WAS JESUS CRUCIFIED IN ANOTHER WORLD?

JESUS – THE SECOND ADAM

Earl Doherty and many others believe that the first Christians never believed in a Jesus who lived on earth but in one who lived and was crucified and slain in the spirit world or another world and who appeared on earth after his resurrection from the dead.

Second Peter states that the apostles did not give out cleverly devised myths when they revealed to the world the power and the coming of the Lord Jesus but were eyewitnesses to a visionary event, the transfiguration, that revealed the majesty of Jesus (1:16). In other words, a vision verified the power and coming of Jesus. It doesn't hint that it means the second coming of Christ. It just says coming. The vision he recounts said nothing or indicated nothing about a second coming. Second Peter is plainly saying that Jesus' power and coming had to be revealed to the apostles in a vision. He was not heard of before. This supports the idea that there was no Jesus known of until some people claimed to be having visions of this being who claimed to have been crucified and died and rose again. Could this being have claimed to have been crucified not on earth but another world?

Paul, the apostle and first Christian writer, writing not many years after Jesus supposedly died according to the gospels, described Jesus as the second Adam. The first Adam was the first of his kind, the originator of the human race. Christians say Jesus was the second Adam not in the sense that God made him directly like he made Adam without a father and mother. They say Paul agreed for Paul wrote that Jesus had a mother. This argument is weak for Paul wrote that Jesus was born of woman so his mother could have been just a host mother and Jesus could have been made directly in her womb without her egg and without a sperm. They say that Jesus was not the second Adam in the sense that he would father a new race like Adam for he didn’t. Or in the sense that Adam made a decision that destroyed us and Jesus was to make this decision anew but this time to bring us life for it has not undone what Adam did except for some but in the sense that he was the first to be our spiritual father and save us and found a new race not by procreation but by changing us to save us. We cannot argue that Jesus was the second Adam in the sense that he was not an earthly man at all but the first of his kind on the basis of him being called the second Adam only. It could be that but we need more.

Read 1 Corinthians 15:45-50. Paul said that Adam was made of dust and became a soul or person when he became alive and that Jesus was something that became a life-giving spirit when he came alive too. Paul was on about life starting because he quoted Genesis saying that Adam became a living being to show this. Adam who came alive is linked to Jesus coming alive meaning the first time both of them came alive because Paul could not make a comparison between a man becoming alive and a man who had been alive coming back to life. Paul is saying that Jesus always had the spiritual body he came back from the dead in. This part of his letter is not on about the resurrection as most Christians think but about the nature of Jesus’ body before and after his return from the dead.

Paul says it is not the spiritual that takes place first but the physical and the physical becomes spiritual. To recap, Paul says that Adam became a living being of dust and the last Adam became a life-giving spirit meaning that Adam and Jesus came alive for the first time with very different natures and bodies. He then says the physical comes before the spiritual and therefore that the first man was the man of dust from earth for Adam was made of dust and those who are of the man of Heaven, Jesus, are not like this for Jesus is not like it. So Adam the physical being was made before the spiritual being Jesus. He is not saying then that Jesus had to have a body like ours before he could become a spiritual being. He is denying that Jesus had a body like ours. He is denying the gospel Jesus who did have such a body.

Notice how Adam does not exist until he becomes alive. The comparison between him and Jesus shows that Jesus may always have been a spiritual being and was created as such and was put to death and rose again as such. This would imply a heavenly crucifixion or an invisible one on earth carried out by bad angels.

Christians argue that Paul simply said that Jesus had to have a physical body before he could become a resurrected spiritual being. This is a mistake. Paul would not have believed such a silly thing – he believed in angels who were non-physical beings. He believed God had the power to put an angel out of existence or to sleep so that it is as good as dead and then bring it back to life.

CRUCIFIED BY ANGELS IN SPIRIT WORLD?

Paul strongly indicates that Jesus was not known as a man by anybody living in his day.

Paul declared that none of the rulers of the world or the age knew that God’s ways are strange to us and that he brings us to Heaven for if they had they would not have crucified Jesus (1 Corinthians 2:8).

There are two interpretations for what Paul means by rulers. Choose the one you want.

One: Rulers who crucified Jesus are human kings and princes.

The standard Christian view is that these rulers are Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas the high priest of the Jews.

If this view is correct then the gospels are unreliable because they say Pilate was forced to execute Jesus and Caiaphus did not have Jesus crucified and was never said to have wanted that to happen to Jesus. He was the high priest of the Jews and so could not afford to scandalise his religion by advocating a form of execution that was against his religion. In Pilate’s case, you can’t say he would not have killed Jesus had he known who he was for Pilate felt he had no choice.

If Paul meant the political leaders, they did not know Jesus who taught such things. Yet the gospels say that Jesus was well known so that would mean Paul is denying the gospels.

Suppose Paul wrote that the rulers are the human rulers of the world. That suggests all the rulers of the world which again contradicts the gospels. He did not need to say rulers of the world if he meant a few rulers so he meant all rulers of the world.

Some say the context shows human rulers are meant for verse 6 says they will pass away and they are called men. But Paul means passing away by losing their power. You could talk that way if the rulers were still alive but not rulers anymore. If it’s human rulers then Paul is saying that the whole world executed Jesus, which contradicts the gospels. This Jesus seems to have died in the distant past when Paul thinks all the rulers were hell-bent on killing him and succeeded. If there is no hint of the rulers being supernatural beings then they are natural rulers. They are earthmen.

Colossians 2:15 says that Jesus openly aired the dirty linen of the rulers by dying on the cross and triumphing over them on the cross. It means he atoned for sins on the cross. The resurrection is not mentioned. It does not say who nailed him. It just says he triumphed over the rulers.

If this is earthly rulers then this differs from the gospels which say that Jesus did not show up and humiliate and disarm the rulers of the earth by dying. The gospels say it was not Pilate or Rome’s fault that Jesus was killed and says that his death had more to do with the Jewish people than the rulers. If it refers to human rulers then Jesus did not rise from the dead in the first century but some time in the distant past or in another world when he made a fool of the kings and destroyed their kingly powers and overthrew them. He became king by dying on the cross and putting people right with God by this sacrificial death.

What supports the human ruler interpretation is the fact that nothing in the context indicates supernatural rulers. Some say Paul wrote in the context that we must not be deceived by philosophies about elemental spirits. But that was already refuted by his saying that Jesus was the image of the invisible God and the only supernatural being we need so that being dealt with has no link to the rulers mentioned later. Later he writes that the cross cancelled all the penalties we would have to pay for our sins and humiliated the rulers and therefore nobody must judge us in questions of food and drink or new moons or get us to worship angels. This would mean human regulations because earthly rulers try to tell you what to eat and drink and how and what to worship. Some would argue that the rulers were spiritual for getting rid of them frees us from rules about food and angels and feasts. But what Paul could have meant was that it is not getting rid of the rulers that does this but the work of the cross. The cross frees us for it gives us strength to stand up to these people. He makes it clear he means human beings for he says we are not to tell them tell us what to do or judge us for the cross has saved us from their rules: “Let no one sit in judgement on you” (Colossians 2:16).

So Colossians is telling us that Jesus lived in the far distant past.

Haley in his Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible (page 358) observes that the Bible says that the rulers did not know Jesus (John 16:3; Acts 3:17; 1 Corinthians 2:8). Matthew said different (21:38).

He resolves the conflict by saying that the rulers who did not know were meant in the first case and the ones who did know in the second. This accuses the God who supposedly wrote the Bible of slander for he did not exclude anybody when he condemned the rulers.

And also, Haley says that the knowledge Jesus meant was the experience of knowing that Jesus saved you. But the verses could mean ordinary knowledge therefore they do mean it. Remember, don’t go for a complex explanation when a simpler one will do.

Two: Rulers are angels

Paul sometimes calls the evil angels that rule the world rulers and dominions and thrones. In Christian and Jewish literature the idea that there were such rulers was shown to be extremely widespread among the people (Revelation 19:17; 7:1; 14:18; Jubilees 2:2; 1 Enoch 60:17). Probability alone then shows that Paul meant supernatural rulers for he would have been clear if he meant earthly rulers. He called them archons which is the word for supernatural angelic rules and demons. Ephesians 1:21 says that God put Christ over all the rulers and them under his feet. Jesus did not do this with the earthly rulers for they could not be under his feet until they submit to him. The Church might say that he did for he is the real boss. But this would be as true of him before the resurrection as after for he was still the Son of God.

The rulers could be angels but still be called men. The angel that fought with Jacob was called a man. Jesus claimed to be a supernatural messenger of God though he claimed to be a man too.

1 Peter 3:22 says that when Jesus went into Heaven all the angels and rulers were made to obey him. The rulers are rebel supernatural beings for he had to go to Heaven to make them do what he wanted. He had to force them.

The view that the rulers who executed Jesus are evil or hostile angelic powers that Christ battered into submission by his crucifixion is to be considered proven (GA Wells Replies to Criticism of His Books on Jesus). See also Kittel’s Standard Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.

The angelic rulers put Jesus to death by nailing him to a cross. He did not die in public. If he was killed on earth then it was a crucifixion that no human eye seen because it was supernatural beings that performed the crucifixion. He could have been crucified in the spirit world.

The Christians might say that the rulers used human beings to kill Jesus so the gospels could still be right. But why then did they go to so much trouble to get rid of Jesus? They were not likely to for Paul says they did not know who he was (1 Corinthians 2:8, 9) so if they wanted rid of him they would have done their dirty work themselves. And would Paul talk as if angels crucified Jesus if men did it? If John kills Mary in a car crash you don’t say the devil killed her though the Devil being evil would be the ultimate cause. There is no reason at all to believe the angels killed Jesus through men. When the epistles which were for teaching the basics didn’t say men were used men were not used. Period.

The Ascension of Isaiah says “The Lord, who will be called Christ, will descend into the world,…the God of that world will stretch out his hand against the Son, and they will lay hands on him and crucify him on a tree, without knowing who he is” (9:4). 11:19 says this God was Satan who turned the Children of Israel against Christ. Jesus then was probably crucified not by men but by angels in Heaven or some other non-earthly realm. The rulers not knowing Jesus implies that Jesus did no miracles and gave no evidence of being sinless and therefore the supreme prophet and contradicts the gospels which say Jesus was known to the evil angels. The Ascension of Isaiah claims that the death of Jesus took place in secret (www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_sd/jconf_hall.html, Jesus Conference). The Ascension dates from the early second century.

(See: www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/jconf_stuckenbruck.html).

Jesus then was probably crucified not by men but by angels in Heaven or some other non-earthly realm.

Our conclusion is, if the rulers of the world that crucified Jesus were men or if they were angels then Jesus was not crucified the way the gospels say. If it were the rulers of the world then Jesus died thousands of years before Paul. If it were angels then no human being may have known about the crucifixion until it was revealed in visions. This does not make it likely then that Jesus really existed.

THE UNSUBSTANTIATED CHRIST IN HEBREWS

The epistle to the Hebrews is so closely entwined to Pauline thought that most Christians have surmised that it is Paul’s own work. It was probably written before 70 AD and is older than the gospels because it is not marked by the traditions that produced the gospels. The argument of the epistle is that Jesus was a better priest than the Jewish priesthood and it never speaks of the Temple. It speaks as if it were written before the Temple was built. In 7:27, it says that the High Priest offered sacrifice for sin every day. This was never done in the Jewish Temple (page 58, The Historical Evidence for Jesus). In Hebrews 9:3 he writes that the altar of incense was in the Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the Tabernacle. It was never put there in the Temple. The epistle speaks as if it were written before the time of Solomon's Temple when the Jews were using a tent called the Tabernacle for worship. The author was trying to plot the gospel of Jesus and the salvation won by him in those times. He was testifying that Jesus lived centuries before the time Christians want to believe he lived.

Hebrews says that Jesus did away with the need for sacrifices by his death and was a descendant of Abraham (Hebrews 2). None of this proves that Jesus was an earthly man nor does it indicate that Jesus was born after Abraham’s time and was literally of his seed. Even if it did, the Law of Moses holds that it is possible for other races to become Jews not by having their flesh changed but legally which means that they can become descendants of Abraham by right and not by blood. God could turn a man who was not descended from Abraham into a physical and blood descendant by changing his flesh. God knowing Jesus would offer the sacrifice would always have considered other sacrifices unnecessary so that gives us no clue as to whether Jesus was born after Moses set up the sacrifice system or before.

Nothing in Hebrews 2 indicates when Jesus lived and Jesus could have been a man who lived in another world. It considers first of all how Jesus was not like the angels and spends time on it indicating that Hebrews was written for those who saw Jesus as a otherworldly being. So it sees the need to establish Jesus’ humanity. Now when Hebrews says that Jesus had to be flesh and blood in order to have compassion on our frailties by being frail himself it is obvious that the Hebrews author is grasping at straws to prove that Jesus was a fleshly being. Had Jesus lived recently there would have been no need for that. And Jesus could have been able to understand us without taking our nature. An alien with feelings could understand us to have compassion on us despite being a totally different kind of being.

We are told that Jesus had to take flesh and blood like us so that he might destroy the power of Satan by his death (v14). Jesus did not have to do this at all. As long as he had some kind of a body he could have suffered and died for us so are we taught the absurdity that it needed to be human flesh and blood? I believe that the Christian doctrine that Jesus needed to have flesh like us and not just any kind of flesh arises from the desire to prove theologically that there was a man called Jesus. The logic was that since there was no evidence for such a man the evidence had to be manufactured theologically.

The same chapter also relates that because Jesus was perfected through suffering he sanctifies others and he and the others have the same origin which is why he can call ordinary people brothers. The author quotes Psalm 22:22 as the words of Jesus as proving that Jesus regards all mankind as brothers. It might mean that Jesus wrote the psalm when he was on earth which would place him well before the time he was said to have lived. If Jesus wrote the Psalm which may have been preserved and edited by David in the book of Psalms and if he suffered that much before his crucifixion then we are not dealing with the Jesus of the gospels here but a nebulous figure from long long ago. Now when the letter does not hint when Jesus lived it is plain that it must be understood to be saying that Jesus did physically write the psalm. Remember, different authors must be put into their own individual contexts. Don’t do what the Christians do and interpret each author in the light of other authors. That’s deception.

Hebrews 5:1-6 tells us that every high priest has been taken out of mankind to act for men in their relationship with God and to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. So he can sympathise with those he acts for because like them he suffers from ignorance and uncertainty which causes weakness. Because of his ignorance and uncertainty which produce weakness he has to make sacrifices for his sins as well as those of others. It then goes on to say that no priest takes this honour to himself but has to be called by God and even Jesus was no exception. (Incidentally, Jesus then could not have been God. If he was God and a man then he had to have been a priest automatically for he would naturally offer his sufferings and works as a man to God.)

This says that ignorance and uncertainty cause weakness and weakness causes sin. The gospel Jesus never made any claim to know all. In fact he listened to the Devil’s temptations which shows that there was weakness there and that he wanted to be tempted which is a sin in itself. This Jesus from Hebrews who didn’t need to make sin offerings for himself is definitely not the Jesus of the gospels. The gospels were lies. Hebrews says that men priests are necessarily ignorant and weak. So he is denying then that Jesus was a man like us that way. He might have been another species of man living on another world or at the gate of Heaven but he wasn’t a man like us that way.

The Law of Moses speaks of sin not necessarily as doing wrong deliberately but as making mistakes as well. That is why it made provision for unknown offences. This totally contradicts all human laws of decency and fairness for nobody should be punished or have to pay for unknown or unintentional mistakes to God. (We might have to make people pay for mistakes on earth but that is so that the suffering caused may be corrected but our mistakes do God who is all powerful no harm.) We have enough to worry about without that nonsense. Hebrews seems to be speaking of that kind of sin, unintentional sin, here. It speaks of ignorance and uncertainty causing the weakness that results in sin so it must be on about unintentional sin primarily. If Jesus was free from this kind of sin then he wasn’t ignorant or uncertain about anything. He wasn’t like us that way. Nobody could write that way about a man that had actually lived recently and if the gospels were even partly true.

Hebrews 7:23 states that the reason there had to be a huge number of priest under the old covenant was because the priests were subject to dying. But Christ because he doesn’t die never loses his priesthood. The old covenant could have had the one priest only. When he dies then replace him. God ordains priests so God can decide how the successor priest is ordained perhaps by election or something. One priest would have been a better picture of the priesthood of Christ assuming that Christians are right in saying that the Old Testament priesthood existed only to point to the work of Christ whether these priests realised it or not. Hebrews is actually being silly in saying many priests were needed because priests die and the supply had to be kept up. It was an attempt to justify the idea that Jesus wasn’t dead anymore. Again this desperation to show that Jesus was alive speaks of how poor the evidence for his resurrection was. Also Jesus must have lost his priesthood when he died so is Hebrews accidentally telling us that Jesus never died? If it is then the gospel evidence for Jesus is nonsense for if the death was doubtful though it was the main event in these works then everything else is more doubtful. Is it the reflection of a tradition in Christianity that Jesus never died?

If Jesus became a priest after his death when he became alive again then the gospels are lying that Jesus offered his death to God before it happened.

If Jesus brought in the New Covenant in which he is the High Priest and the Priest of God meaning that the priests of the Old Covenant which was abolished by the New does that mean that Jesus lived and died in the latter times – say a few decades or so before Hebrews was written. It still could have been centuries before for the old priesthood continued to the day of the author of Hebrews not knowing it was abolished or so we are led to believe!

Now if 7:23 says that the number of priests had to be big because they were dying and ceasing to be priests and Christ holds his priesthood forever for he doesn’t die again then we see something interesting. It is necessary for Christ to live forever to be a priest forever. This is nonsense. A priest can be a priest whether he exists or not. If I was born or if I offered sacrifice and I die nothing can change the fact that I was a born person or a priest. Incidentally it shows that there are no real priests but Christ and that being in danger of death or if death is possible indicates that one cannot be a true priest. It refutes the Roman Catholic doctrine that Christ lets men share in his priesthood so that they can offer his sacrifice, the sacrifice he made of his life on the cross, with him in the Mass. These priests die so they are not priests.

The suggestion of all this is that Jesus’ death didn’t happen on earth or in time but outside of time. Jesus is a priest forever for he is outside time and offers his death timelessly. Its like in dying he rose again to offer this death so that both are present forever. In timelessness two separate events can happen at the one time. The view that Jesus died in time and rose in eternity to offer his sacrifice forever has the following problem. It doesn’t explain why he had to live forever to be a priest and Hebrews says that Jesus had to live forever to hold his priesthood forever. Jesus could be a priest once and he would be one forever like a man offering a sacrifice is a priest forever for nothing can change his having made the sacrifice. But Hebrews means though his death is once for all its actively offered to God so it’s a timeless event and Jesus rises again timelessly so both happen at once. The death of Jesus and his resurrection were not events in time. This denies the gospel Jesus.

The author of Hebrews asserts that the gospel, a term exclusive of anything other than the teaching of Jesus Christ, was known among the ancients of Moses’ day (4:2). It says it was preached to them as it was to us. Paul said that it was all a mystery to ages past but he regarded some people as exceptions for he said so. Hebrews goes on to say that they heard the gospel but did not believe it like Joshua and Caleb did. This would imply that the gospel has been excised from the Old Testament for God would not leave it out unless men hacked it out. Jesus said the Old Testament was perfect and entire for he said the new revelations he gives only back it up so the Old Testament is the important section of the Bible.

Hebrews says that Jesus would not be a priest if he were on earth for there are priests to offer sacrifice (8:4). Now the only reason that could be was if God needed for some mysterious reason, to prevent the other priests doing their job for Jesus to do his. This denies that Jesus was on earth and died in sacrifice in that century or indeed since Moses’ time.

Hebrews 11 explains what faith is and what it can do. It gives us several interesting clues about the falsity of the Christian chronology with its Jesus who had lived not long before Hebrews appeared. It defines faith as the assurance that we will get things hoped for and is the conviction that invisible things really exist. It says that it is by faith that we perceive that God created the world. At least it admits that creation does not prove God exists. Verse 11 says that by faith Sarah was able to conceive despite being barren and old. So God would not have given her a baby had she doubted. God had made a very important promise to Abram that Sarah would conceive and the promise was conditional on her belief. This is a strange doctrine and means that the plan of salvation (for Jesus the descendant of these people as predicted by God who could come to save the world from sin) would have collapsed had she changed her mind about trusting God. By implication then, if Jesus had not kept true to his beliefs he would not have been raised from the dead and God’s alleged promises about it would not have been fulfilled. This opposes the gospel Jesus where no convincing attempt was made to show that he was faithful. You cannot accept both the gospels and Hebrews as scripture. Hebrews would have centred on the evidences of God rewarding Jesus’ faith if it was able. Instead it chose some pathetic examples from the Old Testament. Abraham going where God told him to go while knowing nothing of the future was applauded. But Abraham could have found a way to be okay anyway so his action was not that laudable – it was worthy of condemnation for how did he know that the being talking to him was God. 11:7 commends Noah for building the Ark when he had no evidence whatsoever that the revelation from God warning him about the flood would come true. Hebrews 11 is not just commending faith. It is blind faith it sanctions. It commends it to the Church meaning that the Church must believe in the death and resurrection of the Messiah Jesus just because God says they happened for there is no other reason. There is no evidence. The visions of the apostles concerning the risen Jesus arose from a sense that God was talking to them and they probably had the visions in their imaginations which they considered a valid vehicle of revelation for unsubstantiated faith was a virtue. The epistle regards fanatical suffering for blind faith as a good thing. Christianity in its earliest days was infested with hard-line fanaticism.

The author says that it is worse to ignore the voice of Jesus from Heaven than it is to ignore what Jesus said on earth (presumably what he said in visions on earth which need not mean he came personally to earth for God can project his image from Heaven to earth) in verse 12:25. The people ignored the latter and God shook the whole world and Heaven to punish them. This shows that there was no Jesus on earth as an ordinary man in the first century. He lived even before the flood for there is no record of the global shaking disaster. Some interpret the passage as saying that God came to earth to speak to Israel and they ignored him and so a worse punishment will come upon those who ignore Jesus the speaker from Heaven. The reason this will happen is because you have to go up to Heaven to hear the voice of Jesus and when you go there it is vile in the extreme to neglect the gospel afterwards. In the context of Jesus speaking, the writer said Jesus’ blood speaks more eloquently than the blood of Abel (v24). So Jesus and his blood speak in Heaven. The reason God was said to have spoken on earth to ancient Israel was that God descended from Heaven in visions to talk to Moses and others. So Jesus then did not appear on earth. Since Jesus did it differently, the apostles if they saw him must have ascended to Heaven. This denies the gospel account. It also implies that they were secretly using drugs to have visions in which they thought they had out of body experiences and were in Heaven to see him and hear him or perhaps the earthly visions of Jesus were projections from Heaven and Jesus wasn’t personally on earth. The crucifixion was perhaps believed in because a vision of it was seen in Heaven too. The author of Hebrews advocates credulity for he says that we should be hospitable for some entertained angels unawares that way (13:2). So they were perfectly capable of believing that a stranger they met at the well was Jesus appearing to them. The early Church saw a great need for credulity and tried to imbue it wherever possible which shows that Jesus might not have existed.

Hebrews 12 says we must not forget Jesus who took on the shame of the cross for the sake of the joy that lay beyond it. This implies that Jesus was not God for God has the joy all along and that Jesus as man would have experienced suffering but in his divine side he would have experienced the joy and it is mad to think that God would need to suffer and die on a cross to win the joy back especially when it was available all the time.

Hebrews speaks of Jesus entering the Heavenly Tabernacle. Just like Moses had a tabernacle set up in the wilderness so there is one in Heaven. There is no reason to believe that the Heavenly one is merely symbolic so it is not. The Jewish laws about what priests do is said in Hebrews to picture what Jesus does. The priest sacrifices animals in the Tabernacle before the most holy section and puts their blood on the tabernacle before he enters it. Jesus does the same according to Hebrews 9:12 therefore Jesus did not die and rise on earth but in Heaven. This must have been made known on earth by visions. Hebrews is saying that there is no evidence that Jesus lived apart from religious experience. And that is not much good to wiser people. The gospel stories about the healing miracles, the empty tomb and the resurrection are all shown to be fraudulent.

Hebrews 9:24-27 says that if Jesus had to offer more than one atonement sacrifice he would have been sacrificing and dying over and over again from the foundation of the world. What a strange statement. Why bring in the reference to the foundation of the world? Why not say if Jesus died in 30AD or whenever he would have to die again and again from then on? If Jesus had to die over and over again he didn’t need to start at the foundation of the world unless he came at the foundation of the world and died first then. If he died in 30AD for the first time and died forever and ever all over and over again it would still make an infinite number of deaths so the when doesn’t matter in itself. Hebrews by saying Jesus would have to die over and over again forever after his first death and that he would have been dying from the foundation of the world is saying that was when he died the first time.

Clearly the author is suggesting that Jesus died at the start of the universe. The flesh Jesus had is probably not human flesh as we know it.

The warning that there is no repentance for apostates in chapter 6 totally contradicts the gospel Jesus who forgave readily and declared repentance open to all. If you accept the teaching of chapter 6 you automatically deny the authenticity of most of what is in the gospels. It accuses Paul and the other apostles of being religious liars for saying the same as the gospels about divine readiness to forgive even those who tried to destroy the faith.

Hebrews 13 says Jesus died outside the gate like the animals that were slain as sacrifices to God in the Old Testament and then it says he died outside the camp. This puts Jesus in a time before the city of Jerusalem was built. The words look as if they refer to the camp the Israelites made after they departed from Egypt but they could be any camp – even a prehistoric one or a heavenly one. The camp may even be one in another world perhaps where the Tabernacle that Jesus ministered in is.

Hebrews says that Jesus was in this world but how long and if this can be backed up by historical evidence is not specified. As Jesus was the saviour he had to appear on earth or communicate with it some time so the author of Hebrews may be just assuming he appeared or communicated and working it out from his belief that Jesus was the saviour. To interpret this otherwise to refuse to take the epistle literally and it is being taken figuratively just because it is assumed the New Testament always agrees with itself and so it is unacceptable and deceptive. Now, Hebrews may say that Jesus was on this world but it does not say he was born on or died on this world or that he appeared after his death on it. He was never a priest on this world.

Some think that the only thing we are told about when Jesus came to earth is that it was after the covenant was made with Moses for Jesus is said by the epistle to have ended that covenant by his death (9:15). But Jesus could have died before then while the intentions for which he made the sacrifice were not implemented and actualised until later. The letter speaks of Jesus putting his own blood on the Heavenly Sanctuary implying he was activating the blessings won by his atonement. Hebrews 9 says that Jesus’ blood had to purify the Tabernacle and the utensils in it just like the blood of animals had to do in the earthly Tabernacle that Moses built implying Jesus was killed in Heaven as a human sacrifice and was treated exactly like the animal sacrifices. Jesus could sacrifice himself by rising perhaps spiritually from the dead as soon as he kills himself or is killed (if he was killed he let the killers do it and inspired them so this amounts to the same thing) putting the blood of the body on the altar and on the Tabernacle. Certainly the author of Hebrews though he never defends the view of a physical resurrection believed that death was not the end of Jesus. In reply the Church says the heavenly sacrifice and Tabernacle were symbols and poetry and the author of Hebrews did not mean us to think they were real. Hebrews itself says that if anything was a symbol it was the earthly Tabernacle and the rites both of which God instructed Moses to create for they reflected and were poor imitations of the one in Heaven (8:5).

The research of Earl Doherty has shown that Hebrews 8:1-6 which says that Jesus could not be a priest if he sacrificed on earth and not in Heaven for there are priests (indicating that Hebrews is provably earlier than the gospels for the priests ministered before the cataclysm of 70 AD) in the earthly sanctuary who serve a poor copy of the sanctuary in Heaven implies that Jesus never gave his life for sinners on earth but in Heaven (A Sacrifice in Heaven,

http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/supp09.htm). This also denies that Jesus was literally God for God can atone for sin by giving his life wherever he is and even if there are priests on earth for he is the one that enables them to minister and makes them priests. If priests on earth stopped Jesus offering his life here then he atoned for sins by his blood in Heaven or some celestial world. The translators change the bit saying Jesus would not be a priest if he were on earth for there are priests on earth to that he would not be a priest if he were still on earth which obviously makes no sense. If Jesus had been on earth before and was a priest him still being on earth would not stop him being a priest now for there are priests on earth even to the time the writer of Hebrews was engaged in his little book. The translators just assume the still should be in there as Doherty’s research has noted. The grounds they present for that is that the context meaning the setting of the whole letter demands it which is untrue. So they assume Hebrews has a Jesus who was sacrificed on earth and because they want Hebrews to say that they feel entitled to make 8:1-6 fit the assumption by adding the word still for without that word it denies that Jesus was on earth.

MELCHIZIDEK AND JESUS IN HEBREWS

Hebrews accepts the psalm in which God says that somebody is a priest forever according to the priesthood of Melchizidek as referring to Jesus becoming a priest. It was desperate when it could not use any sayings of Jesus to proclaim him a priest who offered his life on the altar of the cross but had to resort to the use of an obscure statement in a psalm. The author knew what the Jews were like for disagreeing about the interpretation of texts so his evidence was so weak that useless was the only word for it. So clearly Jesus did not leave any concrete information about himself behind so he could have been a fiction.

Jesus being ordained a priest according to the order of Melchizidek does not imply that Jesus lived after Melchizidek supposedly lived. The priesthood could have been called after Melchizidek for he was the first mentioned in the scriptures who had a priesthood that matches Jesus’. When God knows the future for God is outside time, he could call you a priest according to Melchizidek before Melchizidek was born.

Hebrews 7 says that Melchizidek is king of Salem meaning peace and is stated in such a way as to indicate he was not just king of a place called Salem but the king of peace and his name means king of righteousness. These titles alone make him to be a figure that is almost divine like Jesus who also was almost a god.

Hebrews declares that Jesus was the only begotten Son of God and existed before the world was made and that God said he was begotten long before the time specified by the gospels (1). It is meant to be an elementary instruction in religion so it is wrong to say begotten means that the Son comes from the Father in the Catholic sense for that is too difficult to grasp. There you have three “persons” in one being and the absurdity of Father causing the Son and both being the uncaused God!

Begotten is unlikely to mean creation by divine power alone for the angels and Adam, (Luke 3:38) were made that way while Jesus is described as the only-begotten. All power is directly God’s power for God made all things so all things are directly created by God anyway.

Begotten means something that is closer to the way human beings beget babies. Does that mean Jesus must have been caused by God in the womb of a female without a father as the Matthew gospel is alleged to say? No for Jesus was begotten before anything was made. Adam would have been far more begotten for he didn’t have a mother or father. You may say then that is not close to the way humans beget babies. The answer is that it is the way the first human had to be begotten for he couldn’t be the first human if he had a human father and mother.

God could make a force or person who always existed.

Begotten means made as man. So in that understanding, Jesus having always existed as a man would be as much begotten and far more than a man who was born of human parents or who had a mother but no father or who was made directly by God as Adam was.

Then the letter goes on to claim that Melchizidek had no father or mother or origin and like Christ will have no end. Like the Son of God he will be a priest forever. Hebrews argues that since Abraham paid him tithes that this tells us that the priesthood of Levi for which the regulations were made in the first five books of the Bible was inferior to Melchizedek’s priesthood. This is pure imagination. First, how could Levi and his priestly caste be inferior when he and it were not born yet as Hebrews admits? Secondly, tithes do not prove that Melchizedek’s priesthood was even recognised by Abraham. He may have only respected him as a holy king. The Christians never deal with errors like this but only the ones they can handle and then they arrogantly boast that there is no error in the Bible. The zany logic in Hebrews definitely indicates that the Christians of 70AD had no quotes from Jesus with which to verify his alleged priesthood.

Hebrews 7 says that Melchizidek and Jesus were alike in having had no origin or father or mother. The author might have forgotten himself and written this - if Jesus had been born of Mary a virgin there would have been no way he could have forgotten it. Or far more plausibly he meant there was no human father and mother. The assertion would be true if Mel and Jesus had parents who were not human. There is just no way the author of Hebrews could have considered the man Melchizidek to be superior to Christ so he has to be implying that Jesus had no father or mother either but as man always existed.

The reason Melchizidek is referred to is as evidence that Jesus who was better than him must have had no origin from woman and will have no end when things were like that for Melchizidek. The logic is that when Mel had those benefits Jesus being superior and more important would have had them too. But there is no doubt that the Old Testament does not teach these things about Mel though the writer of Hebrews would have us believe that it does. So why does he twist the Old Testament to produce evidence for Jesus’ existence? It is because he is desperate and though an important teacher in the Church he cannot get access to it for it does not exist. He had no evidence apart from the testimony of visionaries and mystics that Jesus rose from the dead and existed. So his Jesus had no miraculous powers. He can’t be referring to anybody who lived in the first century and who claimed to be the Son of God for that would mean he would have had to believe that Jesus had miracle powers even if he never used them. He is definitely showing that the gospel Jesus is a fiction.

Melchizidek is greater than Abraham for he blessed Abraham for only superiors can bless inferiors (7:7). This tells us that Melchizidek was an occultist. Jesus being like him in every respect would mean that Jesus was one too. If God blesses people then inferiors can bless superiors. They cannot do it if they need magical powers to bless and the superiors have those powers. Hebrews tells us Mel is better than Abraham because he shows that the Son of God is the greatest. The Jesus of the gospels then who used divine power and not magic is declared to be a fiction. The loyalty of Jesus to the Law of Moses which the gospels say he had is revealed as another fiction. So Jesus broke God’s law in the Law of Moses that occultism is evil and to be absolutely intolerable.

To summarise, Hebrews says that Jesus and Mel had no father or mother and Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God. By a process of elimination, we find that this must be saying that Jesus as man always existed and he did not come from the Virgin Mary. That is a significant proof that the gospel Jesus, the only one that might justify acceptance of Jesus as a historical person, is a fantasy. I mean if you had no mother then you were not born, period.

Conclusion

The earliest Christians believed Jesus lived in another world. He only appeared in this world. If so, it is not likely he existed. Lots of apparitions are reported of people who don’t exist anymore so why should we think his appearances mean he existed?

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