The Historical Christ

[dagda]

I have heard (and read) much speculation that Christ was not an historical figure. Looking at the evidence for and against, I would have to conclude that this view is just silly. Although it is not beyond the realms of probability that the Christ was made-up, it is far more likely that he existed in some shape or form.

For the following argument I will take a secular historical view point. Although it is against my own personal beliefs, for the purpose of this argument I will assume that the miracles etc found in the Gospels are a consequence of Chinese whispers and coincidence.

I think that this link sums up the argument nicely http://www.gotquestions.org/did-Jesus-exist.html

There is also speculation that these extra-biblical sources are forgeries. First of all this is unlikely as the majority are less than pro-Christian (why would you make critical evidence?) Secondly, there is little to no evidence of this being the case so we will have to assume that the sources are real until evidence proves otherwise. Then there is the huge problem presented by a 'faked' Christ- how faked him and why? Then there is the minor miracle of how they managed to keep such a massive con a
secret.

[Kyuuketsuki]

Oh dear, not again!

OK, the following is an adaptation of a review I wrote some time ago.

---

For some time after ceasing to be Catholic I had envisaged Jesus Christ as some kind of, then, Jewish leader (perhaps terrorist, perhaps "freedom-fighter", perhaps wise, perhaps soft-spoken) and the kind of man around which legends are built ... a kind of early day Robin Hood if you like. However, after reading a number of books and reports (including Freke & Gandy's "The Jesus Mysteries" and web pieces by Frank R. Zindler on the American Atheists sit), I had begun to consider the possibility of a world in which there had never been a Jesus as a literal historical individual. To an atheist who, because of his religious upbringing, is more active against fundamentalist Christian claims this is a key consideration, the foundation of the claims of modern Christianity are built upon this. If there was no literal Jesus Christ then everything every Christian cult has claimed since 1000CE or earlier is built upon a lie (or at least a mistaken claim).

Core to those who believe in Christianity is the crucifixion & resurrection of their Jesus Christ whose father is the one true god and whose mother was a virgin. According to Freke & Gandy Christianity is not unique in these claims and has not only been copied but, it seems, pre-dated (by several hundred years) by similar pagan beliefs, the so-called "mystery religions". The Egyptian Osiris, the Greek Dionysus, the Syrian Adonis, the Italian Bacchus & the Persian Mithras all show an uncanny similarity to the central claims made by Christianity. Yet all of these pagan beliefs are regarded as myth or fable by Christians and many historians yet no such charge is levied against Christianity. Why? Freke and Gandy refer to these various dying & resurrecting godmen as "Osiris-Dionysus" and see them as showing a great degree of similarity in their multi-level teachings that were interpreted more literally by the uninitiated and allegorically by the initiated. Core to this belief system was the concept that "self" comprised of two components, the lower being or eidolon and the upper, spiritual being, or daemon. Initiation into these religions involved the initiated dying to one's old self and resurrecting as one (the eidolon & daemon united) and, interestingly, the Greek word for "resurrect" also means "awaken."

So are the claims made by Christianity are based on lie or error? Perhaps modern day Christianity is more the result of political power plays & human corruption than it is a real attempt to discern some kind of spiritual truth?

Viewed in this light many authors now make a number of quite extraordinary claims revolving around the central concept that Jesus Christ did not literally exist but was, instead, a composite character created to represent a higher spiritual being that we all have within ourselves (the Christ within). So, was the Jesus we all know (and either hate, love or ignore) a Pagan God?

Freke & Gandy say the following are key concepts of Christianity:

• Jesus was the saviour of mankind.
  
• Jesus was God made man (a Godman).
  
• The Son of God equates to the Father.
  
• Jesus is born of a virgin who, after her death, is honoured in heaven as divine.
  
• Jesus is born in a cave on either 25th December or 6th January).
  
• A star heralds Jesus' birth.
  
• Jesus is portrayed as a quiet man long hair and a beard.
  
• At a wedding, Jesus turns water into wine.
  
• Jesus' divinity is only later recognised by his disciples.
  
• Jesus has 12 disciples.
  
• Jesus rides triumphantly on a donkey with crowds waving branches.
  
• Jesus is a just man who is accused of heresy and the introduction of a new religion.
  
• Jesus is hung on a tree or crucified.
  
• Jesus dies as a sacrifice to redeem the sins of the world.
  
• Jesus' corpse is wrapped in linen and anointed with myrrh.
  
• Jesus dies, descends to hell, resurrects before his disciples and ascends into heaven where he is enthroned by God and waits until judgment day to appear as the divine judge.
  
• Jesus' empty tomb is visited by three women followers.
  
• Jesus offers his disciples the chance to be born again.

However, Freke & Gandy claim these are matched by fables of the composite being they refer to as Osiris-Dionysus

• Jesus is visited by three wise men or Magi.
  
• The Magi bring gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
  
• Jesus is baptized.
  
• Jesus' disciples symbolically eat bread and drink wine to commune with him.

They also note that many pagan religions featured baptism & the symbolic eating & drinking of bread & wine as a means of communing with their saviour and that the Magi are followers of Osiris-Dionysus:

• Jesus offers his followers elemental baptisms of water, air and fire.
  
• Jesus heals the sick.
  
• Jesus exorcises demons.
  
• Jesus provides miraculous meals.
  
• Jesus helps fishermen to miraculous catches of fish.
  
• Jesus calms storms.
  
• Jesus is a wandering wonder-worker who is not honoured in his home town.
  
• Jesus attacks hypocrites.
  
• Jesus stands up to tyranny.
  
• Jesus goes to his death predicting he will rise again.

Freke & Gandy further noted that many of the wandering Mystery sages are credited with similar or identical deeds.

An historical figure of Jesus Christ is central to western culture & religion, so much so that it is now hard to question his existence, indeed the mere mention of his name brings easy visualisation of flowing white robes, long hair, beard etc. where the 8th century Jesus is portrayed in a more Romanic style, wearing a roman tunic, short-haired and clean shaven (likely to be how St. Paul would have viewed him). Freke and Gandy claim that the "historic" Jesus is a human creation and that there is little or no evidence for his existence and what we do have " reveals itself as forged, flawed or non-verifiable".

From this they make the following statements, the essential core of the book:

• Christian history is not an accurate reflection of real history.
  
• Christianity was not revolutionary as it claimed even today but grew out of pre-existing pagan religions and, in its original form, differed in relatively minor ways from them.
  
• Like the followers of other pagan or "Mystery" religions early Christians were Gnostics whose scriptures were allegorical encodings of initiation rites & teachings acting at multiple levels for the uninitiated & initiated.
  
• Early Christian initiates knew that their teachings were not literal.
  
• Christian Gnostics believed that Jesus represented one's ability to die to your old self and be reborn at one with the universe and in this respect were more-or-less identical with pre-existing & and co-existing pagan religions.
  
• Circumstances (revolving around the Roman dominance of Israel & brutal reprisals against uprisings) conspired to split non-initiated & initiated allowing unscrupulous individuals acting in the name of the non-initiated to dominate the religion.
  
• In the 4th century CE the Roman Emperor Constantine legalised Christianity beliefs in order to use its core message of "One Kingdom, One God" to justify his parallel desire for "One Empire, One Emperor" and, by doing so, formed the basis for the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
  
• All of the other Christian cults derive from Catholicism.

It is fairly well documented that Rome converted to Christianity under Emperor Constantine, and then went on to strengthen its power becoming the one true religion of the Rome Empire is convincing (even beguiling). To achieve this the Holy Roman church began a systematic campaign designed to "erase" other faiths (particularly the Pagan mysteries) by altering & destroying those religions' scriptures, by branding those who disagreed with them as heretics and when that was insufficient turning to lie & forgery (both Eusebius, the Catholic church's "father", & Justin Martyr claimed that the Mystery religions only had their own dying and resurrecting godmen through Satanically inspired plagiarism ("diabolical mimicry").

In Freke & Gandy's view the original Christian mysteries were perverted into the more orthodox religions due to persecution of the Jews resulting in the need for a saviour to lift the Jewish people from despair. The eventual sacking of Jerusalem in first century CE threw the Christian believers across the Roman Empire as slaves & refugees, splitting apart non-initiates from initiates and thus allowing a more literal form of Christianity to rise from the scattered ashes of the outer mystery form of the religion. The new religion preached that salvation could be found only by believing in a literal Jesus Christ and, once adopted as the official religion of Rome, hunted down the original Gnostics as heretics and apostates of true Christianity. The authors strongly imply that Christianity alone would likely not have survived to what it is today had it not been for Rome ... the hierarchical nature of Rome lent itself far better to the strictly literal outer mysteries and Emperor Constantine used them to justify his stance of one Empire, one Emperor.

From the perspective of an atheist and a child of Catholic dogma I have found it incredibly easy to accept the basic claim that orthodox Christianity has set culture & science back many years and even find the idea that the ancient Greeks had established the diameter of the Earth fairly accurately (Eratosthenes of Cyrene, 275-195 BCE) and that accurate models of the solar system had been proposed (though I could find little to support this claim) quite beguiling and it is easy to envisage that the majority of this knowledge was destroyed by literalist Christianity's pursuit of a human-centric view of the universe.

Reviewing many of the sources on the internet and in books the idea that Jesus was created by a Jewish Gnostic cult, whilst radical, is to my mind quite believable. It is often claimed that, "most scholars agree that a man known as Jesus of Nazareth existed and was crucified around A.D. 30" yet there are an increasingly large number of historians now challenging that assumption. Not that I believe that they have definitively defeated or dismissed biblical claims but they have certainly opened the whole area up for discussion and that can, in my opinion, do little but good.

In researching my original review I encountered a number of critics who showed exceptional bias against the book, Geoff Robson & the "Venerable Bede" to name two. The majority of Robson's defence appears, to my mind, to be based on quibbles and claims that that biblical history is entirely accurate something I understand the majority of objective historians to not agree with. The supernatural aside, that is not to say the basic claims of Christianity are untrue, just that there appears to be little truth its claim to absolute historicity. Bede, on the other hand, chose to attack Freke & Gandy's qualifications and lack of peer-reviewed publications however a brief search of the web however revealed that Freke & Gandy are graduates of philosophy and classical civilisation (MA) respectively the former with some 20 books to his name. History is replete with examples of superbly qualified scientists who are quoted as authorities when opining (often wrongly) in areas that have nothing to do with their areas of expertise (and sometimes even within them) ... qualifications, whilst important, are often irrelevant at such times. It should have been quite obvious to the critic that if qualifications cannot definitively prove a person "fit" to have an opinion or be an "authority" on a subject then the lack of them cannot be used to definitively dismiss a view that has been expressed by that author. It is also worth noting that many of our greatest scientists and researchers have had no particular qualifications of note and I feel it pointless to criticise the authors on the basis of their qualifications when these (along with their interests) potentially make them ideal candidates for authors of such material. It is interesting that another reviewer of the book also says the exact opposite of Bede and refers to the authors as appearing to be "uniquely qualified to look into the connections between Christianity and other religious beliefs of the time."

Bede goes further to criticise the authors for claiming that ancient mystery sages "knew" the earth revolved around the sun and dismisses it on the basis of being "untrue" and "daft" and, though he does provide some brief reasoning in support of view, he appears more than anything to demonstrate his own lack of objectivity. The remainder of his critique appears to be a general dismissal based on the work of a number of pro-Christian historians whereas I feel that this book not so much proves its point as opens up the arena for a whole area of discussion.

References
"The Jesus Mysteries: Was Jesus A Pagan God?" Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy
"Did Jesus Exist?" Frank R. Zindler
"Review: Jesus, man or myth," David Allan Dodson
"Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy's 'The Jesus Mysteries'," Anthony Campbell.
"Was The 'Original Jesus' A Pagan God?" Tom Paine
"Don't be fooled by this Jesus Freke," Geoff Robson
"Tweedledee and Tweedledum on the Christian Faith," Venerable Bede
"'The Jesus Mysteries' opens a controversial can of worms," CNN Editorial
"Pagan Jesus?" Jenny Chisholm
"Historical Jesus," Austin Cline
"The Jesus Puzzle: Was There No Historical Jesus?" Earl Doherty

---

I will agree that the above needs some work and fresh research but since you have been too lazy to do your own research (simply dismissing the claim as "silly") I fail to see why I should bother overmuch either.

I don't "do" theists links BTW ... I expect anyone advancing their own views in such contentious areas to be able to write a fully justify their own POV.

Kyu

[dagda]

From what I can tell, your post has little or nothing to do with the argument at hand. Yes there are many valid points in there about the 'evils' of orthodoxy and how they set us back several hundred years. And yes, much of the story around Christ seems to be borrowed from other religions (the early Church Fathers noted this and wrote it off as tamperings from Satan) but none of this disproves an historical Christ figure.

What is more, there are several mistakes. The part about three Magi is crap. There is no refrence to how many Magi there was (we only know that there is more than one due to the plural), it is just assumed that there are three because there was three presents.
Also, the points you state are central to Christian faith is not accurate either. They are central to Catholic faith. That is not the same thing. Although you rightly state that all modern christian groups stem from the Catholic Church, for several centuries after (and before) Constintine the majority of Christians would have disagreed with your points.
I would like to state that I am taking this argument down a secular angle and that as a starting point, all miricles are assumed to be coincidence and embelishment.

'I don't "do" theists links BTW ... I expect anyone advancing their own views in such contentious areas to be able to write a fully justify their own POV.'

The reason I presented the link was that it pretty much covers the basics of the argument and provides a starting point for debate. Did you read the link or did you made up your mind when you saw the thread title?

[Kyuuketsuki]

Oh Dagda,

What a way to reject a post? One verbal sweep of your hand and it's done ... have you been taking lessons from Frodo?

The simple fact is there is no validatable evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ and the evidence most frequently claimed is either poorly interpreted or considered to be fraudulent.

IMO you didn't really provide that link as additional information because you didn't really make much of an argument therefore the link became your information. As I said earlier ... if you want to present an argument please post it here in your own words, copying & pasting large chunks of text is frowned upon and, if you think about it, providing a link as your evidence is pretty much the same thing.

Rather than link elsewhere or C/P why don't you sum up the basic points as to why you believe there was a physical Jesus Christ and then we can take it from there?

Kyu

[Tiberius]

If you guys want a debate I could easily set up the debate forum for such an event?

[dagda]

At your insistence, here we go.

Evidence from History

The Gospels

Before you say it, yes these can be considered bias and are riddled with flaws, but to discount them as evidence is poor history. For example, if I wished to study the rise of the Nazis, Mien Kampf would be useless on its own (extremely bias etc) but could be used in connection with other primary texts to argue a theory. In the same way, the Gospels can be used in connection to other texts to show Christ probably was an historical figure.


Roman/Jewish Sources


Tacitus, Josephus, Julius Africanus, the Babylonian Talmud, Lucian of Samosata, the Mara Bar-Serapion and Thallus are all non-Christian sources which make reference to a Christ figure in some way. Many of these sources are uncomplimentary ('so-called Messiah etc) and it is this fact which goes against the idea of forgery. Why create a source critical of you?

Extra-biblical Gospels

These add more weight to the other Gospels as they were written by people who tended to hate the orthodox authors of the other Christian sources. This makes co-operation in a giant scam unlikely.

The Lack of Evidence?

The name Christ is a Greek title. The lack of a proper name does not discredit the existence of Christ, however. This shows that the name has been lost (like so much) to the mists of time and the fires of hatred, not that the Christ never existed.
In fact, because the name has so clearly been lost, it makes evidence gathering more difficult (you try finding the records of a nameless man) hence goes some way to explaining the lack of sources with the real name of Christ upon it. Even if we discovered a mountain of papers, we would not know they showed us evidence.

What is more, I can think of few places which are more war-torn and blood soaked areas than Israel. The chances of records of a minor prophet in a back-water province at a time when there where hundreds of 'Son of God' wannabes is highly unlikely. That some did is a minor miracle but again explains why we have no 'real' name evidence. A lot gets lost in 2,000 years of war.

The idea that the existing evidence is a forgery seems groundless. I have yet to come across any evidence for the idea and, until I do, I will dismiss the possibility.

The other factor brought about by the forgery idea is who, why and when? I can think of no answer which satisfy me, perhaps you will have more luck.

[Kyuuketsuki]

At your insistence, here we go.

Well it's going to have to wait because I'm away for a few days ... given that I've just been though all this crap with Mark, whether I can be arsed to catch up when I return remains to be seen.

Kyu

[fr0d0]

You're being disingenuous I believe Kyu. Dagda addressed you fully and you dismiss with pre made yet largely irrelevant material. Now you dodge badly. Mark left because of your poor etiquette. Not a good way to represent this forum IMHO.

[Tiberius]

Trust me fr0d0, Kyu is leaving the forums for a few days for a good reason. He has made this reason know to the staff but not publicly so I won't be revealing it. He's not dodging.

[fr0d0]

OK I retract that statement then.