Jesus Christ Did Not Exist.


http://www.truthbeknown.com/christ.htm


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGbJpGlwjyU


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ-kvw1fYXs&mode=related&search=

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How many people do you want to influence with your nonsensical fairytale?

It would help if you took the time to read/view the evidence presented rather than shooting off like a cat in heat.

Colonised twerp.

Hooray!Some revisionist fables have sprung up!Thank God for civilization, i wish that could be said of the prophet!

It's all to do with my theory the Cheops Theory

Jen33:

Jesus Christ Did Not Exist.


http://www.truthbeknown.com/christ.htm


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGbJpGlwjyU


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ-kvw1fYXs&mode=related&search=

Another tired wishful thinker on the loose. The tired-out 'stories' and kindergarten questions are all the more obvious in the second youtube link. E.g., sample the following -

'Suddenly, John the Baptist is "put in prison". There is no further explanation in the Bible, which seems quite strange if John were a real person. We want to know why he was put in prison.'

This cheap fellow must have deliberately ignored the answer to his "why" question in the Bible in Matt. 14:3-4 >>

"For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife. For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her."

When someone plays games like these and asks silly questions in pretence that the answers are not in the Bible, it just isn't worth losing sleep over noise makers and attention seekers as such.

I can't but laugh at such ridiculous topic as this. This goes to show a long way that indeed Christ is Coming!

As to the attention seeker, I suggest you open up your heart to the Love of God, you may be a messenger of the anti-christ today, but you are not yet beyond redemption!

False Prophet. False Doctrine.

I dont know where this people get all these falasies from.

Please dont come here and decieve anyone.

Jesus Christ came to set us free from sin. he is the Saviour of the world. he is our redeemer, He redeemed us from all sins.

He is alive. Christ liveth.

naijacutee:

[color=#000099]No comment. (Why are these people desperate to believe anything negative about Jesus though)?

lol.
Thank you for that question.
A very reasonable question you asked here. Yet they are quick to believe Jesus does not exist while there are evidences to prove that he actually does still exist.

Jen33:

How many people do you want to influence with your nonsensical fairytale?

I wonder if this chap was musing about his/her own 'nonsensical fairytale' - because it's quite obvious that the links supplied are teeming with well-spun tales.

Jen33:

It would help if you took the time to read/view the evidence presented rather than shooting off like a cat in heat.

Titters! Did he/she really say that? Those 3-dimensional cartoons -- is that what Jen33 calls "the evidence presented"??

Jen33:

Colonised twerp.

Ahh - there! Self-descriptive afterall.

Why are Africans easily led by the nose? The people that introduced you to their fairy tale don't even believe their garbage anymore, but  - typical of us - we're left holding the can, and ridiculously, crying louder than  the bereaved. Choi.

Permit me to dismantle your fairytale: It's a long but worthwhile read, who knows, you may even be cured of your brainwashed condition.


Did a historical Jesus exist?


  by Jim Walker


Amazingly, the question of an actual historical Jesus rarely confronts the religious believer. The power of faith has so forcefully driven the minds of most believers, and even apologetic scholars, that the question of reliable evidence gets obscured by tradition, religious subterfuge, and outrageous claims. The following gives a brief outlook about the claims of a historical Jesus and why the evidence the Christians present us cannot serve as justification for reliable evidence for a historical Jesus.


 

ALL CLAIMS OF JESUS DERIVE FROM HEARSAY ACCOUNTS

No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus got written well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings.

Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources derive from hearsay accounts.

Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge.

Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modern scholarship. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we should dismiss it.

If you do not understand this, imagine yourself confronted with a charge for a crime which you know you did not commit. You feel confident that no one can prove guilt because you know that there exists no evidence whatsoever for the charge against you. Now imagine that you stand present in a court of law that allows hearsay as evidence. When the prosecution presents its case, everyone who takes the stand against you claims that you committed the crime, not as a witness themselves, but solely because other people said so. None of these other people, mind you, ever show up in court, nor can anyone find them.

Hearsay does not work as evidence because we have no way of knowing whether the person lies, or simply bases his or her information on wrongful belief or bias. We know from history about witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts that hearsay provides neither reliable nor fair statements of evidence. We know that mythology can arise out of no good information whatsoever. We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts, or monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies believed as fact taken from nothing but belief and hearsay. It derives from these reasons why hearsay cannot serve as good evidence, and the same reasoning must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any other historical person.

Authors of ancient history today, of course, can only write from indirect observation in a time far removed from their aim. But a valid historian's own writing gets cited with sources that trace to the subject themselves, or to eyewitnesses and artifacts. For example a historian today who writes about the life of George Washington, of course, can not serve as an eyewitness, but he can provide citations to documents which give personal or eyewitness accounts. None of the historians about Jesus give reliable sources to eyewitnesses, therefore all we have remains as hearsay.



THE BIBLE GOSPELS

The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels got written by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons.

He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer]

Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995]

Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels got written during the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies.

The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 AD., and the last Gospel, John after 90 AD [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him!  Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark, " [Pagels, 1995]

The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ.

Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.

Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occured at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.

The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude and ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third removed from Jesus and more likely at a fourth removed. [Helms]

* Most Bibles show 678 verses for Mark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses came later from interpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark 16: 9-20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transition between verse 8 and 9 appears awkward. Even some of  today's Bibles such as the NIV exclude the last 12 verses.

The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felt theologically important, and heightened the miracles and magic.

The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a hellenized Jew and even possibly a woman.

He (or she) wrote at a time of tension in the Roman empire along with its fever of persecution. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke got derived from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source". [Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources.

John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the book got written in Greek near the end of the first century, and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong]

Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person.

Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories.



OTHER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS

Even in antiquity people like Origen and Eusebius raised doubts about the authenticity of other books in the New Testament such as Hebrews, James, John 2 & 3, Peter 2, Jude, and Revelation. Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James calling it ''worthless'' and an "epistle of straw" and questioned Jude, Hebrews and the Apocalypse in Revelation. Nevertheless, all New Testament writings came well after the alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors (with the possible exception of Paul, although still after the alleged death).

Epistles of Paul: Paul's biblical letters (epistles) serve as the oldest surviving Christian texts, written probably around 60 C.E. Most scholars have little reason to doubt that Paul wrote some of them himself. However, there occurs not a single instance in all of Paul's writings that he ever meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor does he give any reference to Jesus' life on earth. Therefore, all accounts about a Jesus could only have come from other believers or his imagination. Hearsay.

Epistle of James: Although the epistle identifies a ''James'' as the letter writer, but which James? Many claim him as the gospel disciple but the gospels mention several different James. Which one? Or maybe this ''James'' has nothing to do with any of the gospel James. Perhaps this writer comes from any one of innumerable ''James'' outside the gospels. James served as a common name in the first centuries and we simply have no way to tell who this James refers to. More to the point, the Epistle of James mentions Jesus only once as an introduction to his belief. Nowhere does the epistle reference a historical Jesus and this alone eliminates it from an historical account. [1]

Epistles of John: The epistles of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation appear so different in style and content that they could hardly have the same author. Some suggest that these writings of ''John'' come from the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor who followed a "John" or they came from the work of church fathers who aimed to further the interests of the Church. Or they could have simply come from people also named John (a very common name). No one knows. Also note that nowhere in the body of the three epistles of "John" does it mention a John. In any case, the epistles of John say nothing about seeing an earthly Jesus. Not only do we not know who wrote these epistles, they can only serve as hearsay accounts. [2]

Epistles of Peter: Many scholars question the authorship of Peter of the epistles. Even within the first epistle, it says in 5:12 that Silvanus wrote it. Most scholars consider the second epistle as unreliable or an outright forgery (for some examples, see the introduction to 2 Peter in the full edition of The New Jerusalem Bible, 1985. In short, no one has any way of determining whether the epistles of Peter come from fraud, an unknown author also named Peter (a common name) or from someone trying to further the aims of the Church.

Of the remaining books and letters in the Bible, there occurs no other stretched claims or eyewitness accounts for a historical Jesus and needs no mention of them here for this deliberation.

As for the existence of original New Testament documents, none exist. No book of the New Testament survives in the original autograph copy. What we have then come from copies, and copies of copies, of questionalbe originals (if the stories came piecemeal over time, as it appears it has, then there may never have existed an original).

The earliest copies we have got written more than a century later than the autographs, and these exist on fragments of papyrus. [Pritchard; Graham] According to Hugh Schonfield, "It would be impossible to find any manuscript of the New Testament older than the late third century, and we actually have copies from the fourth and fifth.'' [Schonfield]



LYING FOR THE CHURCH

The editing and formation of the Bible came from members of the early Christian Church. Since the fathers of the Church possessed the texts and determined what would appear in the Bible, there occurred plenty of opportunity and motive to change, modify, or create texts that might bolster the position of the Church or the members of the Church themselves.

Take, for example, Eusebius who served as an ecclesiastical church historian and bishop. He had great influence in the early Church and he openly advocated the use of fraud and deception in furthering the interests of the Church [Remsberg]. The first mention of Jesus by Josephus came from Eusebius (none of the earlier church fathers mention Josephus' Jesus). It comes to no surprise why many scholars think that Eusebius interpolated his writings. In his Ecclesiastical History, he writes, "We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity." (Vol. 8, chapter 2).

In his Praeparatio Evangelica, he includes a chapter titled, "How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived" (book 12, chapter 32).   

The Church had such power over people, that to question the Church could result in death. Regardless of what the Church claimed, people had to take it as "truth." St. Ignatius Loyola of the 16th century even wrote: "We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides." 

The orthodox Church also fought against competing Christian cults. Irenaeus, who determined the inclusion of the four (now canonical) gospels, wrote his infamous book, "Against the Heresies." According to Romer, "Irenaeus' great book not only became the yardstick of major heresies and their refutations, the starting-point of later inquisitions, but simply by saying what Christianity was not it also, in a curious inverted way, became a definition of the orthodox faith." [Romer]


In attempting to salvage the Bible the respected revisionist and scholar, Bruce Metzger has written extensively on the problems of the New Testament. In his book, "The Text of the New Testament-- Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration'', Metzger addresses: Errors arising from faulty eyesight; Errors arising from faulty hearing; Errors of the mind; Errors of judgement; Clearing up historical and geographical difficulties; and Alterations made because of doctrinal considerations. [Metzger]

With such intransigence from the Church and the admitting to lying for its cause, the burning of heretical texts, Bible errors and alterations, how could any honest scholar take any book from the New Testament as absolute, much less using extraneous texts that support a Church's intolerant and biased position, as reliable evidence?



GNOSTIC GOSPELS

In 1945, an Arab made an archeological discovery in Upper Egypt of several ancient papyrus books. They have since referred to it as The Nag Hammadi texts. They contained fifty-two heretical books written in Coptic script which include gospels of Thomas, Philip, James, John, Thomas, and many others. Archeologists have dated them at around 350-400 AD. They represent copies from previous copies. None of the original texts exist and scholars argue about a possible date of the originals. Some of them think that they can hardly have dates later than 120-150 AD. Others have put it closer to 140 AD. [Pagels, 1979]

Other Gnostic gospels such as the Gospel of Judas, found near the Egyptian site of the Nag Hammadi texts, shows a diverse pattern of story telling, always a mark of myth. The Judas gospel tells of Judas Iscariot as Jesus' most loyal disciple, just opposite that of the canonical gospel stories. Note that the text does not claim that Judas Iscariot wrote it. The Judas gospel, a copy written in Coptic, dates to around the third-to fourth-century. The original Greek version probably dates to between 130 and 170 AD., around the same time as the Nag Hammadi texts. Irenaeus first mentions this gospel in Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) written around 180 C.E., so we know that this represented a heretical gospel.

Since these Gnostic texts could only have its unknown authors writing well after the alleged life of Jesus, they cannot serve as historical evidence of Jesus anymore than the canonical versions. Again, we only have "heretical" hearsay.



NON-CHRISTIAN SOURCES

Virtually all other claims of Jesus come from sources outside of Christian writings. Devastating to the claims of Christians, however, is the fact that all of these accounts come from authors who lived well after the alleged life of Jesus. Since they did not live during the time of the hypothetical Jesus, none of their accounts serve as eyewitness evidence.

Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, lived as the earliest non-Christian who mentions a Jesus. Although many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities) came from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius), Josephus' birth in 37 AD., well after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, puts him out of range of an eyewitness account. Moreover, he wrote Antiquities in 93 AD., after the first gospels got written! Therefore, even if his accounts about Jesus came from his hand, his information could only serve as hearsay.

Pliny the Younger, a Roman official, got born in 62 AD. His letter about the Christians only shows that he got his information from Christian believers themselves. Regardless, his birth date puts him out of the range of eyewitness accounts.

Tacitus, the Roman historian's birth year at 64 AD., puts him well after the alleged life of Jesus. He gives a brief mention of a "Christus" in his Annals (Book XV, Sec. 44), which got written around 109 AD. He gives no source for his material.

Although many have disputed the authenticity of Tacitus' mention of Jesus, the very fact that his birth happened after the alleged Jesus, and he wrote the Annals during the formation of Christianity, shows that his writing can only provide us with hearsay accounts.

Suetonius, a Roman historian, born in 69 AD. mentions a "Chrestus," a common name. Apologists assume that "Chrestus" means "Christ" (a disputable claim). But even if Seutonius had meant "Christ," it still says nothing about an earthly Jesus. Just like all the others, Suetonius' birth occurred well after the purported Jesus. Again, only hearsay.

Talmud: Amazingly some Christians use brief portions of the Talmud, (a collection of Jewish civil and religious law, including commentaries on the Torah), as evidence for Jesus. They claim that Yeshu (a common name in Jewish literature) in the Talmud refers to Jesus. However, this Jesus, according to Gerald Massey actually depicts a disciple of Jehoshua Ben-Perachia at least a century before the alleged Christian Jesus. [Massey]

Regardless of how one interprets this, the Palestinian Talmud got written between the 3rd and 5th century AD., and the Babylonian Talmud between the 3rd and 6th century AD., at least two centuries after the alleged crucifixion! At best it can only serve as a controversial Christian and pagan legend; it cannot possibly serve as evidence for a historical Jesus.

The above sources get quoted the most as "evidence" for Jesus by Christians.

All other sources (Christian and non-Christian), some of which include: Mara Bar-Serapion (cira 73 C.E.), Ignatius (50 - 98? C.E.), Polycarp (69 - 155 C.E.), Clement of Rome (? - cira 160 C.E.), Justin Martyr (100 - 165 C.E.), Lucian (circa 125 - 180 C.E.), Tertullian (160 - ? C.E.), Clement of Alexandria (? - 215 C.E.), Origen (185 - 232 C.E.), Hippolytus (? - 236 C.E.), and Cyprian (? - 254 C.E.). All these people got born well after the alleged death of Jesus. Not one of them provides an eyewitness account, all of them simply spout hearsay.

As you can see, apologist Christians embarrass themselves when they unwittingly or deceptively violate the rules of historiography by using after-the-event writings as evidence for the event itself. Not one of these writers gives a source or backs up his claims with evidential material about Jesus.

Although we can provide numerous reasons why the Christian and non-Christian sources prove spurious, and argue endlessly about them, we can cut to the chase by simply looking at the dates of the documents and the birth dates of the authors. It doesn't matter what these people wrote about Jesus, an author who writes after the alleged happening and gives no detectable sources for his material can only give example of hearsay. All of these anachronistic writings about Jesus could easily have come from the beliefs and stories from Christian believers themselves. And as we know from myth, superstition, and faith, beliefs do not require facts or evidence for their propagation and circulation. Thus we have only beliefs about Jesus' existence, and nothing more.


FAKES, FRAUDS, AND FICTIONS

Because the religious mind relies on belief and faith, the religious person can inherit a dependence on any information that supports a belief and that includes fraudulent stories, rumors, unreliable data, and fictions, without the need to check sources, or to investigate the reliability of the information. Although hundreds of fraudulent claims exist for the artifacts of Jesus, I will present only three examples which seem to have a life of there own and have spread through the religious community and especially on internet discussion groups.

The Shroud of Turin

Many faithful people believe the shroud represents the actual burial cloth of Jesus where they claim the image on the cloth represents an actual 'photographic' image left behind by the crucified body.

The first mention of the shroud comes from a treatise (written or dictated) by Geoffroi de Charny in 1356 and who claims to have owned the cloth (see The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi De Charny). Later, in the 16th century, it suddenly appeared in a cathedral in Turin, Italy. (Note that thousands of claimed Jesus relics appeared in cathedrals throughout Europe, including the wood from the cross, chalices, blood of Jesus, etc. These artifacts proved popular and served as a prosperous commercial device which filled the money coffers of the churches.)

Sadly, many people of faith believe that there actually exists scientific evidence to support their beliefs in the shroud's authenticity. Considering how the Shroud's apologists use the words, "science," "fact," and "authentic," without actual scientific justification, and even include pseudo-scientists (without mentioning the 'pseudo') to testify to their conclusions, it should not come to any surprise why a faithful person would not question their information or their motives.

There also has appeared several television specials which purport the authenticity of the shroud. Science, however, does not operate through television specials who have a commercial interest and have no qualms about deceiving the public.

Experts around the world consider the 14-foot-long linen sheet, which has remained in a cathedral in Turin since 1578, a forgery because of carbon-dating tests performed in 1988. Three different independent radiocarbon dating laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and the University of Arizona yielded a date range of 1260-1390 AD. (consistent with the time period of Charny's claimed ownership). Joe Zias of Hebrew University of Jerusalem calls the shroud indisputably a fake. "Not only is it a forgery, but it's a bad forgery."

The shroud actually depicts a man whose front measures 2 inches taller than his back and whose elongated hands and arms would indicate that he had the affliction of gigantism if he actually lived. (Also read Joe Nickell's, Inquest On The Shroud Of Turin: Latest Scientific Findings)

Walter C. McCrone, et al, (see Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin) discovered red ochre (a pigment found in earth and widely used in Italy during the Middle Ages) on the cloth which formed the body image and vermilion paint, made from mercuric sulphide, used to represent blood. The actual scientific findings reveal the shroud as a 14th century painting, not a two-thousand year-old cloth with Christ's image. Revealingly, no Biblical scholar or scientist (with any credibility), cites the shroud of Turin as evidence for a historical Jesus.

The Burial box of James

Even many credible theologians bought this fraud, hook-line-and-sinker. The Nov./Dec. 2002, issue of Biblical Archaeology Review magazine announced a "world exclusive!" article about evidence of Jesus written in stone, claiming that they found the actual ossuary of "James, Brother of Jesus" in Jerusalem. This story exploded on the news and appeared widely on television and newspapers around the world.

Interestingly, they announced the find as the "earliest historical reference of Jesus yet found." Since they claimed the inscription on the box got written around 70 AD., that would agree with everything claimed by this thesis (that no contemporary evidence exists for Jesus). (Note that even if the box script proved authentic, it would not provide evidence for Jesus simply because no one knew who wrote the script or why. It would only show the first indirect mention of an alleged Jesus and it could not serve as contemporary evidence simply because it got written long after the alleged death of Jesus.)

The claim for authenticity of the burial box of James, however, proved particularly embarrassing for the Biblical Archaeology Review and for those who believed them without question. Just a few months later, archaeologists determined the inscription as a forgery (and an obvious one at that) and they found the perpetrator and had him arrested (see 'Jesus box' exposed as fake and, A fake? James Ossuary dealer arrested, suspected of forgery).

Regrettably, the news about the fraud never matched the euphoria of the numerous stories of the find and many people today still believe the story as true.


Letters of Pontius Pilate

This would appear hilarious if not for the tragic results that can occur from believing in fiction: many faithful (especially on the internet) have a strong belief that Pontius Pilate actually wrote letters to Seneca in Rome where he mentions Jesus and his reported healing miracles.

Considering the lack of investigational temper of the religious mind, it might prove interesting to the critical reader that the main source for the letters of Pilate come from W. P. Crozier's 1928 book titled, "Letters of Pontius Pilate: Written During His Governorship of Judea to His Friend Seneca in Rome." The book cites Crozier as the editor as if he represented a scholar who edited Pilate's letters. Well, from the title, it certainly seems to indicate that Pilate wrote some letters doesn't it? However, unbeknownst or ignored by the uncritical faithful, this book represents Crozier's first novel, a fictionalized account of what he thought Pilate would have written.

During the first publication, no one believed this novel represented fact and reviews of the day reveal it as a work of fiction.

Crozier, a newspaper editor, went to Oxford University and retained an interest in Latin, Greek and the Bible. He wrote this novel as if it represented the actual letters of Pilate. Of course no scholar would cite this as evidence because no letters exist of Pilate to Seneca, and Seneca never mentions Jesus in any of his writings.

The belief in Pilate's letters represents one of the more amusing fad beliefs in evidential Jesus, however, it also reveals just how myths, fakes, and fictions can leak into religious thought. Hundreds of years from now, Crozier's fictionalized account may very well end up just as 'reliable' as the gospels. 



WHAT ABOUT WRITINGS DURING THE LIFE OF JESUS?

What appears most revealing of all, comes not from what got later written about Jesus but what people did not write about him. Consider that not a single historian, philosopher, scribe or follower who lived before or during the alleged time of Jesus ever mentions him!

If, indeed, the Gospels portray a historical look at the life of Jesus, then the one feature that stands out prominently within the stories shows that people claimed to know Jesus far and wide, not only by a great multitude of followers but by the great priests, the Roman governor Pilate, and Herod who claims that he had heard "of the fame of Jesus" (Matt 14:1)". One need only read Matt: 4:25 where it claims that "there followed him [Jesus] great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jersulaem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan."

The gospels mention, countless times, the great multitude that followed Jesus and crowds of people who congregated to hear him. So crowded had some of these gatherings grown, that Luke 12:1 alleges that an "innumberable multitude of people,  trode one upon another." Luke 5:15 says that there grew "a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, " The persecution of Jesus in Jerusalem drew so much attention that all the chief priests and scribes, including the high priest Caiaphas, not only knew about him but helped in his alleged crucifixion. (see Matt 21:15-23, 26:3, Luke 19:47, 23:13). The multitude of people thought of Jesus, not only as a teacher and a miracle healer, but a prophet (see Matt:14:5).

So here we have the gospels portraying Jesus as famous far and wide, a prophet and healer, with great multitudes of people who knew about him, including the greatest Jewish high priests and the Roman authorities of the area, and not one person records his existence during his lifetime? If the poor, the rich, the rulers, the highest priests, and the scribes knew about Jesus, who would not have heard of him?

Then we have a particular astronomical event that would have attracted the attention of anyone interested in the "heavens." According to Luke 23:44-45, there occurred "about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour, and the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst." Yet not a single mention of such a three hour ecliptic event got recorded by anyone, including the astronomers and astrologers, anywhere in the world. Nor does a single contemporary person write about the earthquake described in Matthew 27:51-54 where the earth shook, rocks ripped apart (rent), and graves opened.

Matthew 2 describes Herod and all of Jerusalem as troubled by the worship of the infant Jesus. Herod then had all of the children of Bethlehem slain. If such extraordinary infanticides of this magnitude had occurred, why didn't anyone write about it?

Some apologists attempt to dig themselves out of this problem by claiming that there lived no capable historians during that period, or due to the lack of education of the people with a writing capacity, or even sillier, the scarcity of paper  gave reason why no one recorded their "savior."

But the area in and surrounding Jerusalem served, in fact, as the center of education and record keeping for the Jewish people. The Romans, of course, also kept many records. Moreover, the gospels mention scribes many times, not only as followers of Jesus but the scribes connected with the high priests.

And as for historians, there lived plenty at the time who had the capacity and capability to record, not only insignificant gossip, but significant events, especially from a religious sect who drew so much popular attention through an allegedly famous and infamous Jesus.

Take, for example, the works of Philo Judaeus who's birth occurred in 20 B.C. and died 50 C.E. He lived as the greatest Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher and historian of the time and lived in the area of Jerusalem during the alleged life of Jesus. He wrote detailed accounts of the Jewish events that occurred in the surrounding area. Yet not once, in all of his volumes of writings, do we read a single account of a Jesus "the Christ."

Nor do we find any mention of Jesus in Seneca's (4? B.C.E. - 65 C.E.) writings, nor from the historian Pliny the Elder (23? - 79 C.E.).

If, indeed, such a well known Jesus existed, as the gospels allege, does any reader here think it reasonable that, at the very least, the fame of Jesus would not have reached the ears of one of these men?

Amazingly, we have not one Jewish, Greek, or Roman writer, even those who lived in the Middle East, much less anywhere else on the earth, who ever mention him during his supposed life time. This appears quite extraordinary, and you will find few Christian apologists who dare mention this embarrassing fact.

To illustrate this extraordinary absence of Jesus Christ literature, just imagine going through nineteenth century literature looking for an Abraham Lincoln but unable to find a single mention of him in any writing on earth until the 20th century. Yet straight-faced Christian apologists and historians want you to buy a factual Jesus out of a dearth void of evidence, and rely on nothing but hearsay written well after his purported life. Considering that most Christians believe that Jesus lived as God on earth, the Almighty gives an embarrassing example for explaining his existence. You'd think a Creator might at least have the ability to bark up some good solid evidence.



HISTORICAL SCHOLARS

Many problems occur with the reliability of the accounts from ancient historians. Most of them did not provide sources for their claims, as they rarely included bibliographic listings, or supporting claims. They did not have access to modern scholarly techniques, and many times would include hearsay as evidence. No one today would take a modern scholar seriously who used the standards of ancient historians, yet this proves as the only kind of source that Christology comes from. Couple this with the fact that many historians believed as Christians themselves, sometimes members of the Church, and you have a built-in prejudice towards supporting a "real" Jesus.

In modern scholarship, even the best historians and Christian apologists play the historian game. They can only use what documents they have available to them. If they only have hearsay accounts then they have to play the cards that history deals them. Many historians feel compelled to use interpolation or guesses from hearsay, and yet this very dubious information sometimes ends up in encyclopedias and history books as fact.

In other words, Biblical scholarship gets forced into a lower standard by the very sources they examine. A renowned Biblical scholar illustrated this clearly in an interview when asked about Biblical interpretation. David Noel Freeman (the General editor of the Anchor Bible Series and many other works) responded with:

"We have to accept somewhat looser standards. In the legal profession, to convict the defendant of a crime, you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil cases, a preponderance of the evidence is sufficient. When dealing with the Bible or any ancient source, we have to loosen up a little; otherwise, we can't really say anything."

-David Noel Freedman (in Bible Review magazine, Dec. 1993, p.34)

The implications appear obvious. If one wishes to believe in a historical Jesus, he or she must accept this based on loose standards. Couple this with the fact that all of the claims come from hearsay, and we have a foundation made of sand, and a castle of information built of cards.



CITING GEOGRAPHY, AND KNOWN HISTORICAL FIGURES AS "EVIDENCE"

Although the New Testament mentions various cities, geological sites, kings and people that existed or lived during the alleged life of Jesus, these descriptions cannot serve as evidence for the existence of Jesus anymore than works of fiction that include recognizable locations, and make mention of actual people.

Homer's Odyssey, for example, describes the travels of Odysseus throughout the Greek islands. The epic describes, in detail, many locations that existed in history. But should we take Odysseus, the Greek gods and goddesses, one-eyed giants and monsters as literal fact simply because the story depicts geographic locations accurately? Of course not.

Mythical stories, fictions, and narratives almost always use familiar landmarks as placements for their stories. The authors of the Greek tragedies not only put their stories in plausible settings as happening in the real world but their supernatural characters took on the desires, flaws and failures of mortal human beings. Consider that fictions such as King Kong, Superman, and Star Trek include recognizable cities, planets, and landmarks, with their protagonists and antagonists miming human emotions.

Likewise, just because the Gospels mention cities and locations in Judea, and known historical people, with Jesus behaving like an actual human being (with the added dimension of supernatural curses, miracles, etc.) this says nothing about the actuality of the characters portrayed in the stories. However, when a story uses impossible historical locations, or geographical errors, we may question the authority of the claims.

For example, in Matt 4:8, the author describes the devil taking Jesus into an exceedingly high mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world. Since there exists no spot on the spheroid earth to view "all the kingdoms," we know that the Bible errs here.

John 12:21 says, "The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee. . . ." Bethsaida resided in Gaulonitis (Golan region), east of the Jordan river, not Galilee, which resided west of the river.

John 3:23 says, "John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim. . . ." Critics agree that no such place as Aenon exists near Salim.

[b]There occurs not a shred of evidence for a city named Nazareth at the time of the alleged Jesus. [Leedom; Gauvin] Nazareth does not appear in the Old Testament, nor does it appear in the volumes of Josephus's writings (even though he provides a detailed list of the cities of Galilee). Oddly, none of the New Testament epistle writers ever mentions Nazareth or a Jesus of Nazareth even though most of the epistles got written before the gospels. In fact no one mentions Nazareth until the Gospels, where the first one got written at least 40 years after the hypothetical death of Jesus. Apologists attempt to dismiss this by claiming that Nazareth existed as an insignificant and easily missed village (how would they know?), thus no one recorded it. However, whenever the Gospels speak of Nazareth, they always refer to it as a city, never a village, and a historian of that period would surely have noticed a city. (Note the New Testament uses the terms village, town, and city.) Nor can apologists fall on archeological evidence of preexisting artifacts for the simple reason that many cities get built on ancient sites. If a city named Nazareth existed during the 1st century, then we need at least one contemporary piece of evidence for the name, otherwise we cannot refer to it as historical.[/b]

Many more errors and unsupported geographical locations appear in the New Testament. And although one cannot use these as evidence against a historical Jesus, we can certainly question the reliability of the texts. If the scriptures make so many factual errors about geology, science, and contain so many contradictions, falsehoods could occur any in area.

If we have a coupling with historical people and locations, then we should also have some historical reference of a Jesus to these locations and people. But just the opposite proves the case. The Bible depicts Herod, the Ruler of Jewish Palestine under Rome as sending out men to search and kill the infant Jesus, yet nothing in history supports such a story.

Pontius Pilate supposedly performed as judge in the trial and execution of Jesus, yet no Roman record mentions such a trial. The gospels portray a multitude of believers throughout the land spreading tales of a teacher, prophet, and healer, yet nobody in Jesus' life time or several decades after, ever records such a human figure.

The lack of a historical Jesus in the known historical record speaks for itself.



COMPARING JESUS TO OTHER HISTORICAL FIGURES

Many Christian apologists attempt to extricate themselves from their lack of evidence by claiming that if we cannot rely on the post chronicle exegesis of Jesus, then we cannot establish a historical foundation for other figures such as Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, Napoleon, etc. However, there sits a vast difference between historical figures and Jesus. There occurs either artifacts, writings, or eyewitness accounts for historical people, whereas, for Jesus we have nothing.

Alexander, for example, left a wake of destroyed and created cities behind. We have buildings, libraries and cities, such as Alexandria, left in his name. We have treaties, and even a letter from Alexander to the people of Chios, engraved in stone, dated at 332 B.C.E. For Augustus Caesar, we have the Res gestae divi augusti, the emperor's own account of his works and deeds, a letter to his son (Epistula ad Gaium filium), Virgil's eyewitness accounts, and much more.

Napoleon left behind artifacts, eyewitness accounts and letters. We can establish some historicity to these people because we have evidence that occurred during their life times. Yet even with contemporary evidence, historians have become wary of after-the-fact stories of many of these historical people. For example, some of the stories of Alexander's conquests, or Nero starting the fire in Rome always get questioned or doubted because they contain inconsistencies or come from authors who wrote years after the alleged facts.

In qualifying the history of Alexander, Pierre Briant writes, "Although more than twenty of his contemporaries chronicled Alexander's life and campaigns, none of these texts survive in original form. Many letters and speeches attributed to Alexander are ancient forgeries or reconstructions inspired by imagination or political motives. The little solid documentation we possess from Alexander's own time is mainly to be found in stone inscriptions from the Greek cities of Europe and Asia." [Briant]

Inventing histories out of whole cloth or embellished from a seed of an actual historical event appears common throughout the chronicle of human thought. Robert Price observes, "Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Cyrus, King Arthur, and others have nearly suffered this fate. What keeps historians from dismissing them as mere myths, like Paul Bunyan, is that there is some residue. We know at least a bit of mundane information about them, perhaps quite a bit, that does not form part of any legend cycle." [Price, p. 260-261]

Interestingly, almost all important historical people have descriptions of what they looked like. We have the image of Augustus Caesar cast on denarius coins, busts of Greek and Roman aristocrats, artwork of Napoleon, etc. We have descriptions of facial qualities, height, weight, hair length & color, age and even portraits of most important historical figures. But for Jesus, we have nothing. Nowhere in the Bible do we have a description of the human shape of Jesus. How can we rely on the Gospels as the word of Jesus when no one even describes what he looked like? How odd that none of the disciple characters record what he looked like, yet believers attribute them to know exactly what he said.

Indeed, this gives us a clue that Jesus came to the gospel writers and indirect and through myth. Not until hundreds of years after the alleged Jesus did pictures emerge as to what he looked like from cult Christians, and these widely differed from a blond clean shaven, curly haired Apollonian youth (found in the Roman catacombs) to a long-bearded Italian as depicted to this day. This mimics the pattern of Greek mythological figures as their believers constructed various images of what their gods looked like according to their own cultural image.

Historical people leave us with contemporary evidence, but for Jesus we have nothing. If we wanted to present a fair comparison of the type of information about Jesus to another example of equal historical value, we could do no better than to compare Jesus with the mythical figure of Hercules.



IF JESUS, THEN WHY NOT HERCULES?

If a person accepts hearsay and accounts from believers as historical evidence for Jesus, then shouldn't they act consistently to other accounts based solely on hearsay and belief?

To take one example, examine the evidence for the Hercules of Greek mythology and you will find it parallels the "historicity" of Jesus to such an amazing degree that for Christian apologists to deny Hercules as a historical person belies and contradicts the very same methodology used for a historical Jesus.

Note that Herculean myth resembles Jesus in many areas. Hercules got born as a human from the union of God (Zeus) and the mortal and chaste Alcmene, his mother. Similar to Herod who wanted to kill Jesus, Hera wanted to kill Hercules. Like Jesus, Hercules traveled the earth as a mortal helping mankind and performed miraculous deeds. Like Jesus who died and rose to heaven, Hercules died, rose to Mt. Olympus and became a god. Hercules gives example of perhaps the most popular hero in Ancient Greece and Rome. They believed that he actually lived, told stories about him, worshipped him, and dedicated temples to him.

Likewise the "evidence" of Hercules closely parallels that of Jesus. We have historical people like Hesiod and Plato who mentions Hercules. Similar to the way the gospels tell a narrative story of Jesus, so do we have the epic stories of Homer who depict the life of Hercules. Aesop tells stories and quotes the words of Hercules. Just as we have a brief mention of Jesus by Joesphus in his Antiquities, Joesphus also mentions Hercules (more times than Jesus), in the very same work (see: 1.15; 8.5.3; 10.11.1). Just as Tacitus mentions a Christus, so does he also mention Hercules many times in his Annals. And most importantly, just as we have no artifacts, writings or eyewitnesses about Hercules, we also have nothing about Jesus.

All information about Hercules and Jesus comes from stories, beliefs, and hearsay. Should we then believe in a historical Hercules, simply because ancient historians mention him and that we have stories and beliefs about him? Of course not, and the same must apply to Jesus if we wish to hold any consistency to historicity.

Some critics doubt that a historicized Jesus could develop from myth because they think there never occurred any precedence for it. We have many examples of myth from history but what about the other way around? This doubt fails in the light of the most obvious example-- the Greek mythologies where Greek and Roman writers including Diodorus, Cicero, Livy, etc., assumed that there must have existed a historical root for figures such as Hercules, Theseus, Odysseus, Minos, Dionysus, etc.

These writers put their mythological heroes into an invented historical time chart. Herodotus, for example, tried to determine when Hercules lived. As Robert M. Price revealed, "The whole approach earned the name of Euphemism, from Euphemerus who originated it." [Price, p. 250] Even today, we see many examples of seedling historicized mythologies: UFO adherents whose beliefs began as a dream of alien bodily invasion, and then expressed as actually having occurred (some of which have formed religious cults); beliefs of urban legends which started as pure fiction or hoaxes; propaganda spread by politicians which stem from fiction but believed by their constituents.

People consider Hercules and other Greek gods as myth because people no longer believe in the Greek and Roman stories. When a civilization dies, so go their gods. Christianity and its church authorities, on the other hand, still hold a powerful influence on governments, institutions, and colleges.

Anyone doing research on Jesus, even skeptics, had better allude to his existence or else risk future funding and damage to their reputations or fear embarrassment against their Christian friends. Christianity depends on establishing a historical Jesus and it will defend, at all costs, even the most unreliable sources. The faithful want to believe in Jesus, and belief alone can create intellectual barriers that leak even into atheist and secular thought. We have so many Christian professors, theologians and historical "experts" around the world that tell us we should accept a historical Jesus that if repeated often enough, it tends to convince even the most ardent skeptic.

The establishment of history should never reside with the "experts" words alone or simply because a scholar has a reputation as a historian. Historical review has yet to achieve the reliability of scientific investigation, (and in fact, many times ignores it). If a scholar makes a historical claim, his assertion should depend primarily with the evidence itself and not just because he or she says so. Facts do not require belief. And whereas beliefs can live comfortably without evidence at all, facts depend on evidence.



THEN WHY THE MYTH OF JESUS?

Some people actually believe that just because so much voice and ink has spread the word of a character named Jesus throughout history, that this must mean that he actually lived. This argument simply does not hold. The number of people who believe or write about something or the professional degrees they hold say nothing at all about fact. Facts derive out of evidence, not from hearsay, not from hubris scholars, and certainly not from faithful believers. (Like mugu Africans)

Regardless of the position or admiration held by a scholar, believer, or priest, if he or she cannot support their hypothesis with good evidence, then it can only remain a hypothesis.

Although we have no evidence for a historical Jesus, we certainly have many accounts for the mythologies of the Middle East and Egypt during the first century and before that appear similar to the Christ saviour story.

If you know your ancient history, remember that just before and during the first century, the Jews had prophesied about an upcoming Messiah based on Jewish scripture. Their beliefs influenced many of their followers. We know that powerful beliefs can create self-fulfilling prophesies, and surely this proved just as true in ancient times. It served as a popular dream expressed in Hebrew Scripture for the promise of an "end-time" with a savior to lead them to the promised land. Indeed, Roman records show executions of several would-be Messiahs, (but not a single record mentions a Jesus). Many ancients believed that there could come a final war against the "Sons of Darkness"-- the Romans.

This then could very well have served as the ignition and flame for the future growth of Christianity. We know that the early Christians lived within pagan communities. Jewish scriptural beliefs coupled with the pagan myths of the time give sufficient information about how such a religion could have formed. Many of the Hellenistic and pagan myths parallel so closely to the alleged Jesus that to ignore its similarities means to ignore the mythological beliefs of history. Dozens of similar savior stories propagated the minds of humans long before the alleged life of Jesus. Virtually nothing about Jesus "the Christ" came to the Christians as original or new.

For example, the religion of Zoroaster, founded circa 628-551 B.C.E. in ancient Persia, roused mankind in the need for hating a devil, the belief of a paradise, last judgment and resurrection of the dead. Mithraism, an offshoot of Zoroastrianism probably influenced early Christianity. The Magi described in the New Testament appears as Zoroastrian priests. Note the word "paradise" came from the Persian pairidaeza.

The Egyptian mythical Horus, god of light and goodness has many parallels to Jesus. [Leedom, Massey] For some examples:

Horus and the Father as one
Horus, the Father seen in the Son
Horus, light of the world, represented by the symbolical eye, the sign of salvation.
Horus served the way, the truth, the life by name and in person
Horus baptized with water by Anup (Jesus baptized with water by John)
Horus the Good Shepherd
Horus as the Lamb (Jesus as the Lamb)
Horus as the Lion (Jesus as the Lion)
Horus identified with the Tat Cross (Jesus with the cross)
The trinity of Atum the Father, Horus the Son, Ra the Holy Spirit
Horus the avenger (Jesus who brings the sword)
Horus the afflicted one
Horus as life eternal
Twelve followers of Horus as Har-Khutti (Jesus' 12 disciples)
 
According to Massey, "The mythical Messiah is Horus in the Osirian Mythos; Har-Khuti in the Sut-Typhonian; Khunsu in that of Amen-Ra; Iu in the cult of Atum-Ra; and the Christ of the Gospels is an amalgam of all these characters."

Osiris, Hercules, Mithra, Hermes, Prometheus, Perseus and others compare to the Christian myth. According to Patrick Campbell of The Mythical Jesus, all served as pre-Christian sun gods, yet all allegedly had gods for fathers, virgins for mothers; had their births announced by stars; got born on the solstice around December 25th; had tyrants who tried to kill them in their infancy; met violent deaths; rose from the dead; and nearly all got worshiped by "wise men" and had allegedly fasted for forty days. [McKinsey, Chapter 5]

The pre-Christian cult of Mithra had a deity of light and truth, son of the Most High, fought against evil, presented the idea of the Logos. Pagan Mithraism mysteries had the burial in a rock tomb, resurrection, sacrament of bread & water (Eucharist), the marking on the forehead with a mystic mark, the symbol of the Rock, the Seven Spirits and seven stars, all before the advent of Christianity.

Even Justin Martyr recognized the analogies between Christianity and Paganism. To the Pagans, he wrote: "When we say that the Word, who is first born of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven; we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter (Zeus)." [First Apology, ch. xxi]

Virtually all of the mythical accounts of a savior Jesus have parallels to past pagan mythologies which existed long before Christianity and from the Jewish scriptures that we now call the Old Testament. The accounts of these myths say nothing about historical reality, but they do say a lot about believers, how they believed, and how their beliefs spread.

In the book The Jesus Puzzle, the biblical scholar, Earl Doherty, presents not only a challenge to the existence of an historical Jesus but reveals that early pre-Gospel Christian documents show that the concept of Jesus sprang from non-historical spiritual beliefs of a Christ derived from Jewish scripture and Hellenized myths of savior gods.

Nowhere do any of the New Testament epistle writers describe a human Jesus, including Paul. None of the epistles mention a Jesus of Nazareth, an earthly teacher, or as a human miracle worker. Nowhere do we find these writers quoting Jesus. Nowhere do we find them describing any details of Jesus' life on earth or his followers. Nowhere do we find the epistle writers even using the word "disciple" (they of course use the term "apostle" but the word simply means messenger, as Paul saw himself).

Except for two well known interpolations, Jesus always gets presented as a spiritual being that existed before all time with God, and that knowledge of Christ came directly from God or as a revelation from the word of scripture. Doherty writes, "Christian documents outside the Gospels, even at the end of the first century and beyond, show no evidence that any tradition about an earthly life and ministry of Jesus were in circulation."

These early historical documents can prove nothing about an actual Jesus but they do show an evolution of belief derived from varied and diverse concepts of Christianity, starting from a purely spiritual form of Christ to a human figure who embodied that spirit, as portrayed in the Gospels. The New Testament stories appear as an eclectic hodgepodge of Jewish, Hellenized and pagan stories compiled by pietistic believers to appeal to an audience for their particular religious times.




A NOTE ABOUT DATING:

The A.D. (Anno Domini, or "year of our Lord" dating method derived from a monk named Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Little), in the sixth-century who used it in his Easter tables. Oddly, some people seem to think this has relevance to a historical Jesus. But of course it has nothing at all to do with it. In the time before and during the 6th century, people used various other dating methods. The Romans used A.U.C. (anno urbis conditae, "year of the founded city," that being Rome). The Jews had their own dating system. Not until the tenth century did most churches accept the new dating system. The A.D. system simply reset the time of January 1, 754 A.U.C. to January 1, of year one A.D., which Dionysius obliquly derived from the belief of the date of "incarnation" of Jesus . The date, if one uses the Bible as history, can't possibly hold true. *

Instead of B.C. and A.D., I have often used the convention of B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era) as often used in scholarly literature. They correspond to the same dates as B.C. and A.D., but without alluding to the birth or death of an alleged Christ.

* Dionysius believed that the conception (incarnation) of Jesus occurred on March 25. This meant that the conception must have occurred nine months later on December 25, probably not coincidentally, the very same date that the Emperor Aurelian, in 274 C.E., declared December 25 a holiday in celebration of the birth of Mithras, the sun god. By 336 C.E., Christians replaced Mithras with Jesus' birth on the same date,

A load of nonsense and i did not bother reading too. hisssss ekwensu

Not surprised. It's the Jim Walker lullaby again - classic story teller for those who can't be bothered seeing through has cavil. Actually, I've read his noise before - nothing new here.

His ''noise'' makes an awful lot of sense to the UNBRAINWASHED. 

If that's all the noise you can make, no worries. I'm hardly surprised by the same old story.

WELL, HOW DO YOU ADDRESS THE ISSUES RAISED THEREIN?

It's not enough to keep regurgitating your 'same old story' line. 

@Jen33,

I always suspected you were seeking attention, so no worries. You ought to have taken a hint long ago to address Jim Walker's rantings for yourself before swallowing his drivel hook-line-and-sinker. These issues are the same tired old stories couched up in very immature questions, and one could hardly be surprised that you've only woken up to it.

Let's begin with a silly cavil as in the second youtube link you provided. If anyone was to take you seriously, how come your party conveniently missed out the answer to his question right there in the same Bible where the question was derived? See again:

Question:

Suddenly, John the Baptist is "put in prison". There is no further explanation in the Bible, which seems quite strange if John were a real person. We want to know why he was put in prison.

Answer:
First, whoever was making such remarks/asking such questions was simply being disingenuous. Indeed the Bible gave an explanation as to why John the Baptist was put in prison - which must have been deliberately ignored if one reads the full text in Matt. 14:3-12 >>

For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife. For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her. And when he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet. But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask. And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger. And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath's sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison. And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel: and she brought it to her mother. And his disciples came, and took up the body, and buried it, and went and told Jesus.

When people can afford to be that silly and anyone takes them seriously, they only show the size of their intellect.

Again,

Jen33:

Epistle of James: Although the epistle identifies a ''James'' as the letter writer, but which James? Many claim him as the gospel disciple but the gospels mention several different James. Which one? Or maybe this ''James'' has nothing to do with any of the gospel James. Perhaps this writer comes from any one of innumerable ''James'' outside the gospels. James served as a common name in the first centuries and we simply have no way to tell who this James refers to. More to the point, the Epistle of James mentions Jesus only once as an introduction to his belief. Nowhere does the epistle reference a historical Jesus and this alone eliminates it from an historical account. [1]

It is really laughable how this chap dribbles himself into these inferences. In stating that the Epistle of James mentions Jesus only once exposes Jim Walker's cavil. On the contrary, James mentions Jesus twice!

James 1:1 - James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

James 2:1 - My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.

Secondly, Walker doesn't know the meaning of an "epistle" and hopes that it would automatically mean that an epistle ought to be a biography or a history textbook before he could accept it as a historical document. This sloppy knavery is not worth anyone's waste of time.

Typical Straw arguments - picking holes in mundane aspects and ignoring the wider questions raised. NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

WHY did nobody in Jesus' time record his existence although there were hundreds of professional writers, scribes, and other such pen men?

WHY is the earliest reference to Jesus some 60 years after he supposedly died?

WHY did POPE Leo X make this comment: 'What riches it has brought us - this fable of Christ?'

WHY do ALL the ancient saviour gods who were worshipped centuries and millenia before Jesus including Horus, Krishna, Mythra, Dionysius, Hercules, etc all share the same life story as Jesus? They all had 12 disciples, born of a virgin, and walked on water, among other similarities. Why?

WHAT sort of 'coincidence' is that?

WHY is there no evidence for the existence of a city called Nazareth?

WHY are there no records of Jesus in any Roman archives when it is common knowledge that the Romans kept records meticulously?

WHY are the gospels presented as if they were eyewitness accounts by the writers when they were in actuality written in the third and fourth persons?

Why is there not one single shred of historical evidence to support the existence of Jesus if in fact he lived?

ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS. Don't go picking INCONSEQUENTIAL holes where they don't matter.

ANSWER THE SUBSTANTIVE QUESTIONS RAISED OR STFU. 

The Origins of Christianity and
the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ

by Acharya S

Introduction

Around the world over the centuries, much has been written about religion, its meaning, its relevance and contribution to humanity. In the West particularly, sizable tomes have been composed speculating upon the nature and historical background of the main character of Western religions, Jesus Christ. Many have tried to dig into the precious few clues as to Jesus's identity and come up with a biographical sketch that either bolsters faith or reveals a more human side of this godman to which we can all relate. Obviously, considering the time and energy spent on them, the subjects of Christianity and its legendary founder are very important to the Western mind and culture.

The Controversy
Despite all of this literature continuously being cranked out and the significance of the issue, in the public at large there is a serious lack of formal and broad education regarding religion and mythology, and most individuals are highly uninformed in this area.

Concerning the issue of Christianity, for example, the majority of people are taught in most schools and churches that Jesus Christ was an actual historical figure and that the only controversy regarding him is that some people accept him as the Son of God and the Messiah, while others do not. However, whereas this is the raging debate most evident in this field today, it is not the most important. Shocking as it may seem to the general populace, the most enduring and profound controversy in this subject is whether or not a person named Jesus Christ ever really existed.

Although this debate may not be evident from publications readily found in popular bookstores, when one examines this issue closely, one will find a tremendous volume of literature that demonstrates, logically and intelligently, time and again that Jesus Christ is a mythological character along the same lines as the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Sumerian, Phoenician, Indian or other godmen, who are all presently accepted as myths rather than historical figures.

Delving deeply into this large body of work, one uncovers evidence that the Jesus character is based upon much older myths and heroes from around the globe. One discovers that this story is not, therefore, a historical representation of a Jewish rebel carpenter who had a physical incarnation in the Levant 2,000 years ago. In other words, it has been demonstrated continually for centuries that this character, Jesus Christ, was invented and did not depict a real person who was either the "son of God" or was "evemeristically" made into a superhuman by enthusiastic followers.

History and Positions of the Debate
This controversy has existed from the very beginning, and the writings of the "Church Fathers" themselves reveal that they were constantly forced by the pagan intelligentsia to defend what the non-Christians and other Christians ("heretics" alike saw as a preposterous and fabricated yarn with absolutely no evidence of it ever having taken place in history.

As Rev. Robert Taylor says, "And from the apostolic age downwards, in a never interrupted succession, but never so strongly and emphatically as in the most primitive times, was the existence of Christ as a man most strenuously denied."

Emperor Julian, who, coming after the reign of the fanatical and murderous "good Christian" Constantine, returned rights to pagan worshippers, stated, "If anyone should wish to know the truth with respect to you Christians, he will find your impiety to be made up partly of the Jewish audacity, and partly of the indifference and confusion of the Gentiles, and that you have put together not the best, but the worst characteristics of them both." According to these learned dissenters, the New Testament could rightly be called, "Gospel Fictions."

A century ago, mythicist Albert Churchward said, "The canonical gospels can be shown to be a collection of sayings from the Egyptian Mythos and Eschatology."

In Forgery in Christianity, Joseph Wheless states, "The gospels are all priestly forgeries over a century after their pretended dates."

Those who concocted some of the hundreds of "alternative" gospels and epistles that were being kicked about during the first several centuries C.E. have even admitted that they had forged the documents.

Forgery during the first centuries of the Church's existence was admittedly rampant, so common in fact that a new phrase was coined to describe it: "pious fraud."

Such prevarication is confessed to repeatedly in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Some of the "great" church fathers, such as Eusebius, were determined by their own peers to be unbelievable liars who regularly wrote their own fictions of what "the Lord" said and did during "his" alleged sojourn upon the earth.

The Proof
The assertion that Jesus Christ is a myth can be proved not only through the works of dissenters and "pagans" who knew the truth - and who were viciously refuted or murdered for their battle against the Christian priests and "Church Fathers" fooling the masses with their fictions - but also through the very statements of the Christians themselves, who continuously disclose that they knew Jesus Christ was a myth founded upon more ancient deities located throughout the known ancient world. In fact, Pope Leo X, privy to the truth because of his high rank, made this curious declaration, "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!" (Emphasis added.) As Wheless says, "The proofs of my indictment are marvellously easy."

Read more:

http://www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htm

The Word of God speaks of this fool called Jen33:-

A prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself, but the heart of fools blurts out folly
The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God,"
They are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice


My advice,

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.

do not cast your pearls to swine. 

@trini_girl,

How bodi? Been a while.

trini_girl:

The Word of God speaks of this fool called Jen33:-

A prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself, but the heart of fools blurts out folly
The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God,"
They are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice

Yep, and it's sad that he couldn't make out the folly in Walker et al's misguided theories.

trini_girl:

My advice,

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.

do not cast your pearls to swine.

I thought so, too. Just for the benefit of readers, I'll just post this once so people don't miss the gist at the core of this thread.

Cheers.

@Jen,

Jen33:

Typical Straw arguments - picking holes in mundane aspects and ignoring the wider questions raised. NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

The only person offering typical straw arguments is YOU; and as aptly descriptive of your posts, it shows you were only interested in the "mundane aspects" of empty queries in Walker & co's theories.

There's nothing sensible in Jim Walker's harangue, especially as anyone going through your cut-and-post volume of his knavery can't miss the fact that he was lying through his teeth in an attempt to short-change simpletons who could be baited so cheaply. Since you are so easily taken in by Walker's slobber, it's hardly surprising that you missed the real issue - he was simply being dishonest in his claims - and that is precisely the point in the concise rejoinders by bari_kade and 4get_me. As in their previous examples, let's sample a few more of Walker's prevarication.

Jen33:

No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from [b]writings of other people. . .[/b]

All documents about Jesus got written well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. . .

they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources derive from hearsay accounts

The assertion that all claims about Jesus derive from "writings of other people" or "people who have never met an earthly Jesus" is a weak attempt to ignore the Gospels and epistles of the apostles who walked with Jesus in His ministry (compare Acts 1:21 - "these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us".

John positively identified himself in the Gospel bearing his name: "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true" (John 21:24). He often referred to himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (vs. 20), and "the other disciple, whom Jesus loved" (ch. 20:2).

In his epistle, the same John positively affirms that their accounts of the ministry of Jesus was first-hand, and not hearsays or writings of "other" people: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us" (I John 1;1-2).

Peter categorically deflates Walker's pretentious assertion in stating: "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount." (II Pet. 1:16-18 ).

In the face of these clear texts, someone starts off making pretentious allegations that there were no 'self-written manuscripts,' or that the documents were from 'people who had never met an earthly Jesus' - are we to give his cavil lies any notice?

Jen33:

Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge.
Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modern scholarship. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we should dismiss it.
Authors of ancient history today, of course, can only write from indirect observation in a time far removed from their aim. But a valid historian's own writing gets cited with sources that trace to the subject themselves, or to eyewitnesses and artifacts. For example a historian today who writes about the life of George Washington, of course, can not serve as an eyewitness, but he can provide citations to documents which give personal or eyewitness accounts. None of the historians about Jesus give reliable sources to eyewitnesses, therefore all we have remains as hearsay.

Walker already made up his mind even before he considered the evidence before him - a classic example of prejudice. He pressumed that the apostles of Jesus Christ were giving information derived from "hearsay" when arraigned before a Jewish religious court of their day. Peter and John's bold affirmation before them was: "For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20). This was their affirmation all through their ministry, as we noted earlier in II Pet. 1:16-18 where Peter emphatically stated that they were "eyewitness" of Jesus majesty; as well as that they had been with Jesus.

Jen33:

Even in antiquity people like Origen and Eusebius raised doubts about the authenticity of other books in the New Testament such as Hebrews, James, John 2 & 3, Peter 2, Jude, and Revelation. Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James calling it ''worthless'' and an "epistle of straw" and questioned Jude, Hebrews and the Apocalypse in Revelation. Nevertheless, all New Testament writings came well after the alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors (with the possible exception of Paul, although still after the alleged death).

Again, Walker's prejudice comes to the fore in the paragraph above. After having appealed to the personal and bias views of Origen, Eusebius and Martin Luther, he concludes that all the NT writings came from unknown authors. This is the worn-out currency of his premise; and the preceding answers for internal evidence in the texts just above affirms that the NT writers were clearly identified - Peter, John and others. To have even admitted "with the possible exception of Paul" is simply silly, because Elaine Pagels now has sealed lips on attempts to discredit the Pauline epistles.

Jen33:

Epistles of John: The epistles of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation appear so different in style and content that they could hardly have the same author. Some suggest that these writings of ''John'' come from the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor who followed a "John" or they came from the work of church fathers who aimed to further the interests of the Church. Or they could have simply come from people also named John (a very common name). No one knows. Also note that nowhere in the body of the three epistles of "John" does it mention a John.

Another cheap interjection. A careful reader cannot miss the fact that the epistles of John, Gospel of John, and the Revelation have the very same author - the apostle John. Neither Walker nor his ficticious group of scholars in Asia Minor could even provide the deviation in style and content that they see in these documents.

The apostle John is sometimes called the 'apostle of love' in recognition of that as his theme. This in no way suggests that the other apostles negated love in their writings; but as far as style and content are concerned, we find it running through John's writings like a silver thread. Not only does the word appear more times in his Gospel than you find in each of the other synoptic Gospels; but also all through his epistles, he particularly uses the word in a perculiar way that tessellates with the style in his Gospel account.

Secondly, in style and content John uses a perculiar phrase in both his Gospel and epistles - "the biginning" (John 1:1 & I John 1:1). Not only does the phrase appear in the opening verses each of the Gospel and the first epistle; but notice also that John connects it with the idea of 'precedence and relationship' . This is obvious to any careful reader.

the Gospel: precedence - "In the beginning was the Word" - (ch. 1:1);
and, relationship - "the Word was with God" (vs.1),
"The same was in the beginning with God" (vs.2).

the epistle, I John: precedence - "That which was from the beginning" (ch. 1:1)
precedence - "ye have known him that is from the beginning" (ch. 2:14)
and relationship - "that eternal life, which was with the Father" (ch. 1:2).

Thirdly, more than any other of the Gospels, it is in John one finds the deity of Jesus Christ more positively and categorically affirmed. In the very first verse of John's Gospel, Jesus is called the Word (Logos), who infact is God (John 1:1). In his first epistle, he affirms that Jesus Christ is "the true God, and eternal life" (I John 5:20 - the Greek construct confirms this). And in Revelation, the same apostle identifies Jesus as the One whose name is "The Word of God" (Rev. 19:13), the very same appellation used in his first epistle for Jesus ("the Word" - I John 5:7).

Fourth, besides two texts (Acts 8:32 & I Pet. 1:19) that reference the word "Lamb" as pointing to Jesus as the divine Sacrifice, John's use of this term for Jesus remarkably tessellates in both the Gospel ('the Lamb of God' - John 1:29 & 36) and severally in the Revelation ("the Lamb" - Rev. 7:14 & 22:3).

Jen33:

In any case, the epistles of John say nothing about seeing an earthly Jesus. Not only do we not know who wrote these epistles, they can only serve as hearsay accounts.

Walker plays it cheap again. John in his first epistle was concerned with doctrine, rather than with historical account as in his Gospel. There is a huge difference between the two, and Walker fails to see that. Yet, he proposes a fallacious argument that deviates from the content of the epistle.

The Gospel gives the account of an earthly Jesus - how He lived, what He did, where He went, people He encountered and their reaction and perceptions of Him, as well as the fact that John was one of those who witnessed His crucifixion (John 19:26).

The epistle on the hand, was written to edify and instruct Christians who already had the Gospel narrative. This is why the apostle John would leave no one in doubts as to the very fact that Walker argued against. John describes the fact that he was one of the eyewitness of an earthly Jesus in I John 1:1-3 ("we have heard. . .we have seen with our eyes,. . . we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life".

Several other themes in style and content evidence John as the author of the Gospel of John, his epistles and the Revelation. There's no missing the fact; and only on the basis of dishonesty and cavil would anyone like Walker propose silly, eristic theories such as you've posted.

What I'm simply interested in is: was Walker being honest or dishonest in his claims about the lack of witnesses for the historical Jesus? If you would claim he was being honest, then your case cannot be further helped until you resolve your mix-up in his openly dishonest claims.

@ Jim Jen Walker 33,
You are so quick to believe a story fabricator of your type, yet to study the Word of God is really a great problem for you.

Jen33:

Jesus Christ Did Not Exist.


http://www.truthbeknown.com/christ.htm


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGbJpGlwjyU


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ-kvw1fYXs&mode=related&search=

Historians have made known to confirm Jesus existence on earth. Romans set aside fantastic census proceedings.

@Jen33,[/b]
This is not the first time hearing & reading story l considered a hoax. l'm really not suprised that u took your precious time to fabricate such a story about the existence of [b]JESUS CHRIST coz a similar film was put up recently to dent HIS image. The funniest thing about all the fruitless effort of these fabricators is that it doesn'n change the diety and the existence of Jesus christ. Jen! REMEMBER YOU CANNOT SAVE YOURSELF so u need a helper which is JESUS.

PLS READ THIS AND SHARE UR VIEW ON THAT PAGE

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-37793.0.html

Shahan, you're really funny.

I'm here telling you that the earliest reference to Jesus was 40-60 years after his death and you're reading to me what's in the Bible??

So because some IDIOT writes in the Bible that he witnessed Jesus means we should believe him?

Theology and science do not work that way. The bible texts themselves are not proof of their own authenticity.

Even the most sympathetic theologians and researchers would never dare suggest that any of the gospels were written by anyone who saw 'Jesus', for the simple reason that it is KNOWN that the earliest text references to Jesus were done not less than 40 years after he'd ''died and ascended into the heavens to sit at the right hand of God''

Chei. My people will believe any rubbish thrown at them by whitey. 

And how do you solve the problem of why no contemporary writer of the period wrote a word about this famous 'Christ' despite all his alleged escapades?

Isn't it because - like other myth saviour-gods before him like Hercules and Mythra, he didn't actually exist?

How do you account for the same life stories of all the saviour gods, including ''Jesus'', the last of the lot?

Isn't it because they simply borrowed stories from ancient myth in order to assimilate converts while creating a unique fictional savior god they could rally people round in order to CONTROL them, something the Christian Church has been remarkably successful at doing, especially in Africa and South America etc etc?

Statues of the ancient Egyptan saviour god, baby Horus being held by his mother Isis, are all over Europe and Egypt in the form of 'Black Madonnas'. That explains the root of the Mary carrying baby Jesus palaver etc etc,

Horus, who was worshipped as the Light of the World, who had come to die for man's sins, was as popular in his day as Jesus is today.

Horus was born of a virgin, Isis. He walked on water, and he had 12 disciples. Plus other similarities with the 'Christ' that came of a few thousand years later.

Only a blind man can fail to see the duplicity in all of this.

Many independent thinkers believe Christianity and Islam are the biggest VOODOO religions of all, in the way they get their followers to suspend all reasoning faculties and become unthinking Zombies.

Why then were we endowed with brains if not for thinking things through with common sense?

How do you account for the non-existence of ''the city of Nazareth'' outside the Bible? No trace of the place, no record of it anywhere - in a region where even the most remote villages where known to the scribes and listed in numerous texts and uncountable scrolls?

Why are their so many confluences with SUN imagery and its planetary cycles? Including the SUN HALO around the head of the 'Christ'?

Sun imagery was used to define Horus as well. He was called The Light of The World. The saviour of the World, the son of GOD.

Instead of trying to cast aspersion on people why not tackle the most difficult issues raised here, rather than incessantly lying to yourself?

_{** sigh **}

Please people end this thread. I rather see a debate between Islam and Christianity than this rubbish. Leave this fool alone!

What better way to silence a fool than by silence!

End this thread now please.

You guys are too good for this.

lafile, first off, Josephus was NOT contemporary to Jesus. In fact I believe he was born three years after Jesus supposedly ascended to heaven.

Second, even mainstream theologians accept his single reference to 'a man called Chistus' as a forgery or an interpolation.

NONE of the writers contemporary to Jesus period, such as Seneca and Pliny the Elder, nor the numerous Scribes and Pharisses/Saducees etc wrote ANYTHING about ''Jesus''.

Because he did not exist.

Stories about this guy only started circulating 40 years after his alleged life. No theologian or priest that knows of these things disputes this fact.

It's only the SHEEP such as we see on this site, that are oblivious to the truth, and wish, largely to remain that way.

Trini girl or whatever she calls herself is especially brainwashed, and what she's reading is hurting her real bad.

But the truth is the truth, and as the saying goes, You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free (ancient Egyptian saying wrongly credited to the Bible).

Incidentally, that's a saying that's found on EVERY EGYPTIAN TEMPLE.

Christianity is but recycled/repackaged myth. FACT.

''What profit it has it not brought us, this fable of Christ!'' - Pope Leo X

He would know! 

@trini_girl,

trini_girl:

_{** sigh **}

Please people end this thread. I rather see a debate between Islam and Christianity than this rubbish. Leave this fool alone!

What better way to silence a fool than by silence!

End this thread now please.

You guys are too good for this.

Yep, like I said earlier, if he couldn't see the open dishonesty in the claims of Walker, his case is beyond help.

educate me more jen33. These stories of Horus, Krishna, Mythra, Dionysius, Hercules etc. what is the oldest dated recordings you can find?