JEWISH RECORDS

undermine

THE

GOSPEL JESUS’ EXISTENCE

 

 

Index

THE JEWS ON THE ORIGIN OF JESUS

THE JEWS ON THE LIFE OF JESUS

THE JEWS AND BALAAM

THE TALMUD ON THE DEATH OF YESHU

 

The Jewish records are supposed to mention Jesus.  Christians sometimes use them to prove that Jesus existed. 

 

THE JEWS ON THE ORIGIN OF JESUS

 

The Talmud says that Jesus was a bastard and his father was Pantera, who seems to have been a Roman soldier.  Pantera is alleged to have had an adulterous relationship with Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Why invent a father for Jesus when branding Mary as a self-confessed adulteress would do?  Jesus’ mother was a hairdresser who left her husband, Pappas Ben Judah (Joseph never existed), and Jesus learned spells and magic tricks in Egypt and tattoos on his skin (page 47, Jesus the Magician).

 

If Pantera had been the Messiah not Jesus the Church would have seized on this as evidence for his existence.  Because it doesn’t suit them they reject his existence and expect us to take the references to Jesus as evidence for Jesus.

 

The Gospels claim that Christ was accused of being illegitimate and there are also many hints and statements in the gospels that Jesus was considered by some not to have been a real Jew, a half-breed.  For example, the Jewish leaders call him a bastard in John’s gospel.  Jesus could  have been a Gentile pretending to be a Jew for all we know.

 

Christians say that Pantera comes from the word virgin.  They say that since Christians called Jesus the son of parthenos which is virgin in Greek that a mistake in the naming led to many thinking that Pantera was Jesus’ father!  But Jesus was not called the son of the virgin until the fourth century (Josh McDowell’s Evidence for Jesus: Is it reliable?).  But Pantera was a proper name and the Christian arguments are weak speculation.

 

If Jesus were accused of illegitimacy because of the virgin birth this origin would not have been broadcast in his mother’s lifetime to protect her and his own reputation.  But if he did not look like a proper Jew the rumour would have been inevitable that his father was a Gentile.  That would be the most likely explanation for the rumour. 

 

Rabbi Eliezar some time before 100 AD said it was illegal to tattoo yourself on the Sabbath day even though Jesus had had done it.  Eliezar was converted to Jesus by a Galilean who called Jesus, son of Pantera (page 43, Jesus the Magician).  When an educated man goes to somebody that says that Jesus was born out of wedlock by a man Pantera it shows that what is now called Christianity was not believed then.  There is name called Pantera so Christians are saying that it was a corruption of the Greek parthenos for virgin is unlikely and just typical of the unfair and stupid speculation Christians use against intellectual critics.  The rabbis used Hebrew not Greek.  The fatherless birth was not invented until the second century and is not in the New Testament.  Jesus was not given the title, Son of the Virgin, in the first two centuries (page 47, Jesus the Magician) so there was no such corruption.

 

So when the Christian and the Christian Rabbi believed Jesus was Pantera’s offspring it shows that this came from the Church of the time.  If Jesus existed he must have looked like a cross between a Roman and a Jewess if not a non-Jew.   

 

There is a story of the impudent one from Jewish tradition that was reported by R. Akikba who died in 135 AD.  He Walked Among Us (page 63) repeats the tradition that there was some important and unnamed man whose mother confessed that a man, the groomsman, fathered him on her wedding night making him a son of uncleanness.  Akikba found her sitting in the market selling peas and broke his promise to be discreet about her confession.  It seems that this baby was believed to be Jesus.  Jesus was called the impudent one or the son of impurity.  That Akikba had this interview with his mother suggests that there might have been more Jesuses, Sons of God than one thinks.  That must have been confusing!  The book says the passage has been interfered with but when it is not clear on Jesus Christ the interference can’t be serious.  Why would anybody want to corrupt it to blacken somebody that was not clearly mentioned?  Perhaps something happened the record and it had to be pieced together again.  The story makes no sense apart from being a reference to a Jesus of some description even though McDowell likes to quote a version of the bit where Jesus is apparently quoted by Akikba as saying that if from a hire of a harlot they have come to the same they shall go that is rejected by scholars and which harks back to some dubious nineteenth century book (Josh McDowell’s Evidence for Jesus: Is it reliable?)

 

Nobody would have made up these things for spite.  Being illegitimate would not have stopped Jesus being a prophet of God.  Illegitimates were barred from priestly duty but Jesus never claimed to be a Levitical priest.  David was a prophet despite the terrible things he did.  God thought that people married to adulteresses were dirtier than normal and yet he encouraged the prophet Hosea to wed one.  It is surmised that when Mary said Jesus was not her husband’s son that it started the rumour of his illegitimacy.  But the rumour would be more likely to start if it were true.  It would have been easier to blame her husband.  And the Jews could not accuse Mary of adultery without stoning her.  Pantera must have been a famous person when his name comes up so much as if he were well known.  They believed they were telling the truth when they said that he was Jesus’ daddy when he was well-known. 

 

 

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THE JEWS ON THE LIFE OF JESUS

 

The Talmud speaks of a Yeshu but likes to avoid saying his name a lot of the time.  We are not certain if the person who seems to be Jesus in it is our Jesus. 

 

The Talmud contains information that dates back to the time of Jesus and the Mishnah part of it was finished and written at the start of the third century AD.  The Babylonian Talmud and the Palestine one were completed later.  The Rabbis were very strict about learning their material off by heart and any teacher who forgot his material had to relearn it from his students.  Forgetting even a single word of the Mishnah was regarded as bad as losing one’s soul (page 164, 165, He Walked Among Us). 

 

The Christians say that it seems that the Jews grew more and more reluctant over time to condemn Jesus by name in case their books would be burned by the growing Christian Church.  We read that they did not do this suddenly but over time they were less and less inclined to name Jesus (page 45, The Jesus Event and Our Response).  If they were afraid of Christians then why did they name Jesus sometimes even in insulting contexts?  Why did they not remove all the references to Jesus?  Why not call him (if it is him) such and such a one which they did at times all the time?  Why did they leave references to Jesus in?  They knew what the Christians were like and knew that if they called Jesus such and such they would still be in bother.  The Christians did not have the resources to persecute Jews in every land so we can dismiss Church bigotry for the Jew’s behaviour. The Jews’ behaviour is so bizarre.  It looks as if they had figures in their books that they thought might be Jesus but didn’t want to name them Jesus in case Jesus never existed or simply because the evidence for him was a garbled mess.  They didn’t want to give the Jesus myth any historical basis.

 

A part of the Talmud called the Barita says that Jesus sneered at the wisdom of Israel and transgressed against it and also quotes him as saying that he said good things about Israel (page 45, The Jesus Event and Our Response).  These statements need not be contradictory. 

 

The Talmud speaks of a lot of Jesuses and the Bible Jesus may have been a fictional person based on one of these characters.  When the gospels say Jesus taught in the Temple and the Temple Guards did not know him at his arrest and gives lots of clues that Jesus was not well-known, it indicates that there was no such man and that the Talmud might have mistaken the man Jesus was based on for Jesus.  The Gospels show then that the Talmud, if it confuses Jesus with other people then it was not because of sloppiness. 

 

Mary was said to have descended from kings and princes (b. Sanh., 106 A).  If so then the Jews did believe that Jesus was royalty even though the gospels say they did not and even said they had no heir or claimant to the throne but Caesar!  The gospels hint that they did not have genealogical proof that Jesus was royal.  The Talmud would not say she was royal unless it believed they had.  If Mary could prove it she would not have been poor for there would have been so many who would have been pleased to finance her for she could give Israel its king or even Christ king.  The Talmud is denying the gospel picture of a poor Mary who had to ride about on a donkey and give birth in a stable because there was no room at the inn. 

   

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THE JEWS AND BALAAM

 

Jewish tradition completely ignores the gospels and gives information that tallies with them only a little.  Were the Jews scared of drawing attention to the gospels?  Some of this tradition was created before the gospels went public.  And to mention Jesus at all was enough to draw some to study the gospels so the answer is no.  And Christianity was weak at that time anyway, which gave the Jews the advantage if they wanted an onslaught on the gospels.  When the Talmud ignored the gospels it showed that they were considered to be too ridiculous to be worth refuting.  The Talmud implies that the gospels are not evidence for Jesus or anything about him.

 

The Talmud calls Jesus Balaam.  Balaam was true prophet of God according to the Bible who was asked to curse Israel but didn’t.  Numbers 24:1 says he stopped looking for signs in nature about what God’s will was.  But omens are only superstition when God does not speak through them for God could speak through signs of nature.  So, why does the Talmud praise Jesus by calling him Balaam?  Some think it was because Balaam went off on a donkey on a mission forbidden by God and that Jesus committed the same sin when he entered Jerusalem on a donkey.  This is improbable for it would not be a clear enough comparison and would be too unimportant to emphasise by name-calling and it is supposed to be meant to be a terrible sarcastic insult in that case.  The Talmud sometimes makes a distinction between Jesus and Balaam.  The only possible or probably solution is that Jesus claimed to be Balaam reincarnated or that the Jesus story was based on Balaam, that is that Balaam was Jesus.

 

Ahmed Osman noticed that the Talmud says that Moses wrote the Book of Numbers and the bit about Balaam meaning Jesus (page 35, The House of the Messiah).  This states that Balaam was Jesus.  It need not mean that Jesus lived in Moses’ day except that Jesus was the same person as Balaam but was Balaam’s future life.

 

The Talmud treats Balaam as somebody important to know about when it says that Moses wrote a book with information on Balaam in it (b.B. Bathr. 14b).  The Talmud is then saying that Balaam is a very very important person when such an important man as Moses wrote a book about him.  It also indicates that the Talmud saw Balaam as very important and you are only important if you are well known or if a book can make you important.  So the Talmud is indicating that Jesus is Balaam because Jesus was important.  Balaam in the Bible was not important so this Balaam was Jesus.  The Talmud does not emphasise Balaam except when he is called Jesus so Balaam must be Jesus (page 35, The House of the Messiah).  The Talmud says that Pinhas, a priest, killed Jesus-Balaam.  Pinhas lived in Moses’ time according to the Torah. 

 

The Talmud is saying that Jesus lived in the time of Moses and was Balaam.

 

He Walked Among Us argues that it is not (page 61).  It gives a quote that simply says that Balaam, Doeg, Ahitophel and Gehazi were commoners and the kings, Jereboam, Ahab and Manasseh will have no part in the salvation to come.  Then another one says that the disciples of Balaam the wicked shall inherit the destruction of Gehenna for God says that liars who kill will not see half their lives.  None of that says that Balaam didn’t live in the time of Moses.

 

The book maintains that there was no reason to hide the identity of Jesus under the name of Balaam.  This shows the duplicity of the book because the Talmud and its Mishna did not mean to hide Jesus.  Either they were just inferring that Jesus’ name was too evil to be mentioned much or that they didn’t want to give much evidence that he existed or found the evidence so appalling that they kept getting Jesus confused with other people.  When Jesus was clearly mentioned a few times when it was not really necessary it cannot be true that they didn’t want to mention his evil name.   The book then contradicts its first objection by saying that the rabbis called Jesus such and such to avoid naming him.  Then what did they call him Balaam for?  Then the book says that Balaam could not have been a nickname for Jesus for Balaam was not an Israelite!  Ugh!  What kind of logic is this?  The Jews believed that Jesus wasn’t a proper Israelite.  Anyway, the Law allowed racial mixing so there would have been a few Israelites of mixed origin about.  Balaam could have been a half-Israelite down the line somewhere.  If it was a nickname it had nothing to do with race.  The nickname was meant solely to insult Jesus. 

 

The book says that the Balaam name could be a cover for some others.  It could but when the Talmud hates mentioning Jesus by name he is the number one person being covered and there is no point in writing about somebody who want to blacken and hiding them too much unless the readers will know who you mean in which case there is no hiding intended.  Then it is said that some of the passages about Balaam are late and have no historical reliability if they mean Jesus.  Then despite this assertion the book then quotes a late passage that has the two men Jesus and Balaam existing side by side so it is willing to use this as proof that he wasn’t just a nickname for Jesus though it says late texts can’t be used that way.  And there could have been a real Balaam who Jesus got nicknamed after!

 

The passage says that Balaam prophesied that a man would deceive the world by claiming to be God and that nobody should listen to that man.  This here is worth quoting, “He will deceive and say that he departed and cometh again at the end.  He saith and he shall not perform” (page 62).  This appears to refer to the ascension and second coming of Christ.  Departed may refer to departing this world in death and coming again at the end may refer to the resurrection at the end of the world. The passage said that the man was not God because God cannot lie and it sought to prove that Jesus did lie and the failure of his prediction was the proof of that. Obviously, the second coming at the end of the world or the resurrection of Jesus taking place at the end of the world and not happening before then will prove nothing to us now for we don’t know yet if Jesus was a liar.  We need to have tangible proof for the prophecy to mean anything to us.  Anybody can make prophecies about the distant future.  If Jesus went away vowing to return at the end of the world or if Jesus died and will not come back from the dead until the general resurrection at the end he must have been a liar for God would come back from the dead sooner.  The resurrection interpretation is the most likely one.  This is what the passage is driving at: Jesus did not rise and so was a liar when he said he was God for God would rise.

 

The passage says that Balaam spoke this message to the whole world.  It could be that Balaam was Jesus and that the fake God-man he warned against was the Antichrist who would depart and promise to return at the end of the world his departure having taken place at that time as well.  Perhaps the Antichrist was the gospel Jesus who came pretending to be Jesus-Balaam the true prophet of God and who perhaps looked like him and managed to take over his life by stealing his identity.  Maybe this Jesus was an evil spirit who tricked people to think there was a historical Jesus.  Paul said the antichrist would be an impostor and a false Christ and Revelation says the Antichrist will be dealt a mortal blow and then seem to come back to life.  Jesus did speak to the world and warn against false messiahs which supports this interpretation.  There is no evidence that the biblical Balaam spoke to the world.  And why would the Jews want to believe that Balaam, an unimportant figure, made such a prophecy instead of Moses or Isaiah or somebody?  So, the passage must contain early material that has evidential strength and it must mean to be honest.  The Jews had traditions that Balaam was Jesus and Jesus Balaam lived many centuries before Christianity surfaced in the first century.

 

To recap, Balaam refuted the gospel Jesus as a false portrait and Balaam himself was the real Jesus according to traditions. 

 

Balaam’s prophecy states that the man will be born of woman.  This is to stress that the man was born the normal way for it wants to show that this man will have no right to claim to be God because of that.  If the man were virgin born it would be more likely for him to be God.  The Talmud says that the other Jesus was an enemy of the Jewish religion and nobody could call him up for his advice.  It also suggests that this Jesus did not rise again bodily when Titus was called first and then Balaam and Jesus last.  If Jesus had risen from the dead in any form or irrefutably thought to have risen he would have been called first.  Klausner dates this passage earlier than the above one which was written before 260 AD when the Rabbi who was behind it died (page 62).  This could suggest that Jesus never rose.  It could suggest that nobody who might have known said he did making the resurrection only hearsay.   Or that this was another Jesus and possibly the one the secular historians, like Josephus, meant.  The passage did not mean to hint the things that are so detrimental to Christianity for it would be more up-front if it did which bolsters their importance.  It does not prove that the Christian Jesus was not Balaam. 

 

John 5:46 has Jesus saying Moses wrote about him so the Jews should believe in him which may support the identification of Jesus with Balaam for Moses certainly never clearly wrote about Jesus but he did write about Balaam according to tradition.  Christians will point out that Moses said a prophet like him will come but that could have been anybody and would not entitle Jesus to say Moses wrote about him and Jesus proved it was not this he meant when he told the Jews they don’t believe in Moses when they deny what he wrote.  Perhaps, the writer of John did not realise the import of what he reported.  Worse the writing of Moses Jesus had in mind said that the prophesied person would come from their midst so he could have been Joshua as well.  The context says that the Hebrews must not listen to fortune-tellers like the other nations for they will have a prophet like Moses so it had to be the person who succeeds Moses as prophet and who is as convincing as Moses which Jesus was not.  Did Jesus do miracles that all the people saw like Moses when God came down to talk to Moses on Sinai? 

 

An older passage from the Babylonian Talmud says that a man called Onkelos used spells to call up Titus, Balaam and Jesus for he sought to know if he should become a convert to Judaism.  Jesus told him that Israel was the most important thing in the world and anybody who hurt it would boil in filth and that to hurt it was to hurt God.  This is supposed to prove that Balaam was not Jesus.  But the passage merely reports these visions and does not say if they were true or false.  But still, it is surprising that Jesus got such a positive treatment.  This suggests that this Jesus was not the Jesus of the Christian gospels but another healer and prophet. 

 

The problem with the Babylonian Talmud is the fact that it is hard to date what is in it and anything plausible it says is weak in value because of that.  But weak or not the story is very believable and should still be used as evidence against Christ particularly when it makes attacks against Christ that were so subtle that nobody knew them.  The sly Josh McDowell takes the assertion of the Amoraim in the Babylonian Talmud as evidence for Jesus but does not give any hint that it is reliable enough.

 

The fact that Balaam Jesus was thought to have lived very very long ago means that the Jews had nobody in the first century that they could pin down as being Jesus Christ.  Jesus did not live in the first century. The gospels which say he did are false.

 

In another Talmud passage the necromancer Onkelos Bar Kalonikus calls up Balaam from the dead.  He asked Israel who is honoured in the spirit world and Balaam replied, "Israel" and said that the peace and welfare of Israel must never be sought.  Then the magician called up Yeshu or Jesus from the dead.  Jesus also said that Israel was honoured in the spirit world and commanded, "Seek their good. Do not seek their bad. Whoever touches them is as if he touched the pupil of his eye." Onkelos asked Jesus: "What is your punishment?" Jesus or Yeshu answered, "In boiling excrement. As the master said: Whoever mocks the words of the sages in punished in boiling excrement."  Onkelos converted to Judaism and was highly regarded.

 

It is thought that the episode proves that Jesus and Balaam were not the same person.  But the real Balaam could have been called up.  Jesus was only called Balaam as a nickname.  And the teaching that the summoned up Jesus gives matches what the New Testament Jesus would say.  He claimed he was being punished with boiling excrement in the afterlife.
 

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THE TALMUD ON THE DEATH OF YESHU

 

Here is a quote from The Encyclopaedia of Unbelief, Volume 1, Gordon Stein, Editor Prometheus Books, New York, 1985, page 367).  “Jewish traditions on which the Talmud drew persistently place Jesus among these ancient victims [of crucifixion] by dating him somewhere in the 2nd century B.C.”.

 

Some traditions do this.  But there are traditions that deny that Jesus was crucified at all.  The Talmud and other traditions contend that Jesus was in fact hanged.

 

The Talmud says that Yeshu was hanged on the Eve of the Passover.  For forty days before that a Jewish messenger went in front of him to let the public know that he would be put to death by stoning.  We know the messenger was Jewish for stoning was a Jewish punishment.  The Talmud says that the messengers work was intended to give people the opportunity to come forward and testify for him to save him.  Nobody bothered so Yeshu was hanged on the Eve of the Passover.  So he must have been strung up and then stoned.  The Talmud denies the crucifixion for nobody says hanged when they mean hanged on a cross for that is too vague.  Hanged seems to mean that Jesus was tied up on a tree or something so that the people could stone him better.  The Jews abominated crucifixion and the gospels give the impression that they wanted Jesus on the cross to prove that he was not the Son of God.  If so, the Talmud would have been only too happy to clarify things and say crucified, not hanged.  It is nonsensical how some scholars assume that hanged is just the Talmud's word for crucifixion.  The Talmud states that the Jewish messenger was commissioned to try and save Jesus and it says nothing in his favour was discovered so "they" hanged him.  The they is obviously the Jews.  Jews did not crucify.  Jesus was hanged.

 

Mar Seraphion wrote in about AD 70 that the Jews executed their wise king. This cannot mean that the Jews forced Pilate to kill Jesus.  It must mean they stoned him or executed him themselves.  Mar Seraphion also stated that the king lived on in his teaching just as Pythagoras lived on in the statue of Hera (page 26, The Jesus Inquest).  This is a clear declaration that the resurrection was thought according to Mar Saraphions sources to be a mystical symbol for Jesus being alive in his doctrine.

 

Jesus died on the cross according to Philippians 2:8.  Was he hanged on a cross first and then nailed to it as a warning to rebels?  The Talmud denies the nailing for it goes unmentioned and had it been true it would have spoken about it with glee but the Christian scriptures lend credibility to the Talmud in regard to hanging.  And why would Jesus have been nailed when he could hang from the rope? 

 

The Talmud contradicts the gospel claim that Jesus had to be taken secretly for execution and that Judas was hired to arrange a discreet capture.  It implies then that nobody minded if Jesus was going to be stoned because if they cared they had long enough to rescue him.  He had too few disciples for them to be of any use.  It says that he had five disciples whose names are very different from the gospels.  The Talmud also says that the Jews give Yeshu a good chance to clear himself for the purpose of the notice was so that anybody who could defend him would have a good chance to.  I reject the statement that the five are leading believers in Jesus who were not disciples of Jesus on the personal level (Josh McDowell’s Evidence for Jesus, Is It Reliable?).  There is no evidence in support of this and why would second generation Christians be remembered?  They were direct personal disciples of Jesus.

 

Why would the Jews make any of the Talmud material on Jesus up?  They would have liked to say that Jesus was betrayed by one of his own and why would they make it up about the notice to hint that Jesus was not popular for they could have just said it out straight?  And why would they have been so ashamed to say that, if most of the people had been led astray by Jesus?  Why would they say that Jesus’ mother was royal and then destroy a bloodline by planning to kill her son?  Even if Jesus were fathered by a non-Jew they couldn’t prove it and so wouldn’t have taken the risk of destroying him.

 

Sometimes the New Testament says Jesus was hanged.  It is important that Acts 10:39 says that Jesus was slain by being hanged on a tree.  This gives the Talmud more weight and so it cannot be as easily dismissed as the Christians like to think.  St Paul in the letter to the Galatians claimed that God cursed Jesus for God put a curse on anybody that was hanged on a tree.  The curse referred to the gallows.  It is possible that Paul was claiming that Jesus was hanged perhaps unsuccessfully and then crucified.

 

The Talmud gives laws that would prove that the trial of Jesus as recounted in the New Testament never happened if they existed at that time.  Christians claim that the Talmud made up the laws to discredit the story, which is ridiculous.  As if they had nothing to do but battle Christianity which was a predominately gentile religion and the Jews didn’t want gentiles.  Why would they go out of their way to prove that the trial never happened?  There were many things that would have disturbed them far more that they would have liked to make up lies about to discredit but they left them alone.

 

The fact that the information given by the Talmud is simpler than the gospels suggests that it is more primitive than the gospels though it may not have been written down until after the gospels were composed.  The earlier evidence is given to refute something, the better.  The Talmud material is obviously more primitive than the gospels.  Stories get more complex as time goes on.  If it is invented stuff knowing that the Christian version of events was the right one then why is it so sober?  Why is it much more sensible?  The saner a story is the more likely it is to be true.  Yet Christian frauds use this argument for the gospels being true knowing that it would do a better job of authenticating the Talmud.  The Talmud never looks at the gospels which is strange and indicates that its Jesus material preceded the gospels.

 

The only problem with the Yeshu material is that if there was a Jesus or if the Christians had taken advantage of gaps in the Jewish history to invent one it was most probably about him for there was no way the Talmud would pass over him completely.  Instead of attacking Jesus, the Talmud could have reported what others said about him and feign disapproval which was one way of getting the criticisms past the censors.  If Christians could have been so wrong about Jesus then he easily might not have existed.  And also, if the figure is not Jesus or is somebody that was just confused with Jesus then Jesus probably never existed.

 

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Conclusion

 

The Jewish records cannot be used to prove that Jesus didn’t exist but they do make it likely that he didn’t when the information they have on him is so muddled and confused indicating that the traditions about Jesus were like that.

WORKS CONSULTED

 

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

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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

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

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

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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 

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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 

 

Top of the Document

 

Wednesday, 20 February 2008