The Myth of Christ, Why Jesus is NOT the Savior.

By Ralph Harris

Ralph Harris examines the Jewish Scripture’s predictions about the coming of the
Savior and compares them to the fulfillment of the prophecies set forth by the
authors of the New Testament. Harris’ research proves that the authors of the
Gospels merely took the prophecies of the ancient prophets and then developed a
scenario in which they could report that Jesus had fulfilled the prophecy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ralph Harris
• Release date: Feb 2, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452315300

Ralph Harris

Ralph Harris was formerly Director General at the Institute of Economic Affairs and was instrumental in providing the ideas and intellectual entrepreneurship that sparked the ‘Thatcher revolution’ of the 1980s.

Book preview

THE MYTH OF CHRIST

WHY JESUS IS NOT THE SAVIOR

Published by Ralph E. Harris at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Ralph E. Harris

THE MYTH OF CHRIST

Why Jesus is NOT the Savior

by

Ralph Harris

It has served us well, this myth of Christ.

Pope Leo X

ca. 1520

ALEXANDER SMYTH wrote in 1899:

...The New Testament, which is the text book of Christianity, when judged by the philosophy of the present day, is found to be a compilation of misstatements, misconceptions, perversions, and nearly everything else opposite to that which it professes to be. The very character of Jesus as therein represented is a myth, a being of fabulous and impossible existence, of whom it is impossible to conceive in any natural and consistent light. . . . (The True Life of Jesus of Nazareth, cover).

Another great philosopher wrote:

1. A Christian is one that believes things his reason cannot comprehend; 2. He believes three to be one, and one to be three; a Father not to be elder than his Son, a Son to be equal with his Father; and one preceding from both to be equal with both; he believing three persons in one nature, and two natures in one person. 3. He believes a virgin to be a mother of a son, and that very son of hers to be her Maker. He believes Him to have been shut up in a narrow room whom heaven and earth could not contain. He believes Him to have been born in time who was and is from everlasting. He believes. Him to have been a weak child, carried in arms, who is the Almighty; and Him once to have died who only hath life and immortality in himself. Francis Bacon (WORKS, vol. vii, p.410)

THE BUDDHA:

Believe not because some old manuscripts are produced, believe not because it is your national belief, believe not because you have been made to believe from your childhood, but reason truth out, and after you have analyzed it, then if you find it will do good to one and all, believe it, live up to it and help others live up to it.

PREFACE

Jesus Loves Me - This I Know - For the Bible Tells Me So!

(A popular child’s ditty).

Most Christians were introduced to Christianity in their mother’s arms while their mother sang to them. When they started Sunday school, they moved onto other songs and stories then they were involved in Christmas and Easter pageants, Bible study groups, summer Bible camps, Christian youth groups and later, in college they join Students for Christ or some similar organization. Our culture thoroughly indoctrinates youths into Christianity. They learn at an early age that every word of the Bible is sacred. To them the Bible is the inerrant word of God. Their fundamentalist parents refuse to allow them to acknowledge even basic scientific facts which contradict the ancient writings, such as evolution. In these families young adults are denied basic reproduction information and/or any type of sex education.

These devoted, Born Again, Christians go through life confused and conflicted. If you challenge them with writings from the Jewish scriptures, you get the response, That is the old Law. Jesus fulfilled that Law and we don’t go by that Law anymore. Yet if you ask them if they believe that they should obey the Ten Commandments, they inevitably respond, Of course. They totally disregard the fact that the Ten Commandments are the mainstay of the Jewish Scriptures!

Most Christians do not think. They are told to just establish a personal relationship with Jesus and do the things their pastor (or priest) tells themCwhat Jesus would do. They even have bumper stickers with WWJD? (What Would Jesus Do?) to remind them to act as their pastor tells them Jesus would act. But who is the oracle, Jesus or the pastor reciting his interpretation of the inspired words of God? Jesus cannot talk to anyone to tell them how to act or what to say. The Biblical Jesus has been dead for nearly two thousand years leaving only have the written words of the scribes (with the later interpolations by the Christian community) to rely upon for the acts and words of the mystical man called Jesus. These written words have to be interpreted by clergy and every Sunday. You will hear pastors spouting their interpretations of the words of Jesus (either in their churches or on television or radio). Who knows if this pastor is right or if that pastor is right?

Very few Christians have read the books in the New Testament and most of the ones who tell you that they have read the New Testament do not comprehend the messages contained in the books. They pick up a Bible occasionally and open it without considering the background of the particular passage they are reading. The words are meaningless to them because they cannot put them in context. Granted, some Christians study the Bible and use Bible study aids, including commentaries on the various books to obtain background materiel. Yet they will never read a book critical of the Bible in order to obtain a different view of the reported events. So the net result is that most Christians have little understanding of the teachings of the Bible, just that communicated to them by their pastor, while a few are steeped in the Biblical lore and refuse to consider a contrary opinion.

Any person who seriously studies the New Testament must come away with a wonderment of the inconsistencies, mistakes, errors, misstatements, and fabrications contained within the stories presented by the Gospel writers. Those who are blind to these factors are placing too much faith in infallibility of the Bible. (Faith is defined as: unsupported by facts).

About 2,000 years ago there lived a remarkable man who, when you hear the events of his life, may sound familiar to you:

1. An angelic visitor told his mother that she would have a son who would not be normal, but in fact would be divine.

2 His birth was attended by many miraculous signs and wonders.

3. As a child he evidenced precocious knowledge of religion.

4. As an adult, he became an itinerant preacher, preaching that people should live for spiritual purposes, not material purposes.

5. His teachings angered many of the religious leaders of the country and they had him brought up on charges before the Roman authorities who condemned him and killed him.

6. After his death, many of his followers claimed to have seen him alive before he ascended into heaven.

7. His followers wrote books about his life and many of those books survive yet today.

8. His name was Apollonius of Tyana. He was a worshiper of pagan gods, and his life and teachings are recorded for us in a writing by Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana. (220 CE).

Jesus of Nazareth was not the only miracle working divine man of the first century AD. He is the only one most Christians know about but there were many others at that time. Today we label all of those men as fakirs and the stories of their lives are readily labeled as myths. Early Christians claimed that the ancient men, who were often named Jesus or Christ, were either previous imitations created by the devil or God’s rehearsals for His big role. The next task is to learn why Jesus of Nazareth is considered a messiah and not a myth.

The search for Christ, as The Messiah, separate from the historical Jesus, was an interesting journey along a road that was full of twists and turns with forks that tried to lead one astray. Brief trips along these side roads revealed incredible views of who thought what constituted Christ and what happened after the crucifixion. Two of the views had Jesus surviving the crucifixion and living ever-after with Mary and the children born to them. One placed their post crucifixion home in the south of France. The other puts it in India. However, determining whether or not Jesus survived the crucifixion was not the goal. The goal was to determine if Jesus was the mythical Christ or a messiah.

During the research of the myth of Christ, the method used by Christians to spread their belief to others was discovered: a method Christopher Dawkins labeled a meme (pronounced meem). The story of the meme was so interesting that it is included as an appendix of this book in order to fully describe the method and how Christianity uses this method to spread the Christianity virus.

Any research into the development of the Christ story will lead to the discovery of other myths which were used to construct the myth of Christ. Some of those ancient myths are described below if their story had an impact on the development of the Christ myth. In some cases the sources of the myths were traceable while others remain a mystery. Christianity developed many myths and altered the original gospels as a means of spreading the myth of Christ and indoctrinating the new converts into their new religion.

Any research into the Christ myth necessitates the use of the New Testament as the major resource. Is the New Testament a reliable resource for this task? Many Christians believe that the New Testament is the inerrant word of God and that they should take the Bible literally. However, most Bible critics agree that the Bible is not meant to be taken literally but to be read as an allegory. (One Christian friend said, Of course, it’s all true. You can go to Jerusalem and see for yourself that it’s true. He was referring to the shrines and holy places in that city and totally disregarding what money grubbers have done to pry dollars away from tourists in the Land of the Birth of their Savior).

There were many questions to be answered: When was Jesus born? Why were the New Testament books written? When were the books of the New Testament written? Who wrote the books included in the Biblical canon? Were there other early Christian documents which were not included in the canon? Some of the questions are easily answered while for some there is no satisfactory determination because the information simply is not available.

Apparently there is considerable disagreement among Biblical scholars as to the actual time of formulation of the books of the New Testament and the sequence of their formulation. The most recent statement setting the time and sequence of the New Testament books is contained in Jesus, One hundred Years Before Christ, by Alvar Ellegard. He agrees with the common establishment, which is that Paul’s books were the first of the New Testament books written, dated between 40 and 50 CE. Then he differs from other Biblical scholars by placing the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John in the second century rather than in the last half of the first century. What is most important, he inserts the six letters of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, in the time period between Paul’s letters and the first of the Gospels. These important letters are not included in the canonical New Testament but they laid the foundation for development of the Myth of Christ.

The second question was: Why were the Gospels written? Ellegard offers one reason: To develop an earthly Jesus to add to the spiritual Jesus contained in the letters of Paul and an earthly Jesus to assist Ignatius in countering the spread of Docetism (the evil gods versus the good gods) through the non canonical books of the Gnosticism.

We learned another reason for the books of Mark and Matthew - a very practical reason: These authors wanted to have a text to read to the men and women who came to the weekly meetings of the new Jewish sectCa reading which followed the risen Christ just as the Jewish readings followed Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews. In the Jewish services, the rabbis read from the Talmud each Sabbath to educate their Jewish members in the history and traditions of their religion. The Books of Mark and Matthew were written to give the teachers of new Christians lectionaries to be read during the weekly meetings of church members just as the Jewish lectionaries were read in the Jewish services each week. The leaders of the Jesus movement were astute enough to realize that the closer their rituals followed the rituals of the Jewish religion and/or paganism, the easier it would be to attract converts to the new religions from their old religions and the happier the new converts would be in Christianity. This held true whether the old religion was Judaism, Mithraism or one of the other Greco/Roman religions of the time, so the writers incorporated many of the rituals and holy days from the Jewish scriptures and from the pagan religions into the Gospels.

A necessary determination during the research was: Where were the books of the New Testament written? Many Biblical scholars had placed the development of the New Testament books in Jerusalem or at least in immediate area of the Temple of Judaism. Again Ellegard disagrees with those Biblical scholars by placing the development of the books, including the Letters of Paul, outside of Judea, in the Jewish Diaspora with their primary audience being the members of the Essene Church of God, who were both Jewish and Gentile. This may account for the authors’ lack of knowledge of the geography of Judea necessary for development of their stories within the books of the New Testament. Some of the geographical errors will be revealed later. These books are all written in Greek, not Aramaic or Hebrew.

The research needed to answer a crucial question, Is the Bible, specifically the New Testament, the inerrant word of God? The answer to this question is: The Gospels of New Testament are a fiction, totally constructed by unknown authors - not Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - to add flesh to the outline provided by the apostle Paul and Bishop Ignatius. The mistakes and additions contained in the New Testament merely help prove the fiction.

The following chapters explain how the research determined whether Jesus was really Christ and determined whether the New Testament merely projects a mythical Jesus rather than a physical/spiritual Jesus as the Christians claim or even a spiritual Jesus as the Gnostics claim. This mythical Jesus is definitely not the Christ.

CHAPTER ONE

The Myth of Christ

Joseph Campbell wrote: My favorite definition of religions is: a misinterpretation of mythology. And the misinterpretation consists precisely in attributing historical references to symbols which properly are spiritual in their reference. (An Open Life, 76) The mythological symbols misinterpreted by the followers of Jesus beginning with those set out by St. Paul in his letters to the various communities in Asia Minor include specifically the symbol of the Messiah. (Jesus never refers to himself as the messiah and when others do, he insists that they keep it secret).

Before the Babylonian Exile the term messiah (anointed one) had none of the supernatural connotations that later generations of Jews and Christians would give it. Originally the word designated any Davidic king before the exile. He was a political and military leader, a man who lived in the flesh and was as mortal as any other human being. (The First Coming, 44) When the king was anointed (becoming the messiah, he also became the Son of God. The gospel writers tried to make Jesus the messiah by tracing his linage back to David, by having him anointed with oil, calling him the Son of God and having God call him a begotten son. The messiah of the 1st century Judah was expanded to be not only a king but a world emperor and spiritual leader. However, the gospel writers could not make him a political or military leader as he was a convicted criminal who was executed for sedition.

We have to give Paul and the gospel writers credit for creativity in trying to make Jesus into the messiah. In the

first century CE the Jews were a conquered and defeated people who were looking for a redeemer (the Messiah) to come to free them from their oppressors and restore their nation to the greatness of King David’s time. To these Jews who were oppressed by the Roman Empire it seemed that only a supernatural redeemer could provide their salvation and the redeemer’s arrival would signify the coming end of time. The Jews looked upon the future Messiah as mythological being, a god or, in the alternative, a savior king. A few Jews then created such a supernatural being in the guise of a godman who was both God and man. This mythical being was declared to be born in Bethlehem from the line of David, reportedly taught in the temple, miraculously cured the sick and lame, fed thousands with a few loaves of bread and fish, calmed the sea and walked on water before being crucified to provide salvation for all who believed in him.

Paul carried this tale throughout Asia Minor and in the first and second centuries some Greek scribes created a biography for this godman incorporating the birth in the manager in Bethlehem from a mother who was a virgin and whose human father, Jacob, was of the linage of David. They even include genealogies (conflicting, but nevertheless, genealogies) tracing Jacob’s line back to David and back to the creation of the universe. Yet they declare that the child is the Son of God not the son of Jacob. (This conflict does not bother the authors of the biographies). They give the godman a name, Joshua, which is translated as Jesus in Greek and designates him as the Messiah.

In the New Testament, Jesus never claims to be either the Son of God or the Son of man, (He uses the third person when using either designation and he prohibited his disciples from telling others that he was either). Neither designation supports the messiahship of Christ. If Jesus is the Son of God and calls God Father, then he is the son of a myth! No one has seen God (John 1:18) and no one can prove the existence of God, yet people believe that he exists and believe all (or most) of the stories of God’s existence and his miracles along with his wrath and his condemnation of humanity. This meets the definition of a myth. (See Chapter Four for the explanation of What is a Myth). If, on the other hand he is the Son of man, then he is not a divine figure but merely human. Many secular individuals believe that Jesus was an intelligent, compassionate, gregarious person who preached goodness and good living but was not a god and not Messiah.

While the authors of the Gospels do not have Jesus claim to be the Son of God, they have Jesus use two symbols which reveal the coming kingdom of God: 1) The coming banquet when many would sit at the table with Abraham and 2) The twelve disciples representing the twelve tribes of Israel. The Jewish people still believed in the twelve tribes of Israel even though ten of the tribes had been dispersed by the Assyrians a thousand years priorCleaving only the two tribes of Judah remaining. Was Jesus going to raise the other ten tribes of Israel from the dead and reconstitute them in the Holy Land? This was one promise he did not make.

Many churches today have an icon of Jesus, or a figure of Jesus in stained glass on a ceiling or high window, or a nearly nude body of Jesus nailed to a cross behind the altar. Yet we have no knowledge of what Jesus looked like. Was he tall? Or short? Did he have a beard? Was his hair long? (Jews of that period did not respect long hair on a male). We learn that he was frequently without sandals as the Bible tells us of women washing his feet but we know nothing else. Whose imagination creates the paintings of Jesus? Is there any description of Jesus in the New Testament? In all of our reading, we have not found one and none of the authors of the many books we have read intimated that there is a passage in the Bible which describes Jesus physically. Of all of the books in the New Testament written by men who make claims about Jesus, none could possibly have met Jesus face-to-face. The person who wrote 1st and 2nd Peter is not the Peter who was one of the original disciples of Jesus. 1st and 2nd Peter were supposedly written by the apostle (follower) Peter, who apparently never met Jesus face-to-face and therefore does not, and cannot, provide the physical description of Jesus. Some researchers claim that the author of the Gospel of John was the disciple John and that he wrote the book shortly after the death of Jesus but it was not placed in circulation until fifty years later. Meantime, someone altered the book and the altered book was published. This may be true but there is no evidence of it and there is no physical description of Jesus. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that we have absolutely no knowledge of His appearance. There must be many imaginations working overtime to create the various pictures and icons of Jesus we see in many churches, on book covers, in movies, and other places.

So far as we know, there were no paintings of, or drawings, made of Jesus during his lifetime, yet we see paintings, statues, icons and other representations of the man we call Jesus. Humans make these images of Jesus by looking in the mirrorCthe Jesus we depict in our icons is us. White Anglo-Saxon people make icons which depict a white Jesus. Black people depict a black Jesus. (The Black Entertainment Television (BET) network broadcast a movie on June 29, 2008 entitled Color of the Cross in which the character of Jesus was portrayed by a black man). Was Jesus white or was he black? Or perhaps he was neither - just a Middle-Eastern Jewish man! Xenophanes, the Greek philosopher wrote, in about 25 BCE, that humans depict their gods by describing themselves. Some English theologians had suggested that the search for the historical Jesus was like looking down a well. Just when they thought they had discovered the historical Jesus, they discovered that they were looking at their own reflection staring back at them.

Perhaps the Jews were right in forbidding the making of any image of God (Exod. 20:4-6). (Most Christians think of Jesus as God or at least part of God). Perhaps the Jews knew that any image they made would reflect them and they are not God. Christians originally thought that Jesus was Son of God and they had Jesus say that humans were made in the image of God so it allows Christians to make images of Jesus which looks like them!

We cannot rely upon the New Testament for a description of Jesus or a description of his life or for a record of his sayings or any of the historical events which may have involved him. According to the Jesus Seminar, less than 20 percent of the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels were actually spoken by him and less than 20 percent of the acts attributed to him were performed by him. Without credibility in the New Testament, we cannot even develop a philosophical picture of Jesus. Did he come to promote peace? Or did he come with a sword? Was he the Son of God? Or the Son of Man? Was he physically on earth or did he only seem to be here? Are we saved by Faith? Or are deeds (works) required in addition to Faith? Was Jesus resurrected thus guaranteeing our salvation? Was his body raised? Or was only his soul raised? Was he truly a messiah come from God to save us sinners? These are questions which go to the core of Christianity and yet we cannot rely on the New Testament for answers because of the corruption of the Bible by past clergy and by the creativity of the original authors.

Marilyn Mellowes writes in Thomas Jefferson and His Bible:

Jefferson was convinced that the authentic words of Jesus written in the New Testament had been contaminated. Early Christians, overly eager to make their religion appealing to the pagans, had obscured the words of Jesus with the philosophy of the ancient Greeks and the teachings of Plato. These Platonists had thoroughly muddled Jesus' original message. Jefferson assured his friend and rival, John Adams, that the authentic words of Jesus were still there. The task, as he put it, was one of:

. . . Abstracting what is really His from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of His biographers, and as separate from that as the diamond from the dung hill’. . . .

Jefferson discovered a Jesus who was a great Teacher of Common Sense. His message was the morality of absolute love and service. Its authenticity was not dependent upon the dogma of the Trinity or even the claim that Jesus was uniquely inspired by God. Jefferson saw Jesus as a man, of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, and an enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions of divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition by being gibbeted according to the Roman law’. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline/shows/ religion/jesus/jefferspm.html)

So for our security, we rely on the myth of Christ. The basic facts of the myth, believed by all Christians, are that Jesus was born of Mary; he preached a message of salvation, was arrested and crucified for our sins, and then, after three days he was raised to heaven to sit beside God the Father. All of the terms of the myth are now, or have been at some time in the past, disputed and twisted, altered and changed to meet the needs of specific individuals who had desires for their special brand of Christianity.

One of the most difficult rituals for non-Christians to accept is the ritual of the Eucharist. (The word Eucharist does not appear in the KJV Bible. Communion appears as used by Paul in 1st and 2n Corinthians) to imagine a god who would ask a supplicant to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood is chilling to nonbelievers. Even the ancient pagan gods of the Greeks and Romans did not require such a primitive act. When we consider that