Klaus Schilling’s summary
I Jesus Christ Never Existed
For centuries, church tradition had to defend their historical Jesus in order to consolidate their faith. Many documents had to be fabricated for that purpose. Only a few decades ago, Pope Pius became tired of the struggle and declared Jesus to be a fact of faith only.
Emilio Bossi wrote a book “Gesu` Cristo non e` mai esistito” (Jesus Christ has never existed), where he compared Jesus to Socrates, both having a circle of disciples, but left nothing written on their own. Alas, the disciples of Socrates were no analphabetic parrots of the tradition of the fathers.
The sociopolitical power of the Vatican oppressed any free thought in Europe for many centuries until the Enlightenment, when humanism without superstition was made possible.
Jesus is an ideal invented for midrash of Scripture.
The Jewish people migrated from Central Asia into the Semitic areas of the Near East. It was subject to a lot of hostility and oppression. The Jewish religion grew in that environment. Starting as a people of nomads and itinerant craftsmen, it evolved into a people of merchants. At this stage, literacy became important.
The sect of the Essenes demonstrated elaborate community ethics. Their messianic expectations in the Diaspora gave cause to the formation of Christianity.
Christianity was thus a tool for survival of the diaspora Jews. It became more and more popular among the high society of the Roman empire. An authoritarian class of priests thus was established once Christianity took over the rule of the Empire.
Modern science shows that a lot of early Christian writings are forged and faked.
II The Proofs and Counterproofs
Tacitus, Suetonius, Plinius, Philo, Iustus Tiberias, and Flavius Iosephus have all been tampered with by church scribes in order to camouflage Christian origins.
According to Tacitus, Augustus and Tiberius expulsed some Judeo-Egyptian superstition from Rome in early first century.
The most important author for the formation of Christianity is Philo Alexandrinus. In a lost tractate, Philo supposedly wrote about the good god Serapis. The tractate may have been similar to the Christian Gospels and ruthlessly abused by plagiarists. Thus non-apologist scholars showed that Christianity started out in Alexandria. Philo adapted Judaism to fit in a framework of hellenic philosophy, especially Platonism.
Of course Philo would have known about a historical Jesus of his generation, if there had been any.
The same silence extends to the apostles, to Mary and Joe, and so on.
Church tradition is built on fabrications and forgery only, the head of the enterprise having been Eusebius of Caesarea in Constantine times.
Starting with the Tuebingen school, the historical value of the bible was step by step reduced to naught. Like Jesus himself, it’s a heap of fictions, arrangements, and adaptions.
Jean Guitton underlined the significance of perspective in NT research. While denying the historical existence of Jesus, Couchoud affirmed the ideal existence of the same.
Voltaire exposed the parallels of John’s Gospels and Philo’s collected works, and that Christian philosophy is essentially Philo’s.
Historical criticism also suggests that Paul is a creation of Marcion.
The bible, claiming inerrancy by appeal to higher authority. is full of primitive contradictions and humbug.
Hundreds of gospels have been written before church dogmatics reduced them to four. Laterre holds that they all copied one from another, starting with Mark’s, in a chaotic race, and from sources being in part prior to Hebrew scripture.
Since second century, a historified Jesus was invented for sociopolitical reasons. Finally the Empire was assimilated during the rule of Constantine.
A. Loisy concluded that the Christian church based its structure and dogmatics essentially on Essene doctrine and ritual. The Jesus figure is thus derived from Essenic legends.
Prosper Alfaric, author of “L’e’cole de la raison” (school of reason) expounds on the efforts of reconciliation of Christian faith and reason throughout church history. Alfaric underlined the parallelism of Jesus and pagan solar cults, and sees the Qumran scrolls as the missing link for proving that Jesus is the legendary Chrestos of the Esseni. The Habakuk scroll mentions a righteous teacher, a traitor, and a vicious priest. The scroll predates the Common era and its legendary character influenced a lot the Gospel stories.
Christianity is nothing but syncretism of a diversity of Jewish sects, seasoned with pagan cult elements. The term Evangelion (gospel) already appears in Homer’s Odyssea. It was applied to Emperor Augustus, as is seen in an inscription in Priene in Ionia.
The gospels “according to” someone were not actually written by those persons. Justin Martyr did not know of acts, gospels, and letters. This underlines that they were not known much prior to 150.
Marcion was a contemporary of Justin. He came up with a letter of Paul to the Romans, for the very first time. The letter was not to the liking of the Catholic church, like the other main letters, and went through dogmatic mutilations and redactions before being added to the canonical writings.
For Engels, the Apocalypse is the oldest of the NT writings.
Origenes accuses Flavius Iosephus of neglecting Jesus. This shows that the TF is posterior to Origenes and faked, just as the Testimonium Tacitum. Suetonius wrote about Jews instigated by a certain Chrestus, which can be seen as a reference to legendary essenic Chrestus.
Christians in the proper sense never incited revolts and similar stuff but proved as obedient inhabitants of the Empire. The letter of Plinius has been shown as falsified from front to back by various methods.
Seneca was the first prominent carrier of Christian ethics.
Judaism built much on the solar deity cults of the Mediterranean world, especially the Osiris-Isis cult. This carried over to Christianity. Mary is essentially Isis. Seth, the enemy of Isis- Osiris-Horus, turned into Herod. Christianity is thus just a renaming exercise. A very important source is the Mitras cult and its relative, the Sol Invictus.
Hobbes and Spinoza proved that the Pentateuch is from the Hasmonean era. Reimarus shattered a lot of superstitious church tradition by showing that the whole fulfilled prophetic stuff smells fishy. Dupuis showed the absurdity of the humanity of Jesus by usage of solar mythology that was abundant in ancient times. Kalthoff underlined the socio-economical aspects of early Christianity which fit nicely into the general situation of Rome and its environment.
III The Fabrications
Extrabiblical evidence for Jesus is based on Flavius Iosephus, Tacitus, Plinius II, and Suetonius.
An educated romanophile Jew like Flavius would never write such a humbug, as underlined by Pater Gillet. No one before Eusebius dared to refer to Flavius as a witness for Jesus. Phocius of Constantinople already stated the absurdity of the testimony ascribed to Flavoius Iosephus in the 9th century.
Tacitus wrote about Christ-driven sectarians in Rome as enemies of mankind. The interpolatedness of this passage is plainly self-evident.
Ganeval noted the expulsion of Jews and Egyptians, members of one superstition, from Rome, concluding that this must refer to Alexandrian Esseni, followers of Chrestus.
Suetonius explicitly used the term Chrestus for the troublemaker.
Also the forgedness of the passage in Plinius’ letter to Traian is self-evident.
If there had been a real Jesus Christ, the church would not have invented fraudulent witnesses.
IV The Painful Silence of History
Ganeval emphasised the thorough similarities of Christianity and Osiris cult, which go ultimately back to Sun worship.
From the fragments of Papias it becomes obvious that the Gospels he saw referring to the Egyptian Christ.
Based on Phocius, Ganeval underlined that most early Christian theologers had absolutely no concept of a physical, historical Jesus. Heresiologer Epiphanius insinuates in his refutations that Jesus was essentially seen as Horus, closest relative of Osiris.
For Hieronymus, those heresies go back to apostolic times. Emperor Hadrian supposedly wrote that the Christians were worshippers of Serapis, and vice versa [see John Abrowus’ post at Jesus Mysteries around June 11, 2004]. Philo’s writings and the UrGospels certainly refer to Serapis, not Jesus. Even Clems Alexandrinus and Origenes still dance to a similar tune. They did not believe in a Jesus incarnate, as they did not believe at all in incarnation. Phocius mentions this in his comments on Clement’s disputes.
Dupuis and Volney exercised a thorough study of comparative mythology, showing that the Gospels fit into a general mythical framework. Philo described the ascetic sect of the Therapeutes, proper precursors of Christian monastery movements.
V A Jesus Christ without History
Now that it’s made clear that Jesus was an anthropomorhised God, and not a deified man, it will be examined where the picture of Jesus as a man painted in the Gospels derives from.
Jesus means the God’s saviour.
Christ means anointed, Messiah in semitic languages. This is a term used occasionally in the Old Testament, referring to various kings of glory, including gentiles like Cyrus the Parthic and the Punic King of Tyrus.
Thus for centuries, the idea of God’s anointed king of glory lurked around.
The Jesus Christ of the Christian Gospels now turns out as a figment of second century with the goal of fulfilling Scripture.
Jesus Christ may be seen as an actor on the stage. He implements the dram around Golgotha and vanishes from the stage after this act. Already the birth narrative according to Matthews fulfills various prophets. Many more examples are listed here [and generally known to most of us].
Messianism was an invention of the priest class in order to silence and exploit further the common people. Often the context between prophesy and fulfilling Gospel event is blurred and skewed.
The transformation of prophetic phantasy into evangelical pseudo-reality was awkward and cumbersome.
Proscriptions of Christianity only started with second century. The ideal of martyrdom was propagated by many church fathers starting with that time, expounding on the example of Jesus’ own passion. Ireneus saw the epistle of Peter as way-shower. The epistles express a pending eschatological expectation. The connection of martyrdom and eschatological expectation also shines through in Paul’s epistles.
VI Jesus and the Time
Only after centuries did the year of Jesus’ birth get fixed to today’s traditional date by Dionys Minor. Many considerations were necessary.
Also the date within the year was subject to disputes and schisms during an extended period, ranging from early winter to early spring.
The finally prevailing 25th of December is not by chance coinciding with the legendary birth date of Mitras, another solar redeemer deity.
The choice was made by a John Chrysostom. Only Matthew’s and Luke’s mention a birth tale at all. The tales are full of superstition and wannabe Tanakh fulfilling. Same is valid for the Passion narratives.
Pilatus was never aware of anything that may be named Jesus Christ.
And the life in-between is filled with superstitious thaumaturgy.
Havet underlined the unreality of Jesus, unlike that of Socrates, from the former’s realistic description by his disciples Plato and Xenophanes. Renan emphasises the imaginative power of the early Christians leading to phantastic stories. Miron admits the impossibility of knowing anything about the life of Jesus. Labanca refutes the mere possibility of reading any biography of Jesus from the Gospels, who are solely theological tractates, and nowhere near historical records.
VII Jesus in the Gospels
The Gospels are tales about the God Jesus, not the man. Verne`s showed that everything in the bible is a symbol and midrash.
Only Ireneus started with assigning names to the Gospels, connected by ‘according to’, which does not say anything about authorship. The first to refer to the Gospels was Papias of Hieropolis, who was martyred under Marcus Aurelius. Early Christians were barely literate, and whatever may have been written is most likely destroyed, especially under Emperor Constantine, on whose behalf the council of Nicea was invested with the approval and rejection of Christian writings according to the needs to the Roman state.
The Gospels are utterly full of inconsistencies, anachronisms, anatopisms, and mutual discord. Holy inspiration was invented in order to silence rising critics. This is common practice in religious thinking. Stefanoni figured that those writings reflect the spirit of the time and place they were written, but not the Holy Spirit.
VIII Jesus Christ Is a Miracle
The Gospels are full of thaumaturgy, Jesus being involved both actively and passively in miracle tales. The church was always in an inner conflict between Jesus’ humanity and his divinity. The miraculous, supernatural aspects prevail. Not much is there to distinguish Jesus from other gods walking around in human shape. John’s Gospel presents Jesus as the incarnate word (logos) of God.
IX Jesus Christ, a Biblical Myth
From the absurdity of all pretended historical evidence for Jesus we already know that we deal here with a myth, based on the Tanakh and general traits of solar deities.
La Sagesse warns against the dangers of a connection of theocracy and capitalism.
Again, the construction of Jesus after Tanakh prophets and other legends is pointed out.
Even the number of books in the bible has a symbolic function. OT and NT sum up to 72 books, akin to the number of Elders that climbed Sinai along with Moses.
The messiah is told to be a Nazarean, according to scripture, and thus the village Nazareth got invented by the church fathers in order to fulfill this. Also, the temptation of Jesus in the desert is anticipated by the Tanakh. The 40 days in the desert are akin to the 40 years of Israel in the Exodus. Jeremiah and Isaiah both anticipate the temple cleansing. Like Moses changed water into blood, Jesus changed water into wine, his own blood. Jesus death around the Paschal feast is akin to his role as the Paschal lamb, alluded in Scripture.
And so on and so on and so on … the historicity of Jesus thus becomes a bottomless joke.
X The Contradictions Concerning Jesus Christ
Luke and Matthew give genealogies of Jesus in order to derive Jesus in male bloodline from David. But on the other hand, Jesus is not son of a human man, thus the whole genealogies turn into a ridiculous joke.
The birth dates of Jesus according to Matthew and Luke differ by eleven years.
Mark and John don’t see any value in Jesus’ infancy and start with the baptismal by John Baptist.
Bossi noted how absurd it is that Mary, after the miraculous birth, is still astonished about Jesus’ thaumaturgy and powerful appearance.
Luke’s and John’s descriptions of Samarians towards Jesus conflict.
The synoptics let Jesus die the eve of Paschah, John on the day of Paschah.
And so on and so on …
Bossi gave a more detailed description of all the contradictions.
XI The Contradictions of the Gospels
Only a few days after the glorious march on Jerusalem, the same people that cheered Jesus request his crucifixion. Pilatus is told to be convinced of Jesus’ innocence, yet sentences the same absurdly. It also contradicts Philo’s picture of Pilatus, who would never respect the mood of the people and recklessly exercise his office.
Paul’s letters invent a certain Apollos with a loose relation to the apostles. While knowing everything about Jesus, the same Apollos only knew about the baptismal scene, according to the apostolic acts. What a ridiculous joke. First Corinthians equates Apollos even with Jesus.
Paul describes Jesus as a theological entity rather than a historical one.
Romans 1:8 makes Paul appear enthusiastic about the diffusion of the faith from Rome. But this doesn’t jibe with himself facing serious accusation by same Roman believers.
Eusebius says that the Christianity of Egypt is Therapeutist, and Tacitus confirms that Judaism and Egyptian cult formed a superstitious unity.
XII Some Sources of Christianity
Indian deity Vishnu had a series of incarnations (avatars), the most prominent being Krishna and Buddha. There are some fancy parallels between Krishna and Jesus, like the annunciation and the missing corpse.
Also, Buddha shows some parallels to Jesus.
Like the Pope, the Dalai Lama is under a nimbus of infallibility.
The link between the Indian world and Christianity may be the cult of Mitra, the solar deity of Iranian origin. Jesus appears as a cheap copy of Mitra in several aspects.
Firmicus emphasised the similarity of Christian and Mithraic liturgy and ceremonialism.
Horus, Bacchus, and Adonis play a similar trumpet. Already the Phoenicians had a sort of passion rite.
Redeemer gods were usually solar deities, also in cultures off the Mediterranian and Indian zones, like Belus , the celtic deity.
Dupuis described the solar myth in detail.
Jesus is thus just one more example of one large brood of solar – redeemer -deities.
XIII Jesus Christ, a Religious Copy
As many elements of the redemption theology of Christianity were present within the neighbour cultures of Judaism, one just had to loan and patch them together.
For example, Yahveh and Ahura Mazda both approximately mean “that what is”. The Genesis derives also otherwise a lot from the Zentavesta.
For example the story of Adam, Eve, and the fall is paralleled within Zoroastrian Scripture. The paradise is from an Iranian word for garden. The Purgatory has been used already by Plato, who divided souls into pure, cleansable, and beyond hope.
Chaldeans and Phoenicians , like Jews, specialised in commerce. Religion turned out as an excellent merchandise. Becoming literate, it was easy to copy and distribute legends that have been patched together.
Emilio Bossi figured that Manas, Egyptian lawgiver, and Manu, Indian lawgiver, can’t be quite unrelated, and also Moses of the Hebrew and Minos of the Minoic culture should be seen in this brood. Following Jacolliot , it doesn’t take much to see that Krishna and Jesus are in a similar relation. Egypt may be speculated to have been colonised from India.
Thus in general, Jesus is an amalgamation of divinity aspects of older cultures.
XIV The Redeemer Gods
The sun was the first source of energy human life had, until mankind was able to kindle fire itself.
Many solar deities like Mitra also have been worshipped as fire gods.
The discovery of fire gave mankind an immense advantage in controlling the world.
Plato and Aristotle deemed sun worship as rational to some extent, although they were more sceptic to popular religiosity in general.
Solar deities like Salvitri and Mitra tend to be born shortly after the winter solstice. Herodot already knew about Mitra. Plutarch tells us that persian pirates brought the Mitra cult to Sicily.
Jesus’ life is somewhat typical for the life of a solar deity. Birth around winter solstice, resurrection around spring equinox.
For Egyptians, the sun was the celestial father. This is underlined by some obelisk dragged into the Circus Maximus at Rome.
Jesus is just the same old sun god in a new dress.
XV Jesus Christ Is a Solar Myth
Dupuis derived the general pattern of the biography of solar deities like Jesus from astronomical observations, esp. solstices and equinoxes, and so on. Solar cult prevails in modern Christianity as well. Jesus is the lamb of God, akin to the significance of Easter, usually celebrated during the passage of the sun through the zodiacal sign of Aries. Origenes justified sun worship for its symbolic reason. Tertullian admits that Christian resurrection is akin to the Mitraic counterpart.
The portuguese term for sunday (domingo) derives from Latin dominus.
Mani and Satornil identified the sun as the Christ and true home of the soul.
The church tried to hide the fact that Jesus is just yet another solar deity after a long struggle.
XVI Other Sources of Christianity
As already seen, all of the Jesus story is copied from those peoples the Jews had contacted throughout their history, thus there’s nothing new or unique in Christianity at all, with the possible exceptiopn of eternal damnation.
For example, the golden rule is a whole lot older and spread across the western hemisphere. Pythagoreans taught forgiving of enemies before Common Era. Panecumenical fraternity was e.g. promoted by Philo Alexandrinus. Plato emphasised the value of virtues. The Sicilians abandoned bloody sacrifices during the wars of Hanibal with Rome. Epictetus and Marcus Aurel may be considered as perfect teachers of Christian virtues. And so on …
XVII Judaism and Christianity
Most of the Jewish roots of Christianity have been floating around already prior to Judaism, like the role of free will and sin. Psychic immortality has been established in the pre-Zoroastrian Iranic religion.
Many other cultures did so, too. Monotheism and trinity are Indian.
Church fathers had to admit that pagans held these concepts since ancient times. The divine word was already an Egyptian concept.
Stoics like Seneca and Cicero cherished concepts of Christian ethics and virtues.
Christianity is result of a hellenisiation of Judaism. Therapeutae abandoned Jewish orthodoxy because it was impractical in the diaspora and a source of conflicts. They practice strict ascetism.
Philo was the involuntary founder of Christianity. He emphasised the major currents of Hellenic diaspora Judaism: Essenic eschatology, Therapeutic ethics, and the doctrine of the Logos personified. Also, the personification of wisdom in Hellenised Jewish literature, especially the wisdom of Solomon, fits in this context. Philo established the role of mercy (Charis) which God shows towards mankind, and the mediating role of the Logos. The logos have also deemed the bread of life, which anticipates already the Christian Eucharist.
Paulus, Origenes, and Clemens Alexandrinus stayed in this framework.
XVIII Christianity without Jesus Christ
It’s plain obvious that Christianity works well without Jesus Christ.
The role priesthood is akin to that of the Brahmanic tradition who had established the necessity of professional priests long ago. The situation is similar in Buddhism, with its monasteries and priests. The Zoroastrian priesthood established an inner hierarchy. Already in Egypt, the priests formed the ruling social and political class, responsible even for voting for the king.
Indians also practiced masochist practices that were popular in medieval Europe, like self-flogging.
The Romans practiced human sacrifices for the sake of human race.
Chastity votes were practiced in Buddhism. Pure virgins as mothers of deities abound in the ancient world.
Greeks invented the week of seven days, each dedicated to its own deity. And so on …
Thus Christianity is one eclectic copycat.
Tagged: Christianity, Jesus myth