Jesus- Was He Really The 'Son of God'? Do Christians Want the Truth - Or Myth?

The historical Jesus was a common eating and healing Rabbi  who would have been appalled at being identified with God, or being called 'Son of God'.


Today, Good Friday, Christians celebrate around the world as the day their Savior, Jesus Christ, was put to death on the cross. Most believe, as per gospels, churches, priests and ministers, that he was really the 'Son of God' hence the only route to "salvation". But are they correct or the victims of myth?

It is true that Jesus claims to be divine in the last of our canonical Gospels to be written, the Gospel of John. Here it is enough to note that in that Gospel Jesus does make remarkable claims about himself. In speaking of the father of the Jews, Abraham (who lived eighteen hundred years earlier), Jesus tells his opponents, “Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am” (8:58). This particular phrase, “I am,” rings a familiar chord to anyone acquainted with the Hebrew Bible. In the book of Exodus, in the story of the burning bush, Moses asks God what his name is, and God tells him that his name is “I am.” Jesus appears to be claiming not only to have existed before Abraham, but to have been given the name of God himself. His Jewish opponents know exactly what he is saying. They immediately take up stones to stone him.

Later in the Gospel, Jesus is even more explicit, as he proclaims:  “I and the Father are one” ( John 10:30). Once again, the Jewish listeners break out the stones. Still later, when Jesus is talking to his disciples at his last meal with them, his follower Philip asks him to show them who God the Father is; Jesus replies, “The one who has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9). And again later, during the same meal, Jesus prays to God and speaks about how God had “sent him” into the world and refers to “my glory that you gave me . . . before the foundation of the world” (17:24).
 

Jesus is not claiming to be God the Father here, obviously (since when he’s praying, he is not talking to himself ). So he is not saying that he is identical with God. But he is saying that he is equal with God and has been that way from before the world was created. These are amazingly exalted claims.

But examined  from a historical perspective, they simply cannot be ascribed to the historical Jesus. They don’t pass any of our criteria. They are not multiply attested in our sources; they appear only in John, our latest and most theologically oriented Gospel. They certainly do not pass the criterion of dissimilarity since they express the very view of Jesus that the author of the Gospel of John happens to hold. And they are not at all contextually credible. We have no record of any Palestinian Jew ever saying any such things about himself. These divine self-claims in John are part of John’s distinctive theology; they are not part of the historical record of what Jesus actually said.

Perhaps no serious theological group has shed more light on the real, historical Jesus than the Jesus Seminar, and particularly the works of one of its luminaries, John Dominic Crossan.

My own ability to ferret out the key research of the Jesus Seminar via Exegesis was no doubt aided by my having attended a Jesuit-run university  (Loyola) in New Orleans ca: 1964-67. So, I'd already taken courses in biblical exegesis, Quadriform Gospel analysis and Comparative Religion. My mind was therefore already open to the possibilities John Dominic Crossan presented in his masterful book: The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant .

Crossan's conclusionary take on Jesus is perhaps best summarized on p. 422:

"His strategy, implicitly for himself and explicitly for his followers, was the combination of free healing and common eating, a religious and economic egalitarianism that negated alike and at once the hierarchical and patronal normalcies of Jewish religion and Roman power.

And lest he himself be interpreted as simply the new broker of a new God, he moved on constantly, settling down neither at Nazareth or Capernaum. He was neither broker nor mediator but, somewhat paradoxically, the announcer that neither should exist between humanity and divinity or between humanity and itself. Miracle and parable, healing and eating were calculated to force individuals into unmediated physical and spiritual contact with God and unmediated physical and spiritual contact with one another.

He announced, in other words, the borderless kingdom of God."

Jesus as a historical person, in other words, entirely fit within the egalitarian Gnostic scheme - as opposed to the Pauline 'god-man/Savior' theme. (The Gnostics, as biblical scholar Elaine Pagels notes in her book, The Gnostic Gospels, considered anyone who identified with God as committing a sacrilege and blasphemy).

What or who was Jesus, at the end of the day? From the weight of Crossan's arguments and insights - not to mention the consensus of The Jesus Seminar Project- he was an extraordinary man. But a flesh and blood human nonetheless.

In Crossan's final conclusion - with which I wholeheartedly concur from everything I've seen- Jesus was a "peasant Jewish Cynic". As Crossan points out, p. 421, a 'Cynic' embodied:

 "a life-style and mindset in opposition to the cultural heart of Mediterranean civilization, a way of looking and dressing, of eating and living and relating, that announced its contempt for honor and shame, for patronage and clientage. ....Hippies in a world of Augustan yuppies.")

Little wonder then that Jesus' habits would infuriate not only Jewish orthodoxy but the Roman government. Leading ultimately to execution for what they'd have perceived as "subversion" of the Empire.  Geza Vermes, a scholar of ancient Judaism concurs with this take. He is a Jewish Studies professor at Oxford University. According to Vermes, Yeshua (Jesus) was crucified because he "clashed with Jewish and Roman leaders" and was regarded as a "potential threat to law and order and consequently to the welll being of the Jewish people".

They thus decided he "had to be eliminated for the common good."

Vermes goes on to note the 'spark' that ignited the hostility was probably Yeshua doing the "wrong thing" by tossing out the money changers, "in the wrong place" (the Temple). At the "wrong time" (Passover).

Vermes' (like Crossan and other researchers) thus rejects implicitly the facile explanation that the dispute involved the claim of being a unique Son of God who "exercised divine powers".
Vermes doubts seriously (as scholar Elaine Pagels of Harvard notes vis-a-vis the Gnostics) that those 'Savior' beliefs and words were part of the original message.

They were added later on, most of the additions from bastardizations of the Latin Vulgate in its transciption to the King James Bible - which is probably the worst version of the bible available- though it reads the best! 

Neither Crossan's or Vermes' work is unique either,  as the weight of modern textual analysis comes down  firmly on their side. We have numerous earlier sources for the historical Jesus: a few comments in Paul (including several quotations from Jesus’s teachings), Mark, Q, M, and L, not to mention the finished Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In none of them do we find exalted claims of this sort. If Jesus went around Galilee proclaiming himself to be a divine being sent from God—one who existed before the creation of the world, who was in fact equal with God—could anything else that he might say be so breathtaking and thunderously important? And yet none of these earlier sources says any such thing about him.

The central problem for the conventional Christian believer inevitably arises: how to reconcile his/her faith in a literal 'God-Man/Savior' Jesus, with the actual historical person. Who was more a radical, "liberal" freedom-fighter against the Roman state. (Again, imagine a well spoken 60s radical, like Yippie Jerry Rubin, alive and well in the Middle East and dissing all the antiquated Jewish and Roman customs like he dissed the "establishment" in the 60s)


Crossan offers a hint ('Epilogue', p. 423):

"Is an understanding of the historical Jesus of any permanent relevance to Christianity itself? I propose that at the heart of any Christianity there is always, covertly or overtly, a dialectic between a historically read Jesus and a theologically read Christ. Christianity is always, in other words, a Jesus/Christ/ianity."


and finally (ibid.)

"This book challenges the reader on the level of formal method, material investment, and historical interpretation. It presumes there will always be divergent historical Jesuses, that there will always be divergent Christs built upon them, but above all, it argues that the structure of a Christianity will always be: this is how we see Jesus as Christ now."

For anyone with patience and a truly open mind, Crossan's research (embodied in his book) is a worthwhile excursion into the intricacies of textual analysis, and diligent comparison of ancient scrolls, sources. Its intellectual journey is breathtaking, and its conclusions even more so.

All things to bear in mind today, Good Friday!

A REAL Piss-Off Issue: Hell Mongers Who Threaten Siblings That Have Months to Live

My wife and I were watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night, wifey with her laptop open – when a ‘ping’ for email arrived. It was from our long time (20 years) friend Nancy, who lives in Aurora. Nancy has been stoically trying to make the best of life after learning her dear older brother, David, had recently been diagnosed with massive, metastasizing adenocarcinoma that has spread to liver, abdomen, spleen, and lymph glands. After a meeting with his oncologist he was given about 6-7 months to live.

Nancy had emailed that she and siblings got together over the Thanksgiving holiday: Dave, wife Mary, Nancy and another hyper Christian sister named “Leah”. (Note that two years ago, Nancy, Dave and Mary accompanied my wife and me to Barbados). Things went okay until Leah buttonholed Dave for an hour, hocking her own brand of hell-mongering baloney and bullshit, and warning him that unless he got “saved before he died he would end up burning in Hell forever”.

To rub it in deeper, this clown zealot then asked him: "You DO want to see Mom and Dad, don't you? Well, you won't if you're burning in Hell!"  Dave already dealing with the stress from the worst prognosis one could conceive took it stoically. I admire the guy, because had I been there in his place, I’d have told the harpy to fuck herself. No apologies, no goofy euphemisms....no ‘telling it through the flowers’.

Dave, to be sure, is a gentleman - and I mean that literally. He is of benign temperament and takes most things in stride, unlike me. (Perhaps why I am dogged with high blood pressure, but maybe because I’m outraged most of the time, especially by obdurate Repukes who play political games with our nation's future and hell-mongering fundie whackos who prey on the weak.) Dave is also one of the few people who was able to read my entire book, ‘The Atheist’s Handbook to Modern Materialism’ and even asked intelligent questions about various chapters. He noted that it provided him with a solid perspective on many things, including that there was no afterlife: when we’re gone we’re gone, as with anesthesia. (I did make allowances for a nonlocal afterlife but this is nothing to do with anything supernatural, i.e. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/07/has-stuart-hameroff-explicated-way-out.html


My beef with Leah presuming to “save” her brother is the same I have with other Fundie idiots who have nothing better to do with their time than trespass on time and eternity with their boring, ignorant misinterpretations of two thousand year old bollocks written by sheep herders. It would not be so bad if they all remained in their own enclaves (looney bins) but no – they are allowed to go out into the world and render damage to stressed or weakened psyches. People who have been through one wringer or other and don’t deserve mental stress on top of physical deterioration. Moreover, they do it relentlessly to the most unassuming people, or those with a very short timeline like Dave. People who, unlike me – would never take these creeps by the scruff of the neck and bodily hurl them out the door and into the street.

Why are these psychos - like Leah and a certain pretend FLA pastor- running around loose? Why not confined to an institution someplace and on meds, or with ECT prescribed? Who knows? I guaran-damn-tee you, however, if anyone aggressively pushed aliens and ETs like these nutcases, they wouldn't be tolerated. But because the blather carries the specious cachet of "religious speech" they are allowed to get away with it. Meanwhile, Stalin would have long since had them locked up in Gulags and receiving home -made anti- psychotics.  (I generally don't applaud the likes of Stalin, or Mao Tse Tung, but in regards to controlling uppity, in -your face, hell-mongering Christians, they did have the right idea! In that respect, our country allows these nuts way too much leeway.)

First, let's understand the whole basis for their suppositions on the afterlife is totally askew.

A condescending aspect of current evangelical Christianity is its prescription for personal salvation: that one must be “born again in the Lord Jesus Christ” and “accept Him as persona Savior”. Of course, in spouting this codswallop, Christians thoughtlessly consign billions to the Christians’ eternal microwave: Hindus, Jains, Muslims, Buddhists and others – whose only “crime” is they either refused to follow, or weren’t privy to, the magic salvation formula. 

In fact, the evidence shows that the Christian myth of the unique God-Man / Savior is not original, but probably plagiarized from earlier pagan sources – such as the Book of Mithras - nee 'Mithra' (Actually, the Zendavesta). This was the main source for the ancient religion of Mithraism, which predated Christianity by hundreds of years.

Exactly like Jesus, Mithras (Mithra) was “born of a virgin” (Anahita), in humble surroundings, and later worked miracles including walking on water, and raising the dead. He was also crucified, died and was buried, to ascend three days later. Coincidence? Hardly! It is more likely the basis of a common myth (also present with the God-Man Horus, and Orpheus) present throughout antiquity. Thus, it would have made eminent sense for the early New Testament authors to copy these stories where they could. Why reinvent the proverbial Savior “wheel”?  Indeed, why re-invent a punitive afterlife, when the Mithraists had already conceived a "Hell" that was essentially wholesale copied by Christians?

In his excellent expose article “How Jesus Got A Life” (The American Atheist, June, 1992, p. 46) author Frank Zindler notes even more comparisons, such as the fact that Mithras was born of Anahita on Dec. 25th (the Winter Solstice, according to then crude computations), he was also worshipped on SUN-days (being also a solar deity), and the leader was called “papa” (pope) and ruled from the “mithraeum” on the Vatican Hill in Rome.

Mithraic priests also wore “miters” (from which current Catholic Bishops’ head gear is derived), and they consumed a sacred meal “Myazda” – which “was completely analogous to the Catholic Eucharist service”. (Ibid.)  Why the need to copy wholesale earlier God-man stories? The Catholic historian, the Rev. Thomas Bokenkotter is clear on this:

“The Gospels were not meant to be a historical or biographical account of Jesus. They were written to convert unbelievers to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, or God.”

In other words, the earlier pagan tracts and myths were copied to try to fulfill a Church agenda, not to disclose any historical or biographical truth.  Later Protestant sects, formed after the Reformation, would simply alter the theme to making “salvation” contingent not only on the belief in the overall God-Man mythology – but BELIEF in the MYTHICAL MAN as GOD and SAVIOR. In other words, what evangelicals are effectively doing, is threatening unbelievers with eternal perdition unless they embrace a God-Man account likely plagiarized by their Catholic forbears from ancient pagan works.

  Ah, but to confer credibility, or what we in the secular world call 'rabid cherry picking' - the numskulls had to dredge up what they took to be biblical or scriptural quotations to "ice" their convictions in stone, and thence, grant them perverse power to try to "save" or "convert" others. (No surprise many of these louts were burned or shot, especially when they tried it in Hindu India.) And so they isolated quotes like John 3:16, which we sports fans often see morons holding up at stadiums. They are trying to remind all who might glance their way of the need to get "saved" by a mythical, plagiarized "savior". (The Xtians didn't even have the brains to think up their own original version!)

The whole thing would actually be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic, and one can imagine the ancient founders of Mithraism laughing hilariously from their graves at the gullibility and profound ignorance of modern day Christians that buy this hogswill, that they really are putting their trust in a unique “Savior” and ‘god”.


Did a real historical Jesus exist? According to Oxford scholar Geza Vermes in The Authentic Gospel of Jesus:

“Jesus was an ordinary man, crucified because he clashed with Jewish and Roman leaders and was regarded as a potential threat to law and order “

In other words, one could almost think of him like an ancient JFK, given all the interests he pissed off, although unlike JFK he held no office.  But invoking him to be "saved" would make about as much sense as invoking JFK for the same. Nevertheless, you can be sure the religio-tards will never ever accept this, and they will remain convinced they have the one and only salvation "formula" and woe betide anyone who doesn't accept it - they will pick up a ticket to "Hell". (As Dave's crazed sister warned him).

French philosopher and teacher, Andre Comte-Sponville has a solid take on these Xtian knotheads and pests. I quote his words as follows:

"They mistake their faith for knowledge and are prepared to kill or die in its name. They have no doubts or hesitations. They know everything there is to know about Truth and Goodness....and Salvation. So of what use is Science to them? None. Of what use is democracy?

Everything worth knowing is in "the Book". One need only believe and obey. From Genesis to Revelation they have taken sides once and for all. They are on God's side, so how can they be wrong? Why should they believe in or obey anything else? Fundamentalists, obscurantists and terrorists...but they see themselves as angels, though they behave as beasts and tyrants.

They take themselves for the Knight of the Apocalypse. They are the janissaries of the absolute, which they reduce to the narrow dimensions of their own conscience and perceive as their private property.

They are the prisoners of their faith, slaves of God or of what (with absolutely no proof) they claim to be His Word or Law. Spinoza summed their type up admirably when he said:  "They fight for their servitude as if it were their salvation"


I couldn't have said it better. But one thing we atheists, secularists, skeptics and rationalists will not do is place ourselves in mental or cooperative servitude to those who are already in thrall to their self-created mental chains of  "salvation" delusion and supernatural bunkum!