Thor or Zeus?

Smiler,
The godless one
a.a.# 2279

On Feb 22, 11:33 pm, "Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD"
<heartdo...@emorycardiology.com> wrote:

LQQK Andy....

THE "HISTORICAL" JESUS: A CREATION OF LATE-COMING CHRISTIAN WRITERS

Former evangelical minister Dan Barker points out in his book, Losing
Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist, "[T]here is not a single
contemporary historical mention of Jesus, not by Romans or by Jews,
not by believers or by unbelievers, not during his entire lifetime.
This does not disprove his existence, but it certainly casts great
doubt on the historicity of a man who was supposedly widely known to
have made a great impact on the world. Someone should have
noticed." (Barker, p. 360)

Noted religious historian and professor of German at Birkbeck College
in London, G. A. Wells, observes in his book, The Historical Evidence
of Jesus, that if one places early Christian documents in
chronological order, it becomes evident that "only from approximately
90 did Christians regard Jesus as a teacher, miracle-worker and a near
contemporary, crucified under Pilate."

These documents, Wells declares, are striking in their lack of detail,
indicating that the claims of their authors were most likely
influenced "by the Jewish wisdom literature they knew well and by
traditions they must have known concerning actual crucifixions of
living men in Palestine one and two centuries before their
time." (Wells, pp. 216-217)

Wells concludes that "the Jesus of the earliest documents . . . [was]
someone about whose life nothing was known, who had certainly not been
a contemporary or near-contemporary of Paul, but who was later
regarded as having lived about A.D. 30 and has having preached in
Galilee before his death in Jerusalem, perhaps because he was
identified with an obscure Galilean preacher of the same name (which
after all was a common one)." (Wells, p. 216)

A blow-by-blow summary of the evidence against historicity claims for
Jesus is offered by Canadian historian and classical scholar Earl
Doherty in his work, Why I Am Not A Christian:

"1. Jesus of Nazareth and the Gospel story cannot be found in
Christian writings earlier than the Gospels, the first of which (Mark)
was composed only in the late first century.

2. There is no non-Christian record of Jesus before the second
century. References in Flavius Josephus (end of the first century) can
be dismissed as later Christian insertions.

3. The early apostles, such as Paul and Hebrews, speak of their Christ
Jesus as a spiritual, heavenly being revealed by God through
scripture, and do not equate him with a recent historical man. Paul is
part of a new 'salvation' movement acting on revelation from the
Spirit.

4. Paul and other early writers place the death and resurrection of
their Christ in the supernatural/mythical world, and derive their
information about these events, as well as other features of their
heavenly Christ, from scripture.

5. The ancients viewed the universe as multi-layered: matter below,
spirit above. The higher world was regarded as the superior, genuine
reality, containing spiritual processes and heavenly counterparts to
earthly things. Paul's Christ operates within this system.

6. The pagan 'mystery cults' of the period worshiped savior deities
who had performed salvific acts which took place in the supernatural/
mythical world, not
on earth or in history. Paul's Christ shares many features with these
deities.

7. The prominent philosophical-religious concept of the age was the
intermediary Son, a spiritual channel between the ultimate
transcendent God and humanity. Such intermediary concepts as the Greek
Logos and Jewish Wisdom were models for Paul's heavenly Christ.

8. All the Gospels derive their basic story of Jesus of Nazareth from
one source: whoever wrote the Gospel of Mark. The Acts of the
Apostles, as an account of the beginnings of the Christian apostolic
movement, is a second century piece of myth-making.

9. The Gospels are not historical events, but constructed through a
process of 'midrash,' a Jewish method of reworking old biblical
passages and tales to reflect new beliefs. The story of Jesus' trial
and crucifixion is a pastiche of verses from scripture.

10. 'Q,' a lost sayings collection extracted from Matthew and Luke,
made no reference to a death and resurrection and can be shown to have
had no Jesus at its roots: roots which were ultimately non-Jewish. The
Q community preached the kingdom of God, and its traditions were
eventually assigned to an invented founder who was linked to the
heavenly Jesus of Paul in the Gospel of Mark.

11. The initial variety of sects and beliefs about a spiritual Christ
shows that the movement began as a multiplicity of largely independent
and spontaneous
developments based on the religious trends and philosophy of the time,
not as a response to a single individual.

12. Well into the second century, many Christian documents lack or
reject the notion of a human man as an element of their faith. Only
gradually did the Jesus of Nazareth portrayed in the Gospels come to
be accepted as historical." (Doherty, pp. vii-viii)

LACK OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE ABOUT JESUS' LIFE IN EARLY CHRISTIAN
WRITINGS

Early Christian writings are noticeably vague about the details of
Jesus' life. Wells quotes Gager's observation: "We know virtually
nothing of [Jesus'] parents, siblings, early years (childhood,
adolescence, early adulthood), friends, education, religious training,
profession, or contacts with the broader Graeco-Roman world. We know
neither the date of his birth, not the lengthy of his public ministry
(the modern consensus of two or three years is an educated guess based
largely on the Gospel of John), nor his age at death (Luke 3:23 states
that he was 'about thirty when he began'). Thus even an optimistic
view of the quest (of the historical Jesus) can envisage no more than
a collection of 'authentic' sayings and motifs devoid of
context." (Wells, p. 217)

Similarly, former evangelical minister-turned-non-Christian Charles
Templeton points to the paucity of evidence concerning Jesus' life. In
his book, Farewell to God: My reasons for rejecting the Christian
faith, Templeton writes:

"It may come as something as a surprise to the reader to learn that we
know remarkably little about Jesus of Nazareth. . . .

We don't know the date of his birth--it was certainly not December 25
in the Year One. Nor do we know for certain where he was born,
although it was in all likelihood in the city of his childhood,
Nazareth--certainly not in a Bethlehem stable. Nor do we know the
exact date of his death, although it would seem to have been around
the year 30 A.D. The great secular historians of that time (Tacitus,
Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, and others) mention Jesus only
briefly, making passing reference to the fact that he preached in
occupied Palestine and was crucified by the Roman
government." (Templeton, p. 85)

THE HISTORICAL UNRELIABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN GOSPELS

As Wells notes, "The Gospels are widely agreed to have been written
between forty and eighty years after his [Jesus'] supposed lifetime by
unknown authors who were not personally acquainted with him. And their
miracle stories are nearly all couched in general terms, with no
indication of time or place or details concerning the person or
persons who benefited." (Wells, p. 206)

Raising further questions about their credibility, many of Paul's
letters are obvious "fusions" that were "not written as they now
stand." (Wells, pp. 8-9)

Not only are Paul's epistles composite stories, they are notoriously
non-factual. Historian Will Durant observes: "Paul created a theology
about the man Jesus, a man that he did not even know, 50 or more years
after the death of Jesus, with complete disregard and neglect for even
the sayings that are attributed to Jesus in the synoptic Gospels. The
simple teachings attributed to Jesus become lost in the metaphysical
fog of Paul's theology." (cited in Edelen, Toward the Mystery [Boise,
Idaho: Josylyn & Morris, Inc.], p. 76)

As to the origination period of the New Testament itself, its 27 books
have defied repeated attempts at reliable, universal dating. Those
portions which can be most firmly dated are, as has been noted, the
letters of Paul, which have been determined to have been penned by 60
A.D. (Wells, p. 10)

In addition, none of the four Gospels represent the "original" texts.
As Templeton writes, "The earliest Christian records extant are the
Pauline epistles, and they were written around 50 A.D. It was another
ten years or so before the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
were completed. But the names attached to the gospels are pseudonyms--
none of the authors were among Jesus' apostles and it is likely that
none of them so much as saw or heard him."

Moreover, Templeton notes that these accounts "are mutually
contradictory, lack authenticity, and are in large part of the nature
of legends. The stories of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, his cleansing
of the Temple, and his arrest, trial, and crucifixion have about them
an aura of reality but, beyond that, the various accounts differ so
radically and at so many points that, with all the good will in the
world, they cannot be reconciled." (Templeton, pp. 85-86)

In terms of which Gospel begat which Gospel, that of Mark appears to
have been the source for those of Matthew and Luke, based on the
virtual identicalness of many passages. Thus, the latter two gospels
"are not acceptable as independent testimony." The Gospel of John
gives indications of reliance on phraseology from the other three
Gospels. (Wells, p. 11)

Not only are the names attached to the synoptic Gospels pseudo in
nature, the authors of the four Gospels remain, as Wells notes,
virtually anonymous, with the books offering no proof within their
texts of who actually wrote them. Adding to the confusion, present
claims to their authorship were not part of the original documents.
(Wells, p. 11)

The legitimacy of statements in the Gospels attributed to Jesus are
also suspect. For example, teachings supposedly given by Jesus on the
subject of women of Palestine divorcing their husbands lack historical
veracity, since only men were allowed to divorce. (Wells, p. 13)

The Gospel accounts of Jesus' trial and crucifixion are also replete
with significant historical difficulties. Luke's account of the trial
is an obvious summary of Mark's. Mark's, in turn, is full of imaginary
dialogue and scenes concocted by Christian writers who, believing in
the Messianic mission of Jesus, invented trial scenes and dialogue in
which the Jews condemned Jesus for his status as the Christ. (Wells,
pp. 14-15).

Keith M. Parsons, in his Why I Am Not a Christian, summarizes the case
against the reliability of the canonical Gospels as follows:

1. The Gospels were written by unknown persons.

"Not only did Jesus himself write nothing, but the attribution of the
gospels to his disciples did not occur until the late first century at
the earliest. . . .

'Matthew: Written by an unknown Jewish Christian of the second
generation, probably a resident of Antioch in Syria.

'Mark: [There is] confusion in the traditional identification of the
author . . .

'Luke: Possibly written by a resident of Antioch and an occasional
companion of the apostle Paul.

'John: Composed and edited in stages by unknown followers of the
apostle John, probably residents of Ephesus.' "(cited by Kingsbury,
J.D., "Matthew, The Gospel According to," in Metzger and Coogan, eds.,
The Oxford Companion to the Bible [Oxford, England: Oxford University
Press, 1993], pp. 502-506

2. The dates of the Gospels preclude them having been written by
eyewitnesses.

". . . New Testament scholars agree fairly closely on a rather late
date for the writing of the gospels . . . Generations of New Testament
scholarship have produced a very broad consensus that the gospels from
around 70 to as late as the early second century."

3. The Gospels are rooted in unreliable oral traditions.

"Written records of Jesus's words or ministry were simply not needed
or wanted until the end of the apostolic age with the martyrdom of
Peter and Paul in 64. The writing of [the] Gospels was a task for
second-generation Christians. . . .

"[T]he word-for-word similarities of the synoptic Gospels are very
unlikely to be due to the verbatim recollection of the original
eyewitness. Oral traditions simply do not form that way. Rather, those
precise parallels are much more likely due to common use of written
sources. Hence, the synoptic Gospels are not independent eyewitness
accounts but textually interdependent syntheses of earlier oral
traditions."

4. The Gospels are theologically biased with an apologetic agenda.

"'[The Gospels] . . . can no longer be read as direct accounts of what
happened, but rather as vehicles for proclamation. Such was their
original intention.'" (cited in Reginald H. Fuller, The Formation of
the Resurrection Narratives [New York, New York: The Macmillan Company,
1971] p. 172)

5. The Gospels contain fictional forms.

"The gospels are clearly not biography in the modern sense . . .

'Christians have never been reluctant to write fiction about Jesus,
and we must remember that our four canonical Gospels are only the
cream of a larger and varied literature.'" (cited in Helms, R., Gospel
Fictions [Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1988], pp. 11-12)

6. The Gospels are inconsistent with each other.

"A careful study of the four Gospels in comparison with each other
will show that there is little agreement among the Gospel writers as
to the order in which Jesus said and did what is reported of
him. . . .

"A striking discrepancy concerns the accounts in the synoptics of
Jesus's resurrection appearances to his disciples. . . .

"[There is] inconsistency between Matthew's and Luke's genealogies [of
Jesus]."

7. The Gospels are inconsistent with known facts.

"Luke's nativity story [is] demonstrably false . . .

'. . . [T]he Roman census would not have affected Nazareth in any
case, as Galilee was not under Roman rule but had its own ruler, the
'tetrach' Herod Antipas, son of King Herod.'" (cited in Arnheim, M.,
Is Christianity True? [Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1984], pp.
10-11)

8. There is no independent support of Gospel claims.

' . . . [P]agan sources do not confirm the resurrection. . . . [T]here
is good reason to suppose that [a well-known passage from Tacitus] was
written nearly ninety years after the alleged death of Jesus and was
based not on historical research but on information provided by
Christians of the second century. . . .

'Other pagan writers such as Suetonius and Pliny the Younger provide
no support for the Resurrection of Jesus since they make no mention of
it. . . . Thallus, in a work now lost but referred to by Africanus in
the third century, is alleged to have said that Jesus' death was
accompanied by an earthquake and an unusual darkness that he, Thallus,
according to Africanus, wrongly attributed to an eclipse of the sun.
However . . . it is unclear when Thallus wrote his history or how
reliable Africanus's account of Thallus is. Some scholars believe that
Thallus wrote as late as the second century and consequently could
have obtained his ideas from Christian opinion of his time.'" (cited
in Martin, M., The Case Against Christianity [Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1991], p. 86)

"'Non-Christian evidence is too late to give any independent support
to the gospels. . . .

"'Rabbinic references to Jesus are entirely dependent on Christian
claims, as both Christian and Jewish scholars have conceded.'" (cited
in Wells, G.A., Who Was Jesus? [La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1989],
pl. 20)

9. The Gospels testify to matters beyond belief.

"The Gospels are full of miraculous tales that, in any other context,
would be taken to completely destroy the author's credibility. What
would we think of an alleged witness who swears that he saw Ms. Smith
commit the murder and then abscond quickly on her broomstick? Why not
regard reports of walking on water or raising the dead in the same
light? Religious people often employ a curious doublethink here that
permits them to treat reverently stories that, encountered anywhere
else, would get very short shrift." (Parsons, pp. 43-70)

FURTHER LACK OF PAGAN EVIDENCES FOR THE HISTORICITY OF JESUS

A favorite pagan source cited by Christian believers verifying the
life of a "real" Jesus is that of the Roman historian Tacitus, who
wrote that "Christians derive their name and origin from Christ, who
was executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign
of Tiberius."

Ample evidence exists, however, to show that Tacitus was simply
repeating what he had been told by Christian informants.

First, as Wells demonstrates, Tacitus identified Pilate by the rank of
procurator, which title was a Roman administrative office from the
second half of the first century.

Next, Tacitus failed to identify Jesus by name, but merely referred to
a person put to death who went by the title of Christ.

Finally, Tacitus was an opponent of Christianity and therefore would
have been inclined to repeat the Christian view of the day that
Christianity was of recent vintage, given that the Roman government
countenanced only ancient cults. (Wells, pp. 16-17)

Barker observes that even if other pagan writers had made reliable
reference to Christianity, they did so too late in the game to be
considered first-century witnesses. These include the writings in of
Suetonius in his Twelve Caesars, as well as the record in 112 A.D. by
Pliny the Younger--both of which fail to mention Jesus by name.

Barker notes that also failing to specifically mention Jesus was a
second-century Roman satirist name Lucian who wrote of a "man
crucified in Palestine," whose death provided the foundation for the
Christian faith. However, Lucian was simply repeating the beliefs of
Christians and not presenting compelling historical evidence.

Barker further mentions the Christian believer's penchant for invoking
an undated fragment from a personal letter written by a Syrian named
Mara Serapion to his imprisoned son, in which the father mentions that
the Jews had killed their "wise king." This purported evidence,
nonetheless, contradicts the New Testament version of Jesus' death, in
which, of course, the Romans are blamed for his crucifixion. Even if
it is an authentic letter, Barker argues that it most likely refers to
someone else, since the Jews had, in fact, killed other religions
leaders, including the Essene Teacher of Righteousness. (Barker, pp.
364-366)

ALLEGED HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE MAN JESUS IN THE WRITINGS OF
JOSEPHUS

In his work (circa 90 A.D.), The Antiquities of the Jews, Flavious
Josephus, a messianic Jew and respected Roman historian, supposedly
wrote:

"Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to
call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works--a teacher of
such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both
many of the Hews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and
when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had
condemned him to the cross, those that love him at the first did not
forsake him, for he appeared to them alive against the third day, as
the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other
wonderful things concerning him, and the tribe of Christians, so named
from him are not extinct at this day."

Barker dispenses with the claim that this is the authentic Josephus
with the following observations:

1. This paragraph about Jesus did not appear until the advent of the
fourth century.

The disputed writing surfaced during the time that Bishop Eusebius, a
close ally of the Roman emperor Constantine, was helping to fashion
what would eventually become the orthodox version of Christianity.
Barker notes that it was Eusebius who had argued it was justifiable
for Christians to, in effect, "lie for the Lord" and that it was he
who was the first person known to have cited this alleged Josephus
account. As Barker notes, many Bible experts have concluded, in fact,
that Eusebius forged the paragraph in question and then attributed it
to Josephus.

2. The paragraph in doubt appears completely out of context.

It is dropped into Josephus' writings after the historian gives an
account of Roman taxation, various Jewish religious sects, Herod's
municipal building projects, the comings and goings of priests and
procurators, the planning of seditious plots against Pilate, and
Pilate's construction of Jerusalem's water supply using religious
monies, which led to a Jewish protest, followed by Pilate's bloody
suppression of it. The questionable paragraph then follows, after
which Josephus goes on to speak of "another terrible misfortune [that]
confounded the Jews . . ." As Barker notes, only a Christian would
have regarded this as a misfortune for Jews. Josephus himself was an
orthodox Jew and would not have so described it.

3. Not being a believer in Christianity, Josephus would also not have
used the language of a Christian convert in referring to Jesus as "the
Christ."

4. Josephus would also not have used the term "tribe of Christians,"
since Christianity did not achieve organizational status until the
second century.

5. Josephus' alleged paragraph on Jesus portrays Josephus as having no
other familiarity with the alleged Christian Messiah.

Barker observes that the Roman historian thus simply repeats what
Christians would have already known, while adding virtually nothing to
the Gospel accounts. In fact, Josephus' supposed brief mention of
Jesus is the only reference in all of his expansive writings to
Christianity.

6. The paragraph does not reflect the careful wording of a responsible
historian.

Rather, says Barker, it is written in the fervent language of a
believing Christian and, further, is given with no citation of
predictions from Hebrew prophets who supposedly foretold Jesus'
advent. (Barker, pp. 362-363)

Other weaknesses in the Gospel tales which undermine claims to their
accounts of an historical Jesus include the following:

NO HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE VIRGIN BIRTH

Templeton points out that the accounts of Matthew and Luke differ on
fundamental points regarding the birth of Jesus. For example, at the
time Luke says Jesus was being circumcised and Mary was being purified
in Jerusalem, Matthew claims Joseph, Mary and Jesus were in hiding in
Egypt, waiting for Herod to die.

Additionally, there is nothing in the historical record that mentions
the supposed Herod-ordered slaughter of every male child in Bethlehem.
Concludes Templeton, "It seems likely that the birth in Bethlehem was
inserted into the story at a later date to validate the clams made by
Jesus' followers that, through Joseph, he stood in a direct line of
descent from King David, whose roots were in Bethlehem." (Templeton,
p. 91)

As to the Christian claim that Jesus was God, born of an unwed Jewish
virgin who conceived through the power of the Holy Ghost, Templeton
bluntly concludes, "If one approaches the New Testament account with
an open mind and unflinching realism, the evidence clearly indicates
that Jesus was an illegitimate child who, when he came to maturity,
resented it and was alienated from his parents and
siblings." (Templeton, p. 93)

NO HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR JESUS' RESURRECTION

Except for the claims made by anonymous Gospel writers, no evidence
exists that Jesus ever rose from the dead. In fact, Gospel accounts of
the alleged resurrection are, from a realistic point of view,
completely implausible.

If, as Templeton observes, Jesus' resurrection was accompanied by a
extraordinary earthquake, the wholesale rending of the Temple veil and
a large-group resurrection of the dead witnessed by many, why do these
phenomenal events merit but a single sentence in Matthew--and
virtually no mention in the other Gospels or in contemporary
historical accounts?

Writes an understandably skeptical Templeton: "Let the reader imagine
the scene: The astonished spectators, the gathering crowd, the family
members and friends, weeping and delirious with excitement. Surely
someone would have plied them with questions: 'What happened as you
died?' 'Did you see God?' 'What is Heaven like?' 'Were you reunited
with our parents and other members of your family?' Surely the answers
to these and other questions like them would have flashed across
Palestine within hours and been recorded somewhere. But there is not
one word of it in history. The entire resurrection story is not
credible."

Add to this the fact that the four Gospel accounts of the resurrection
not only differ from one another on many major points but are
irreconcilably at odds with Paul's account in I Corinthians on who
Jesus supposedly appeared to after rising from the dead. (Templeton,
pp. 120-122)

NO HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF JESUS PERFORMING MIRACLES

Templeton persuasively explains the afflictions suffered by those in
the Gospel accounts, which were supposedly healed by Jesus' miraculous
powers:

"Most of the illnesses that afflict humans were beyond the
comprehension of the men and women of that day and, of course, beyond
Jesus' comprehension, too. No one at that point in history had even a
rudimentary understanding of the causes of physiological or
psychological illnesses or of the various other afflictions to which
humankind is subject. Most thought of them as punishments from God or
the machinations of Satan or other evil spirits.

"When, for instance, epilepsy brought on a seizure that caused the
victim to collapse and writhe on the ground as though struggling with
an internal enemy, when food poisoning produced a paroxysm of
vomiting, when a raging fever led to intense shivering and delirium,
or when a migraine attack produced visual aberrations and excruciating
pain, it seemed reasonable in that pre-scientific time to interpret
such phenomena as the work of an evil spirit. And, when the affliction
passed, it was equally reasonable to interpret it as the triumph of a
benign spirit over a malign.

"Many illnesses, then as now, were psychosomatic and could be 'cured'
when the sufferer's perception changed. Just as today a placebo
prescribed by a physician in whom the patient has faith can effect an
apparent cure, so, in earlier time, faith in the healer could banish
adverse symptoms. With each success the healer's reputation would grow
and his powers would, as a consequence, become more efficacious.

"It would appear evident that this is what happened with Jesus . . .

"It is clear in the text that Jesus was seen by the general populace
as a wonder-worker. The stories of his exploits were before him--by
word of mouth, of course, and thus subject to embellishing--and when
he entered a town the state of heightened expectation would often be
close to mass hysteria. As a consequence, the apparently miraculous
would happen." (Templeton, pp. 111-112)

Finally, as Barker points outs, a miracle cannot be considered
historical if it is "defined as some kind of violation, suspension,
overriding, or punctuation of natural law. . . . In order for history
to have any strength at all, it must adhere to a very strict
assumption: that natural law is regular over time.

"Without the assumption of natural regularity, no history can be done.
There would be no criteria for discarding fantastic stories.
Everything that has ever been recorded would have to be taken as
literal truth.

"Therefore, if a miracle did happen, it would pull the rug out from
history. The very basis of the historical method would have to be
discarded. You can have miracles, or you can have history, but you
can't have both." (Barker, p. 377)

CONCLUSION: POSSIBLE ORIGINS OF THE JESUS MYTH

Various propositions have been advanced to account for the rise of the
Jesus myth. Barker lists the following as possibilities:

1. It was "patterned from a story in the Jewish Talmudic literature
about the illegitimate son of a woman named Miriam (Mary) and a Roman
soldier named Pandera, sometimes called Joseph Pandera."

2. It "grew out of a pre-Christian cult of Joshua," originating in
tensions between two different Joshua factions.

Interesting in this regard is the fact that "Jesus" is the Greek word
for "Joshua." As Barker notes, in Mark 9:38, "the disciples of Jesus
saw another man who was casting out devils in the name of Jesus
(Joshua)."

3. It was "simply a fanciful patchwork of pieces borrowed from other
religions."

Pagan myths are peppered with their own pre-Jesus accounts of Last
Suppers, passion play-outs, crucifixions of sun gods, virgin births
and latter-day climatic battles between the forces of good and evil.

4. It followed from "a pre-Christian Jesus cult of gnosticism," based
on since-discovered ancient writings which declare, "I adjure thee by
the God of the Hebrews, Jesus."

5. It could have arisen "as the personification of Old Testament
'wisdom,'" which did not rely on any historical basis for claims of a
pre-existent, literal redeemer.

6. It may have resulted from so-called "self-reflective fiction,"
wherein "literary parallels [are drawn] between Old and New Testament
stories" through the use of "skeletal templates into which the Jews
placed [them]."

In such cases, the tales are similar in not only content, but in
structure, as with stories from the Old and New Testaments involving
storms, the raising of widows' sons from the dead, and miraculous
episodes of so-called "food multiplication."

7. It could have found origin in an earlier account of the crucifixion
of a Messiah and Lawgiver figure known as the Essene Teacher of
Righteousness, who was put to death in 88 B.C.

8. It could have been based on a naturalistic explanation that the
resurrection story was essentially historically reliable, "but that
Jesus merely fainted, and was presumed to be dead, coming back to
consciousness later." (Barker, pp. 372-376)

_____

Bibliography

Barker, Dan, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist [Madison,
Wisconsin: Freedom from Religion Foundation, 1992)

Doherty, Earl, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a
Mythical Christ? (Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Humanist Publications,
1999)

Edelen, William, Toward the Mystery (Boise, Idaho: Joslyn & Morris,
Inc., no publication date)

Parsons, Keith M., Why I Am Not A Christian [Atlanta, Georgia:
Freethought Press, 2000]

Templeton, Charles, Farewell to God: My reasons for rejecting the
Christian faith [Toronto, Ontario, Canada: McClelland & Stewart, Inc.,
1996)

Wells, G.A., The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Buffalo, New York:
Prometheus Books, 1988)

Wilson, Ian, Jesus: The Evidence [San Francisco, California: Harper &
Row, Publishers, 1984)