Way of the Mind

If you’re a Christian, you almost certainly believe that Jesus existed as a human, was the son of God, performed miracles, died, resurrected, and ascended to heaven.

Even among atheists and agnostics, however, it’s common to believe that Jesus did exist, though he was one hundred percent human and mortal; that he was a religious leader at the time, who inspired a new faith, an offshoot from Judaism.

But did he really exist? If so, what was he like?

Of course, we can’t know with absolute certainty without a time machine. But we can, I believe, look at several theories and interpretations, and figure out which one is the most likely, according to whatever facts we have.

I’ll start by refusing the “he really was the son of God” one. There’s absolutely no proof of that, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan said. I won’t repeat all my reasons here; readers of WotM should know them by now.

Until recently, however, I believed that Jesus did exist; a fictional being wouldn’t be such a big influence in the world for thousands of years, would he? (ahem…) But how was he like? A meek, religious figure like the Gospels suggest?

Two books, Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Messianic Legacy, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (and before you say “they’re crackpots”, yes, their Merovingians / Templars / Saunière / Priory of Sion theory was completely wrong, but their research on Jesus through the Gospels does make a lot of sense - and, after all, the Gospels are available to anyone; it’s not as if they’re claiming to have some secret source of information) suggest something different: that Jesus - the “Christ”, or “Messiah”, or “Anointed One” - was more of a political leader, the rightful king of the Jews (in a temporal sense), and was crucified by the Romans, not the Jews, as a real threat to their authority. According to this theory, the Gospels, having been written decades after Jesus’ death, were written for a Roman audience, and therefore turned Jesus into a meek, “turn the other cheek”, “render unto Ceasar” religious figure, removing any political / revolucionary content from his story.

Also according to them, Jesus was always a devout Jew and never intended to create a new religion; it was Paul who did so, always stressing Jesus’ divinity without ever mentioning Jesus’ actions or teachings. Reading Paul’s letters, this is obvious - Paul writes about Jesus as God, not as someone who really lived on Earth, taught men, and died years ago. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln’s conclusion, then, is that Paul “stole” Christianity, using Jesus’ name to create his (Paul’s) own religion.

Which certainly makes a lot of sense.

However, more recently I read about a different theory, in Ebon Musings: that Jesus never existed as a man… and that the early Christians actually believed that.

According to Ebon, to early Christians Jesus died and resurrected in heaven, not on Earth. Some of them even said as much, in writing. Besides, there are no historical mentions of Jesus at the time, or even a hundred years later - and there would have been, if he really had hundreds or thousands of followers, as the Gospels say. This also explains why Paul never wrote about anything Jesus said or did: Paul’s letters were all written before the Gospels, and he wasn’t writing about a man who lived and died on Earth, but who supposedly did so in a spiritual realm.

But what about the Gospels themselves? Well, not only were they written many decades after Jesus was supposed to have lived, but they were written as a story - there are many parts where some events are described even though no disciple of Jesus could have been there, such as:

[...] in Matthew 28:11-15, we see a gospel recording, with no difficulty, things that none of Jesus’ followers should have been there to witness. In this case it is a conspiracy between the temple priests and the guards set at Jesus’ tomb, after the resurrection, when the priests bribed the guards to say the disciples had stolen his body. Was Matthew present to hear this? Again, how is it possible that any gospel records things that none of the gospel writers could have seen?

The list goes on and on. Matthew 27:19 writes about a private message Pilate’s wife sent to him. Matthew 27:3-8 describes how Judas returned his blood money to the priests and then hanged himself out of guilt. (Did he make a quick detour in between to confess to the other disciples?) Luke 7:39 tells us what a Pharisee was thinking.

Besides, it’s accepted that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, and the others used it as a source, adding to it, or reinterpreting some parts. The idea here, then, is that Mark was written as a fictional story, and the others were revisions of it. Certainly, none of the authors was present there at the time.

This view is also corroborated by the documentary The God Who Wasn’t There. You can see a part of it here, and I highly recommend it. Among other things, that film shows how every single part of the Jesus story (virgin birth, healing the sick, raising the dead, sacrifice for our sins, resurrecting after 3 days, and many more) existed before, in pagan myths - sometimes, centuries earlier.