Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, October 04, 1999
Monday, 12 September 2005

Obscure Teachings

18. Jesus did not teach clearly. This passage in John is totally obscure:

And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin because they believe not on Me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.

Jn 16:8-11

He admitted teaching in parables that were meant to be obscure:

These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs, but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father.

Jn 16:25

That time has never come. The Father has never been plainly shown. Various interpretations have been made of these parables and difficult passages by scholars of distinction. Often, no one is sure what he meant.

19. Matthew and Luke give long genealogies to prove that Jesus was descended from David, but Jesus himself—if he was the messiah—denied it:

If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?

Mt 22:41-45

He was making the point that sons or descendants always call their elder, Lord, in Jewish etiquette. Yet David, the founder of the line, is calling the messiah, his descendant, Lord, in one of the psalms he wrote. That David should refer to the messiah as Lord proves, for Jesus, that the messiah was not a descendant of David, despite Jewish expectations. He, as messiah, was not a son of David! Perhaps it was a subtle admission that God not David was his father, but then Christians have to explain why God in his aspect of the Holy Ghost wrote the long genealogies into the bible. Evidently the Holy Ghost was not in the know. Whichever way you look at it, God is imperfect, if he wrote the bible.

20. On the subject of witnesses there is great confusion. We get the following statements, all obscure or even contradictory:

If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.

Jn 5:31

But at the same time:

Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true.

Jn 8:14

It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me.

Jn 8:17-18

Yet:

I and my Father are one.

Jn 10:30

And then again:

My Father is greater than I.

Jn 14:28

In Jewish law two witnesses are necessary and Jesus tries to meet it technically by claiming the two are himself and his father God, but elsewhere he claims he is one with his father. So, in fact, there is only one witness and the Jewish legal requirement is not met. Furthermore, it is hard to understand why the messiah had to bother about legal technicalities. Surely God could have sent an angel or even spoken himself from a cloud, as he does elsewhere, and the point would have been simply made.

21. Jesus is supposed to be the judge of the world, but his statement of the case leaves the issue ambiguous:

For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son.

Jn 5:22

I judge no man. And yet if I judge, my judgment is true.

Jn 8:16

And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.

Jn 12:47

For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.

Jn 10:39

Plainly this is another farrago of unreason. It provides endless opportunities for theologians to add vast tomes to the nonsense already there, but the truth is that John’s gospel was late and accumulated a lot of inconsistent fodder. Of course Christians cannot admit this because it throws out the whole idea that the Holy Spirit watched over the compilation of the bible to make sure that it was true.

22. The Jews would have been appalled when Jesus said:

Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life.

Jn 6:53-58

To be ritually pure, Jewish food has to be free of blood. The Jews abhor eating blood. This could not have been said by a Jew and it could not have been said, therefore, by Jesus. However, it mimics the practices of Pagan religions in the first century and that is its source. Essenes merely sprinkled a few drops of wine symbolising the new covenant.

23. Jesus says that people were to remain as children and not seek mental improvement to become wise:

I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.

Mt 11:25

Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

Mk 10:15

The only beneficiaries of injunctions like these are the priests who prefer their flock to be simple minded and not prone to question the religion too deeply. They succeeded excellently.

24. Jesus says it is easy to be a Christian:

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Mt 11:30

In other places he trowels on the hardships that they will endure. Such blatant contradictions are not worthy of a god, yet the gospels show Jesus contradicting himself constantly.

25. Christians were to demonstrate their good works or charitable acts before men to glorify God but in the next chapter they were not to:

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Mt 5:16

Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

Mt 6:1

26. Awkwardly for Christians, Jesus honoured the laws of Moses:

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Mt 5:17-18

And yet elsewhere he supposedly abrogates the law or aspects of it. Again he was being contradictory.

26. Jesus explained his obscurity in this way:

Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.

Lk 8:10

But unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: that seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.

Mk 4:11-12

Hitherto we onlookers thought that the saviour of the world wanted to convert people. It seems we were mistaken. What do Christians make of this? Is there any Christian that wished Jesus had been clearer? If there is they are admitting that their god was not perfect.

Deficient Instructions

27. Often Jesus gives commands that Christians freely renounce, saying they are inappropriate for today. Do they realize that in so doing they are again admitting that their god was not perfect. He did not have the foresight to make rules which would hold in quite different circumstances. One could easily forgive the real Jesus because he plainly expected the world to end within a few decades at the most, so he was not trying to make rules which would hold two thousand years later.

The relation between employer and employee is one that requires practical guidance. What advice did Jesus have to give? In the parable of the labourers, an employer hired men to work in his vineyard for twelve hours for a penny, but he paid the same wage to other workers who toiled only nine, six, three and one hour. When those who had worked longest resented this treatment, as any worker who was not a slave would, Jesus gave the employer’s answer:

Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last.

Mt 20:1-16

The answer is true but it is not fair. The employer kept his side of the bargain but it seems ill-designed to get the workforce working happily. Jesus approves of paying the last men to turn up a better rate then the willing or hungry workers who turned up after breakfast. It is not equitable for worker or employer today. Employers would want to encourage their workers to start early, not to stroll along half way through the afternoon and get the same pay.

Elsewhere Jesus said:

The labourer is worthy of his hire.

Lk 10:7

It contradicts the foregoing but seems a much better principle. Yet, Jesus still has contempt for the hired man:

The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.

Jn 10:13

28. In the parable of the talents the servant who did not lend his money at interest to make profits but instead conserved it was condemned:

And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Mt 25:30

Just as he had little regard for hired men, Jesus had little regard for servants who had to be “beaten with many stripes” (Lk 12:47) when disobedient and even beaten when they were not disobedient, but not so severely (Lk 12:48). These servants were obviously not employees but slaves who were treated as chattels and beaten as the masters liked. It is hardly surprising that slave owners took him at his word and were inhumanly cruel, on God’s say so. Christians will be glad to know that these ideas were Luke’s not Jesus’s. Essenes abhored slaand they held no slaves.

In the parable of the unmerciful servant, Jesus taught the duty of forgiveness. A lord had given a servant who owed him money extra time to pay. But the servant who was owed lesser sums by a subordinate had him thrown into prison. Told by the other servants, the master rightly rebuked the servant but then had him tortured as punishment:

And his lord was wroth and delivered him to the tormenters, till he should pay all that was due unto him.

Mt 18:34

This sounds quite mild because the word “torment” has decayed in meaning. People use it today to mean “annoy”. In the seventeenth century it meant “torture”, and that is the proper translation of the Greek, as the Revised Standard Version points out in a footnote, mistranslating it to “jailers” in the main text as most modern bibles dishonestly do. Jesus advocated torture for those who did not pass on a kindness. Christians might say it is meant to illustrate hell for sinners, but that makes it infinitely worse.

29. Jesus admired poverty and, although he is described as a carpenter in the gospels, he never seemed to be in his workshop. He said:

Blessed be ye poor.

Lk 6:20

Conversely he hated riches. Nothing in his teaching is more certain, though you will find few Christians respectful of their god enough to take any notice.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.

Mt 6:10

A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Mt 19:23-24

The beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried, and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments.

Lk 16:22-23

But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.

Lk 6:24

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus even told people not to bother seeking food or clothes because God would look after everyone just as he does birds and flowers (Mt 6:25-31). There must be few of the two billion Christians in the world who run their lives on this principle even though their god told them so. If any actually do, they will be despised by the rest as lazy idlers.

Most people who are poor do not consider it a blessing but a curse. It might be psychologically good for impoverished believers to imagine that they will be eternally blessed for being poor on earth while the rich will be eternally damned, but meanwhile the rich are crowing and, even though they also profess Christianity, they are not queueing up to give away their wealth in exchange for eternal life. When some of them do, it is when they are expecting to die in the hope of buying salvation, just as they bought everything else and everyone else in life. Who are the fools?

But Jesus’s advocacy of poverty was contrary. He promises that his followers:

…shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

Mk 10:30

If this means that they will get rich in this time then it contradicts his blessing of the poor. If it is clever because a hundred times nothing is still nothing then he was fooling those he addressed who the gospels repeatedly tell us were not too smart. That remains the case today, should the son of God be using such double talk?

30. Not only did Jesus decry the rich, he was a communist. How many Christian rednecks in the bible belt of America know that? All right, all of them do know it, but they will not admit it is communism. According to Acts:

All that believed were together and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need… Neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.

Acts 2:44-45; 4:32

The disciples practised communism because Jesus told them to. When he sent the disciples out to convert Israel he told them to carry no possessions. Most people in the western world hate communism but Jesus taught it, or so his disciples thought. How can any modern Christian know better? It was the preactice of the Essenes, so certainly true of Jesus and his followers.

31. Jesus seemed to believe an unkind servant should be tortured until he paid his debts in full. “Tortured” is mistranslated “jailed” by the purveyors of that curious type of truth, apparently synonymous with lies, called God’s truth. “Jailed” is bad enough. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus wanted to see debtors’ prisons:

Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

Mt 5:25-26

32. Jesus in his normal life is admired most as a healer of physical sickness or disabilities. He believed both sin and sickness were caused by demons to be cast out. Modern science has not been able to confirm Jesus’s belief. Disabilities can sometimes be cured by surgical techniques or helped by technology, but no one ever reported a demon scuttling away when someone used a hearing aid or had a flu injection. Christians will claim that Jesus merely used the terminology and beliefs of the time but that shows he never expected his words to be revered as the absolute words of God two millennia later.

On the other hand, if Jesus really could cure disease and also knew, as an aspect of God, that he was laying down rules that people would follow centuries later, why did he not explain how these diseases could be cured? Millions of sick people could have been saved a lot of suffering that way. Scientists and doctors who are not revered as gods, indeed, are reviled by some extreme Christians, have done far more to alleviate distress than Jesus did in his lifetime.

33. The pacific character of Jesus was established early in the career of Christianity. The best non-theological explanation of Jesus is that he was an Essene religious leader intent on recapturing Judaea from the Romans by stirring up sedition among his fellow Jews. In short he was a terrorist or a revolutionary fighting for Jewish national freedom in a Roman colony. Some people in the Empire knew this and they had to be quickly refuted by the church establishing Jesus as a peaceful Jesus not the one known as a seditionist. So he became the “Prince of Peace”.

The apparent contradiction in some of Jesus’s sayings from the revolutionary truth, and indeed many other contradictions, arise because Jesus distinguished between Jews who he regarded as brothers—or potential brothers—and the enemy, the Romans. Most of the sayings of Jesus regarding violence or non-resistance were for Jews only and even then they were references to solving personal disputes not international ones. He did not try to tell foreign nations that they should not fight wars when he speaks about them:

And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

Mt 24:6-7

Evidently he thought wars were inevitable and did not suggest that people should refuse to fight in armies to resist wars. Jesus tells a disciple traditionally thought to have been Peter:

Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

Mt 26:52

The warning is practical advice, pointing out the plain facts of fighting—it was dangerous. It contains in itself no ethical principle—it does not say it is morally wrong to take up the sword. In typical contradictory style, he also told his disciples to buy swords:

He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one… And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.

Lk 22:36

This refutes totally the myth of Jesus as the “Prince of Peace”. Like most of the Christian beliefs, it is an illusion belied by the Holy Books themselves, but unintelligibly ignored by believers. Jesus does seem to recommend peace in several places in the gospels:

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Mt 5:9

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

Mt 5:44

But they are belied by as many places in the gospels when he seems violent:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

Mt 10:34

In John, Jesus is happy to condone fighting for kingdoms in this world but refrains from doing so because his kingdom is in another world:

My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews.

Jn 18:36

Since Jesus was no less contradictory on the question of pacifism than on any other subject, it is only right to consider all of his statements in the balance, not just to take odd ones that suit out of context. Jesus sometimes preached non-resistance but armed his disciples with swords. No man of principle can hold both views. If one is right the other is wrong. So Jesus must have been wrong sometimes, whichever of the two views you prefer.

34. Jesus occasionally eulogized marriage:

For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh… What therefore God hath Joined together, let not man put asunder.

Mt 19:5-6

More often he praised celibacy as the only one disposing to salvation. In Matthew, it sounds as though Jesus is merely describing what happens in the resurrected world:

In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

Mt 22:30

Jesus is explaining that he expected people to become asexual angels when they entered God’s kingdom. It seemed logical to him that those serious about seeing the face of God should begin how they expected to continue—chaste! So, he declares that people must not marry if they are to be considered worthy of the other world, not only denying the natural sexual functions of the human body but contradicting Jewish thought of the time:

The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage.

Lk 20:34-35

Do married Christians realize that they are already barred from the kingdom of heaven because they are married? Do the priests of the Anglican Church realize that? No wonder Catholic priests refuse to marry.

Jesus even tells his followers to leave their wives and they will get not only everlasting life but also more in this world:

There is no man that hath left… wife, or children for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.

Lk 18:29-30

When he came across a woman who had committed adultery and the Pharisees wanted to stone her, Jesus was tolerant:

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her… Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more.

Jn 8:7-11

In Matthew, he sounds even more tolerant, allowing that:

The harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.

Mt 21:31

He was calling the chief priests and the elders of the people names. Or maybe the expression was hyperbolic, but then Jesus is saying that priests and politicians have less chance of getting to heaven than harlots, who can have little chance if the saying means anything. Do the priests and politicians of our Christian world realize that they have counted themselves out of the kingdom of heaven? Of course they do but, unlike the gullible punter, they know they will lose nothing—it’s all baloney.

However, there was no tolerance in Matthew for the man who lusted after a woman:

Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Mt 5:28

As in most of these things, Christians have taken them to be universal, timeless precepts when they were precepts which applied locally in time and space, in this case, to Essenian celibate monks.

35. Christians like to believe that Jesus was opposed to divorce, saying that divorce is adultery on both parts, so that a man who divorces his wife makes her commit adultery as well as himself. But Jesus did permit divorce, because the phrase “saving for the cause of fornication” is usually deliberately omitted from the citation from Matthew:

It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

Mt 5:31-32

Nowadays there must be millions of Christians who have sought and been granted a divorce for reasons other than infidelity. Do they realize that they are disobeying their God? If they do, how do they reconcile their position with remaining Christians.

36. For all the Christians take Jesus to be a god, his judgement of character was atrocious. The gospels repeatedly say his disciples were a bad lot—at the best totally stupid and incomprehending, at worst cowards, selfish, greedy. Jesus selected Judas to be the treasurer of the apostles’ joint funds, but later admitted his error:

Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spoke of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for it was he that should betray him, being one of the twelve.

Jn 6:70-71

Elsewhere Jesus also says that Simon Peter is the devil, saying to him:

Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

Mt 16:23

Jesus made such a hash of choosing his disciples that he loved only one of them:

When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!

Jn 19:26

37. Jesus admitted that in himself he was incompetent:

I can of mine own self do nothing.

Jn 5:30

But, even with the help of god, he failed because no one believed him, and earlier even his disciples did not belief him:

But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him.

Jn 12:37

For neither did his brethren believe in him.

Jn 7:5

In Mark, some of his friends thought he was mad:

And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.

Mk 3:21

Christians say Jesus triumphed on the cross but he certainly failed in his life.

Skeptical Resources—Internet infidels | Jesus Never Existed | Steven Carr’s Website | Christianism | Early Christian Writings | God is Imaginary | “Religion Detoxification” | Our Judaio-Christian Heritage | Archaeoastronomy | No Deity | No Beliefs | Evil Bible | Bible God | ex-Christians | Jesus Police | Islamic Faith Freedom | Atheist Experience | American Atheists | Jovial Atheist | Askwhy! books
Other Resources—Early Christian Docs | Resources for Study | Traditional Bible-History | Traditional Bible World History | Traditional Bible History | about.com biblical history | Apologetics web sites | Advent Ch Fathers | Orion center links | Wikipedia | Traditional Jewish History