Miracles, Myths and Mysteries of Christianity
The New Testament—History?
Public domain. Copy freely
Abstract
The Saviour Jesus
When an honest bishop admits that the tale of Jesus Christ is not literally true, and this is reported in the press, there is always outrage from offended Christians, but evidence for him is thin, and for belief in him as God would not satisfy a dodo. On examining the gospels carefully we find many inconsistencies concerning the details of the life of Jesus. If he was the Jew of the Synoptics, he was not the Jew hater of the fourth gospel. He was born, according to Matthew, during the sovereignty of Herod, who was appointed Governor of Judaea, part of the Roman province of Syria, in 40 BC under Antonius Marcus, and later became puppet king. In Luke, the birth is said to have taken place in 6 AD when Augustus was Emperor, a decade after the death of Herod. Herod died at Jericho in 4 BC after a period of absence on account of illness from Jerusalem.
Jesus Christ rises again on the third day and ascends in company with Adam and numerous saints into heaven. Mark says that “Jesus was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God,” but the twelve verses in which the account appears are admitted in the revised edition to be spurious. Matthew and John do not mention the Ascension. Luke is the only gospel that gives the story, He “was carried up into heaven”. Acts says, “He was taken up, and a cloud received him out of sight”. Both Luke and Acts were written by the same man, so we really have the testimony of only one man, with no corroborating evidence, to this astonishing spectacle.
The miracles of the primitive church were mere fictions, which the pious and zealous Fathers, partly from a weak credulity and partly from reasons of policy, were induced to espouse and propagate for the support of a righteous cause. The primitive Christians were perpetually reproached for their credulity, and Julian says that “the sum of all their wisdom was comprised in the single precept—believe”.
Such extraordinary events as miraculous darkness covering all the land for several hours, earthquakes at the death of a god, raising the dead to life again, must have formed topics of general conversation and must have found a place in the literature of the day. Nothing. Cures being wrought must have interested the writers on medicine. Nothing. It is incredible that no one except the four interested partisans, who are supposed to have written the gospels, should ever have referred to them.
Matthew recorded that, at the death of Christ, the earth quaked, the rocks were rent, and the graves were opened. Could such peculiar events have occurred and yet no notice be taken of them? History records nothing.
Myths and Miracles
Faith in miracles comes from ignorance or a confusion of belief with knowledge. Miracles are imaginary deviations from the known laws of Nature—proved by experience to be firm and unalterable—by the power of a god. The people who lived contemporary with Jesus Christ tended to believe in anything—it was a credulous age. If they could have been present at one of Uri Geller’s shows, these credulous ancients would have certainly wanted to worship him as a god. But no intelligent person today could accept such miracles as other than tricks. All accounts of miracles should be banished altogether to their proper region—that of fiction or legend. Nature does not allow her laws to be fooled with.
Josephus was a Jew, and lived in the country where all these things are said to have occurred, and wrote a history of the period. Yet, he makes no mention of even the existence of Jesus Christ. In book 18:3:3 of his Antiquities, an unknown editor has put between the account of the sedition of the Jews against Pontius Pilate and that of Anubis and Pauline in the Temple of Isis, an insertion relating to Jesus Christ, which is clearly a forgery. Josephus, a Jew, is made to say:
Now, there was about this time Jesus Christ, 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.
It is not likely that a Jew writing under the patronage of the Romans would show such a respect towards Jesus Christ, who was known among both nations as seditious, and talk about his teaching the truth!
At the crucifixion Luke writes that “there was darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour”. Those who say the darkness was a solar eclipse do not understand the motions of the celestial bodies. The Passover moon was full. Furthermore, a solar eclipse lasts only about six minutes. At the death of the Hindu saviour, Krishna, a black circle surrounded the moon, and the sun was darkened at noon-day, the sky rained fire and ashes, flames burned dusky and livid, demons committed depredations on earth. At sunrise and sunset thousands of figures were seen skirmishing in the air, and spirits were to be seen on all sides. When Æsculapius was put to death, the sun shone dimly from the heavens, birds were silent and trees bowed their heads in sorrow. On the death of Romulus, founder of Rome, in his legend, the sun was darkened for six hours.
Praying to God for material or spiritual benefits implies He is not omnipotent, not all-foreseeing or not voluntarily good to his faithful. Man can do wonders in the war of conquering nature, but he has not been able to alter natural laws, nor is there any honest evidence that Nature’s laws have been changed at any time in answer to prayer.
Historians of this early period, curiously enough, have recorded miracles and wonders alleged to have been performed by other persons, but not a word is said by them about the miracles claimed by Christians to have been performed by Jesus Christ. Marduk, the Assyrian god—he who made heaven and earth—the merciful one, the life giver, performed great miracles and raised the dead to life. Apollonius, of Tyana, in Cappadocia, born about four years before Christ, among other miracles restored a dead maiden to life. Æsculapius, son of Apollo, the Greek god, was a great performer of miracles, who cured, the sick and raised the dead. Osiris and Isis performed miracles, and pilgrimages were made to the temples of Isis by the sick.
Jesus in History
Not one of the classic writers in the first century, writers of the Augustan age of letters, writers in satire, history, natural history, medicine, astronomy, miracles, fables, not one unequivocally mentions Jesus Christ or his apostles or his miracles. If all the wonderful things said about Jesus Christ were true, we should naturally expect to hear something about him in the writings of the period.
Pagans often called their gods “Chrestos” in an affectionate way and Romans called many people from Syria and Egypt Jews. These were often Hellenised people of the Levant whose beliefs were a mixture of Paganism and sectarian Judaism. When Suetonius used the name Chrestus, he might have been referring to jealousies among these Jews over some Pagan god called “Chrestos”. More likely is that he confused the word he knew, “Chrestus”, for the word he did not know, “Christus”, and the troubles were fights between messianic Jews and Jews who preferred not to invite close inspection by Romans of Jewish hopes.
Justus of Tiberias, who was born about five years after the time assigned for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, wrote a Jewish history, but it contained no mention of the coming of Jesus Christ, nor of the events concerning him, nor of the prodigies he is supposed to have wrought.
Christians say that Suetonius preserved evidence of Jesus Christ in his book The Twelve Caesars. Suetonius lived from about 75 to 150 AD and his book was published about 120 AD. In the section on Claudius, he mentions that the emperor expelled the Jews from Rome (about 49 AD) because they caused continual disturbances at the instigation of a certain “Chrestus”. If “Chrestus” is Jesus Christ, then what was Jesus Christ doing in Rome in 49 AD when he was supposed have been crucified under the Prefecture of Pontius Pilate between 26 and 36 AD? “Chrestus” is the Greek “Chrestos” meaning “good one”, and it is not the same as Christus which is derived from the Greek “Christos” meaning “anointed one” or “Messiah”. Any historical evidence of the original Jesus Christ that existed anywhere was destroyed by Christians to hide the truth when they were able. Jesus Christ has been overlaid with mythology taken from contemporary religious belief, notably the sun gods. Any historical Jesus Christ has been deliberately disguised to hide him from the historians.
