Gnostics Gave Evidence that Jesus a Myth

 

 

 

In the early Church, there were many people who believed that Jesus Christ was not a man but a vision.  They believed that the Jesus who we read of in the gospels was not a man.  These people were mystics and were not far from being psychologists.  Their Jesus only existed in the mind like modern witches use imaginary people to lead them to spiritual awareness.  They were called antichrists who denied the coming of Jesus in the flesh in John’s time.  In Paul’s day, they denied that Jesus had risen from the dead.  We know their Jesus was a mental force and not a vision of a separate entity because the New Testament just condemns them and never tries to prove to them that Jesus was real as we would expect if they were saying there was a Jesus but he was only a ghost.

 

The mystics called themselves Gnostics - those who know.  They wrote scriptures that indicate the possible non-existence of Jesus Christ.

 

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THE GOSPEL OF PHILIP

 

Found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, the Gospel of Philip, tells us that Jesus was an apparition and rose from the dead before he died.  Jesus lived way back in the Stone Age.  Philip says things that have since his time found to have been correct – for example, that Jesus never lived in the first century so he has to be taken seriously.

 

The research material for this work was just thrown together.  It shows the marks of the Gnostic system of Valentinus.  This means the author had access to the outstanding scholarship of the Valentinians and should be taken seriously.

 

Because the book is like the format of the catechisms of the second century to the fourth it is dated in the late second century (The Nag Hammadi Library in English, page 141).  But the way it is disorganised hints that most of the material in it must go back a lot further.  The quotations from the gospels are hurried insertions – whoever put them in had no intention of tampering much.  If the gospel in its original form had been all late second century we would expect to see criticisms of the Christian writings in it for it opposes anything that makes people fail to see that the spiritual Jesus saves and there is no physical Jesus.  So in its original form and because of its primitive teaching it goes back to the first century or the early part of the second before the gospels appeared.  It is sacramentalist and it would use the gospel of John which has been traditionally been thought to have been a major source of sacramental thinking more if it does not.  It quotes John once and calls it the word of God.  Yet it contradicts it!  The author could only get pieces of John’s gospel for he couldn’t get his piece of it right so he wrote before John was made public in the middle of the second century.  Despite himself he was proving that John was a liar.  This perhaps accidental attack on John’s veracity carries more weight than all the early testaments favouring the apostolic doctrine put together.  The Church will say it was just a mistake.  But you have to take historical material as it is for if you start assuming that anything you don’t like is a mistake you are on the path to danger.  A historical portrait has to stand by what the written sources say for there is no alternative but worthless speculation.

 

The book is not merely a collection of Gnostic myth that the author believed you could dissent from.  The sacramentalism and the emphasis on knowing magical names of Jesus and the catechism format suggest that it was a dogmatic book for a sect.  What was in it was in it because it was believed to be as much fact as the rising of the sun every morning. 

 

The quote from John says that whoever does not eat the flesh and drink the blood has no life in him.  But the flesh is interpreted as the word of God and the blood as the holy spirit of God.  This would be a denial that the gospel version of Jesus existed as a flesh and blood being so he could have been a vision or an illusion or a symbol from Heaven. 

 

It says that Jesus Christ lived before men knew how to make bread, “Before Christ came there was no bread in the world, just as Paradise, the place where Adam was, had many trees to nourish the animals but no wheat to sustain man.  Man used to feed like the animals, but then Christ came, the perfect man, he brought bread from heaven in order that might be nourished with the food of man”.  This bread could be literal bread so it is literal bread.  The first century Jesus of the gospels is denied.  

 

Philip says that Mary did not conceive by the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is female.  It says that the apostles hated her which shows that its author did not have the New Testament which says that Mary was chummy with the early Church.

 

The gospel says that Jesus appeared differently to different people suggesting that he was an apparition perhaps one that people induced to appear themselves by hypnotic rites.

 

It says Christ came to the whole place meaning he had been all over the world.  The gospel comes to the brink of stating that Jesus was just a vision.  It went on to say that Jesus burdened nobody while on earth which contradicts the gospels that he depended on charity to live and expected the apostles to die for him instead of sending them to safe places to preach.  And that then he forbade causing distress to anybody though Jesus abused the Pharisees and caused a lot of misery.  The author is disputing the gospel account.  And yet he appeals to some word of God or scripture that supports his teaching meaning there was a book that would not be compatible with the gospels. 

 

The gospel is reckoned by Barbara Thiering and her ilk to state that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a romantic relationship.  It says that he loved her more than the disciples and kissed her often on the mouth to their disgust.  They complained and he said that he loved them like her.  So if he loved her most and did not love her the most then love must be in two different senses.  The first sense is sexual and the second is platonic.

 

The gospel says that kissing is a sacrament that gives wisdom, “We also kiss one another.  We receive conception from the grace which is in one another”.  Kissing is causing you to be conceived as a child of God and passes on grace.  So is there no romance in Jesus and Mary’s kisses?  There must be some for he kissed her a lot and could have got others who could give the sacrament to do it.  The early Christians kissed one another according to the New Testament.  This was stopped to scotch unkind rumours.  So the sacrament of the kiss points to the earliness of the gospel.

 

 

How does this slot in with the idea that Jesus didn’t live in the first century for the gospels say Magdalene did live then?  Gnostics had no problem making up stories about religious figures.  They thought making myths and inventing faiths was a sign of gnosis and that all schools of mysticism strove for the one truth so the details didn’t matter.

 

 

The author thought that Adam was nailed to the cross and that Adam and Jesus were one and the same.  “When Eve was still in Adam death did not exist.  When she was separated from him death came into being.  If he enters again and attains his former self, death will be no more.  “My God, My God, why O lord, have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34 and parallels).  It was on the cross that he said these words, for he had departed from that place”.  The place was probably the Garden of Eden for Adam was expelled from it by God.  Philip calls Jesus the perfect man so grammatically and otherwise he must have meant Adam.  He wrote before the gospels became public for they contradict the context he puts the quote in.  Jesus was a vision after his death which took place in prehistoric times.   

 

The gospel says that there is the son of man which was Jesus’ title and then there was the son of the son of man who is he who creates through the son of man and who can beget.  The son of the son is every man so the son of man is Adam.  Jesus and Adam were the same person or Adam was the first person to be possessed by the Christ Jesus force which became a part of him so that when he died you could say it died too. 

 

Philip said that Adam came from two virgins which were the spirit and the earth and that therefore Jesus was born of a virgin to put the fall right.  Adam’s mothers were not women so Jesus’ wasn’t either.  Adam was Jesus and Adam became Jesus by some kind of spiritual rebirth.  Jesus’ mother was the spirit.  Gnostics saw creation as a fall from God so it is not the fall of Genesis where Adam and Eve were disinherited for disobedience that is meant.  Adam was bad for he was earth and spirit and Jesus was good for he was pure spirit.  Adam became Jesus when he got rid of what his mother earth had put into him.  The therefore shows that Jesus was Adam for he fixed the fall that Adam had.  Nobody else was involved.  Nobody would argue that a person called Adam was virgin born so another person Jesus had to be for that makes no sense.  That is not what the gospel is saying. 

 

The gospel says that Adam became an animal by eating the fruit and that Christ was redeemed himself (page 152) and became sinless.

 

A story is attributed to the apostle Philip that Joseph the father of Jesus planted a garden of trees and made the cross of Jesus from them.  But the gospel interprets this as an allegory for it starts about the tree of life in the middle of the garden and that it is from an olive tree there that we get the chrism and the chrism grants us a resurrection from spiritual death to life in this world.  Joseph means increase in Hebrew and could be a symbol for the power that made Jesus or Adam.  The cross could be the tree of life in the Garden of Eden that Adam was symbolically nailed to meaning he could not avail of its fruit and wanted to.  The olives represent the salvation he won for us.  This interpretation requires that Jesus be Adam and in the Garden of Eden.  Adam could be the fallen animal man and Jesus the redeemed spiritual man.  Though the two are different persons in many ways they are the same person in essence which is why they can be spoken of as if they were separate persons at times.  If Joseph made Jesus’ cross and Jesus was crucified in Joseph’s garden then we could have a staged mock crucifixion.  It was necessary to fake a resurrection which God used to give mystical knowledge to the world.  The author of Philip might be denying the gospels that Joseph was dead during Jesus’ ministry. 

 

 “Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images.  The world will not receive truth in any other way.”  This completely repudiates and contradicts the gospels which are not wrapped up in symbols.  So, Jesus must be a symbolic picture which does not rule out him being a true apparition that unveils truth to us.  The gospel would not be teaching if Philip meant teaching.  Jesus claimed to be the truth and this gospel is taking him literally.

 

The gospel condemned names because they cloak what is unreal.  It said that words like Father, Son and Holy Spirit and resurrection blind one to the truth.  It means you put your interpretation on them and they become idols.  Words describe facts so the facts about the Son if you take him as somebody that lived on earth are as dangerous.  Obviously, the gospel advocates truth so it forbids dependence on this alleged Jesus.  He would not have come to earth to block our progress so he was not on earth at all and just speaks from Heaven to those who are in mystical communion with him -  and though people differ in the details he gives them the truth that gives them personal transformation in the way that is best for them. 

 

The gospel says that God dyes.  But this is symbolism for the fact that God changes a person in water baptism which the text says. 

 

The line, “God is a man-eater.  For this reason men are [sacrificed] to him”.  The author may only be reiterating the Old Testament demand for killing people who commit certain sins. 

 

We are told that Jesus came to crucify the world.  So perhaps this is just another way of expressing what Jesus asked us to do when he told us to sacrifice ourselves and follow him by bearing our crosses.

 

It is argued that this gospel is worthless on the grounds that it is crazy.  But you don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.  It is not really crazy.

 

Philip proves that Jesus was made up.  It proves there were early Christians who denied that the gospels had the real Jesus and who treated gospels and legends about Jesus as allegories and myths not as literal truth which is the same as saying there is little or no evidence for the existence of Jesus.

 

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VALENTINUS AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS

 

The Gnostic heretic of the Second Century, Valentinus, held that the Pastoral Letters of St Paul were forged (page 5, The Gnostic Paul).  Interestingly, modern experts have come to the same conclusion so Valentinus knew something we did not.  Valentinus rejected these letters not for doctrinal reasons for the other epistles of Paul which he accepted were far more rabidly anti-gnostic but for historical reasons.  Valentinus then eliminated the epistle which says that Jesus spoke before Pilate which made it clear that Paul had no historical evidence for his Jesus.  In the Valentinian scheme, Paul left no evidence for a historical Jesus.  Valentinus didn’t take the gospels seriously as history.  This is as important as saying that Jesus didn’t exist.  When you say the life of somebody is dubious or not to be taken seriously then you cannot exclude the possibility that the person never lived. I am saying that anybody not taking the New Testament gospels that seriously on the historical level is as good as saying there is no evidence that the gospels are historically true where they speak of Jesus.

 

Valentinus subscribed to the language of a historical Jesus and to the whole Christian system but the only difference was that he felt that there were two equally valid understandings of this faith.  The seemingly literal talk masked esoteric symbolism.  For example, they said that the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus, or his historical resurrection if you like, was foolishness and quoted Paul in their defence (page 82, 84).  The resurrection of Jesus signifies enlightenment and the achievement of gnosis which resurrects the soul from death to life (page 81). 

 

The Gospel of Philip which has Valentinian influence says that the flesh of Jesus is the logos or word of God and his blood is the Holy Spirit and argues that Jesus said this himself when he stated that anybody who does not eat his body and drink his blood will be lost in death (page 99).  That is a challenge to the view that Jesus was a historical personage.  They did believe that he existed but only on the spiritual plane.  For us, it is enough that they denied his physical sojourn on earth.    

 

The Valentian work Treatise on the Resurrection or as its sometimes called The Epistle to Rheiginos rejects the view that Jesus’ resurrection had anything to do with the body.  In fact it was salvation from the body and Jesus rose again spiritually.  The letter teaches that the world and what is physical is an illusion but the resurrection alone is real.  Thus we see a form of Christianity that didn’t take the Bible too seriously or the New Testament but valued alleged secret teachings and religious experiences.  Such an attitude towards the New Testament and the gospels is incompatible with attaching any importance to the Jesus of history. 

 

The Valentinians were able to live like fully orthodox Christians (page 157, The Gnostic Paul).  They held that they should teach traditional Christianity to their followers and reserve the secret teaching for a few suitable people among them.  The Valentinians held that Paul gave secret tradition to Theudas who gave it to Valentinus (page 5, The Gnostic Paul).  Paul indicated that he was keeping teachings back from the Church that only some very trusted people could be allowed to hear (1 Corinthians 3:1-3).

 

Valentinians sounded exactly like ordinary Christians.  It was what they meant by what they preached that was different and they kept much of their teaching secret.  But as evidenced by them and other groups, they viewed literal Christianity which took the gospels as history to be false.   Christians complain that if Jesus didn’t exist then why aren’t there more statements to the effect from first and second century people that he didn’t exist.  Don’t they realise that the fact that most of those who claimed to be Christians in the early Church, including the Valentinians, denied that the gospels should be afforded any historical status.  That is the same thing as admitting there was no evidence for the historical gospel Jesus.  For a first or second century person to say Jesus didn’t exist wouldn’t be enough to prove that Jesus didn’t exist for the person could be lying out of hatred for Christ.  But when people who like Jesus say there is no evidence that is actually better for those of us who doubt the existence of Jesus.   It is confessing there is no evidence he lived and if there is no evidence there is no reason to believe in him.  If there is no evidence Jesus lived, then he probably never lived at all.

 

The Christian scholar might reply that the Valentinians for example were heretics not Christians.  Makes no difference.  They had nothing to gain from denying that there was evidence for Jesus.  The only evidence they were interested in was subjective evidence such as having visions of Jesus and feeling that he was with them.  But subjective evidence counts for nothing for Hindus claim subjective and experiential evidence of Vishnu and various gods.  They weakened their own teaching – and they didn’t care because they honestly knew or believed that there was no evidence for Jesus as a historical personage.

 

Christian tradition such as we seen in the first century Epistle of Barnabas and most sources agreed with Valentianianism that stories about God and his deeds were to be treated as symbolic and not historical.   We read in the excellent pro-Fundamentalist book, Fundamentalism and the Word of God by J I Packer that during Medieval times, the literal or historical sense of scripture or the Bible was regarded as of no importance and the whole Church agreed (page 103, Fundamentalism and the Word of God)  All they cared about was their fanciful allegorical interpretations.  For example, when Jerusalem was mentioned in the Bible it was taken to mean the Church!  So Jerusalem was thought to be not the real Jerusalem but a code word for the Church.  The Reformation restored the idea that the historical sense of the Bible was important. 

 

This tells us a number of things.

 

• The faith of the Church in those days was based on tradition and subjective feelings not on evidence.  The heretics such as the Valentinians taught the same thing. 

 

• The Church didn’t trust the Bible so they tried to avoid having to deal with it for looking for evidence for Christ and his doings.

 

• The Church desperately and fanatically opposed heretics such as the Valentianians and the Gnostics who also refused to take scripture literally or as history for they did it too openly.  If the Church had been able to, it would have rejected the allegorical method of interpreting the Bible which can make it mean anything you want to.  That way it would have been able to attack the heretics using the Bible.  It would be able to argue for instance that historically Christ founded his Church and promised to remain with it forever from the Bible and that the Church that has a direct line from him is the right Church.  It was the allegorical method of interpretation that led to chaos in the Early Church.  Why was the Church not able to fight the Gnostics and Valentinians by treating the Bible as history?   Because everybody knew the New Testament for instance wasn’t true.  There could be no other possible reason.  Burglars are out on the street about to enter your house by the front door.  You see them and you don’t lock the door.  The only reason you didn’t lock the door was because you have no lock.  Simple. 

 

• The Bible itself generally opposes the allegory method.  Jesus for example spoke of the Old Testament events such as Jonah being swallowed by a big fish as true and accepted Adam and Eve as historical though we know today they never existed.  Commonsense opposes the method as well for if you imagine the Bible is all symbolism you can make it mean whatever you like.  So it is undeniable that for centuries the Christian Church was apostate for it was not founded on the word of God in the Bible.   To turn away from God’s word is to turn away from God.  It proves that the Catholic Church is lying when it says that Catholic tradition like the Bible is infallible for they don’t follow the anti-historical interpretation today.  This is the religion that says that because Christ promised that the Church would never lose the truth, that if the whole Church believes something then it must be true. 

 

• The only time the Bible supports allegory is in Galatians 4:21-31 – the Bible often contradicts itself but if Christians really took it seriously they would not ignore the general teaching of scripture and focus on one verse or section.  Paul is trying to refute those who say we must still follow the Law of Moses like slaves.  He tells them that they must hear what the Law has to say.  He says it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by his wife as a result of God’s promise.  He says this is an allegory. The two women stand for two covenants.  One covenant is the covenant of slavery and the other is the covenant of freedom.  The point he is trying to make is that Christians are not to go back to slavery to the Law for they are free.  If they fail to keep the Law now, Jesus has kept it for them vicariously and they will still be saved in Heaven.  Jesus speaks about the Law a fair bit in the gospels and promises delivery from slavery to the Law.  When Paul couldn’t use his words to refute these people but had to resort to a fanciful interpretation of the Bible it is plain that the gospels lied.  It is also plain that Jesus as man had no relevance for Paul.  If there had been a Jesus who lived recently Paul would have examined his life and looked in his teaching for ammunition.  When Jesus the Jew said nothing about the Law it shows either that he lived an unknown life as a man or he never existed.  Christians say that Paul is not denying that the scripture is history.  But when he attaches such importance to a fanciful way of interpreting it he is saying that it is okay to worry more about spiritual interpretations than the literal.  The same would have to be true of the gospels had they existed then.  The original Christian Church had no concern for a Jesus of History at all.  This adds fuel to those who believe that Jesus was a myth not a man.   

 

 

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AN ANCIENT TESTIMONY

 

 

In the book of Wisdom and in Proverbs, Wisdom is talked about like she was a person.  Paul called Heaven, Jerusalem our mother.  So personification is a popular device in the Bible which firmly imbeds it in Jewish and Christian tradition.

 

At Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, the ancient gospel of Thomas was found.  It is a collection of sayings which allegedly came from Jesus.  Fragments of this gospel written before 200 AD were uncovered before that.  The sayings of the gospel look more primitive and therefore older than the related ones in the canonical gospels.  We can tell for they are simpler and seem to show little knowledge of the context of the sayings that resemble the gospels.  The original draft of the gospel is possibly first century (page 125, The Nag Hammadi Library in English). 

 

This gospel says that Jesus was not a real person but a symbolic teacher of wisdom.  The living Jesus was a symbol just like the Devil is a symbol of wisdom for the Church of Satan in San Francisco.

 

The first saying says, “Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death”.  So they all have spiritual meaning and if you think hard enough you can break the code.  We have broken the code.  We will see that the author must have been totally sure that Jesus never existed historically for he takes it for granted that we should be able to see that he is saying that so he shows that he believes that any open-minded and knowledgable person out there will agree with him.  He presupposes that there are many disbelievers in the existence of Jesus out there.  He knows of plenty.  He knows of evidence but he does not see the need to draw attention to it.

 

The gospel can be interpreted as monistic, that all things are just the one God, but we need not go that far and remember the valid interpretation is the simplest.  We need not think it envisages an undivided God without parts which is the creation so nobody can say that the reason it has an impersonal Jesus is because it follows a monistic impersonal God.  The god of monism or pantheism is impersonal for he is stones as well as people so he cannot be a person.

 

Jesus is the leader of the disciples and their spiritual director.  He could be a mental image like the god Hermes was to his fans that God used to give people visions and revelations inside their heads in their imagination. 

 

Jesus said that the person who will drink from his mouth will become Jesus himself.  If Jesus is a symbol for spiritual insight then the person who achieves spiritual insight makes it a part of him and kind of becomes it when he follows it.  It may seem that to drink from his mouth means hear the word of God and absorb it.  What it really means is to drink spiritual power or a life-force out of Jesus so that you become Jesus.  Jesus then is a force not a person.  He is not a man.  The human Jesus never lived.

 

Jesus says he is all things and if you break a stone you find him inside (77).  This assertion came after he said that that kingdom of God is like a precious pearl and since the kingdom is enlightenment he shows he is on about gaining wisdom. Then after the assertion he said  that those who come to him look for truth.  So when he said that we can break a stone to find him he meant that he was nature and we hear his word through nature and not through a man.  There is spiritual insight in all things or all things are the power of wisdom.  So Jesus is a metaphor for nature and not a man.  Obviously, Jesus could not be all things if he were a real person.  I can’t become a stone as well as a person if I am conscious only of being a person.

 

Jesus told his followers to make James the Righteous the true leader if he leaves.  Jesus admits that he is the boss.  But shortly afterwards, he tells Thomas that he is not his master and that he only thinks he is his master because he had not seen the light and is drunk in his ignorance.  So if Jesus is not his real master and yet a master then Jesus does not exist and he only a symbol for the mental force from God that leads to psychological insight or the mystical illumination of gnosis.  James was named as the brother of the Lord so the gospel is telling us he was the brother only in the sense that he was close to the Lord for the Lord is not a real man.  Brother of the Lord is a honorary title.  There is much evidence that the gospel is telling the truth and has inside knowledge of early Christianity.

 

The author evinces his great regard for Jesus when he says that Jesus wants us to follow James the Righteous after Jesus is gone.  He is saying that Jesus ought to be listened to.  Jesus is a force that will speak through the person of James in the future.  Following James is following Jesus because James will become the incarnation of Jesus.  This implies that Jesus is a spiritual force from God that is to communicate with man through the imagination.  Jesus is saying that ongoing revelation is necessary and he only gives that revelation through a person. 

 

Jesus criticises the apostles for referring to dead prophets instead of the living one in front of them which is himself (52).  Does this tell us that the living Jesus is a man of flesh and blood?  If the dead men were prophets then a real live Jesus would have regarded them as voices like his own, he would not have chastised the apostles.  But if Jesus were only a personification in the imagination through which God speaks it would be preferable for people to go directly to him instead of to other people.  The verse really refutes the notion of a literal Jesus.  A Jesus who speaks last week would be in the same boat as a dead prophet for his word is in the past.  But a non-literal Jesus would speak and remind and be with you all the time so his word would come first.  The living one just means the force that reveals life and salvation for Jesus made it clear that it was mystical communion with God who is nature that saves so stones and men are not important but the divinity in them.  So when he said he meant himself as the road to salvation he was not talking about his human self but the divinity inside.  He was not referring to being human at all.  If Jesus was a divine force speaking through a medium like say James like a spirit would then how does that square with the message of the gospel that each person has to get knowledge about Jesus on his own?  Jesus speaks through James but you cannot learn from it unless you experience mystically what Jesus is saying.  So to the person who does have the magical experience it is just hearing words but not the import of the words.

 

Jesus proclaimed that it was for James that Heaven and earth were created.  This would have to be truer of Jesus than James if Jesus is a real person.  So Jesus is not real and James is real.  James will be the symbolic Jesus’ main mouthpiece after Jesus ceases to talk to the apostles.  Think about this.  What if Heaven and earth were made for James because he would be the only spiritual medium through which Jesus would speak?  When Jesus leaves James, James will be boss.  This has to be the correct understanding.  Remember how the gospel condemned listening to prophets from the past.  Then it says that we must listen to Jesus.  Jesus then was not a prophet in the past at any time.  He is a spiritual force that we commune with right now.  It is the present voice not the past that matters.  Thomas rejects any other gospel but Thomas for Thomas says we must listen to Jesus now and feel him inspiring us.  Gospels with any different message and with stories of Jesus are not to be depended on.

 

Since Heaven and earth were made for James it suggests that James alone will give the pure word of God.  This also is a hint that there was no historical Jesus.  It is definitely a hint of great age for the saying about James is so strange and unnecessary there is no other explanation but that the saying was created when James was alive.

 

When it is James alone, Jesus is denying the gospel portrait of a saviour who came for all and who speaks to all by the power of the Holy Spirit and who had loads of followers.  This is another indication of a pre-gospel origin because it ties in with the earliest strata that express the fact that the predecessors of the gospels did not have Jesus as a Palestinian superstar.  A fact that was too well covered up to have been thought up later.  And it was a fact for it was commonsense that nobody like Jesus would have been tolerated for five minutes by the authorities.

 

Salome asked Jesus who he was when he came up on her couch and ate from her table (61).  Jesus told her that he was the one who exists from the undivided.  God is the undivided and God is all therefore he who exists outside God is not a real person but a myth, a symbol.

 

Now it may be objected that a real Jesus could be used as a symbol and image and this means that the gospel is not challenging his real existence.

 

This is incorrect.  It is not likely that a person will do that without making it clear that he does not intend his symbol to represent the true Jesus.

 

Why would anybody pick out sayings of a real Jesus that had no relevance for him and put them in this book in the mouth of a symbolic Jesus?  There is no reason and no way it could happen!  Jesus was a symbol that was taken too seriously by some that they turned him into a man.

 

Jesus said that Adam was not worthy of the apostles which was why he died (85).  This hints that Jesus himself never died.  When Jesus told the apostles that when they see a man who was not born of woman they will know that he is their father and they must worship this man (15).  He means God and himself as the manifestation of God.  He is saying he is not born of woman meaning he is not a real man or a real person.  Since they have to know God in a mystical experience they have to know that same way that the man did not have a human origin.  Since salvation is partly delivery from human ways of thinking and takes you to the abstract the man is not a man at all for a man is a block to salvation.  Jesus means personified force by man not man the material being.  He demands worship so he is saying he is a personified force as well.

 

Jesus says that only the solitary will be saved (75) indicating that depending on Jesus if he was a man or on apostles is wrong.  You only use them to learn that you must do it on your own or as examples.  This is a denial that the death or resurrection of Jesus saves us and the gospels which have a social Jesus.

 

Saying 30 claims that Jesus will be with the gods who seem to be enlightened human beings. He says that where there are three gods there are gods but where there is less he will be with them.  This implies that very few can be saved by Jesus.  Jesus is saying that he can get nobody to rest in.  That is, there is nobody who fully accepts his principles. 

 

In saying 86, Jesus says that foxes and birds have to rest but he has nowhere to rest.  Since the gospel claims to have an oblique interpretation Jesus must mean he has nobody to rest in.  This Jesus who kept his ministry quiet fits the evidence from the first century that Christianity was not founded by a popular well-known person.

 

So we have found a first century witness that Jesus was not a real person but a myth in the sense of a meaningful symbol - a vehicle of expression.

 

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MARCION STATED THAT THE EVIDENCE WAS FLIMSY

 

Marcion, the first Christian to set forth a canon of scripture, was excommunicated by Rome in 144 AD for heresy.  He denied that Jesus existed before he appeared straight out of Heaven in the synagogue of Capernaum which is the event that occurs in Luke 4:31.  This means that Marcion denied the existence of Jesus’ mother Mary, the existence of St Joseph the massacre of the innocents and the birth in the manger, the baptism by John the Baptist – in short everything before Jesus began his ministry.  He asserted that the twelve apostles failed to understand the gospel and polluted it which was why Paul was chosen to save and preserve the good news.  He did this when he could have said the apostles just kept the secret tradition of the true gospel and preached another theology to the public.  When the apostles could be so wrong why could they not be wrong about Jesus’ existence?

 

Marcion came very close to saying that there was no historical Jesus.  It is obvious that if Jesus really did descend as a divine super-powered apparition from Heaven as Marcion’s theology stated that Jesus had to be a myth.  Marcion as good as said that the evidence for Jesus was flimsy and that until later in the gospel story it was non-existent for he appeared out of nowhere.  In its reply to him, the Church just used gospel materials and was unable to provide objective evidence for the events surrounding Jesus that Marcion denied.  For example, they did not provide evidence for the link Jesus had with the Baptist nor did they provide evidence that the massacre of the innocents over Jesus really took place.  Thanks to Marcion the gap in Christianity’s evidences was shown up.  If everybody believed then that Jesus existed it would make no difference to the case against Jesus simply because they could not have believed for the right reasons.  The argument that Jesus must have existed for nobody denied his existence simply has no hope of being right.

 

The things that Marcion did but did not need to do tell us more than anything else ever could.

 

He was accused of editing and dropping portions out of the gospel of Luke.  This gospel may not have been Luke but the forerunner of Luke and it could be Marcion was right that the gospel was tampered with and needed amending.  Marcion accepted the crucifixion and the resurrection but as an illusion for Jesus was an apparition.  He certainly had no need to deny most of what was in the Lucan infancy narratives.  The Church says he had for he regarded Jesus as an apparition and not a real man.  But Marcion knew that when Jesus seemed to die on the cross he could seem to have been born.  It would have made Marcion’s gospel more acceptable had he kept the stuff about Mary and Jesus’ birth and so easier for his Church.  So he must have been very sure that these things never happened or were late inventions before he could omit them.  We know he studied his case thoroughly and was very cautious (page 104, The Call to Heresy).  We must remember that being closer to the time of Jesus and living before the Church had the chance to wipe out too many documents it did not like, that Marcion knew things we never will for he had access to many lost documents.  The claim that nobody knew of the God of Jesus until Jesus appeared is very strange and can only be explained as if Marcion learned this from some source he trusted.  He could have had Jesus appearing occasionally before which would look better and stop people from scoffing at his theology on the basis that Jesus took a long time before he came to teach the world and reveal the true God of love.  But he was sure he couldn’t and he was sure he could shut them up.

 

Marcion founded a very successful and very early Church that was able to get all its members to be celibate and many were martyred.  They committed a huge sacrifice to deny that the human Jesus of the gospels existed for they even denied that he was a Jew by religion and excised all references to his Jewish faith from their scriptures.  Their Jesus was an opponent of the Old Testament.  Marcion was not unjustly biased towards heresy for he had nothing to gain but scorn and also he could not get much power when he forbade his followers to have sex and therefore babies.  Marcion was a damn sight lot more credible than the gospellers who wrote anonymously meaning we can’t eliminate unjust bias, who made a hero of a heretic Jesus and then lied that he was not a heretic and whose works were hidden from critics who wouldn’t have been that interested in them had they come out.  Marcion had the kind-heartedness to reject the brutality of the Old Testament so he was a better man with his faults than any gospeller ever was.

 

Marcionism called Jesus not Christus which means Messiah but Chrestus which means The Good.  Marcion denied that Jesus was the Christ or Messiah because he rejected anything Jewish and the Messiah was the Jewish title for the king of the world that God would send but he rejected their God and so he rejected this title.  When Marcion was able to create a successful Church that denied that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah it shows that the evidence for something that was as important as the resurrection could be denied convincingly in those days.  It shows that many held that the Jesus story was riddled with legend.

 

Top of the Document

 

Conclusion

 

 

The Gnostics knew that Jesus was a myth and the stories about him were not true.  That is why they felt free to make up tales of their own but at least they admitted they were making up tales in the hope of helping people spiritually.

 

 

 

WORKS CONSULTED

 

A Concise History of the Catholic Church, Thomas Bokenkotter, Image Books, New York, 1979 

Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley, Whitaker House, Pennsylvania, undated

Asking them Questions, Various, Oxford University Press, London, 1936

Belief and Make-Believe, GA Wells, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1991

Concise Guide to Today’s Religions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks, 1983

Did Jesus Exist? GA Wells, Pemberton, London, 1988

Did Jesus Exist?  John Redford, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1986

Documents of the Christian Church, edited by Henry Bettenson, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979  

Early Christian Writings, Maxwell Staniforth Editor, Penguin, London, 1988 

Encyclopaedia of Heresies and Heretics, Leonard George, Robson Books, London, 1995 

Encyclopaedia of Unbelief, Volume 1, Ed Gordon Stein, (Ed) Prometheus Books, New York, 1985

Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995

Fundamentalism and the Word of God, JI Packer, Inter Varsity Press, Leicester, 1996

Handbook to the Controversy With Rome, Volume 1, Karl Von Hase, The Religious Tract Society, London, 1906  

He Walked Among Us, Josh McDowell and Bill Wilson, Alpha Cumbria, 2000

In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1996 

Introduction to the New Testament, Roderick A F MacKenzie, SJ, Liturgical Press, Minnesota, 1965 

Jesus, AN Wilson, Flamingo, London, 1993 

Jesus and the Goddess, The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Thorsons, London, 2001

Jesus – God the Son or Son of God? Fred Pearce Christadelphian Publishing Office, Birmingham, undated 

Jesus – One Hundred Years Before Christ, Professor Alvar Ellegard Century, London, 1999 

Jesus and the Four Gospels, John Drane, Lion, Herts, 1984 

Jesus Hypotheses, V Messori, St Paul Publications, Slough, 1977 

Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten, Element, Dorset, 1994  

Jesus, Qumran and the Vatican, Otto Betz and Rainer Riesner, SCM Press Ltd, London, 1994

Jesus the Evidence, Ian Wilson, Pan, London, 1985 

Jesus the Magician, Morton Smith, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1978

Jesus under Fire, Edited by Michael F Wilkins and JP Moreland, Zondervan Publishing House, Michigan, 1995 

Lectures and Replies, Thomas Carr, Archbishop of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1907 

Let’s Weigh the Evidence, Barry Burton, Chick Publications, Chino, CA, 1983

Miracles in Dispute, Ernst and Marie-Luise Keller, SCM Press Ltd, London, 1969

On the True Doctrine, Celsus, Translated by R Joseph Hoffmann, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987 

Putting Away Childish Things, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1994 

Runaway World, Michael Green, IVP, London, 1974 

St Paul versus St Peter, A Tale of Two Missions, Michael Goulder, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1994

St Peter and Rome, JBS, Irish Church Missions, Dublin, undated

Saint Saul, Donald Harman Akenson, Oxford University Press, New York, 2000

The Bible Fact or Fantasy, John Drane, Lion, Oxford, 1989 

The Bible Unearthed, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Touchstone Books, New York, 2002. 

The Call to Heresy, Robert Van Weyer, Lamp Books, London, 1989 

The Case For Christ, Lee Strobel, HarperCollins and Zondervan, Michigan, 1998 

The Case for Jesus the Messiah, John Ankerberg Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1989 

The Early Church, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1967 

The Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics, Leonard George, Robson Books, London, 1995 

The First Christian, Karen Armstrong, Pan, London, 1983 

The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, Penguin, London, 1990 

The Gnostic Paul, Elaine Pagels, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1975

The Historical Evidence for Jesus, G A Wells, Prometheus Books, New York, 1988

The History of Christianity, Lion, Herts 1982 

The History of the Church, Eusebius, Penguin, London, 1989

The House of the Messiah, Ahmed Osman, Grafton, London, 1993

The Jesus Event and Our Response, Martin R Tripole SJ, Alba House, New York, 1980 

The Jesus Hoax, Phyllis Graham, Leslie Frewin, London, 1974 

The Jesus Mysteries, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Thorsons, London, 1999 

The MythMaker, St Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Hyam Maccoby, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1986 

The Nag Hammadi Library in English, Ed James M Robinson HarperCollins New York 1990 

The Pagan Christ, Tom Harpur, Thomas Allen Publishers, Toronto, 2004

The Reconstruction of Belief, Charles Gore DD, John Murray, London, 1930

The Search for the Twelve Apostles, William Steuart McBirnie, Tyndale House, 1997 

The Secret Gospel Morton Smith Aquarian Press, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1985 

The Truth of Christianity, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co Ltd, London, 1905 

The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992 

The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1973 

Theodore Parker’s Discourses, Theodore Parker, Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, London, 1876 

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Kittel Gerhard and Friedrich Gerhard, Eerdman’s Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, MI, 1976

Those Incredible Christians, Hugh Schonfield, Hutchinson, London, 1968 

Who Was Jesus?  A Conspiracy in Jerusalem, by Kamal Salabi, I.B. Taurus and Co Ltd., London, 1992 

Who Was Jesus?  NT Wright, SPCK, London, 1993

Why I Believe Jesus Lived, C G Colly Caldwell, Guardian of Truth, Kentucky 

 

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The WWW

 

Who is GA Wells? Rev Dr Gregory S. Neal

www.errantskeptics.org/G_A_Wells.htm

 

The Silent Jesus

www.askwhy.co.uk/awcnotes/cn4/0325SilentJesus.html#Justin

 

Apollonius the Nazarene, The Historical Apollonius versus the Historical Jesus 

www.apollonius.net/bernard1e.html

 

Why Did the Apostles Die? Dave Matson, 

 www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1997/4Why97.html 

 

The “Historical” Jesus by Acharya S

www.truthbeknown.com/historicaljc.htm

 

How Did the Apostles Die? 

www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1997/4/4front97.html

 

History’s Troubling Silence About Jesus, Lee Salisbury

www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=102

 

Steven Carr discusses the Christian and apostolic martyrs

www.bowness.demon.co.uk/martyrs.htm  

www.bowness.demon.co.uk/martyrs2.htm

 

Challenging the Verdict

A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ

http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/CTVExcerptsOne.htm 

http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/CTVExcerptsTwo.htm 

http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/CTVExcerptsThree.htm#Twelve

 

The Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, Peter Kirby

http://home.earthlink.net/~kirby/

 

The Martyrdoms: A Response, Peter Kirby

www.bowness.demon.co.uk/martyrs3.htm

 

A Sacrifice in Heaven, 

http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/supp09.htm

 

The Evolution of Jesus of Nazareth

http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/partthre.htm

 

The Jesus of History, a Reply to Josh McDowell by Gordon Stein

 www.infidels.org/library/modern/gordon_stein/Jesus.html

 

Josh McDowell’s Evidence for Jesus – Is It Reliable?, by Jeffrey J Lowder   www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/chap5.html

 

A Reply to JP Holding’s “Shattering” of My Views on Jesus

www.infidels.org/secular_web/new/2000/march.html

 

Robert M Price, Christ a Fiction

www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/fiction.html

 

Earliest Christianity G A Wells 

www.infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/earliest.html

 

The Second Century Apologists

http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/century.htm

 

Existence of Jesus Controversy, Rae West 

www.homeusers.prestel.co.uk/littleton/gm1_jesu.htm

 

Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story by Richard Carrier

www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/index.shtml

 

Jesus Conference,

www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_sd/jconf_hall.html 

 

Jesus Conference,

www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/jconf_stuckenbruck.html 

 

The Testament of Levi Concerning the Priesthood and Arrogance

www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-08/anf08-07.htm#P378_53868. 

 

Sherlock Holmes Style Search for the Historical Jesus 

www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/bp/890/history.html  

 

The Ascension of Isaiah

www.earth-history.com/sacred-ascension-Isaiah.htm 

 

Apollonius of Tyana: The Monkey of Christ?  The Church Patriarchs, Robertino Solarion   www.apollonius.net/patriarchs.html

 

What About the Discovery of Q? Brad Bromling

www.ApologeticsPress.org  

 

Wells without Water, Psychological Buffoonry from the Master of the Christ-Myth, James Patrick Holding 

www.tektonics.org/JPH_WW.html

 

Critique: Scott Bidstrp [sic] on The Case for Christ by James Patrick Holding

www.tektonics.org/bidstrup02.html

 

GA Wells Replies to Criticism of his Books on Jesus

www.infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/errant.html

 

The Ossuary Scam: A Critical Analysis of the “James” Ossuary

http://www.atrueword.com/index.php/article/articleprint/15/-1/1/

 

The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, Acharya S

www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htm

 

The Historical Jesus

http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/index.html

 

BIBLE VERSION USED

 

The Amplified Bible

The King James Version    

 

03 October 2007

 

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