Jesus Never Existed Com

[Confused Ape]

I decided to make a topic about this because people keep mentioning it.

Jesus Never Existed Com used to drive me nuts because the site is full of contradictions and sketchily presented ideas. Kenneth Humphreys throws everything in including the kitchen sink - if somebody had a theory as to why Jesus or Paul didn't exist he includes it. Somewhere on every page is a list of books he got all these bits of information from which shows just how many authors wanted to publish books on the non-existence of New Testament characters.

I spent a lot of time researching these sketchily presented ideas and following up leads and then it suddenly hit me. What if he wants his readers to research and evaluate the contradictions and decide which of them are valid arguments?

Here's some examples to illustrate what I mean.

Two Different Pauls - A Fabricated Apostle?

This page throws doubt on the existence of Paul and includes the idea that he was invented by Marcion.

Another idea about Paul turns up on a different page - Christianity Without Jesus

Jewish Gnosis: Paul's "good news" for the Essenes –

An early Jewish Gnostic was the Samaritan "Simon the Magus" whose legacy was to inspire both the mystical "Kabala" (a refinement of Pythagorean "magic" numbers) and later Christian Gnostics – Basilides, Saturninus, Carpocrates among them.

Probably the most successful student of Simon was the apostle Paul, who would concoct a new, Jewish-oriented version of the ancient mystery cult tradition of dying and rising gods. In common with all the early Christian writers, Paul knew nothing of any human Jesus. His saviour originated (and remained!) in the ethereal world of pious imagination, both crucified by and triumphing over "Principalities and Powers":

If Paul had been invented by Marcion he couldn't have been a pupil of Simon the Magus. Is there any proof that Simon the Magus actually existed?

Now to Jesus himself. A History Of Jesus Denial

Down the left hand side are quotes from and bits of information about various people. Bertrand Russell is followed by -

In 1970 biblical scholar and Dead Sea Scroll expert John Allegro argued for the non-existence of Jesus Christ.

Allegro's thesis associated notions of the godman with narcotic-induced visions.

The hallucinatory plant in question was Amanita Muscaria (Fly-Agaric), the phallic mushroom, arguably used by early Christians and interpreted as a virgin (i.e. seedless) birth and "God come in the flesh."

Allegro was subjected to acrimonious fury and ostracised. He died in 1988.

The book which caused such fury was The Sacred Mushroom And The Cross

Allegro argued that Jesus never existed and was a mythological creation of early Christians under the influence of psychoactive mushroom extracts such as psilocybin.[1]

Allegro also wrote The Dead Sea Scrolls And The Christian Myth

The book's aim was to show the logical progression of Jewish history through the writings and archaeology of Qumran, as opposed to the unique revelation of traditional Christianity.[9] Allegro suggested that traditional Christianity developed through a literal mis-interpretation of symbolic narratives found in the scrolls by writers who did not understand the minds of the Essenes. He further argued that Gnostic Christianity developed directly from the Essenes and that Jesus Christ was a fictional character based on a real person, who had helped established the Essene movement (or "Way") and lived in the first century BCE, around one hundred years before the traditional period of New Testament events.[1] In a chapter entitled "Will the real Jesus Christ please stand up", Allegro referred to this man as the Teacher of Righteousness.[3][7]

So was Jesus a fictionalised character based on a real person or the result of eating hallucinogenic mushrooms?

The Teacher Of Righteousness

The Teacher of Righteousness (in Hebrew: מורה הצדק Moreh ha-Tzedek) is a figure found in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, most prominently in the Damascus Document.[1] This document speaks briefly of the origins of the sect, probably Essenes, 390 years after the Babylonian exile and after 20 years of 'groping' blindly for the way. "God... raised for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of His heart".[2]
The Teacher is extolled as having proper understanding of the Torah, qualified in its accurate instruction,[3] and being the one through whom God would reveal to the community “the hidden things in which Israel had gone astray”.[4]

There are many ideas about the identity of this teacher but nobody knows who he really was. Did he even exist or was he invented to explain the origins of the sect?

Maybe there wasn't a real Jesus and a real Paul. When there are dozens of different theories as to why they didn't exist, though, they can't all be right.

[Mudhammam]

If there wasn't a real Paul, who authored the letters that are generally agreed upon to be his authentic work? I'm fairly certain that others before Marcion were aware of Paul and his epistles. This hypothesis seems to be grasping at straws.

[Confused Ape]

If there wasn't a real Paul, who authored the letters that are generally agreed upon to be his authentic work? I'm fairly certain that others before Marcion were aware of Paul and his epistles. This hypothesis seems to be grasping at straws.

I've spent many an hour looking into things such as did Marcion invent Paul or was it somebody earlier? Who wrote the letters which aren't generally agreed upon to be authentic? Did Marcion forge the originals of the inauthentic ones and were they then altered by Tertullian who denounced the Marcion heresy and declared Paul to be orthodox?

Tertullian. Five Books Against The Marcion Heresy


I think the point of Humphreys' approach is to indicate that skeptics need to evaluate their sources. If they don't they could end up with something like "Jesus was the fabrication of the non-existent Paul who was a pupil of Simon the Magus who mightn't have existed either." This wouldn't be very helpful when discussing Christianity with believers.

[Mudhammam]

If there wasn't a real Paul, who authored the letters that are generally agreed upon to be his authentic work? I'm fairly certain that others before Marcion were aware of Paul and his epistles. This hypothesis seems to be grasping at straws.

I've spent many an hour looking into things such as did Marcion invent Paul or was it somebody earlier? Who wrote the letters which aren't generally agreed upon to be authentic? Did Marcion forge the originals of the inauthentic ones and were they then altered by Tertullian who denounced the Marcion heresy and declared Paul to be orthodox?

Tertullian. Five Books Against The Marcion Heresy


I think the point of Humphreys' approach is to indicate that skeptics need to evaluate their sources. If they don't they could end up with something like "Jesus was the fabrication of the non-existent Paul who was a pupil of Simon the Magus who mightn't have existed either." This wouldn't be very helpful when discussing Christianity with believers.

It seems like a pointless endeavor though I can support anything that arouses a person's skepticism and causes him/her to do further research.

This is one reason I have a difficult time taking New Testament studies seriously. For every different "expert" you come across, you get a WIDELY varying sequence of events. Unless you're dealing with Evangelicals, in which it's all true because...well let's face it, their mental stability depends on it (or so they subconsciously believe it does).

I don't agree with Robert Price's Jesus myth hypothesis but I support his approach, which is methodological naturalism. He isn't philosophically opposed to the possibility of miracles (though in the biblical sense, I am), he just doesn't see any evidence to suggest any occurred in Christianity's origins. I concur and I'd even say that much should be obvious to any one with half an imagination.

Anyway, it seems like just going off some rudimentary historical method, there's little reason to doubt the existence of a first-century Hellenistic Jew named Paul though, as was true for the first couple centuries, his existence--as with Jesus--is of little significance.

[Confused Ape]

I think that somebody, who probably went by the name of Paul, decided to take Christianity to the Gentiles and start a new religion. This doesn't mean that everything in his 'official' biography is true, though. There are many different theories as to why everything isn't true so it's a case of looking into them and deciding which are valid arguments.

[Minimalist]

The whole point of JNE is to show that there is no coherent story behind any of the jesus myth. Different threads from different times and places were glossed over....and more myths like "Paul" were invented to provide simplistic answers to problems which were obvious to early church officials. They are no so obvious to us anymore because the heretical groups which caused the problems no longer exist.

Paul is put into a first century context and frankly, it is very shaky at best.

[Confused Ape]

The whole point of JNE is to show that there is no coherent story behind any of the jesus myth.

Paul is put into a first century context and frankly, it is very shaky at best.

Agreed. If you were going to pick one of the theories which Humphreys' includes which one would it be, though? Is the idea that Paul was a pupil of Simon the Magus as plausible as some of the other ideas people have come up with? Does shaky ground excuse coming up with ideas which are just as shaky?

What about Allegro's idea that Jesus was the result of a mushroom cult?

The Sacred Mushroom And The Cross - Reconsideration

Recent studies of Allegro's work have given new supporting linguistic evidence and led to calls for his theories to be re-evaluated by the mainstream.[8][9] In November 2009 The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross was reprinted in a 40th anniversary edition with 30-page addendum by Prof. Carl A. P. Ruck of Boston University.[10] A far more articulate exposition of Allegro's insights into early Christianity and his discoveries studying the Dead Sea Scrolls was published in his 1979 book The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth.

The work of Allegro also gained recognition and consideration by such late proponents of experiential psychedelia through pharmacological interaction as Terrence McKenna, who cited Allegro's claims of certain psychoactive fungi analogizing the Eucharist, spoken in a live lecture in the 1990s

Carl A P Ruck

Carl Ruck is best known for his work along with other scholars in mythology and religion on the sacred role of entheogens, or psychoactive plants that induce an altered state of consciousness, as used in religious or shamanistic rituals. His focus has been on the use of entheogens in classical western culture, as well as their historical influence on modern western religions. He currently teaches a mythology class at Boston University that presents this theory in depth.

What about Terence McKenna, though?

Terence McKenna

Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American philosopher, psychonaut, ethnobotanist, lecturer, and author. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, culture, technology and the theoretical origins of human consciousness.

He was called the "Timothy Leary of the 90's",[1][2] "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism"[3] and the "intellectual voice of Rave culture".[4] He also formulated a concept about the nature of time based on fractal patterns he claimed to have discovered in the I Ching, which he called novelty theory,[3] believing this predicted the end of time in the year 2012.[5] His promotion of novelty theory and its connection to the Mayan calendar is credited as one of the factors leading to the widespread beliefs about 2012 eschatology.[6] Novelty theory is considered pseudoscience.[7][8]

As we're still here in 2014, maybe McKenna's interest in Allegro's theory doesn't help when it comes to evaluating the role of mushrooms in the origins of Christianity.

[Minimalist]

The simple fact is that no xtian writer refers to any "Paul" prior to the mid 2d century.

They tell us that Marcion issued a canon which included a stripped down version of "luke" and ten epistles ( of Paul? or was that name invented later and attached?) We don't know for sure if Marcion called him "Paul" or not.

For whatever reason, the proto-orthodox saw something useful in the so-called paul writings and 'resurrected' them for their own use. Did Marcion write these up himself? Did he have a few letters written by someone which he edited? We'll probably never know.

But 2 Cor. 11 32 does describe an actual historical political reality. Unfortunately for xtians that reality takes place between 84 and 64 BC And 2 Cor. is always included in the list of "authentic" pauline epistes.

I'm leaning towards Marcion inventing him and later xtians finding the concept useful.

[Mudhammam]

The simple fact is that no xtian writer refers to any "Paul" prior to the mid 2d century.

Simply put, you're incorrect: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Epistle_of_Clement

[truthBtold]

Why didnt jesus write a little about himself?? His hands are a good holder for a pen!