part0006

The story of Jesus Christ can be found only in the forged books of the New Testament, an assortment of gospels and epistles that required many centuries and hands to create. As Dr. Lardner said, “…even so late as the middle of the sixth century, the canon of the New Testament had not been settled by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged…” lxiv Mead describes the confused compilation of the “infallible Word of God”:

In fact, it took well over a thousand years to canonize the New Testament, and the Old Testament canon remains different to this day in the Catholic and Protestant versions. This canonization also required many councils to decide which books were to be considered “inspired” and which “spurious.” Contrary to the impression given, these councils were not peaceful gatherings of the “good shepherds of Christ” but raucous free-for-alls between bands of thugs and their arrogant and insane bishops. As Keeler says:

The reader would err greatly did he suppose that in these assemblies one or two hundred gentlemen sat down to discuss quietly and dignifiedly the questions which had come before them for settlement. On the contrary, many of the bishops were ignorant ruffians, and were followed by crowds of vicious supporters who stood ready on the slightest excuse to maim and kill their opponents. lxvi

In fact, at the Council of Ephesus in 431 mobs consisting of the dregs of society and representing the warring factions of Antioch and Alexandria broke out in riots and killed many of each other. This melee was merely one of many, and this shedding of blood by Christian followers was only the beginning of a hideous centuries-long legacy.

But increasing freedom transformed our character to arrogance and sloth; we began envying and abusing each other, cutting our own throats, as occasion offered, with weapons of sharp-edged words; rulers hurled themselves at rulers and laymen waged party fights against laymen, and unspeakable hypocrisy and dissimulation were carried to the limit of wickedness.… Those of us who were supposed to be pastors cast off the restraining influence of the fear of God and quarrelled heatedly with each other, engaged solely in swelling the disputes, threats, envy, and mutual hostility and hate, frantically demanding the despotic power they coveted. lxvii

Such were the means by which the New Testament was finally canonized. Concerning the NT as it stands today, Wheless says:

The various gospels, of which only four are now accepted as “canonical” or “genuine,” are in actuality not the earliest Christian texts. The earliest canonical texts are demonstrably the Epistles of Paul, so it is to them that we must first turn in our investigation.

The various Pauline epistles contained in the New Testament form an important part of Christianity, yet these “earliest” of Christian texts never discuss a historical background of Jesus, even though Paul purportedly lived during and after Jesus’s advent and surely would have known about his master’s miraculous life. Instead, these letters deal with a spiritual construct found in various religions, sects, cults and mystery schools for hundreds to thousands of years prior to the Christian era. As Dujardin points out, the Pauline literature “does not refer to Pilate or the Romans, or Caiaphas, or the Sanhedrin, or Herod or Judas, or the holy women, or any person in the gospel account of the Passion, and that it also never makes any allusion to them; lastly, that it mentions absolutely none of the events of the Passion, either directly or by way of allusion.” lxix

Mangasarian notes that Paul also never quotes from Jesus’s purported sermons and speeches, parables and prayers, nor does he mention Jesus’s supernatural birth or any of his alleged wonders and miracles, all of which would presumably be very important to Jesus’s followers, had such exploits and sayings been known prior to Paul. Mangasarian then understandably asks:

Is it conceivable that a preacher of Jesus could go throughout the world to convert people to the teachings of Jesus, as Paul did, without ever quoting a single one of his sayings? Had Paul known that Jesus had preached a sermon, or formulated a prayer, or said many inspired things about the here and the hereafter, he could not have helped quoting, now and then, from the words of his master. If Christianity could have been established without a knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, why then, did Jesus come to teach, and why were his teachings preserved by divine inspiration?…If Paul knew of a miracle-working Jesus, one who could feed the multitude with a few loaves and fishes, who could command the grave to open, who could cast out devils, and cleanse the land of the foulest disease of leprosy, who could, and did, perform many other wonderful works to convince the unbelieving generation of his divinity— is it conceivable that either intentionally or inadvertently he would have never once referred to them in all his preaching?…The position, then, that there is not a single saying of Jesus in the gospels which is quoted by Paul in his many epistles is unassailable, and certainly fatal to the historicity of the gospel Jesus.

In fact, even though the “Lord’s Prayer” is clearly spelled out in the gospels as being given directly from Jesus’s mouth, Paul expresses that he does not know how to pray. Paul’s Jesus is also very different from that of the gospels. As Wells says:

…these epistles are not merely astoundingly silent about the historical Jesus, but also that the Jesus of Paul’s letters (the earliest of the NT epistles and hence the earliest extant Christian documents) is in some respects incompatible with the Jesus of the gospels; that neither Paul, nor those of his Christian predecessors whose views he assimilates into his letters, nor the Christian teachers he attacks in them, are concerned with such a person… lxx

So it appears that Paul, even though he speaks of “the gospel,” had never heard of the canonical gospels or even an orally transmitted life of Christ. The few “historical” references to an actual life of Jesus cited in the epistles are demonstrably interpolations and forgeries, as are the epistles themselves, not having been written by the Pharisee/Roman “Paul” at all, as related by Wheless:

The entire “Pauline group” is the same forged class…says E.B. [Encyclopedia Biblica] …“With respect to the canonical Pauline Epistles,…. there are none of them by Paul; neither fourteen, nor thirteen, nor nine or eight, nor yet even the four so long ‘universally’ regarded as unassailable. They are all, without distinction, pseudographia (false-writings, forgeries)…” They are thus all uninspired anonymous church forgeries for Christ’s sweet sake! lxxi

In The Myth of the Historical Jesus, Hayyim ben Yehoshua evinces that the orthodox dates of the Pauline epistles (c. 49-70) cannot be maintained, also introducing one of the most important individuals in the formation of Christianity, the Gnostic-Christian “heretic” Marcion of Pontus (c. 100-160), a well-educated “man of letters” who entered the brotherhood and basically took the reins of the fledgling Gnostic-Christian movement:

We now turn to the epistles supposedly written by Paul. The First Epistle of Paul to Timothy warns against the Marcionist work known as the Antithesis. Marcion was expelled from the Church of Rome in c. 144 C.E. and the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy was written shortly afterwards. Thus we again have a clear case of pseudepigraphy. The Second Epistle of Paul to Timothy and the Epistle of Paul to Titus were written by the same author and date to about the same period. These three epistles are known as the “pastoral epistles.” The ten remaining “non-pastoral” epistles written in the name of Paul, were known to Marcion by c. 140 C.E. Some of them were not written in Paul’s name alone but are in the form of letters written by Paul in collaboration with various friends such as Sosthenes, Timothy, and Silas.… The non-canonical First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (written c. 125 C.E.) uses the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians as a source and so we can narrow down the date for that epistle to c. 100-125 C.E. However, we are left with the conclusion that all the Pauline epistles are pseudepigraphic. (The semi-mythical Paul was supposed to have died during the persecutions instigated by Nero in c. 64 C.E.) Some of the Pauline epistles appear to be have been altered and edited numerous times before reaching their modern forms.… We may thus conclude that they provide no historical evidence of Jesus.

It is clear that the epistles do not demonstrate a historical Jesus and are not as early as they are pretended to be, written or edited by a number of hands over several decades during the second century, such that the “historical” Jesus apparently was not even known at that late point. As is also evidenced, these texts were further mutilated over the centuries.

Although they are held up by true believers to be the “inspired” works of the apostles, the canonical gospels were forged at the end of the 2nd century, all four of them probably between 170-180, a date that just happens to correspond with the establishment of the orthodoxy and supremacy of the Roman Church. Despite the claims of apostolic authorship, the gospels were not mere translations of manuscripts written in Hebrew or Aramaic by Jewish apostles, because they were originally written in Greek. As Waite relates:

Of these Greek texts and their pretended apostolic attribution, Wells states:

Furthermore, as stated and as is also admitted by the writer of Luke when he says that there were many versions of “the narrative,” there were numerous gospels in circulation prior to the composition of his gospel. In fact, of the dozens of gospels that existed during the first centuries of the Christian era, several once considered canonical or genuine were later rejected as “apocryphal” or spurious, and vice versa.

Out of these numerous gospels the canonical gospels were chosen by Church father and bishop of Lyons, Irenaeus (c. 120-c. 200), who claimed that the number four was based on the “four corners of the world.” In reality, this comment is Masonic, and these texts represent the four books of magic of the Egyptian Ritual, lxxiv facts that provide hints as to where our quest is heading.

According to some early Christians, the gospel of Matthew is the earliest, which is why it appears first in the canon. However, as noted, the gospels have been arranged in virtually every order, and scholars of the past few centuries have considered Mark to be the earliest, used by the writers/compilers of Matthew and Luke. Going against this trend, Waite evinced that Luke was first, followed by Mark, John and Matthew. In fact, these gospels were written not from each other but from common source material, including the narrative, or Diegesis, as it is in the original Greek. The first gospel of the “narrative” type, in actuality, appears to have been the proto-Lukan text, the “Gospel of the Lord,” published in Rome by the Gnostic-Christian Marcion, as part of his “New Testament.” As Waite relates:

The first New Testament that ever appeared, was compiled and published by Marcion. It was in the Greek language. It consisted of “The Gospel,” and “The Apostolicon.” No acts—no Revelation, and but one gospel. The Apostolicon comprised ten of Paul’s Epistles, as follows: Galatians, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Romans, except the 15th and 16th chapters, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon and Philippians; arranged in the order as here named. This canon of the New Testament was prepared and published shortly after his arrival in Rome; probably about 145 A.D. Baring-Gould thinks he brought the gospel from Sinope.… [Marcion’s] gospel resembles the Gospel of Luke, but is much shorter. lxxv

It is interesting to note that the two missing chapters of Romans are historicizing, whereas the rest of the epistle is not. Furthermore, the gospel referred to by Paul in this epistle and others has been termed the “Gospel of Paul,” presumed lost but in reality claimed by Marcion to be a book he found at Antioch, along with 10 “Pauline” epistles, and then edited, bringing it around 139-142 to Rome, where he translated it into both Greek and Latin.

Originally in the Syro-Chaldee or Samaritan language, Marcion’s Gospel of the Lord, which predated the canonical gospels by decades, represents the basic gospel narrative, minus key elements that demonstrate the conspiracy. Although much the same as the later Gospel of Luke, Marcion’s gospel was Gnostic, non-historical, and did not make Jesus a Jewish man, i.e., he was not born in Bethlehem and was not from Nazareth, which did not even exist at the time. In Marcion’s gospel there is no childhood history, as Marcion’s Jesus was not born but “came down at Capernaum,” i.e., appeared, in “the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,” the very sentence used in Luke to “prove” Jesus’s historicity. Marcion’s original, non-historicizing and non-Judaizing New Testament was a thorn in the side of the carnalizing conspirators, who were compelled to put a spin on the facts by claiming that the “heretic” had expurgated the gospel of Luke, removing the genealogies and other “historical” and “biographical” details, for example. Thus, Marcion was accused of “purging the letters of Paul and Luke of ‘Jewish traits,’ “an allegation that served as a subterfuge to hide the fact that Marcion’s Jesus was indeed not a Jewish man who had incarnated a century before. However, as demonstrated by Waite and others, Marcion’s gospel was first, and Luke was created from it. Thus, it was not Marcion who had mutilated the texts but the historicizers who followed and added to his.

Like the rest of the gospels Luke fits into the timeframe of having been written between 170-180, as admitted by the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The Gospel of Luke is a compilation of dozens of older manuscripts, 33 by one count, including the Gospel of the Lord. In using Marcion’s gospel, the Lukan writer(s) interpolated and removed textual matter in order both to historicize the story and to Judaize Marcion’s Jesus. In addition to lacking the childhood or genealogy found in the first two chapters of Luke, Marcion also was missing nearly all of the third chapter, save the bit about Capernaum, all of which were interpolated into Luke to give Jesus a historical background and Jewish heritage. Also, where Marcion’s gospel speaks of Jesus coming to Nazareth, Luke adds, “where he had been brought up,” a phrase missing from Marcion that is a further attempt on Luke’s part to make Jesus Jewish.

At Luke 9:22, the passage is rendered thus:

The inclusion of “elders and the chief priests and scribes” represents an attempt to make the story seem as if it happened one time in history, as opposed to the recurring theme in a savior-god cult and mystery school indicated by Marcion.

It can be proved how passage after passage has been added to the earlier gospel, in the course of manufacturing the later history. For example, the mourning over Jerusalem (Luke xiii. 29-35) is taken verbatim from the 2nd Esdras (i. 28-33) without acknowledgement, and the words previously uttered by the “Almighty Lord” are here assigned to Jesus as the original speaker. lxxix

destruction of its former inhabitants, it was colonized by an alien race, and the Roman city which subsequently arose changed its name, so that now, in honour of the emperor then reigning, Aelius Hadrianus, it is known as Aelia. Furthermore, as the church in the city was now composed of Gentiles, the first after the bishops of the Circumcision to be put in charge of the Christians there was Mark. lxxx

This devastation and changeover occurred in the 18th year of Hadrian’s rule, i.e., 135 CE; thus, we see that this Mark of whom Eusebius speaks could not have been the disciple Mark. The date is, however, perfect for the Gnostic Marcion. Eusebius provides confirmation of this association of Mark with Marcion when he immediately follows his comment about Mark with a discussion of “Leaders at that time of Knowledge falsely so called,” i.e., Gnostics and Gnosis. Indeed, legend held that Mark wrote his gospel in Rome and brought it to Alexandria, where he established churches, while Marcion purportedly published his gospel in Rome and no doubt went to Alexandria at some point.

Like Marcion, Mark has no genealogy; unlike Marcion, he begins his story with John the Baptist, the hero of the Nazarenes/Mandaeans, added to incorporate that faction. The Gospel of Mark was admittedly tampered with, as is noted in the New Testament, with several verses (16:9-20) regarding the resurrected apparition and ascension added to the end. Here we have absolute proof of the gospels being changed to fit the circumstances, rather than recording “history.”

As to the authorship of Mark, ben Yehoshua says, “…the style of language used in Mark shows that it was written (probably in Rome) by a Roman convert to Christianity whose first language was Latin and not Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic.” It would seem, then, that the compiler of Mark used the Latin version of Marcion’s gospel, while Luke and Matthew used the Greek version, accounting for the variances between them. Indeed, the author of Mark was clearly not a Palestinian Jew, as Wells points out that Mark “betrays in 7:31 an ignorance of Palestinian geography.” lxxxiii

So strong is the evidence of a late date to this gospel, that its apostolic origin is being abandoned by the ablest evangelical writers.… Both Irenaeus and Jerome assert that John wrote against Cerinthus. Cerinthus thus flourished about A.D. 145. [T]here is evidence that in the construction of this gospel, as in that of Matthew, the author had in view the building up of the Roman hierarchy, the foundations of which were then (about A.D. 177-89) being laid.… There is a reason to believe that both [John and Matthew] were written in the interest of the supremacy of the Church of Rome. lxxxiv

The tone of this gospel is anti-Jewish, revealing that it was written/compiled by a non-Jew, possibly a “Gentile” or an “exiled” Israelite of a different tribe, such as a Samaritan, who not only spoke of “the Jews” as separate and apart from him but also was not familiar with the geography of Palestine. As Waite also says:

There are also many errors in reference to the geography of the country. The author speaks of Aenon, near to Salim, in Judea; also of Bethany, beyond Jordan, and of a “city of Samaria, called Sychar.” If there were any such places, they were strangely unknown to other writers. The learned Dr. Bretschneider points out such mistakes and errors of geography, chronology, history and statistics of Judea, as no person who had ever resided in that country, or had been by birth a Jew, could possibly have committed. lxxxv

In addition, as Keeler states:

Furthermore, the writer of John relates several events at which the apostle John was not depicted as having appeared and does not record others at which he is said to have been present. Moreover, John is the only gospel containing the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, which is an Egyptian myth.

The Greek Gospel of Matthew was a subsequent production, and either originally appeared in the Greek language, or was a translation of the Gospel of the Hebrews, with extensive changes and additions. There is reason to believe it to have been an original compilation, based upon the Oracles of Christ, but containing, in whole, or in part, a number of other manuscripts. lxxxviii

The gospel of Matthew is particularly noteworthy in that it contains the interpolation at 16:17-19 not found in either Mark or Luke that gives authority to the Roman Church: To wit, the statement by Jesus that Peter is the rock upon which the church is to be built and the keeper of the keys to the kingdom of heaven. The appearance of this gospel determining Roman dominance corresponds to the violent schism of 180-190 between the branches of the Church over the celebration of Easter.

Even knowing this fact of falsity, some believers will claim the gospels are nonetheless inspired by the omnipotent God and represent an infallible representation of the life of “the Lord.” Far from being “infallible,” these spurious gospels contradict each other in numerous places. As noted by Otto Schmiedel, considered one of the greatest authorities on the “life of Jesus”: “If John possesses the genuine tradition about the life of Jesus, that of the first three Evangelists (the Synoptists) is untenable. If the Synoptists are right, the Fourth Gospel must be rejected as a historical source.” xc

In regard to these “variant readings,” Waite states:

In this mess, the gospels’ pretended authors, the apostles, give conflicting histories and genealogies. The birthdate of Jesus is depicted as having occurred at different times, in Matthew about two years before and in Luke more than nine years after Herod’s death. Jesus’s birth and childhood are not mentioned in Mark, and although he is claimed in Matthew and Luke to have been “born of a virgin,” his lineage is also traced through Joseph to the house of David, so that he may “fulfill prophecy.” Furthermore, the genealogies presented in Luke and Matthew are irreconcilable. In fact, as Wheless says, “Both genealogies are false and forged lists of mostly fictitious names.” xciii A number of the names, in reality, are not “patriarchs” but older gods.

The New Testament story confuses so many historical periods that there is no way of reconciling it with history. The traditional year of Jesus’s birth is 1 C.E. Jesus was supposed to be not more than two years old when Herod ordered the slaughter of the innocents. However, Herod died before 12 April 4 B.C.E. This has led some Christians to redate the birth of Jesus to 6-4 B.C.E. However, Jesus was also supposed have been born during the census of Quirinius. This census took place after Archelaus was deposed in 6 C.E., ten years after Herod’s death. Jesus was supposed to have been baptised by John soon after John had started baptising and preaching in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias, i.e., 28-29 C.E., when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, i.e., 26-36 C.E. According to the New Testament, this also happened when Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene and Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. But Lysanias ruled Abilene from c. 40 B.C.E. until he was executed in 36 B.C.E. by Mark Antony, about 60 years before the date for Tiberias and about 30 years before the supposed birth of Jesus! Also, there were never two joint high priests; in particular, Annas was not a joint high priest with Caiaphas. Annas was removed from the office of high priest in 15 C.E. after holding office for some nine years. Caiaphas only became high priest in c. 18 C.E., about three years after Annas.… Many of these chronological absurdities seem to be based on misreadings and misunderstandings of Josephus’s book Jewish Antiquities which was used as reference by the author of Luke and Acts.

Thus, the few incidents useful for dating are found mainly in Luke and turn out to be false. Doane states:

Luke ii. 1, shows that the writer (whoever he may have been) lived long after the events related. His dates, about the fifteenth year of Tiberius, and the government of Cyrenius (the only indications of time in the New Testament), are manifestly false. The general ignorance of the four Evangelists, not merely of the geography and statistics of Judea, but even of its language—their egregious blunders, which no writers who had lived in that age could be conceived of as making—prove that they were not only no such persons as those who have been willing to be deceived have taken them to be, but that they were not Jews, had never been in Palestine, and neither lived at, or at anywhere near the times to which their narratives seem to refer. xciv

As concerns Jesus’s birthplace, while the synoptics place it in Bethlehem, such that he is from David’s village, John says he is from Galilee and that the Jews rejected him because was not from Bethlehem, whence the Messiah must come to “fulfill scripture” (Jn. 7:41-42). Also, in the conflicting and illogical gospel account, Jesus’s birth is heralded by a star, angels, and three Magi or wise men travelling from afar, and represents such a danger to Herod that he takes the heinous and desperate act of slaughtering the male infants in Bethlehem. Yet, when Jesus finally appears in his hometown, he is barely acknowledged, as if the inhabitants had never heard of his miraculous birth with all the fanfare, or of Herod’s dreadful deed, or of any of Jesus’s “wisdom” and “mighty works,” not even the purportedly astounding temple-teaching at age 12. Even his own family, who obviously knew of his miraculous birth and exploits, rejects him. In addition, in the Christian tale, the three wise men are represented as following the star until they arrive near Herod’s house, whereupon he tells them to continue following the star until they reach the place where the baby Jesus lies. The wise men then go off and find the baby, but Herod cannot, so he must put to death the firstborn male of every family. One must ask, how is it that the “wise men” needed Herod’s help to know that the star would lead them to the babe, when they were already following it in the first place? And why wouldn’t Herod simply have followed the star himself and killed only Jesus, rather than all the boys? In reality, the terrible story of Herod killing the infants as portrayed only in Matthew is based on ancient mythology, not found in any histories of the day, including Josephus, who does otherwise chronicle Herod’s real abuses.

In the gospel story, practically nothing is revealed of Jesus’s childhood, and he disappears completely from the age of 12 to about 30, when he suddenly reappears to begin his ministry. After this dramatic and unhistorical appearance out of nowhere, Jesus is said in the synoptics to have taught for one year before he died, while in John the number is around three years. Furthermore, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus’s advent takes place in Galilee, except for the end in Jerusalem, while John places the story for the most part in Jerusalem and other sites in Judea, discrepancies that reveal two important forces at work in the gospels, i.e., the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern of Judah.

The story of Jesus’s trial is also highly suspicious. It clearly tries to placate the Romans while defaming the Jews. The historical Pontius Pilate was arrogant and despotic. He hated the Jews and never delegated any authority to them. However, in Christian mythology, he is portrayed as a concerned ruler who distanced himself from the accusations against Jesus and who was coerced into obeying the demands of the Jews. According to Christian mythology, every Passover, the Jews would ask Pilate to free any one criminal they chose. This is, of course, a blatant lie. Jews never had a custom of freeing guilty criminals at Passover or any other time of the year. According to the myth, Pilate gave the Jews the choice of freeing Jesus the Christ or a murderer named Jesus Barabbas. The Jews are alleged to have enthusiastically chosen Jesus Barabbas. This story is a vicious antisemitic lie, one of many such lies found in the New Testament (largely written by antisemites).

Walker points out other errors of fact and perception about the part of the world in question during the era of Jesus’s alleged advent:

The most “historical” figure in the Gospels was Pontius Pilate, to whom Jesus was presented as “king” of the Jews and simultaneously as a criminal deserving the death penalty for “blasphemy” because he called himself Christ, Son of the Blessed.… This alleged crime was no real crime. Eastern provinces swarmed with self-styled Christs and Messiahs, calling themselves Sons of God and announcing the end of the world. None of them was executed for “blasphemy.” xcv

Mangasarian concurs that the story is implausible:

In order to shore up their fallacious claims of Christ being crucified under Pilate, Christian forgers even went so far as to produce the “Acts of Pilate,” which at one point was considered “canonical.” After the canon was formalized, the book was deemed “spurious,” thus demonstrating that it was merely an opinion as to what was “inspired” and what was “forged.” The Acts of Pilate purports to relate the trial of Jesus before Pilate, in accordance with the canonical gospel accounts but in greater detail. Some of the scenes of this book were lifted from The Iliad:

The Acts of Pilate, also called the Gospel of Nicodemus, even goes so far as to purport to be a record of the actual conversations of the astonished faithful and prophets of old, such as David and Enoch, who have been resurrected from the dead after Jesus’s own resurrection and ascension! This “true” gospel also contains a ludicrous conversation between Satan and his “prince” in Hell. The fictitious nature of such writings is obvious, as is, ultimately, that of the gospels.

Furthermore, the gospel accounts of Jesus’s passion and resurrection differ utterly from each other, and none states how old he was when he died. In fact, the early Church fathers were constantly bickering over how old “the Lord” was when he died, with Irenaeus—who was widely respected by his peers as a highly educated establisher of doctrine—fervently insisting that Jesus was at least 50 years old, rather than the 30 or 33 held by other traditions, including the four gospels he helped canonize. Indeed, Irenaeus “flatly den[ied] as ‘heresy’ the Gospel stories as to his crucifixion at about thirty years of age.” xcviii

If the gospel narrative as found in the canon had existed earlier than 170-80, and if it constituted a true story, there would be no accounting for the widely differing traditions of “the Savior’s” death: To wit, “By the third century A.D., there were no fewer than 25 versions of Jesus’ death and resurrection! Some have him not being put to death at all, some have him revived back to life, and some have Jesus living on to an old age and dying in Egypt.” xcix These various details of the lives of Christ and his apostles should have been “set in stone,” had the story been true and these books been written by the apostles, or even had an orally transmitted “life of Christ” been widespread during the decades that followed.

We should here note the total lack of historic verity as to facts and places in the gospels. With the methods then available a town was not built rapidly, and the work would not have been completed in A.D. 27 or even 30. The gospel writers were therefore unaware that they were placing in a countryside overturned by demolition and rebuilding the larger part of the teaching of Jesus.

Furthermore, in the gospels Jesus himself makes many illogical contradictions concerning some of his most important teachings. First he states that he is sent only “to the lost sheep of Israel” and forbids his disciples to preach to the Gentiles. Then he is made to say, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations …”

Next, Jesus claims that the end of the world is imminent and warns his disciples to be prepared at a moment’s notice. He also tells them to build a church from which to preach his message, an act that would not be necessary if the end was near. This doomsday “prophecy” in fact did not happen; nor has Jesus returned “soon,” as was his promise. Even if he had been real, his value as a prophet would have been very little, as his most important “prophecies” have not occurred, thus proving that he was no more prophetic or divine than the average newspaper astrologer or palmreader.

In addition to the hundreds of epistles and gospels written during the first centuries were many “Acts” of this apostle or that. The canonical Acts of the Apostles cannot be dated earlier than the end of the second century, long after the purported events. Acts purports to relate the early years of the Christian church, yet in it we find a well-established community that could not have existed at the time this book was alleged to have been written, i.e., not long after the death of Christ. In Acts we read that the first “Christians” are found at Antioch, even though there was no canonical gospel there until after 200 CE. Taylor calls Acts “a broken narrative,” and Higgins states that it was fabricated by monks, “devil-drivers” and popes, who wished to form an alliance by writing the book, “the Latin character of which is visible in every page…” cii According to Wheless, even the Protestant Encyclopedia Biblica admits Acts to be “untrustworthy.”

The author(s) of Acts used text from Josephus and, evidently, from the writings of Aristides, a Sophist of the latter part of the second century, to name a couple of its sources, which also purportedly included the life of Apollonius of Tyana, the quasi-mythical Cappadocian/ Samaritan/ Greek miracle-worker of the first century CE.

Many people believe that the biblical tale of Jesus must be true because the Bible itself predicted his advent and because so many other Old Testament “prophecies” had come true, demonstrating that the book was indeed “God’s word.” First of all, much of the biblical “prophecy” was written after the fact, with merely an appearance of prophecy. Secondly, the book has served as a blueprint, such that rulers have deliberately followed to some degree its so-called prophecies, thus appearing to bring them to fulfillment. Thirdly, very few if any “prophecies,” particularly of the supernatural kind, have indeed come true. Fourthly, biblical interpreters claim that records of events centuries in the past somehow refer to the future. As concerns purported prophetic references to Jesus in the OT, Wells says:

To demonstrate that their Messiah was predicted, Christians have also grabbed onto the brief reference made at Psalms 2 to “the Lord and his Anointed,” a word that in the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible, the Septuagint, is “Christos.” In fact, the Septuagint, allegedly translated and redacted during the second and third centuries BCE at Alexandria, Egypt, contains the word “Christos” at least 40 times. cv This title “Christos” or “anointed,” however, referred only to an Israelite king or priest, not a superhuman savior. This Christian defense, in fact, proves that there were other Christs long before Jesus, including David, Zadok and Cyrus. The title “Christ” or “Anointed” (“Mashiah”) was in reality held by all kings of Israel, as well as being “so commonly assumed by all sorts of impostors, conjurers, and pretenders to supernatural communications, that the very claim to it is in the gospel itself considered as an indication of imposture…” cvi

As to the reliability of both Old and New Testaments, Hilton Hotema declared, “Not one line of the Bible has a known author, and but few incidents of it are corroborated by other testimony.” cvii Thus, Christianity is based upon a false proposition, and, without the inspired authorship of apostles under an infallible god, the Church is left with little upon which to base its claims. Regarding this state of affairs, Wheless declared: