PAUL

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TWO DIFFERENT JESUSES

NO FIRST CENTURY CHRIST

 

TWO DIFFERENT JESUSES

 

The four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John which are to be found in the Bible in the New Testament, claim to present the story of Jesus.  They are the only accounts we have of the life of Jesus, the only ones.  If we can debunk them we have no reason to take Jesus or his existence seriously.  The gospels are the centre of the Christian faith which claims that they are the word of God.

 

Paul was the first Christian writer and he had nothing to do with the gospels.  In fact, he contradicted them.  He was THE Christian of the first century and a top leader in the early Church.  He knew what he was talking about.  He worked in the land Jesus lived in and he was a leading Pharisee when Jesus was supposedly alive.  He would have heard lots about Jesus had there been a Jesus for the gospels indicate that Jesus was a Pharisee himself though a rebel one.

 

As Paul wrote of Jesus before the gospellers his word comes first when there is a disagreement. 

 

Paul followed the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible instead of the original.  This translation had many errors and inaccuracies and was biased towards altering the Jewish faith too.  If Jesus had insisted in the Sermon on the Mount that it was easier for Heaven and earth to perish than for one word to perish as the New Testament tells us meaning that we should use the Hebrew unchanged, Paul could not have done this.  He would not.  The widespread idea that Jesus’ teachings were known and remembered better than his life among the ordinary people is wrong when you see such an important teaching not being known in Paul’s time.  Paul was an educated Jew and knew all about the failures of the Septuagint.  The Hebrew Bible gave him enough ammunition for his faith without using a corrupt Bible.  Paul started the tradition of Christians using the Septuagint so by the time the gospels were written it was too late to stop using it for they used it despite what they said Jesus said.  They might have been honest in a lot of things but they were not honest when it came to providing religious evidence for their doctrines. 

 

Paul said that we do not know how to pray right and even if we do, how to offer it worthily (Romans 8:26).  So when we pray the Holy Spirit has to do it inside us in our place for we are too sinful to be heard.  So what Christians should be doing is, “Holy Spirit I cannot pray so do it for me that God’s will alone be done.”  This totally contradicts Jesus giving us the Lord’s Prayer.  The Lord’s Prayer was something the gospels indicate would have been known to most Christians and yet here we are told it was not known.  Matthew gives the long version and Luke gives a version with half the petitions missing which is further evidence for this.  The Christians will have their answers for this but when all is said and done when there are too many awkward explanations for these things that shows the explanations are artificial and depend on a turning away from probability.  The very fact that they have to be so complicated proves that the Bible cannot be God’s word for if it were it would not be so hard to defend it and the defending is a source of much discord and dissatisfaction.  This problem badgers the entire breadth of Christian thought.

 

Paul would have learned all he could about the story of Jesus if his Jesus were a knowable historical person.  Why?  For our edification and because Jesus’ whole life manifested God.  If Paul had distorted anything he would have been corrected by the apostles and certainly somebody would have corrected his epistles in case they would be preserved for future generations.  So we can take Paul’s beliefs about Jesus being a stranger to his generation who was only revealed in the resurrection appearances and visions as been those of the apostles and entire early Church as well.

 

In 2 Corinthians 8 he says the Corinthians are to remember that Jesus was rich but for their sake he became poor to make them rich out of his poverty.  He added that this didn’t mean that to give relief to the starving and the poor they had to make things difficult for themselves but to use their surplus!  So Jesus then was clearly a totally rich man who gave it all up.  This denies the gospels which have a Jesus who was born in a stable, had poor parents, had to wander about homeless and often hungry and whose invectives against the rich were harsh in the extreme.  Paul means that Jesus was literally rich.  There is no room for the idea that he only meant that Jesus had the supernatural power to take whatever he wanted and was rich in that sense but didn’t use it.  God or the Son of God incarnate then should have the power to enjoy all the gold in the world for its theirs and their magic can get it for them.  Jesus then was only acting poor but wasn’t poor at all if he was one of these.  He was like a multi-trillionaire who doesn’t use his money but lives in a box with the homeless.  Such a man wouldn’t be poor.  In Paul’s description of Jesus as rich and then poor we see that he denied that Jesus was God or had the magical power to turn stones into bread or even bread into money.  He denied the gospel Jesus who claimed supernatural powers.  So Jesus was literally rich but gave it all away.  This isn’t in the gospels at all and he contradicts them so they are false. 

 

Paul in 1 Corinthians said that he had a right to marry as did the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Peter (9:5).  He didn't say he had a right to marry because Jesus had done it.  An anti erotic tendency was in the Church from the start and even influenced official Church teaching.  These considerations lead believers to hold that Jesus Christ was not married.  But the gospels speak of Jesus being alone with loose women and allowing and protecting marriage.  They don't mention Jesus being married but a man of his age would have had to have been married.  People would not take to an unmarried man any more than they would a homosexual for marriage was considered to be of extreme importance. 

 

So Jesus had to have been married if the gospels are even basically true in what they say about him.  But he wasn't when we consider the reasons against his being a married man.  Paul is again contradicting the gospels.

 

Jesus made no effort to convert non-Jews and indeed told a pagan woman she was a dog.  He lived as a Jew and we know the Jewish faith believed that Jews were the chosen race and salvation was only for them.  This contradicts Romans 2:11 where Paul says God does not mete out special treatment.  In saying that, he repudiated the idea of Jesus being a typical Jew.  He repudiated the entire gospels.

 

Paul said that the Christian life is in vain if Jesus has not risen again from the dead.   This contradicts Christ's teaching in the gospels that people loving God with all their hearts is the most important commandment.  The Law of Moses was the centre of Jesus' spirituality.  It never mentioned a life after death at all but urged people to keep their focus on obeying God and loving him with all their being.  Thus even if death were the end, the life that was spent loving God totally was all that mattered.  People will see that Paul put more emphasis on agreeing with him that Jesus rose than on love.

 

Paul in Ephesians 5:18 forbids people to get drunk with wine.  Yet Jesus provided wine for a drunk party in John 2.  He produced at a stage where the gospel says it was usual to serve bad wine for the revellers would have been too intoxicated to notice that they were not getting the good wine any more.

 

Paul forbade name-calling (Ephesians 4:31) which he would not have done if he had known that Jesus had indulged in it quite a bit (Matthew 23).  Even being God could not give Jesus the right to fan the flames of the Pharisees wrath who he called bastards among other hideous names to sin and sanctimonious hatred.  It was not necessary.  They could only resent it coming from a man who commanded, “Turn the other cheek”.  And insulting the smug Pharisees would only have made them worse.   Jesus told us to judge fairly.  Nobody can say we cannot judge and he can so he can call names if he wants to. 

 

For Paul, Jesus atoned for our sins and did it all for us.  God has chosen who will be saved and if we are saved we will believe because God will make sure we will.  So the greatest commandment for Paul would be to accept the salvation Jesus won for you.  For Jesus the greatest commandment was to love God with all your heart and soul and mind.  Jesus according to the gospels was saving people before he died and when he was teaching this  – he was applying the future atonement to them.   It does not help to point to 1 Corinthians 13:13 where Paul says there is faith and hope and love and the greatest of these is love.  He is still not saying we need to try and love God with all our hearts.  He is saying that faith saves us and produces hope and love and love is the best in so far as doing good is concerned.  Faith is at the root of love but this does not mean that faith is better than it in the practical sense.  But in the value sense, and for what it does and leads to, namely hope and charity, faith is better. 

 

Paul said that we must desire the higher gifts and he will show us a still more excellent way (1 Corinthians 15:31) meaning the way of love for love is the greatest gift.  Paul said that there are three gifts from God that never perish and which will last forever and they are faith, hope and charity and that the greatest of these is charity (1 Corinthians 13:13).  So we will believe in God, trust in God and love God and one another forever.  He says that the time will come when we won’t see in shadows but see God face to face and will know him as well as he knows us.  This shows that he did not believe in the Jesus of the gospels who presented himself as knowing God and making others know God.  If Paul had facts about Jesus he would have considered him to be an example of Christian living but he couldn’t if the gospels were right that Jesus claimed to know God for faith and trust cannot exist if you know God.  A Jesus who knows could not be much of an example.  This is a big contradiction in the gospels.

 

Paul tells his followers to strive for the gift of charity and tells them that if they give their lives for God and don’t have this gift it profits nothing.  He talks to them as if they haven’t the gift properly yet.  He would have believed a person could seem to be heroically good and still have no charity which raises the question of how he knew that Jesus was heroically good.  The stress on the gift even over knowledge about religious doctrine shows that we are to find out what Jesus was like by tying ourselves to him in love and not by looking for historical facts.  Paul is indicating that there was no Jesus that a history could be created for for he wanted people to pay no attention to even trying to create a history. 

 

Those who hold that Paul thought that charity was more important than faith will have to say, “Paul stressed that charity was better than any of the other gifts which means it has all the good they have in them and surpasses them.  Charity then is better than knowing things about God and Jesus.  Charity is what reveals them.  Charity then is how Jesus reveals himself and is a better way to know him than having visions of the resurrection appearances.  This shows that the early Church was not interested in tangible evidence and that the gospels in trying to provide it are heretical.”

 

Paul said that if you have faith that can move mountains and don’t have charity the faith is no good (1 Corinthians 13:2).  In Mark 11:23, Jesus says that if anybody believes without doubting that a mountain will move and asks it to move it will move.  Paul would see more value in charity so he contradicted Jesus.  It is interesting that whoever made up the quote for Jesus seems to have been inspired by Paul!

 

Jesus said that we must call no man on earth our Father (Matthew 23:9).  Proof that he meant this literally comes from the fact that he always called his mother Woman and never Mother.  Mary then is the bearer of God if Jesus is God but not the mother of God for mother implies a relationship of mother and son not just the mother having had given birth to the son. A better proof is in the fact that the gospels never give titles such as Father to anybody so we have nothing disputing the literal interpretation.  Another good proof is that Jesus was speaking to people who could only take him literally.  He also specifically forbade the titles Teacher and Master or Rabbi at the same time. 

 

FF Bruce in the excellent Hard Sayings tells us that when Jesus made this ban he meant that nobody is to get a designation that belongs to God (page 219).  Your own father is not so much your father as God so that logically implies nobody should be called father.  Bruce wouldn’t go that far but he does hold that Jesus opposed honorific titles such as father or master or rabbi in affairs of religion.  But Paul contradicts Jesus by having himself called Father (1 Corinthians 4:15).  Bruce says Paul was only using an analogy for Paul wrote that he became their father through the gospel.  But for that Paul would have to say he became like their father.  He didn’t. 

 

Jesus said there was an eternal sin, a sin against the Holy Spirit that couldn’t be forgiven in this world or in the world to come (Mark 3:28,29).  He said this of the Pharisees for they refused to believe the Holy Spirit was behind his ministry.  This has been interpreted as meaning that you can be so stubbornly anti-God that you will never repent and so you cannot be forgiven.  St Paul was a Pharisee and worse than the ones Jesus said had committed this sin.  They didn’t persecute Jesus the way Paul persecuted Christians.  Paul murdered them brutally and he even got them to blaspheme (Acts 26:11) and blasphemed himself.  If anybody committed the eternal sin it was Paul.  Yet Paul claimed he had an experience of the risen Jesus and repented and was forgiven.  In 1 Timothy 1:13 his excuse was that he acted in unbelief and ignorance so it wasn’t really malicious!  He said it was because of his ignorance that God forgave him.  Now, if he needed mercy he must have sinned deliberately.  And it is stupid and boastful to say God forgives you because of ignorance as if God wouldn’t forgive you if it was malice!  Now, nobody who believes in religious murder and fanatical doctrine and in blasphemy can say that they didn’t really mean anything by it.  The gospel Jesus as good as tells us that Paul was a fake and had committed the eternal sin.  Whatever appeared to him it was not Jesus.  Satan maybe trying to make him feel good about his evil?  Take Paul’s word for it, he never really repented.  He just changed his ways but inside he was still the same man.  We must remember that when Jesus appeared to Paul at Paul’s conversion Paul called him Lord without knowing who he was and he was told the Lord he saw was Jesus (Acts 9).  Obviously Paul already knew but had to have it confirmed.  He had known Jesus was Lord all along!  And yet he blasphemed and hated everything to do with Christ and the Church says he didn’t commit the eternal sin!  Who knows, maybe the gospels in reporting the teaching about the eternal sin really had Paul in mind!  Jesus in Matthew 23 said that the Pharisees were in total opposition to God despite appearances and kept people away from God and said they were the children of Hell and couldn’t escape from this fate.  He said in verse 28 that they looked good but inside they were evil so they concealed their evil.  Jesus meant all Pharisees by this for if they are hiding their black hearts under good works then how can anybody tell who was not meant?  He never said he meant some of them so he meant all of them.  Paul therefore was damned.  He was a false apostle.  Paul speaks so well of the Pharisees that it is impossible to reconcile this with Jesus’ attitude.  And the gospels are full of accounts of the verbal battles and animosity between Jesus and the Pharisees.  For Paul to disagree with the gospels on something so foundational shows to how great an extent the Church was making up stories about Jesus.  The Church made up the stories out of hatred for the Jews.  They used Jesus as a propaganda mouthpiece when he could no longer speak for himself!   

 

By the way was Joseph of Arimathea an exception to Jesus' scathing condemnation of the Pharisees?  Maybe Joseph joined the Pharisees after this condemnation in the hope of reforming them.  But though he is called a secret disciple of Jesus the fact remains he was a hypocrite and had joined the Pharisees under false pretences and was presumably silent whenever Jesus was condemned by them.  He was perhaps a disciple but not a good one.  With a deceiver like that handling the body of Jesus anything could have happened.

 

If Paul believed that Jesus really was a normal man (even if Jesus was God the Church teaches he was fully or normally man at the same time) then why did he describe private parts as dishonourable?  He said we cloth the inferior parts of our bodies and treat them with great care which means they are equal to the better and nicer parts which we don’t do this to (1 Corinthians 12:22-25).  So the parts are inferior but treated like they are important.  But they are still inferior.  Paul hated sexuality so his Jesus could not have been the sexual being of the gospels who cuddled men and let women touch him and who seems to have been affectionate.  Paul’s teaching that the inferior members of the Church must get special care like private parts do indicates clearly that there shouldn’t be apostles in the Church for they would be entitled to this pampering care instead.  His own teaching proves the apostles had no right to claim to represent the truth of Christ.

 

Paul said that even clever lies to get a person to convert and save their soul were immoral (Romans 3:7,8).  Jesus was a wanted man from early in his ministry according to the gospels and many believed he was the Christ and he did not go public and say they were right until close to his death.  so he must have denied being the Christ before that time.  If he was the Christ then this was lying.   But Paul is condemning all lies which he would not have done had the gospels not been making all that stuff they said about Jesus up.

 

Paul tells us not to eat meat sacrificed to idols when others will be outraged at it though they should not be (Romans 14).  He is censuring Jesus who never worried about what other people thought and who claimed to be the Son of God though it upset many of his own admirers. 

 

If the gospels are to be believed, Jesus openly poured scorn on Jewish taboos about food and drink that were not in the Law.  Paul quoted Isaiah in 2 Corinthians 6 in which God said not to go near anything unclean.  Paul knew from the context of the times that this meant no unclean food.   So Paul is declaring the Jewish food laws to be still in force.  If you believe that Jesus made all foods clean then Paul is denying that. 

 

Jesus sought to call Jews to a deeper commitment to their religion (Matthew 17:24; 9:13).  He made friends with prostitutes and other outcasts which Paul knew nothing of because he ordered his Church to refuse to associate with or talk to people like that (1 Corinthians 5).  Christians may say that Jesus befriended outsiders while Paul is against backslidden Christians.  But the people Jesus befriended were backslidden Jews  - members of what was then, according to him, the true faith, so the same would go for Christianity now.

 

Paul complained against Christians having their legal battles seen to by the wicked and he forbade it.  This was in contradiction to Jesus who called the Sanhedrin evil and then wanted anybody who treated another with complete contempt dragged before them! 

 

Paul’s teaching that God does not care if one is a Jew or a Greek (Colossians 3:11) is the opposite of Jesus’ own attitude.  In the gospels, Jesus made racist remarks to a pagan woman who wanted him to deliver her daughter from a demon.  He should have said nothing and the gospels would say if he was joking and it only took half a second to cure the girl.  He didn’t have to speak to the woman at all and especially when he ignored her when she first spoke to him.  He said salvation is from the Jews.  The Christian has to be a Jew in a sense to be saved. 

 

Paul, or his editor, predicted that there would be a mass falling away from the gospel when the antichrist comes before Christ returns and therefore not to listen to anybody saying that Jesus was about to come back or already had (2 Thessalonians 2).  Yet the synoptic gospels, that is Mark, Matthew and Luke which are the ones that have the most in common, with John the fourth gospel being the odd one out, strongly emphasised that Jesus could return any minute which was why people were counselled to be ready at all times.  Even 1 Thessalonians 5 stresses that Jesus’ coming will be sudden and it will be like a thief in the night and there will be peace and then instant destruction before anybody has a chance to escape.  Christians say that there will be great calamities after this peace and the calamities will be sudden and destroy and be over fast and then Jesus will manifest himself.  But this is wrong because the thief comes at night when all is quiet and peaceful.  The destruction will accompany the appearance.  Everywhere else the picture is of a destruction that is not all that sudden so there should be time to escape.  The contradiction plus the evidence for Pauline authorship suggests that somebody revised this letter after Paul wrote it.  It was so easy for anybody to do something like that for first there would have been one copy and then somebody would write another copy and somebody would copy that copy and so on especially when there is no evidence that Paul took measures to safeguard the authenticity and preservation of the text or even cared if the letters were preserved.  2 Thessalonians warns against anybody forging letters in Paul’s name but that only means letters that said that Jesus was coming back on such a such a date or is already here.  The obvious lie about Jesus would prove that the letter is a fake.  It does not imply that they made sure that the text of existing letters would escape interference like the Jews did with their scriptures.  Paul would not have been so vague at times if they had because that would be an invitation to people to interfere.  Christians say there is no evidence of interference.  Even if that’s true, who is going to alter a document and make it obvious and obvious all the time?

 

Paul said that we must not go beyond what is written (1 Corinthians 4:6).  He was speaking of the need for people not to puff themselves up and quoted a bit from the Jewish Bible (1 Corinthians 3:20) as a backup.  The earliest Church did not use scriptures apart from the Old Testament.  In their interpretation its alleged Messianic prophecies spoke of the deeds, death and resurrection and message and salvation of Jesus.  What Paul wrote suggests that the early Church had no interest in a Jesus story that went further than the Old Testament.  Stories like the healings and miracles of Jesus were condemned.  It was enough to know he had such powers and may have used them after his death.

 

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that far from ever telling a lie we must not even swear that we are telling the truth for we must not need to so oaths are wrong.  Paul swore in Galatians 1:20.  And he had no need to either because he could have got affidavits to support the assertions he was making.  A man who swears without need is definitely one to keep an eye on.  He even had to swear in Romans 9:1 that he felt terrible all the time and was really depressed over the Jews not accepting the Christian faith.  That was totally unnecessary.  At least it shows that if you are a real Christian the joy you experience will be of little benefit to you for you should be depressed over the terrible things that happen to those who reject God.  The fact that Paul’s conflicts with the gospel Jesus were not eradicated from the text shows that the Church would have agreed with him that the gospel Jesus was a myth, a fiction, and a myth that would not emerge and be accepted until the second century.

 

Paul stressed Jesus being the Christ.  G A Wells, the best debunker of Jesus’ existence ever, wrote that the word Messiah or anointed one appeared in the Psalms and when the Jews read the Psalms after anointed ones had ceased to exist they came to believe that the Psalms were still relevant to them for the anointed one was in Heaven waiting to come down (many Jews still believe that today) or had already come long ago and would return (page 366, The Encyclopaedia of Unbelief, Vol 1, Edited by Gordon Stein, Prometheus Books, New York, 1985).  I would add that anointed one meant more than just a king but one that whose consecration was sanctified and accepted and approved by God.  The king needed to go through some ceremony for this for any prince could make this claim.  He would probably have to be anointed by a recognised prophet and take over the land.  The writers of the Psalms meant a political king by the term Messiah and for Christians to say they meant a spiritual king is bluntly dishonest.  Wells feels that the Jesus stories started off with the belief in a Heavenly Messiah that were elaborated on and eventually became fairy-tales about a Messiah having come to earth.  Given that nobody, not even Jesus, fitted the biblical criteria I have given for being an earthly Messiah this had to happen.  

 

Paul wrote that when he does something he does it and it is not a yes with him and then a no.  This led him to express a thought about Jesus.  Paul wrote that the Son of God the Christ Jesus that we proclaimed I mean myself and Silvanus and Timothy (2 Corinthians 1) was not yes and no but was always yes.  He then wrote that no matter how many promises God made the yes to them all is in Christ which is why we praise God through Christ.  Why does he say who he means here?  Certainly it was to indicate that the Christs of other preachers might be a caricature and only those three had the right Christ and the right view of him.  It is a hint that there were lots of self-styled apostles in those days.  No doubt their Christs were all yes to the promises of God as well so why does Paul indicate that they couldn’t have been?  The promises refer to the Christ allegedly promised in the Old Testament by prophets to whom God revealed the future.  Paul is plainly stating that there were many different versions of Christ being preached but only his version fitted the prophecies.  The Christ then is not learned about by delving into history but through prophecy.  This can be only true if the story that Jesus lived in Paul’s time is false and he lived aeons before.  The other versions indicate that everybody was making up his own Christ in the absence of any history.  That is what happens when the subject is unreal or lived long ago. 

 

The Gospel Jesus was not always yes.  He refused to help a pagan woman and called her a dog.  Then he changed his mind when she told him that dogs deserve scraps off the table.  This contradicted Paul's teaching that there was no Jew or Gentile but only equality with Jesus.

 

Paul said that his disciples should follow him even as he follows Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1) meaning that he mirrors Christ in his actions and words.  He said too immediately after that about how thankful he was that the people didn’t let him leave their minds and remembered the traditions he taught.  So there was no other source about Jesus but himself and the apostles proves the point that Jesus could not have lived in the first century.  Paul warned against following men acting in the name of God and Jesus for you could end up serving men when you think it is God you are serving so when he talked this way he had no alternative.  If he had he would have directed the Corinthians to it and helped them to it instead of setting himself up as the expert on the Son of God.

 

Despite the fact that his disciples were living in a turbulent country and needed money to make a new life somewhere else if war broke out the Luke Jesus demanded that they surrender all their possessions.  He said in Luke 14 that no king going to war sends his men out without making sure that they can stand up to the enemy so in the same way nobody can be his disciple without giving up all his possessions.  In other words, you have to go to war against what is around you to follow Christ.  Note the violent imagery:  it shows that the battle is going to be just as tough as real war.  You have to give up your possessions to prepare for the war so that you might win it.  There can be no doubt that he is not just referring to detachment from possessions here, having them but them not meaning much or anything to you.  He is saying they must physically be abandoned to prepare for the battle.  Detachment is what you are fighting for, it’s the goal of the war so that you will be attached only to Jesus.  You must painfully and agonisingly part with everything so that you have a chance of really being detached for giving up possessions does not mean you don’t love them any more.  You give them up so that you can stop loving them.  That is what Jesus is saying.  Jesus is also saying that nearly the whole of Christianity is a fake for they ignore his directions.  He said that nobody is a disciple of his unless he gives up everything.  Jesus said that he who was not for him was against him and you need to be a disciple of his to enter the kingdom of Heaven.  Obviously then there is no salvation for anybody who does not abandon all he has.  Jesus did ask his disciples to do that – they were called just to drop everything and follow him.  He told Matthew just to leave his job and follow him for example.  So all must be forsaken for Jesus Christ.  A wife can be more dangerous than material things for all materialists are unhappy and it is easier to prefer your wife to Jesus than your money so by implication Jesus is advocating celibacy as well.  This kind of morality indicates an extreme fanaticism in this version of Jesus, his followers and his fans.  Like many fanatics they might have been able to hide it well just like somebody acting normally doesn’t mean they are sane.

 

The Luke Gospel causes problems for the stupid idea some scholars have that the more difficult to believe parts of the gospels must be true for they are embarrassing.  It is embarrassing to have a Jesus who rails against property and sexuality.  The Luke Jesus does just that even though Paul long before the gospel was dreamed of did have property, worked and said he had the right to these things and the right to a wife!  St Paul didn’t forsake all for Jesus.  Though Luke’s gospel is influenced by Paul’s thinking it certainly makes no effort to stick to his version of Jesus.  But Paul came before the gospel so his Jesus who did not make the demand’s Luke’s did is the one that should be taken most seriously.  The Luke Jesus is fantasy, perhaps based on a life-story stolen from some Jewish saint but fantasy all the same.

 

That people listen to this being read in the Catholic liturgy and then take religious leaders seriously is astonishing for it makes it plain that the leaders only pick and choose what they like out of Jesus’ teaching and then claim to be his honest representatives!

 

The Jesus of Paul is a lot less exciting than the one in the gospels and is the true one if any is near real.  The gospels are drunk on myths and lies.  Remember, the simplest portrait is the most believable one.

 

Paul’s contradictions of the gospels prove that their Jesus never existed though he may have been based on a suitable historical victim which is not the same as saying there was a Jesus.  And his silence speaks just as loudly.  That is our next study. 

 

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NO FIRST CENTURY CHRIST

 

The writings of Paul, the first Christian writer deny the view expressed in the gospels that Jesus lived roughly from about 4BC to 33 or whatever AD and don’t even say he lived and died on earth - he could have died in some arcane and magical world.  He says that Jesus died and rose from the dead on the third day and then he appeared.  But he could have risen the third day centuries before and started only to appear in the early thirties AD.  Theodore Parker noticed from the New Testament that Paul’s Jesus was a mythological figure (page 234, Theodore Parker’s Discourses).  Paul does state some things about Jesus’ life but he never puts Jesus in any time or place or says that what he knows about Jesus came from historical data.  It might have been worked out from Old Testament prophecies or have been disclosed to somebody in visions.  There is no evidence against the view from Paul himself that the only revelation Paul got was a sense that God was telling him to interpret the alleged messianic prophecies of scripture as having been fulfilled by an unknown man and that this was the cause of his conversion and he thought the man appeared to him later (page 15, Jesus - One Hundred Years Before Christ). No hint is given that the vision had anything to do with his conversion or that it was even as important as scripture.

 

The Epistles of Paul just say that Jesus was born of woman, lived under the law of Moses, was betrayed, said, “This is my body given for you”, over bread, testified to the faith before Pontius Pilate - did Pilate have a vision of Jesus (Paganism used techniques to induce “visions”) or did he see the real Jesus or did he just hear what Jesus supposedly said through some prophet?  (Note: the letter that records this, the first epistle to Timothy, is regarded as a late forgery by most scholars), died on a cross, rose to life and appeared in his time.  Paul’s Jesus could have been born of this woman on another world.  The Law of Moses was believed to be a Law that was always in force – because it was really God’s Law - but which was only revealed at the time of Moses so Jesus could have been born under the Law before Moses was even born.

 

Romans 9:5 says that the Jews are descended from the patriarchs and that Christ came from their flesh and blood which seems to contradict the view that Jesus never lived on earth.  But God could have taken an embryo to Heaven so that the Christ would be Jewish or made sperm into a body for Jesus in Heaven just like he made Eve from Adam’s rib.  Perhaps despite being risen for countless centuries, the risen Jesus had his bodily nature changed after the Israelites came to be so that he was genetically a descendant.  Or perhaps because when Paul decreed that Onesimus and Philemon were blood brothers though they were not this is a reflection of that idea.  Perhaps Jesus was only a legal descendant but not an actual one.

 

In the Bible, the angels are natural material beings like men and who have bodies but who possess unusual powers. 

 

A major proof that the gospels tell nothing but lies is in Romans 13.  It goes, “Let every person be loyal subject to the governing (civil) authorities.  For there is no authority except from God.  Therefore he who resists and sets himself up against the authorities resists what God has appointed and arranged.  And those who resist will bring down judgment upon themselves.  For civil authorities are not a terror to people of good conduct, but to those of bad behaviour.  Would you have no dread of him who is in authority?  Then do what is right and you will receive his approval and commendation.  For he is God’s servant for your good.  One must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath and escape punishment, but also as a matter of principle and for the sake of conscience” (1-5).  

 

This refers specifically to the corrupt, lying, thieving and brutal Roman empire.  Paul would not have written this way had the gospels been telling the truth that Pilate, the Roman governor of Palestine, and the Roman Empire had put Jesus to death.  Jesus and his apostles openly defied the authority of the Jewish leaders according to the gospels and they were by no means as despicable as the Romans.  Jesus also defied Rome according to the gospels by claiming to be the Messiah, a political title meaning he was saying he was the true king of the Jews not the Emperor, and did what Messiahs do going into Jerusalem on a donkey to claim the city and accept the praises of the people.  Jesus claiming to be the Son of God meant he was happy to make the Romans lose faith in their many gods which was also treasonous for the Romans believed that their future in power depended on their gods.  Jesus encouraged people to hope the world would end soon which meant he wanted God to come and overthrow the Roman Empire and being in a Roman province that was treason and would rouse a smug attitude towards the Empire and make people less keen on living up to its demands.  What this chapter from Romans tells us is that most of what is in the gospels isn’t true.  Paul commended the authorities despite their injustice.  Despite what the hypocrite says, good people did have to fear the authorities.  Had the authorities destroyed the good man Jesus he would not have written this way.  He says that his command to obey the authorities is just a good idea.  He says it is a matter of conscience.  If you disrupt the authorities then you are committing sin – its objectively wrong.  He is saying that true Christians cannot break the law of Rome even though Jesus indicates the opposite in the gospels.  It makes it more likely that when he said that the authorities or rulers slew Jesus that he did not mean political authorities but that Jesus was slain by supernatural beings who had no real authority though they just had powers.  The Jesus of Paul and the primitive Church was not killed by the Romans.  His crucifixion must have taken place in the distant past or in a celestial world for a more recent crucifixion would mean the Romans had to have been responsible.

 

Jesus broke Roman and religious law by wrecking the money changing area in the Temple.  The fact that he got doing a lot of damage (Matthew 21:12; John 2:15) shows he got others to help him do this.  You can’t wreck a public area swarming with people without somebody stopping you immediately.  When Jesus got as far as he did it shows he sought and got help.  He organised a riot.  Had this event really happened Paul would not have been able to write as he did for the gospels may have put in the story to explain why the Jews decided that they would wait no more but get Jesus despatched off to the next world as soon as they could.  To deny the possible major cause of the crucifixion could be tantamount to denying that Jesus was crucified on earth at all.  Mark 11:16 says Jesus stopped people from carrying vessels in the Temple which indicates that he had a huge pile of manpower, real mean fighting man-machines, which contradicts the fact that they did nothing later to help save him from his death a few days later.

 

That nobody mentioned the cleansing of the Temple outside the gospels shows that it never happened.  Josephus writing a few decades later mentioned lesser events happening in the Temple but never mentioned this one.  He didn’t have to mention Jesus if he didn’t want to but not mentioning that a riot took place surely shows it never happened.  When such a plausible story is false we cannot trust the gospels at all.

 

Paul’s emphasis on living in peace with everybody and even putting up with people who still had superstitious scruples despite being Christians does not fit a Jesus who uses violence, hate speech and gets others involved in them too.  The gospel Jesus has been an encouragement to people who believe they have a right to send hate-mail to homosexuals or people of a despised religion and sneer at them on the street.

 

Paul’s stress on faith would be incompatible with the traditional Christian idea of a Jesus who did lots of miracles on earth for Paul wanted a faith nourished by the word of God and not by miracles.  He viewed faith as a great blessing and the means of salvation so though he considered visions tolerable too many miracles would be a problem and would block faith.

 

Romans 15:8 tells us that Christ became a servant to the circumcised, referring to the Jews, to show that God was truthful so that the promises made to the patriarchs centuries before would be confirmed.  The promises didn’t mention a saviour who would die for sins and rise again. They promised material blessings for Israel and peace with a David ruling it as its just king on earth.  Unless you want to believe that Paul thought that Jesus did all this for Israel in some unrecorded time perhaps at least a century before his time you can see that Jesus did not fulfil any of these promises.  The alternative is to hold that Paul is a liar or that Romans 15:8 tells us nothing about when Jesus lived for he could have been this servant, that proved these points, after his resurrection or even before his birth as a man.  All of the three would indicate that Paul cannot be taken as evidence for the existence of Jesus.  In the same chapter Paul called on the Romans to be tolerant with each other after the example of Jesus Christ.  But the Gospel Jesus was very intolerant of the Jewish leaders and of hypocrites.  He was tolerant of stubborn sinners but the intolerance is what shines through most.

 

Many think that Paul wrote that when he admitted to having persecuted the Church (Philippians 3:6) that the Church must have existed before him so he was not the inventor of Jesus or the first Christian.  He only admits to his bloodthirsty past the once.  He immediately added that he was above reproach when it came to justice as the Law of Moses understood it.  He then says that he perceived all this as rubbish when the light of Christ shone upon him.  The Church could have been just the chosen body that was conscious of garbled new revelation coming through and Paul was chosen as their prophet and seer.  He could have been the one that shaped these revelations that became solidified into a new god, a resurrected Jesus Christ.  He could still have been the creator of Jesus. 

Paul said that Jesus died and rose according to the scriptures.  The scripture he had in mind was probably Isaiah 53 which speaks of a man suffering for others as an offering for sin – one of Paul’s major themes about Jesus - and then he gets his reward.  It is the best candidate though it is bad enough.  Romans 10:16 proves that it is the one.  The suffering man is spoken of in the past tense in Isaiah as if it had all happened long ago.  Christians say the prophets often predicted future events in the language of the past.  Isaiah never did that even if others did so that is improbable.  They would have made it obvious that they could not mean the past if they did.  Also, the passage could be about the past so it should be taken to mean the past.  53:1 asks who has believed this message about the servant meaning nobody did.  We gather then that that generation knew who or what it was about and did not believe it.  It was too vague and obscure in itself to be really unbelievable to those who accepted prophets unless it was not vague and obscure to them indicating they knew what and who it referred to.  Paul’s use of the text may indicate that he believed that Jesus lived long ago.  Paul said that Jesus was a mystery to the ages past but that could refer to the gospel of the resurrection which was only revealed in the latter days by the apparition of Christ.  The past tense in Isaiah shifts to the future tense when speaking of the rehabilitation and vindication of the servant indicating that the tenses should be taken literally. 

 

Paul told the Thessalonians that they and he believed that Jesus died and rose again (1 Thessalonians 4:14).  You don’t say you believe that John F Kennedy died.  You would only say that if you had just the word of a few witnesses for it that he died or if you knew people who thought they had seen his ghost that said he had died on a cross.  If Jesus had died in the first century Paul would have written you know that Jesus died and believe that he rose again and not lumped the death and resurrection under belief.  The context in which Paul said this was about that there was hope if loved ones die.  Yet the hope he gives is one of belief not proof so there was no proof for proof would serve his consoling purpose better. 

 

Paul received his entire gospel from a revelation not from men (Galatians 1:12,17).  If Paul could have learned things about Jesus’ life the human and mundane way there would have been no visions to teach him though one to convert him would have been required to make an apostle of him.  People prefer hard facts to visionary evidence so Paul could not have chosen magical evidence in preference to mundane evidence.  He would have used both assuming material evidence existed for the more proof the better.  He warned about false visions so he needed some standard to test his visions by so he must have been stuck when he had to have visions to give himself a religious education.  The Bible makes it clear that the twelve apostles were the foundation of the Church.  Paul was an apostle but could be by no means equal to the other apostles but it seems he did take it that he was equal (2 Corinthians 11).  Those who say he broke with them say that he claimed he was.  Others say the apostles he said he was equal to were heretical super-apostles.  But when Paul did not check his gospel alongside the authority of the twelve and learn from them and state that his vision gave him no authority apart from their approval and consent it seems he was a rebel and a heretic.  The apostles would not have wanted him harping on about his visions but to stress the revelations they received as a whole and perhaps for him to see his own as being only an additional witness to their role as divinely appointed witnesses.  Paul’s message would have been very different had the apostles taught what the gospels and the Church say about a historical Jesus.  So, like Paul, the apostles must have been entirely dependent on visions.  It is interesting that the gospels are more focused on the life of Jesus as a man and have very little to say on his life as a risen man which is extraordinary and shows the apostles did not have a lot of visions. 

 

Cephas, James and John were three of the apostles of Jesus.  Cephas and John allegedly saw the risen Jesus after his death by crucifixion and were appointed by him to spread the good news that the saviour Jesus was alive.

 

When Paul went to meet them he stated that Cephas (Peter), James and John seemed to be the leaders but added that it made no difference to him what they seemed to be for God has no favourites (Galatians 2).  The trio then extended the hand of fellowship to Paul when they saw the grace that was in him and his couple of associates and decided that Paul indeed had a call to preach the gospel. 

 

So just because they thought there was grace in him they accepted Paul! In other words, they were claiming to be so righteous that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit was open to them.  So it really boiled down to them thinking they had grace in them,

 

Paul pompously agrees that they were right which was why he was saying all this.  They were obviously sceptical of Paul when they needed to have the meeting and then when he talked to them and it was a private meeting we are told they were convinced.  They were not hard to convince which shows that they were anything but reliable witnesses to the resurrection themselves.  The conversation was not very long when Paul didn’t even know if they were the leaders for sure or not.  He was not even interested enough to find out which shows that he was hell-bent on going his own way and following his visions and to hell with everybody else.  Not the attitude an honest man would be likely to have!  (Jesus would not encourage him by appearing to him!)  He had no respect for leadership.  And he admits he thought they could be the leaders but says he does not care what they were for God has no favourites.  But God choosing leaders and people claiming to be leaders does not mean they are his favourites.  Paul is rancorously accusing them of claiming to be God’s favourites and he attacks them for that.  When Paul asks us to accept him and uses their testimony to him as evidence that we should and then accuses them of being big-headed nitwits who are taking advantage of religion to look down on other people we have every right to be suspicious of Paul himself too.  The two-faced beggar even shook hands with them in religious fellowship just for appearances.  The men who knew Jesus would have the right in some ways to be superior to Paul if they knew Jesus.  His contempt for them shows that he does not care about the historical Jesus or that they knew no historical Jesus and only had visions like himself.  The latter is the most likely possibility for nobody could call himself a prophet and ignore the lessons to be learned from the life of Jesus especially one like Paul who had time to go on solitary retreats and even resumed his tent-making as if he had nothing important left to do.

 

When Paul disrespected Cephas and John asleaders he refused to regard them as reliable witnesses to the resurrection appearances of Jesus.  He refused to regard them as leaders in the field.  He would not have treated them so nastily had he believed they lived with Jesus.  He needed them.  He could not afford to affront them.  The way he treated them suggests that he believed that his own authority was enough for like theirs it was only based on visions anyway.

 

Small wonder Paul wrote that he wanted to be known for knowing nothing but Jesus and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2) in the context of talking about being smart.  He said that it was not facts he could present that convinced people but the power of the Holy Spirit showing that there were no facts for the Holy Spirit could make good use of factual knowledge and would have an easier and greater influence on people.  The crucified Jesus was more important than the resurrected one because the crucifixion implied the resurrection and it was the crucifixion that took away sins.  So Jesus dying for us is more important than him rising for us.  The main purpose of the resurrection then was for Jesus to come and tell us what his death had done, so in that sense Jesus rose for our justification.  So the resurrection was the only way Jesus could prove to us that his death saved us, his holiness, his teaching, his miracles prove nothing.  They would if they happened or if we knew they happened so Paul is indicating that we know nothing and nothing can be known about Jesus’ life.  Jesus must have been a person nobody heard of until he started appearing as a resurrected man or he lived centuries before.  To say you want to know nothing but the crucified Jesus and to claim God approves would be to say that nothing else said about Jesus has divine authority.  So virgin births and miracle healings are all out.

 

Paul said that he didn’t rely on his own powers to teach this message and came among them to teach it in fear and great trembling.  Why would the crucified Jesus story scare him so much? – possibly because it showed that God could ask something awful of you like he did Jesus.  It certainly indicates that the Church used fear to get converts and to keep them.

 

The mission fields that Paul worked in would have required him to be able to tell the people about Jesus’ life and there were mystical heretics around who would have liked there to have been Christians who knew nothing much about the Jesus of history.  Pagans comprised the bulk of the converts and pagans were heavily into stories about gods and they would not have changed the religious habits of a lifetime.  If Jesus had had a story, Paul would have focused on it more.  It would be different if Paul admitted that nobody knew anything about Jesus.  A Jesus who could be known through visions would have been a big attraction to pagans. A Jesus with stories about him like the gods of the pagans would have been much better.

 

Paul complained about how hard it was to keep people true to the faith and yet he did not give them the whole verified Jesus story.  He wrote to the Thessalonians that they must hold fast to the faith and prove all things in it (1 Thessalonians 5:21).  This proof contained nothing then about the life of Jesus.  Whatever had to be proven had to be proven by the Old Testament and without the life of Jesus.  We see this when Paul complains about his fear that their faith was not firm despite his efforts which betrays a non-intellectual historical basis for that faith (chapter 3).  In 2 Thessalonians the concern is that the people will be tricked by forged or altered letters from the apostles that contradict the apostolic doctrine of the second coming and what will happen.  This could not happen if they were familiar with the Jesus of history, if that Jesus is the one of the gospels, for the second coming was one of Jesus’ main themes and Jesus went on about it so much that it is clear that he may have thought of rising from the dead and the second coming happening then or that the second coming was not far behind. 

 

Paul centred the Church not on the foundation of Jesus and his history but on Jesus as seen through the apostles and especially himself.  This overwhelming dependence on the apostles proves that Jesus was at most a vision that they had and that the gospel history never happened.

 

Ephesians 4:8 says that Jesus took captives with him when he ascended into the heavens.  This proves that the author thought that Jesus must have ascended centuries before because nobody could say he did it some years ago.  The saints are not captives.  Paul says that Jesus does not drag people kicking and screaming into his friendship.  The captives are his enemies who he takes up out of the world but not necessarily to Heaven. 

 

Romans 16:25,26 speaks of the mystery of redemption which was recently unveiled and kept in secret for long ages but is now disclosed through the prophets and scriptures of the Old Testament.  The mystery of redemption is very broad and covers the death and resurrection of Christ and the call to the world to be saved through this redemption.  Paul is saying that the converts are seeing these doctrines in the Old Testament and the apostles never claimed authority for themselves but always used the Old Testament to support their claims so everything depended on the predictions of the Old Testament.  Even Paul himself and the Early Church didn’t believe that their mission was based on the miracles and life of Christ or any gospels.  In fact the only thing that counted was the Old Testament prophecies.  If it didn’t predict the resurrection of Jesus then it never happened even if the whole of Palestine saw Jesus rise!

 

Paul said that the children of Israel hundreds of years before when Moses was alive drank from the spiritual rock that was Christ and that God was not pleased with any of them (1 Corinthians 10:4).  He said that they were lost so he does not mean that they were spiritually sustained by grace but that Christ was there to teach them.  Paul was frightened of people twisting his words (2 Thessalonians 2:2) so he wrote what he meant.  And especially when he was writing to the Church in Corinth which had many people who believed Jesus was not a material being and that the resurrection was a symbol and not an event.  Paul believed that Jesus only appeared to people for a good spiritual reason so he was not talking about apparitions.  Jesus lived on earth as a man in the time of Moses.  The fact that the deeds of Jesus are not mentioned in the books of Moses was of little consequence to him.  The early Church believed the prophet Moses predicted who would be like him was Jesus.  Paul knew that when Moses predicted the coming of a prophet like himself that this prophecy was too vague and therefore useless unless you assume that this prophet was alive then which narrows it down a good bit.  All the early Christians believed this prophet was Jesus so Paul would have thought Jesus was alive in Moses’ day.

 

Why does Paul when enumerating the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12) which are to prophesy, preach well, do miracles include the gift of faith?  He says this gift is given to some in the Church. 

 

Faith is necessary for membership in the Church and for being a Christian.  But what is this faith that is given to some of these?  How is it different?

 

Now this faith is different from the faith you have to have when you join the Church.  It is not normal Christian faith but something more advanced.  It has to be when that faith is necessary for membership.  Now both kinds of faith are based on evidence and are a gift from God – his guidance makes you see that the faith is true.  Let’s call the ordinary faith of Christians normal faith.  Let’s call the other charismatic faith.  It is a charism – a gift that the Spirit doesn’t give for everybody just like he doesn’t give all the gift of prophecy.

 

So what is different about them?  There is only one possible answer. 

 

The normal faith of the Christians was based on the apostles’ testimony and on the feeling that God was telling you in your heart that it was true but not on anything concretely evidential.  But God was choosing some to receive and or provide proper evidence for the faith of and the existence of Jesus which was charismatic faith.  That would only happen if there were no people who saw Jesus do miracles or who knew people who had experienced Jesus’ miracles.  It would only happen if there were no people who saw the death of Jesus happen.  So God provided evidence for the chosen in the Church by giving them visions of what supposedly actually happened.   

 

Paul counselled the Church members to work out their salvation by fear and trembling – Jesus never encouraged fear and often told his followers not to be afraid.  When Paul wants the trembling it shows he wanted them to be very afraid.  When the first Christian writer urges something that the gospels say Jesus didn’t want then it follows that the gospels are lying.  Maybe they are not, but we have to follow the rules of evidence which require us to pay most heed to the earliest testimony.  And that testimony is Paul’s. 

 

Some say that Paul quoted the historical Jesus in his epistles.  1 Corinthians 9:14 superficially matches Matthew 10:10.  1 Corinthians 10:27 superficially matches Luke 10:7.  Romans 13:7 superficially matches Mark 12:13-17; 1 Thessalonians 5:2-5 superficially matches Luke 12:39-40.  All of the parallels can be explained without suggesting that they were quotes from the gospel version of Jesus.  The gospels came after the epistles and so they probably took some inspiration from the epistles.  Some parallels can also be explained as coincidence or are down to expressions like thief in the night which might have been current in the Church and were incorporated into the gospel version of the words of Jesus.  The author of Luke was reputed to be a disciple of Paul.  None of the verses are presented as quotations so they should not be taken to be quotations.  The first selection has Jesus saying something we all say, without intending to quote him or anybody – there are certain things that tend to be expressed in the same words by coincidence – Jesus saying that the worker deserves his wages and Paul puts it like this, that those who preach the gospel should live by the gospel which is too different to be a possible quotation. 

 

Top of the Document

 

Conclusion

 

The Jesus of Paul and the Jesus of the gospels which came later are two different people.  The gospels are lies.  What Paul says takes precedence over legends that came together later for he was the first Christian writer and wrote closer to the alleged time of Christ.

 

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

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

Hard Sayings, FF Bruce, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1983

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

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

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 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 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 

 

Top of the Document

 

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

  

BIBLE VERSION USED

 

The Amplified Bible

The King James Version    

 

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