such legends are true, when in their origins they have no basis in fact. Similar legendary tales and rumors were circulating which purported to describe the crucifixion and its aftermath, and this testimony is about as reliable as the testimony concerning Judas.

     What it all means in the end is that the authority of preachers is questionable, based as it is on the polemical appeal to the ‘authority of scripture' (the connection between this false belief and the polemical needs of preachers and evangelists is to obvious and not much more needs to be said about it than that...) To quote the gospel of Luke, ‘why don't you decide for yourselves what is right' instead of relying on what are purported to be authorities. When confronted with urban legends of the type which compose the Bible it seems you really don't have much choice in the matter, since no such infallible or inerrant authority exists at the end of the day.

The story of Judas as urban legend and myth in the gospels

John the Baptist and the Baptism of Christ





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A Unified Field Theory

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The Unified Field Theory
is also available as a zip file -> unified.zip

Introduction :The Pioneer Effect and the New Physics. A brief description of the new physics required to explain the 'Pioneer Effect', which is the constant deceleration of space craft as they fly through space.










Principles of Evolution: A Study in the Evolution of Bedbugs


A couple of years ago my bedroom was invaded by bedbugs. There were two variant genetic lines. One type of bedbug was an enlongated, thin, tubular insect, and the second genetic line was a flat, perfectly circular insect. The result of the cross breeding of these two genetically distinct variants was the production of a bedbug with charcteristics of both, an enlongated, flat bedbug with a central bulge (such that the shape of the bedbug was somewhere between 'long' and 'circular'). The long skinny bedbugs were such strange and unfamiliar looking insects that at first I did not recognize them as being bedbugs, and considered them to be a seperate species of insect. However, as the photographs of bedbugs above indicate, enlongated and skinny bedbugs are not uncommon, and the photographs also show the variants that are produced by genetic combinations that result in an insect somewhere in between 'circular' and 'enlongated'.

Therefore it is my hypothesis that evolution occurs by means of the transfer of dominate genes, with the production of such dominant genes being the product of 'biological algorithms', a genetic software program that brings physical characteristics into harmony with behavior, such that when behavior changes, and a conflict then exists, this acts as a trigger and causes the release of dominant genes. The result is rapid evolution of species. The bedbug is a relatively new insect, not the product of millions of years of evolution but rather an insect that is evolving in real time. The newly emerging dominant form of the insect is the flat, round ciruclar insect, well adapted to living in human bedrooms (it is flat, rather than tubular, thus allowing it to hide in the smallest cracks, living a stealthy lifestyle, and it is round, which gives the insect a maximum storage capacity such that it must endanger itself only a few times a month by emerging to feed.

Other examples of rapid evolution include the development of long legs in an invasive species of toad in Australia. As the toads move into the mountainous regions of Australia, and their behvaior changes, making them 'climbing toads', over the course of just a couple of decades the toads in the highlands have grown long legs specially adapted to climbing. It is worth noting here that the toads are poisonous, and are a successful invasive species because they have no natural predators in Australia, and so it would not be the case that the toads with long legs were 'the fittest survivors', because all the toads are survivors, and therefore predation does not explain the rapid emergence and spread of such well adapted, long legged toads. Once again we see evidence for the existence of biological algorithms and the rapid spread of dominant genes through a population, which once introduced proceed to overwhelm the older genes which are being replaced (making toad long legged and a bed bug round and flat).


A Theological Experiment

My interest in pursuing the Unified Field Theory is spurred on by my need to discover the theoretical explanation of a new form of propulsion (as explained on this page: Why the Unified Field Theory?). The experiment involving the bedbugs came out of nowhere.

I also believe that it is possible to justify theological propositions using experimental methods. If a thing is an objective truth then it can be verified and proven true by means of experimentation. Such a theological proposition is of more value than a ‘divine revelation’, since such revelations depend upon nothing more than establishing authority figures which requires the creation of artificial hierarchies, for the only reason why I might be encouraged to believe an authority figure who orders me to believe unsubstantiated opinions is if I could somehow be convinced that this authority possessed a mind that was somehow superior to mine, and thus was fit to express opinions as though opinions were unquestionable facts and thus worthy of being elevated to the status of absolute dogma.

There is a self evident human inequality which is visibly apparent. Some people are ‘beautiful’ and thus are the true elite on this planet, and some people are not. It is this sexual inequality and the degeneration that follows upon beauty that is the true driving force behind all the evil that happens on earth. The need for ruthless oppression and the pursuit of wealth and the consequent creation of suffering and poverty which must follow upon this practice is for the purpose of creating an artificial alpha elite.

The true elites are the young and the beautiful. The artificial elite are the rich and the wealthy. The elite aging rich artificial alpha male has no good looks, for he is physically degenerate, but he will be found escorting beauty because he has a beautiful wallet. If he loses his wallet he will be found at home with all the other unattractive aged beta males sitting in a rocking chair watching reruns of Bonanza. No money, no sex. It is for this reason that the alpha males are found to be so ruthless and so violent in pursuit of their goal. The alpha male has fallen. The beta male has arisen and now the whole planet is full of ruinous destruction for it.

We see in religion a confused and contradictory reaction to this reality. On the one hand religion preaches a sexless heaven where castration and the clitorectomy create ‘pure spirits’. Muslims throw women under sacks. On the other hand religion supports hierarchy and is the prop of the elite alpha male. It is for this reason that religion is incoherent when it comes to speaking about sex.

Now we see this same principle at work in all of nature. Guppies dance and show off their colorful tails and the guppy who dances with the most colorful tail is the sexually successful guppy. Therefore it is the doctrine of the ruthless oppressor which teaches that the solution to human sexual violence is to be found in castration and the creation of pure ghosts. This would be equivalent to damning an aardvark for having the ‘sinful aardvark nature’ or prosecuting an anteater for the high crime of ‘ant genocide’.

Therefore it was my theological hypothesis that the correct solution to this problem is to give every guppy a beautiful colorful tail. I compare this solution to the classic religious solution which is to cut off every tail since having a tail is ‘sinful’. If having a tail is sinful then God must be sinful for no human being has any choice in deciding whether or not they would be born with a colorful tail, or whether they would not.

When I was young I was a beautiful guppy with a lovely tail. So everyone seemed to think. I am older now. My nose became very badly sunburned and destroyed. It seemed good to me to test my hypothesis by using these ‘biological algorithms’ to correct this problem. I healed half my nose as you can see by the line separating the still very dark patch on the side in the photograph below.





I documented my experiment on these pages. one two t hree four fi ve six


I have confirmed to my own satisfaction that my theological proposition is correct and that religious dogma is erroneous, being based as it was upon nothing more than ‘divine revelation’ which is just a form of opinionated speculation. For the time being I am not continuing this experiment, for I must wait until the weather on this planet improves, and the dark clouds of ruthless oppression break letting a little sun shine come through so that I can show the world the truth about God, by showing people how God goes about giving an old guppy back his beautiful colorful tail.


Until then I will have to sit on the sidelines, while all my scientific breakthroughs are deliberately ignored, while I wonder to myself what ever in the world could be wrong with the human race, because what this all will prove at the end of it all is that there definitely was something wrong with the people on this planet.