Deciphering the Gospels: Proves Jesus Never Existed

By R.G. Price

The idea that Jesus may never have actually existed has been around in modern scholarship for over a century, but it has never been sufficiently proven. Yet critical analysis shows that every account of the life of Jesus can be traced back to the writing now called the Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Mark was originally written as a fictional political allegory in reaction to the First Jewish–Roman War of 70 CE. In this book, author R. G. Price presents a unique analysis of the Gospels to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Jesus of the Gospels never existed. Looking especially at the Gospel of Mark, analysis shows that the writer of this gospel had read the letters of Paul and used Paul as the basis for his Jesus character—Jesus’s teachings are actually Paul’s teachings, not the other way around. The core of this case is proven largely through analysis of the biblical texts themselves, by demonstrating clear textual relationships that show us how the original story of Mark was written.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483487823

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PRICE

Copyright © 2018 R. G. Price.

Revised Edition

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ISBN: 978-1-4834-8783-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8784-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8782-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018907932

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Quotations marked NETS are taken from A New English Translation of the Septuagint, ©2007 by the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Inc. Used by permission of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Scriptures taken from Young’s Literal Translation of the Bible.

Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 10/26/2018

FOREWORD

T his fascinating book is, among other things, a welcome sign that Christ Mythicism has become a true subfield of New Testament scholarship, that is, no longer merely a conventicle of eccentrics despised and rejected of men, but a real school of thought in which Mythicists put forth and compare rival proposals, learning from one another. Mythicism becomes a positive field of studies, not merely an enterprise of anti-Christian polemic. New Mythicist books, while inevitably covering much familiar territory, contribute new variations on the theme, offering new arguments, new theories, new perspectives on issues that only Mythicism makes visible. That is certainly true of the present volume.

The basic contention of the book is that the Gospel of Mark appears to be the original account of Jesus upon which all others have been based. Bruno Bauer had shocked nineteenth-century contemporaries by suggesting that Mark (whoever he may have been) created the Jesus character out of whole cloth, following Seneca’s advice that one ought to create an imaginary friend whose disapproval one might seek to avoid by resisting temptations to evil. What would Jesus do? What may appear to be independent sources underlying subsequent gospels are better understood as fictive embellishments by the authors of those gospels. It all began with Mark, and that is suspicious: had there been a historical Jesus, would there not be, on the one hand, a variety of Christian accounts and, on the other, some neutral, mundane biographical material in Mark, as one finds in actual biographies, no matter how grand and heroic their subjects? But nada.

Price embraces the contention of Earl Doherty, myself, and others that, operating on the (dogmatic) assumption that there must have been a historical Jesus, early Christians tried to reconstruct (actually to construct, without the re) the life and deeds of that Jesus by interpreting biblical texts in an esoteric manner, rather like the Dead Sea Scrolls sect or the later Kabbalists. When they said Jesus had done this or that according to the scriptures, they meant not that these events, known from historical memory, had been promised and predicted in the Old Testament, but rather that Christians discovered that they had (supposedly) happened by reading the Old Testament writings, much as Christians today learn what Jesus (supposedly) did and said from reading the New Testament. This paradigm makes fine sense of the fact that, again and again, gospel stories bear an uncanny resemblance to Old Testament tales of Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, etc. David Friedrich Strauss argued long ago that early Christians naturally inferred that, since the promised Messiah must exceed the wonders and adventures of all previous biblical heroes, when he came (or if he had come), he must recapitulate their ancient exploits, only better. Hence the creation of the gospel episodes.

But Price offers new data to this effect. Price provides many examples of scenes having been derived from literary references, noting that many such examples refer to passages about God’s disapproval of his people. John Dominic Crossan argues in a similar vein in his brilliant book The Cross That Spoke, where he sets forth the case that all the canonical gospels are based on an original Cross Gospel, a collection of Old Testament passages which got historicized into gospel stories, but he fails to follow out the logic to its natural conclusion. Price, on the other hand, sees what two plus two amounts to.

The note of impending divine judgment on the Jewish people for rejecting Jesus, the point of so many of the literary references, is no side issue, according to Price. On reflection, mustn’t the prominence of the theme at least suggest that it is actually the main reason for the writing of Mark? The whole of the Deuteronomic theology of the Old Testament was designed to get God off the hook for the defeats and subjugations of Israel and Judah by heathen empires. Wasn’t Yahweh obliged to safeguard his people? Well, he conspicuously didn’t, so Jews were faced with two options: either the covenant with God was, in the words of Woody Allen, just so much chin music, or God threw his covenant people to the wolves because they reneged on the covenant, not him. Jewish thinkers chose the second option. It would have been even worse to say, Okay, we were barking up the wrong terebinth, I guess. We’re on our own. (Richard L. Rubenstein had the courage to draw just that conclusion in his book After Auschwitz.) In this respect, Price’s theory recalls that of William Benjamin Smith, who understood the Jesus story as an allegory for the fate of Judea at the hands of the Romans.

Let’s return to Price’s claim that all gospel versions ultimately stem from Mark, something that would seem very unlikely if Jesus had been a real historical individual who would have left several footprints, not just one. What about the Q source? Wouldn’t this count, as many think, as a second, independent source for a historical Jesus? But Q is just a supposition. Several scholars, including Michael Goulder and myself, have made the case that the author of Luke made use of Matthew, removing Q from the equation. Price offers other alternatives as well and shows the implausibility of both Matthew and Luke having integrated material from a second independent source.

Price’s section on Paul’s conception of Christ as a celestial being who never incarnated on earth as a historical Jesus is quite effective. He is not content merely to cite Colossians 2:15 and 1 Corinthians 2:6-8 as attesting an unseen crucifixion by archons in heaven. He does a good job invoking the odd facts that Paul never speaks of a return or a second coming of Christ but only of a coming, as if Christ had not yet touched down among men, and that he says the gospel was revealed to him directly (and/or revealed by charismatic exegesis of the scriptures as in Romans 16:25-26), not by a recital of oral traditions of the supposed words and deeds of a recent historical Jesus. And far from Paul quoting teachings of a historical Jesus, Price sees the transmission going in the opposite direction, much as David Oliver Smith (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul) does: Mark lifted Pauline texts from the epistles and credited them to Jesus, again, just as some redactor cut up a copy of Eugnostos the Blessed and made the statements into replies by Jesus to set-up questions of the disciples.

Finally, does the book justify its subtitle? Does it actually prove Jesus never existed? I don’t think you can prove either that a historical Jesus existed or that he didn’t. What you can do, and what Price does, is to construe the same old evidence in a new way that makes more natural, less contrived, sense. That, he has done and done powerfully. I found his argument striking even though I am pretty familiar with Christ Mythicism already. But I want to stress a crucial point: just because the question cannot be definitively settled with mathematical certainty does not give a fair-minded person the right to say, Case not proven? Then I can just go back to assuming the traditional view is correct. Historical judgment doesn’t work that way. You have to go with the strongest argument, and even then you mustn’t pretend you’ve settled the question. And, for what it’s worth, I think Price has set forth the strongest argument.

Robert M. Price

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T his book is the culmination of many years of intermittent writing and research about Jesus’s existence. While this book is the presentation of my own research and analysis, it is surely indebted to the foundation laid by prior writers and researchers on this subject, as well as supporters who have contacted me and made contributions through my website.

Of particular influence on my understanding of this subject have been the late Arthur Drews (author of The Christ Myth), Robert M. Price (no relation; author of The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man and many other works), Earl Doherty (author of The Jesus Puzzle), and Richard Carrier (author and researcher on Christianity and Jesus historicity). I have studied the works of each of these individuals and gained valuable insights from all of them. This book builds on their work and hopefully makes valuable new contributions as well.

In addition to the work of these individuals, access to source materials has been of critical importance to my research. The type of research required to produce this book really wouldn’t have been possible prior to the internet and the ability to easily search across the works of many ancient writers. I am indebted to all those who have made these works available online, in particular, Peter Kirby (curator of the websites Early Christian Writings and Early Jewish Writings) and Kevin Knight (curator of the website New Advent).

Obviously, this book relies heavily on material from Christian sources. While the conclusions of this book present serious challenges to the Christian faith, I am grateful to all those, Christian and non-Christian, who have provided translations, analyses, and access to the works of the Bible and early Christianity. Hopefully this book will be seen by Christians and non-Christians alike as an earnest effort to more fully understand Jesus and the origins of Christianity, and as such to honor all those whose work, intentionally or unintentionally, contributed to the findings presented herein.

SOURCES

T hroughout this book, there are many lengthy quotations from the Bible and other ancient sources. I have chosen to include large quotations from these sources so that readers can assess them for themselves. Much of the case presented in this book relies on directly comparing and understanding ancient texts, and I want readers to be able to see the evidence for themselves.

All Bible quotations presented in this book are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) unless otherwise noted. I chose to use the translation provided by the NRSV because I believe that this is one of the most accurate and scholarly popular translations. The NRSV translation is not completely perfect, as no translation is, and the NRSV does in some cases use words or phrases that fall in line with tradition or that intentionally modernize the language, as opposed to what extant original sources indicate. In such cases, I do make note of those differences where relevant. All emphasis within quotations is mine, used to either identify relationships between texts or draw attention to key phrases.

I also frequently refer to the Harper Collins Study Bible, New Revised Standard Version. I use this Bible as a reference because it is a highly regarded work that is representative of the current consensus of modern biblical scholarship.

Many of the other ancient texts that are used in this book have been cited from online sources using public domain translations. As most of the quotations in this book are from ancient manuscripts, and most of these translations have not changed much over the years, the majority of translations used for nonbiblical sources are from prior to 1923 for copyright purposes.

PREFACE

B y conventional standards, I am not qualified to write this book. I have no formal training in ancient history, biblical studies, textual criticism, or even a background in literature. I am a software engineer and data analyst by profession, with a Bachelor of Science in biology. Thus, my background is in the application of logic, the scientific process, and systematic data analysis, which are the tools I have used to investigate the subject of Jesus’s existence. I have written this book because I believe the case I am presenting stands on its own merit and is easily demonstrated by clear facts.

Like many Americans, I grew up in a nominally Christian household and went to church on Sundays throughout my childhood. Though I was skeptical of the Christian story from an early age, I was always fascinated by religion in general. I read the Bible from time to time throughout my youth, both Old and New Testaments. Like many skeptics of the Christian story, my immediate response to supernatural claims made in the Bible was to try and to rationalize how those things could have happened in a non-supernatural way.

For example, perhaps Moses didn’t really part the Red Sea, but the fleeing Jews just happened to have gotten lucky and there was some low-water phenomenon that resulted in a portion of the Red Sea being passable by foot. Likewise, perhaps Mary cheated on Joseph and just claimed that she was a virgin when she really wasn’t. Perhaps Jesus didn’t completely die on the cross but instead recovered in his tomb and escaped during the night, leaving his tomb empty.

These are the types of ideas that many skeptics of Christianity have, and perhaps even many faithful Christians. These types of ideas contain within them an implicit assumption that the stories told in the Bible are basically true. There is an implicit assumption that the phenomena described in the Bible were actually observed and thus require some explanation. But what if these things don’t require such explanations because they are just fictional stories?

With the rise of the internet, I was introduced to the idea in the late 1990s that perhaps Jesus was a myth and never existed at all. Despite not being a Christian, I was very skeptical of this claim. My skepticism was heightened all the more because many of the claims made by those advocating the idea that Jesus never existed were clearly and demonstrably not true. The pervasive theme in most such claims was that the story of Jesus had evolved out of pagan mythology or that the story of Jesus was some kind of concocted Roman conspiracy. I found these claims to be wildly unbelievable and set about debunking many of them on various chat forums and message boards during the early 2000s.

Based on my knowledge of both the Bible and Greek and Roman mythology, I knew that the Jesus story was heavily rooted in Judaism. I went to great lengths to demonstrate the clearly Jewish underpinnings of the Jesus story. During the process of researching and debunking many of the claims made by various mythicists, however, I began to doubt whether Jesus had actually existed myself. These doubts were raised not so much due to the claims made by mythicists but by the research I conducted in refuting those claims.

One of the main lines of evidence I used to refute the idea that Jesus originated as a pagan myth was the relationship between the Gospel texts and the Hebrew scriptures, aka the Old Testament. For example, one common claim I saw being made by mythicists was that the twelve disciples represented the twelve signs of the zodiac. I countered this claim by showing that a far more plausible explanation was that the twelve disciples were patterned on the Jewish tradition of heroes and prophets appointing twelve helpers from among the twelve tribes of Israel. Now it may be that the idea of twelve tribes of Israel evolved from the twelve signs of the zodiac, but that is a different matter altogether. Clearly, there was a well-established Jewish tradition of heroes having twelve followers or assistants.

Nevertheless, regardless of whether the twelve disciples were patterned on the pagan zodiac or on Jewish tradition, the same point is ultimately made, which is that the twelve disciples were likely a symbolic invention, which was itself a revelation to me. My view had become simply that they were a symbolic literary invention based on Jewish symbolism as opposed to pagan symbolism.

It was at this point, in the mid-2000s, that I formulated an explicit hypothesis about how the Gospel stories were written. After having researched several parallels between the Gospel stories and the Hebrew scriptures, such as the well-known relationship between the Crucifixion scene and Psalm 22, I hypothesized that virtually every scene in the Gospels was actually a literary allusion to the Hebrew scriptures. At first, my hypothesis was directed at the Gospels in general, but after some initial research, I refined my hypothesis explicitly to the Gospel of Mark, based on the knowledge that Mark was widely believed to have been the earliest canonical Gospel to have been written.

I then spent roughly a year going through the Gospel of Mark line by line searching for related passages in the Old Testament using various different translations, including the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures). This was something that could really only have been done recently, thanks to computers and the internet.

What I found was a strong confirmation of my hypothesis, which I viewed as quite a breakthrough. However, there were still many passages in the Gospel of Mark that could not be explained as literary allusions to the Hebrew scriptures, so I looked for other possible literary sources that the author of Mark could have used. The most obvious potential source was the Pauline Epistles, knowing that they were actually written before the Gospels. I then performed a similar exercise looking for correlations between the letters of Paul and the Gospel of Mark. Again, what I found confirmed my suspicion, which was that there were many examples of close textual parallels between the Gospel of Mark and the Pauline Epistles.

At this point, I had accounted for virtually every passage in the Gospel of Mark, showing that essentially every scene in the Gospel of Mark was an apparent literary allusion to the Hebrew scriptures and that virtually every teaching of Jesus appeared to be based on the writings of Paul.

I had also been researching other aspects of the Jesus story during this time, such as historical references to Jesus by non-Christian writers, and had come to the conclusion that, despite my initial skepticism, I too now believed it was highly unlikely that Jesus ever existed, but for reasons that had little to do with many of the popular arguments against his existence. I then produced several web articles and self-published books on the subject but still felt that while there were many separate pieces of evidence that strongly drew Jesus’s existence into question, what was lacking was a truly coherent theory that could explain all of the facts regarding the origins of the Jesus story and Christianity.

This book is the presentation of that overarching theory which, I believe, provides a coherent explanation for the origins of Christianity without there ever having been a real Jesus. In fact, I think this theory better explains the origins of Christianity than traditional explanations that assume Jesus was a real person—which is why I think this thesis is so powerful.

However, unlike many challenges to the traditional origin story of Christianity, the theory I am presenting is not very radical. In fact, it falls largely in line with traditional scholarship and traditional understandings of Christian theology. The theory I am presenting is more about a change in perspective than a complete rewriting of the facts. I see my theory of Christian origins as something like viewing a magic trick from behind the magician. You’re still looking at the same objective reality that the audience is viewing, but due to a different perspective, you can see that what appears miraculous to the audience is actually mundane.

I believe that the case I am putting forward proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Jesus never existed, but it does so largely by changing our perspective, not by rewriting history. The case I am putting forward is in line with scholarly consensus on the timeline of authorship of the major documents of early Christianity. The case I am putting forward does not require calling large numbers of passages into question as later interpolations. The case I am putting forward does not rely on claims of intentional deception by various church fathers. The case I am putting forward essentially shows that belief in a real human Jesus arose out of confusion and a misunderstanding of how the Gospels were written.

INTRODUCTION

O ne of the most compelling claims made by early advocates of Christianity was the claim that the life and deeds of Jesus Christ had been predicted by ancient Jewish prophecies, and that the Gospels provided irrefutable proof that Jesus had indeed fulfilled these ancient prophecies. The idea that Christianity contained within it evidence of real prophetic power was extremely compelling to the elite class within the Roman Empire, particularly to Constantine, the first Christian emperor. ¹ The Greeks and Romans had been obsessed with the idea of prophecy for centuries and viewed prophecy as both a sign of divinity and a powerful tool for leadership and rule. ²

As early as the second century, Christian apologists (intellectuals who advocated the ideas that have shaped Christianity as we know it) essentially staked the legitimacy of the religion on the proof that Jesus had fulfilled ancient prophecies and performed miracles. According to their arguments, Jesus’s fulfillment of prophecies was hard evidence of divinity, indeed the most concrete evidence for divinity ever established. But not only did they argue that Jesus’s fulfillment of prophecies proved that he was indeed divine, they also argued that the Hebrew scriptures (which Christians call the Old Testament) likely contained within them additional encoded prophecies, which could potentially be deciphered to predict the future. The idea that the Hebrew scriptures could be used to predict the future was extremely compelling to Roman elites and was influential in the adoption of the Christian religion.

The idea that Jesus is proven to have fulfilled prophecies and that Jesus made prophecies that came true is still a major point in the theological defense of Christianity to this day. In fact, prophecy fulfillment has long been seen as one of the most compelling proofs of Jesus’s divinity and of the truth of the Christian religion. The two central facts that have been used to prove the divinity of Jesus since the formal origin of the religion in the second century are Jesus’s resurrection and Jesus’s fulfillment of prophecies.

That we have solid evidence for Jesus’s resurrection and fulfillment of prophecies has always rested on the idea that the four canonical Gospels are independently written accounts of the life and deeds of Jesus leading up to the events of his death and that these accounts record the ways in which Jesus’s life and deeds fulfilled many ancient Jewish prophecies. However, cracks in this case began to form as early as the fifth century, when it was noted by Augustine that there appeared to be some dependencies between the Gospels. Augustine, though, appeared not to be troubled by this and simply concluded that the interdependencies were minimal and that the evangelist Matthew had written his Gospel first, with the evangelist Mark lightly borrowing from him to fill in gaps in his own account, and with Luke having lightly referenced both Matthew and Mark when writing his account. ³ But none of this was to call into question the central idea that these accounts were still fundamentally independent eyewitness or secondhand accounts of the life and deeds of Jesus that corroborated each other.

It was not until the eighteenth century that the extent of the similarities between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were widely acknowledged and understood. The apparent relationships between these three Gospels was termed the Synoptic Problem. Since then, there have been many proposals to explain exactly how these three texts came to share their common language. It has become increasingly clear through modern scholarship that the dependencies across the Gospels are very significant indeed and that the apparent prophecies shown to be fulfilled in the Gospels are not actually prophecies at all. The case I will present demonstrates that the Gospels are not four independent accounts, and that far from proving the divinity of Jesus, deciphering the so-called prophecies found in the Gospels actually proves that the Jesus of the Gospels is a fictional character who never existed.

What I will demonstrate is that the idea of a real human, earthly Jesus was introduced by the story that has come to be known as the Gospel of Mark and that every account of Jesus’s life is dependent on this story. It is from the Gospel called Mark that the idea of a real-life earthly Jesus originated, and the so-called prophecies found in the Gospels actually come from the literary allusions that the author of the Gospel called Mark used to craft his narrative.

What the Gospel of Mark actually is, is a fictional allegory that was likely written sometime between 70 and 80 CE in reaction to the First Jewish-Roman War and the sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans. Virtually every scene in this story is built on literary allusions to the Hebrew scriptures. These literary allusions were interpreted, however, as examples of prophecy fulfillment by later readers, including writers of the other Gospels. In addition, whoever wrote the Gospel called Mark was a follower of a Pauline sect and had read the letters of Paul. The Jesus character in the story is patterned on Paul himself, and the teachings of Jesus presented in the Gospel called Mark are actually teachings of Paul, not the other way around.

It can be demonstrated that the major deeds of Jesus found in the other Gospels actually originated as literary allusions in the story called Mark and that, thus, every account of Jesus’s life is dependent on this single story. That every account of Jesus’s life is dependent on this one story, and that the events of Jesus’s life in this story originate from literary allusions, means that no account of the life of Jesus is based on any real events or any real person. None of the writers of the other Gospels could possibly have known anything about a real Jesus because their accounts are all dependent on a clearly fictional narrative. That every account of the life of Jesus is dependent on a single fictional story can only mean that no one had any knowledge of a real Jesus person, which strongly implies that Jesus never existed at all. The belief that Jesus was a real person stemmed entirely from the Gospel stories themselves.

At this point, the entire case for Christianity is revealed to be nothing more than a huge literary misunderstanding. The most significant literary misunderstanding in human history—one that absolutely changed the course of Western civilization.

A basic overview of how I think belief in a real-life Jesus developed is as follows:

Some small apocalyptic Jewish cult existed in Jerusalem around the middle of the first century that worshiped a heavenly messiah named Jesus. While there was no universal messianic belief among Jews at this time, most descriptions of the messiah prior to Jesus described the messiah as some person who would lead the Jews to establish an idealized Jewish state, free of corruption and injustice, usually by means of military victory over their oppressors. ⁴ What set the Jesus cult apart was their belief that the kingdom established by the messiah would not be on earth, but rather it would be in heaven. They believed that the material world was hopelessly corrupt and that the kingdom of God could never be established on earth. Thus, they believed that an immaterial heavenly messiah would be required to destroy the evil material world and establish a perfect kingdom in heaven. The creation of an immaterial heavenly kingdom required an immaterial heavenly messiah.

Paul became an apostle of this cult, writing his letters and sending them around the Mediterranean from approximately 50 to 65 CE. Paul’s message was one of reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews). According to Paul, the material world itself was mankind’s oppressor, and the kingdom of God established by Jesus would be open to all people, both Jews and Gentiles, as long as they had faith in him. However, there were escalating hostilities between the Jews and their Roman occupiers, which resulted in an outbreak of armed conflict between the two sides in 67 CE. This conflict lasted roughly eight years and has come to be known as the First Jewish-Roman War. It was during this conflict, in 70 CE, that the temple in Jerusalem was plundered and destroyed by the Romans. In reaction to the First Jewish-Roman War and the sacking of Jerusalem, some follower of a Pauline sect wrote a fictional story, casting Paul’s Jesus as the protagonist in a narrative that was meant to show that the Jews had brought the war upon themselves and that the destruction of the temple by the Romans was a punishment from their own god for not having heeded Paul’s message of harmony between Jews and Gentiles. This story is what we now call the Gospel of Mark. This story is what introduced the idea that Jesus was a real person who had lived on earth. Every biography of Jesus descends either directly or indirectly from this one story. It was the Gospel stories that created widespread interest in Jesus, and it was only after the writing and dissemination of the Gospels that significant numbers of people began converting to the religion.

Ironically, the key pieces of evidence used by early church fathers and Christian apologists to prove the divinity of Jesus are in fact the key pieces of evidence which prove Jesus never existed at all. And the fact that the four separate Gospels were meticulously preserved, because it was believed that they corroborated each other, is what provides the material needed to prove that Jesus never actually existed. If only one Gospel had been preserved, perhaps Matthew or Luke, then establishing the ahistorical nature of their accounts would be next to impossible. Let’s now explore the evidence to support the scenario I have laid out.

I

DECIPHERING THE GOSPEL CALLED MARK

F or most of Christian history, the Gospel of Mark has been the least appreciated Gospel and viewed as the least significant. This is partly because the Gospel of Mark is the shortest Gospel, was not viewed as an eyewitness account, contains the least significant theological constructs, lacks any mention of the birth or origin of Jesus, paints an unflattering image of the disciples, and was believed to have been written after the Gospel of Matthew. This all changed, however, in the eighteenth century when the theory of Markan priority was first proposed. Since that time, there has been a growing interest in the Gospel of Mark, and its status has changed from being viewed as the least significant Gospel to far and away the most important.

The importance of the Gospel of Mark is elevated all the more not simply because it was certainly written before the others but indeed because all of the other canonical Gospels are based on it. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are directly based on the Gospel of Mark, which is now widely accepted among biblical scholars. ⁵

There is debate, however, as to whether or not the Gospel of John was influenced by the synoptic Gospels. ⁶ It was long accepted that it was, even before the Synoptic Problem was outlined, but some modern apologists have tried to argue that John is a fully independent work, which was not influenced by the Synoptics. This argument has gained favor among modern Christian apologists in an attempt to strengthen the Gospel tradition by asserting that the Gospels do still contain independent accounts of the life of Jesus, as was believed prior to the outlining of the Synoptic Problem, which showed that, unlike the traditional belief, at least the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were not independent accounts and thus not eyewitness accounts. We will go over some of the evidence, however, which shows that the Gospel of John was influenced by the Synoptic works as well.

Another significant realization of modern scholarship about the Gospel of Mark is that it was written during or shortly after the conquering of Judea and sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. That the Gospel of Mark was written during or shortly after the First Jewish-Roman War that spanned from 67 to 73 CE is now widely accepted by modern scholars and supported by internal evidence from within the work, based partly on the descriptions of the destruction of the Jewish temple in Mark 13. ⁷

What most biblical scholars have failed to do, however, is fully recognize the significance of the sacking of Jerusalem in relation to the Gospel of Mark. Most biblical scholars simply view the sacking of Jerusalem as a reference point in time in relation to which the Gospel of Mark can be dated—simply an event on a timeline. But few actually put the Gospel of Mark in the context of the war. This is because most biblical scholars view all of the Gospels as being about Jesus. For them, Jesus is the subject, Jesus is the impetus, Jesus is the driving factor behind the writing of the Gospels. If you were to ask most biblical scholars why the Gospels were written, the answer would invariably be, In order to record the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Mark is viewed no differently than the other Gospels in this regard. Why was the Gospel of Mark written, according to Christians? In order to record the life and teachings of Jesus, of course.

My view, however, is that the motivating factor that drove the author to write the story that we now call the Gospel of Mark was the destruction of the temple and the war itself. Jesus is just a literary device used in an allegorical framework to tell a story about how the Jews brought destruction upon themselves. That’s what the story is really about. The motivation behind writing the story was to comment on the war; Jesus is a device used for the telling of that tale. This means that if the First Jewish-Roman War had never taken place, and the temple had not been destroyed, then the Gospel called Mark would never have been written, and consequently, none of the other stories about Jesus would ever have been written either. This means that Christianity as we know it would never have come into existence, because, as we shall see, it is really the Gospel stories that gave birth to Christianity.

What has led me to this conclusion is my analysis of the abundant literary allusions in the Gospel called Mark. Below is a table summarizing the major literary allusions and textual references to the Hebrew scriptures I have been able to identify in the Gospel called Mark. Some of these have not previously been recognized by other biblical scholars.