Was Jesus the Bastard Son of a Menstruate and Promiscuous Woman from 100 BCE?

[michaelsherlock]

In the following series of posts, I will not attempt to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that Jesus was the bastard son of a menstruate and promiscuous woman, who lived around 100BCE, for one cannot prove such a thing. Yet, if we apply the standards of proof used by Christians and other secular historicists to prove Jesus existed as an historical person, then we can also employ such standards to demonstrate that Jesus was a bastard, whose mother was an adulteress.

Most Christians and historicists rely heavily on the Christian texts to show that Jesus existed as an historical person. Professor of NT Studies, Bart Ehrman is one of them, who in his book ‘Jesus Interrupted,’ said:

What sources do we have for Jesus? Well, we have multiple sources in the Gospels of the New Testament. That part is good.(1)

Scholars like Ehrman, who is at present one of the leading biblical/textual scholars, one I have studied quite a lot and have a high regard for, believe that by using Christian sources, we can gather reliable information about the historical character named Jesus, a figure who stands at the heart of the Christian religion. Of course Ehrman does qualify his position somewhat, saying:

But they (Gospels) are not written by eyewitnesses who were contemporary with the events they narrate. They were written thirty-five to sixty-five years after Jesus’ death by people who did not know him, did not see anything he did or hear anything that he taught, people who spoke a different language from his and lived in a different country from him. The accounts they produced are not disinterested; they are narratives produced by Christians who actually believed in Jesus, and therefore were not immune from slanting the stories in light of their biases. They are not completely free of collaboration, since Mark was used as a source for Matthew and Luke. And rather than being fully consistent with one another, they are widely inconsistent, with discrepancies filling their pages, both contradictions in details and divergent large-scale understandings of who Jesus was.(2)

But these discrepancies and errors, Ehrman and others claim, are due to the fact that the stories in the Gospels are based upon oral tradition, word of mouth stories, which in the words of Ehrman:

…can be used by historians to establish what really happened with some degree of probability, we have to learn more about the oral traditions about Jesus.(3)

So in the very words of this highly reputable scholar and historian, oral traditions which contain, nay, are built upon and fuelled by, religious biases, proven fictions, interpolations, forgeries and are tainted by the strongest motivations to lie and deceive, remembering the words of the “great” Martin Luther, who once quipped:

"What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church … a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." (4).

These religious documents, historicists argue, can be used to demonstrate that Jesus was an historical person.

Well then, if that is the case, let us draw upon equally qualified material to show that Jesus was nothing but a poor little bastard, who was the son of a promiscuous woman, that conceived him during her niddah (menstruation) with a man, who was not her husband, at a time when King Jannaeus (100 BCE) ruled Judea.

1. Bart D. Ehrman. Jesus Interrupted. Harper Collins (2009). Pg. 143.
2. Ibid. Pg. 144.
3. Ibid.
4. Martin Luther cited by his secretary, in a letter in Max Lenz, ed., Briefwechsel Landgraf Phillips des Grossmüthigen von Hessen mit Bucer, vol. I. "


To be continued….

[FallentoReason]

How can Bart Ehrman argue that even though the Gospels originated through religious biases, proven fictions, interpolations and forgeries they can still prove that the historical Jesus was real?

I've seen 'oral tradition' at work. This story that I'm going to tell you has not been stretched by me in the least bit:

I went to a university camp before my first year which was for meeting new people. Things got a little messy with alcohol and what not as you can imagine.

The first morning after the first night I woke up and urgently had to go to the toilet. As I walked into my dorm the guy sleeping on the top bunk unconsciously let go of his bladder as he slept. His urine went straight through the mattress and a huge stream wet the bed underneath, with no one in it. I laughed my head off and told him when he woke up what he did. This is what I saw 2 years ago.

Just two weeks ago I bumped into him at university after not seeing him for about a year and a half. He was with other friends that I hadn't met. Long story short, he was talking about that incident and he retold the story but this time... "...and I wet the guy underneath me. He was all like 'what the hell'?!".

This doesn't compare to the grandness that is an entire religion, but my point is that oral tradition means nothing. People will add what they want whenever they want. It happens all the time.

[michaelsherlock]

How can Bart Ehrman argue that even though the Gospels originated through religious biases, proven fictions, interpolations and forgeries they can still prove that the historical Jesus was real?

I've seen 'oral tradition' at work. This story that I'm going to tell you has not been stretched by me in the least bit:

I went to a university camp before my first year which was for meeting new people. Things got a little messy with alcohol and what not as you can imagine.

The first morning after the first night I woke up and urgently had to go to the toilet. As I walked into my dorm the guy sleeping on the top bunk unconsciously let go of his bladder as he slept. His urine went straight through the mattress and a huge stream wet the bed underneath, with no one in it. I laughed my head off and told him when he woke up what he did. This is what I saw 2 years ago.

Just two weeks ago I bumped into him at university after not seeing him for about a year and a half. He was with other friends that I hadn't met. Long story short, he was talking about that incident and he retold the story but this time... "...and I wet the guy underneath me. He was all like 'what the hell'?!".

This doesn't compare to the grandness that is an entire religion, but my point is that oral tradition means nothing. People will add what they want whenever they want. It happens all the time.

I think your example is an excellent one. Also, in his recent interview with NPR (April 1, 2012), Bart Ehrman said:

"Mythicists' arguments are fairly plausible... According to them, Jesus was never mentioned in any Roman sources and there is no archeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. Even Christian sources are problematic – the Gospels come long after Jesus' death, written by people who never saw the man.... Most importantly...these mythicists point out that there are Pagan gods who were said to die and rise again and so the idea is that Jesus was made up as a Jewish god who died and rose again.... The mythicists have some right things to say... The Gospels do portray Jesus in ways that are non-historical."

[Minimalist]

These religious documents, historicists argue, can be used to demonstrate that Jesus was an historical person.

Jesus Interrupted was a fine book but that section on the historicity of jesus had a touch of desperation about it. It was almost as if, having spent a couple of hundred pages trashing xtian's precious mythology, that Ehrman felt he had gone too far and had to pull back so as not to smash his own rice bowl.

I wonder if Ehrman would use the quoted section above to substantiate the existence of Sumerian and Greek gods who were also written about extensively.

Anyway Ehrman has a new book out which deals with the subject. It was reviewed over at Internet Infidels ( or whatever they call it now) and generally panned for that kind of specious reasoning noted above.

[michaelsherlock]

These religious documents, historicists argue, can be used to demonstrate that Jesus was an historical person.

Jesus Interrupted was a fine book but that section on the historicity of jesus had a touch of desperation about it. It was almost as if, having spent a couple of hundred pages trashing xtian's precious mythology, that Ehrman felt he had gone too far and had to pull back so as not to smash his own rice bowl.

I wonder if Ehrman would use the quoted section above to substantiate the existence of Sumerian and Greek gods who were also written about extensively.

Anyway Ehrman has a new book out which deals with the subject. It was reviewed over at Internet Infidels ( or whatever they call it now) and generally panned for that kind of specious reasoning noted above.

Nicely said. Yes, this is the main reason I am writing this brief series. If such standards of historical evidence are good enough to prove the historicity of Jesus, then they are good enough to show that he was a bastard son of a menstruate whore from 100 BCE.

[Sciwoman]

I would think that a game of Telephone would show the reliability of oral tradition. If you can't get a sentence across a room without it morphing almost out of recognition, how can you expect a story passed down for hundreds of years to be remotely similar to the original tale?

[Minimalist]

Xtian theory is that all of this crap starts whenever their boy gets nailed up.
The fact that they cannot state when that happened is a problem right off the bat. We have a terminus ad quem at March 36 since that would have been the last Passover where Pontius Pilate was prefect of Judaea.

We now have proof that judaism was far from the monolithic system which both jews and xtians insist it was. The Sadducees and Pharisees were competing schools of thought as were the Essenes. The pharisees believed in an afterlife, the Sadducees did not. In the last few years we have learned of an unnamed sect which was active at the end of the first century BC and which believed in resurrection after 3 days.


The Gabriel Revelation Stone

How many other splinter groups might there have been which, lacking aristocratic support, simply disappeared into the dustbin of history?

You know, the jewish concept of a messiah was a great warrior who would crush their enemies and unite all jews. To be sure, jesus was a total failure on that score! But ironically if there was ever a point in jewish history in which they did not need to be delivered from anything it was during the reign of Tiberius. The country was prospering, they had a measure of home rule in Jerusalem ( the prefect was in Caesarea) and they were granted certain exemptions from Roman taxation and worship of Roman gods. After Tiberius it is true that things start to go down the shitter but jesus' life in the reign of Tiberius is an anachronism in and of itself. They were doing pretty well. They didn't need him.

[Faith No More]

I would think that a game of Telephone would show the reliability of oral tradition. If you can't get a sentence across a room without it morphing almost out of recognition, how can you expect a story passed down for hundreds of years to be remotely similar to the original tale?

I'm guessing they would get around this by saying that god guided the process. I had someone use that answer when I asked them about the picking and choosing of which books went into the bible.

[Minimalist]

When they have to resort to "magic" as an answer you know you have them.

[Adjusted Sanity]

When they have to resort to "magic" as an answer you know you have them.

Magic is always the answer. It's the universal truth.