Unknown Novelists
"Disconcertingly,
we do not know who any of the authors of the four Gospels were. The traditions that they were written by Jesus' apostles Matthew
and John, and Paul's companions Mark and Luke, are in any case subject
to
grave and virtually insuperable doubts...
And even though it has
not been possible to establish who the evangelists are, they emerge
as four very distinct individuals – so distinct that
they often seem to present not one Jesus, but four."
– Michael Grant
(Jesus, 1977, p180,183) |
It
is not merely Christ, divine son of God, that is an article
of faith, but also the so-called "Jesus of history". A
liturgy of carefully crafted "proofs", a hallowed parade
of alleged witnesses, and a handful of dogmatically
interpreted
writings are
the sacraments of this faith.
What better explains a thousand different Jesuses than
the single word: fiction. |
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Part
1
Piety
and Dreams Sire a Godman
It is intuitively
satisfying to think that someone was behind the
towering legend. Yet like the worship of Horus or Mithras
a human life
was neither necessary nor helpful. |
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Part
2
Growing
the dream
The
teachings of the Jewish prophets – in essence, pronouncements
upon
God's Law and social criticism of their own age – were
re-purposed by the Christians as "fore-telling" their
own would-be hero, centuries into the future. |
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Part 3
Universal
Saviour
Every
miracle, every pronouncement and every micro-drama of the
godman's supposed existence was teased out of Jewish
scripture and
a handful of supplementary sources. Traditional pagan
motifs completed the detail. |
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Part 4
Hero
of the People
Rabbis,
radicals and rebels – 1st century Palestine had them in
abundance. But a 'life' conjured up from mystical fantasy,
a mass of
borrowed
quotations, copied story elements and a corpus of self-serving
speculation, does not constitute an historical reality. |
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Part
5
Glory – The
Greatest Man Who Never Lived
The total defeat of militant Jewish nationalism and the
eradication of a Jewish kingdom gave the incipient Christian
churches the final uplift they required. |
Helping
JesusNeverExisted to exist: |
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Copyright © 2005
by Kenneth Humphreys.
Copying is freely permitted, provided credit is given to the author and no
material herein is sold for profit.
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