http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/visionorigin.html
Paul never says that Jesus is God. He also never says that Jesus was a man who actually lived. At the time that Christianity became popular, there were many pagan savior religions—some if not all of which predate Christianity by a substantial period of time. Although the concept of a God-Man that dies and restores humanity in some spiritual sense is not found anywhere in Judaism, it is found in abundance in pagan mythology. It arose, like all pagan concepts, out of an appreciation for and observation of nature. The concepts of the seasonal rhythm—the harvest (“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”—John 12:24), the archetypal connection between food from the fields nourishing the body and the body nourishing the fields (And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me."—Luke 22:19), the rise and fall of the Nile, the waxing and waning of the moon, and the daylight hours growing longer and shorter—all contribute to this image of a cycle of degeneration followed by regeneration and the idea that through sacrificing something, something else could be restored. This produced the idea of the Son/Sun dying and entering into the Mother/Earth to be restored and reborn. Christianity’s lead rival at the time of its ascension to power was Mithraism. Mithra was a sun god closely tied to Helios and Apollo. He had all sorts of things about his life that made particular sense because he was a sun god. For instance: he was born December 25 (the day of the winter solstice on the old Roman calendar, after which daylight hours begin to lengthen), he had 12 disciples (representing the 12 signs of the zodiac around the sun), his feast day was on Sunday (because he was a sun god), and he ascended to heaven around the time of the spring equinox (at the midpoint of the lengthening of daylight hours). All of these facts later became about Jesus’s life, though they make considerably less sense for him.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa1.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/xmas_sel.htm
Mithraism may very well have become the main religion of Europe if it had not been for Constantine. As Paul Tobin points out, Constantine adopted Christianity when it was practically dying out. If you read Crises in European History by Gustav Bang (available free online) you will learn about how economically Rome was faltering at this point and it needed something that would encourage large masses of people to live meagerly and be obedient to authority. Christianity served this purpose well. It was Constantine’s decision to deify Jesus. This took place at the Nicene council, against the will of many of the bishops—though Constantine ordered banishment for any that did not comply. In the whole of the New Testament, Jesus never claims to be God. Not once.4 The closest thing we get to this is in John—the last written and least reliable of the Gospels—in which Jesus is recorded as saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. None come to the father but through me.” Yet while the “I am” suggests a proclamation of some form of divinity, Jesus specifically does not claim to be the incarnation of God. Even where Jesus says “I and the father are one,” again in John, this is ambiguous. One in what sense? Spiritually one? One in terms of action? Yet these are such essential proclamations to Christianity that if Jesus really said them, we would expect them to be found in every version of the Christian story—not just the last. And many pagan saviors said very similar words to these before there ever was a Jesus. In the whole of the New Testament, no one ever claims that Jesus is God. The closest thing to this that we come is, again, John stating that Jesus is God’s “only begotten son,” yet this, again, is not even the equivalent of saying that Jesus is God, and this kind of statement is not found anywhere except John—the last written and least reliable of the Gospels. And why? Why would such an essential aspect of Christian theology as John 3:16 be found only in John if it were really original to the Christian story? If it really were original to the Christian story and not a later theological invention, we would expect to find it everywhere—we don't. John is the only one that says these kinds of things.
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/arian.html#nicaea
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/xtianspread.html
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/divinity.html
Type “Gustav Bang” into Google, and then once you've found the book Crises in European History, search inside for “The Rise of Christianity.”
Of the many pagan savior figures of antiquity, I will provide for brevity’s sake but two more examples. Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, was considered a God-Man. Scholar Richard Carrier has this to say about Romulus:
“Romulus is another unmistakable example—and one whose pageant of incarnation and ascension was publicly celebrated in Rome in the 1st centuries BC and AD, without any doubt (we have it from Livy, Ovid, Plutarch, etc.). He is a heavenly being who descends, incarnates on earth, establishes an empire, is killed by a conspiracy of leaders, resurrects, and ascends back to heaven. However, unlike Plutarch's "true" Osiris, this is a literal historical event and takes place on earth”
http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/CritiquesMuller1.htm
There is also Horus who was worshiped thousands of years before Jesus and the stories of whom were circulated hundreds of years before. The gospel accounts of Jesus share a number of points of similarity with the stories of Horus.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa.htm
No historian contemporary with Jesus so much as mentions him—even historians that go into painstaking detail to chronicle the would be prophets and messiahs of the time.5 In addition, the name Jesus sends up a bit of a red flag. Jesus (more properly, Yeshua) literally means “Yahweh Saves” and is thus likely to be being used here as a title, though it is also an actual name. Christos, of course, means “anointed one”—the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew “Mashiach” from which the English messiah comes. And thus the title “Jesus Christ” ties together the idea of a pagan God-Man savior and the Jewish idea of a messiah. The Jewish idea of a messiah is very different from the Christian idea, however, and Jesus fails to fulfill the Jewish criteria for the messiah laid out by the “Old Testament” (see the link to “Jews for Judaism” below for an explanation as to why this is the case).
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/sources.html
http://www.luigicascioli.eu/traduzioni/en_argomenti_gesu_apostoli.htm
http://www.luigicascioli.eu/traduzioni/en_argomenti_nazoreo.htm
http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/Why_Jews_Dont_Believe_In_Jesus.asp
One of the first Jewish messiahs, and the model for those to come, was the legendary King David, who was said to have arose from humble beginnings, been victorious on the battlefield against great odds, and established the first and greatest Jewish Empire. In the time of the Roman occupation of Israel, some Jewish groups believed that God would send them another militant messiah to destroy the Romans and establish the “Kingdom of God”—not an ethereal kingdom, but the very terrestrial Holy Jewish Empire. This, and nothing besides, is what was meant by messiah and what the Jews had prophecies concerning. At the time surrounding Jesus’s alleged life there were many Jewish warriors who claimed to be the messiah. All of the prophecies concerning messiahs in the “Old Testament” corresponded with actual wars of liberation and real life military messiahs. All the alleged messiahs failed, however. None of them overthrew the Romans or established the Holy Jewish Empire. Jesus, if he existed at all, was most likely another failed military messiah who was tried for inciting a riot (attacking the moneychangers in the temple during Passover, a terrorist action and one of the few events that are recorded in all four of the Gospel stories) and executed by the method reserved for terrorists against Rome—crucifixion. His followers continued in his tradition (or a religious sect created him to sanctify their tradition), lead by his (physical or spiritual) brother James. The original Jewish Christian groups were mostly destroyed along with other rebel groups and the Jewish Temple in 70 CE as the Romans crushed the Jewish rebellion. Those few Jewish Christians that escaped and survived were eventually destroyed by Pauline Christians as heretics—though they, remaining closer to the original tradition, had always considered the Pauline Christians the heretics.
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/paulorigin.html#jerufate
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_intr1.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcsi2.htm
As Cascioli points out, while no historian mentions Jesus, there is a line of messianic figures in history, of which Judas the Gualonite is the most important verified one for our considerations. It is Judas's eldest son, who Cascioli refers to as “John of Gamala” (though his circumcision name has been lost to us), that Cascioli believes to be the historical basis for Jesus. Cascioli asserts that John lived in the same area that Jesus was supposed to have lived, at the same time that Jesus was supposed to have lived, and had disciples with the same names that Jesus was supposed to have had. But “John of Gamala” was no heavenly savior—he was a violent terrorist. Even so, this might not invalidate him as being the historical basis for Jesus as much as some might think, as a good deal of data seems to suggest that Christianity did indeed start off as a war movement and later expunged most of these elements after the hope of a successful Jewish militant revolt against Rome became unfeasible. Were the facts of John of Gamala’s life incorporated into the story of a mythical Christ figure to serve the purposes of a religious cult that wanted their savior to be written into history? Was John of Gamala himself the founder of Christianity and his name changed to hide the group’s wrathful origins? Was some other poor individual, considered too insignificant by his contemporaries to even be mentioned by historians, the heir to both a mythological and historical tradition? It is not clear. However, whereas the messiah had always meant an earthly savior that would bring about an earthly “Kingdom of God”—that is to say, the Holy Jewish Empire—the Christian groups that existed after the fall of the Jewish temple in 70 CE at the hands of a victorious Rome against a defeated Jewish insurgency, whatever their origin, had good reason to make their “messiah” and “kingdom” a peaceful and spiritual one—as well as make themselves look pro-Roman and anti-Jew. Dr. Abruzzi does a good job discussing the evidence for this on his website, the link for which is below. A “mostly harmless” article also discusses this and sites excellent sources. One can also read Marvin Harris’s book Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches in which he discusses the militant messiah issue. Or you can see Monty Python’s The Life of Brian in which they do a fairly good, and entertaining, job of discussing this issue. P.S.—Brian is Jesus.
http://www.luigicascioli.eu/traduzioni/en_argomenti.htm
http://www.drabruzzi.com/jesus_movement.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/biz3/mostlyharmless/jesus.html
Paul never says that Jesus is God. He also never says that Jesus was a man who actually lived. At the time that Christianity became popular, there were many pagan savior religions—some if not all of which predate Christianity by a substantial period of time. Although the concept of a God-Man that dies and restores humanity in some spiritual sense is not found anywhere in Judaism, it is found in abundance in pagan mythology. It arose, like all pagan concepts, out of an appreciation for and observation of nature. The concepts of the seasonal rhythm—the harvest (“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”—John 12:24), the archetypal connection between food from the fields nourishing the body and the body nourishing the fields (And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me."—Luke 22:19), the rise and fall of the Nile, the waxing and waning of the moon, and the daylight hours growing longer and shorter—all contribute to this image of a cycle of degeneration followed by regeneration and the idea that through sacrificing something, something else could be restored. This produced the idea of the Son/Sun dying and entering into the Mother/Earth to be restored and reborn. Christianity’s lead rival at the time of its ascension to power was Mithraism. Mithra was a sun god closely tied to Helios and Apollo. He had all sorts of things about his life that made particular sense because he was a sun god. For instance: he was born December 25 (the day of the winter solstice on the old Roman calendar, after which daylight hours begin to lengthen), he had 12 disciples (representing the 12 signs of the zodiac around the sun), his feast day was on Sunday (because he was a sun god), and he ascended to heaven around the time of the spring equinox (at the midpoint of the lengthening of daylight hours). All of these facts later became about Jesus’s life, though they make considerably less sense for him.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa1.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/xmas_sel.htm
Mithraism may very well have become the main religion of Europe if it had not been for Constantine. As Paul Tobin points out, Constantine adopted Christianity when it was practically dying out. If you read Crises in European History by Gustav Bang (available free online) you will learn about how economically Rome was faltering at this point and it needed something that would encourage large masses of people to live meagerly and be obedient to authority. Christianity served this purpose well. It was Constantine’s decision to deify Jesus. This took place at the Nicene council, against the will of many of the bishops—though Constantine ordered banishment for any that did not comply. In the whole of the New Testament, Jesus never claims to be God. Not once.4 The closest thing we get to this is in John—the last written and least reliable of the Gospels—in which Jesus is recorded as saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. None come to the father but through me.” Yet while the “I am” suggests a proclamation of some form of divinity, Jesus specifically does not claim to be the incarnation of God. Even where Jesus says “I and the father are one,” again in John, this is ambiguous. One in what sense? Spiritually one? One in terms of action? Yet these are such essential proclamations to Christianity that if Jesus really said them, we would expect them to be found in every version of the Christian story—not just the last. And many pagan saviors said very similar words to these before there ever was a Jesus. In the whole of the New Testament, no one ever claims that Jesus is God. The closest thing to this that we come is, again, John stating that Jesus is God’s “only begotten son,” yet this, again, is not even the equivalent of saying that Jesus is God, and this kind of statement is not found anywhere except John—the last written and least reliable of the Gospels. And why? Why would such an essential aspect of Christian theology as John 3:16 be found only in John if it were really original to the Christian story? If it really were original to the Christian story and not a later theological invention, we would expect to find it everywhere—we don't. John is the only one that says these kinds of things.
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/arian.html#nicaea
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/xtianspread.html
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/divinity.html
Of the many pagan savior figures of antiquity, I will provide for brevity’s sake but two more examples. Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, was considered a God-Man. Scholar Richard Carrier has this to say about Romulus:
“Romulus is another unmistakable example—and one whose pageant of incarnation and ascension was publicly celebrated in Rome in the 1st centuries BC and AD, without any doubt (we have it from Livy, Ovid, Plutarch, etc.). He is a heavenly being who descends, incarnates on earth, establishes an empire, is killed by a conspiracy of leaders, resurrects, and ascends back to heaven. However, unlike Plutarch's "true" Osiris, this is a literal historical event and takes place on earth”
http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/CritiquesMuller1.htm
There is also Horus who was worshiped thousands of years before Jesus and the stories of whom were circulated hundreds of years before. The gospel accounts of Jesus share a number of points of similarity with the stories of Horus.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa.htm
No historian contemporary with Jesus so much as mentions him—even historians that go into painstaking detail to chronicle the would be prophets and messiahs of the time.5 In addition, the name Jesus sends up a bit of a red flag. Jesus (more properly, Yeshua) literally means “Yahweh Saves” and is thus likely to be being used here as a title, though it is also an actual name. Christos, of course, means “anointed one”—the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew “Mashiach” from which the English messiah comes. And thus the title “Jesus Christ” ties together the idea of a pagan God-Man savior and the Jewish idea of a messiah. The Jewish idea of a messiah is very different from the Christian idea, however, and Jesus fails to fulfill the Jewish criteria for the messiah laid out by the “Old Testament” (see the link to “Jews for Judaism” below for an explanation as to why this is the case).
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/sources.html
http://www.luigicascioli.eu/traduzioni/en_argomenti_gesu_apostoli.htm
http://www.luigicascioli.eu/traduzioni/en_argomenti_nazoreo.htm
http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/Why_Jews_Dont_Believe_In_Jesus.asp
One of the first Jewish messiahs, and the model for those to come, was the legendary King David, who was said to have arose from humble beginnings, been victorious on the battlefield against great odds, and established the first and greatest Jewish Empire. In the time of the Roman occupation of Israel, some Jewish groups believed that God would send them another militant messiah to destroy the Romans and establish the “Kingdom of God”—not an ethereal kingdom, but the very terrestrial Holy Jewish Empire. This, and nothing besides, is what was meant by messiah and what the Jews had prophecies concerning. At the time surrounding Jesus’s alleged life there were many Jewish warriors who claimed to be the messiah. All of the prophecies concerning messiahs in the “Old Testament” corresponded with actual wars of liberation and real life military messiahs. All the alleged messiahs failed, however. None of them overthrew the Romans or established the Holy Jewish Empire. Jesus, if he existed at all, was most likely another failed military messiah who was tried for inciting a riot (attacking the moneychangers in the temple during Passover, a terrorist action and one of the few events that are recorded in all four of the Gospel stories) and executed by the method reserved for terrorists against Rome—crucifixion. His followers continued in his tradition (or a religious sect created him to sanctify their tradition), lead by his (physical or spiritual) brother James. The original Jewish Christian groups were mostly destroyed along with other rebel groups and the Jewish Temple in 70 CE as the Romans crushed the Jewish rebellion. Those few Jewish Christians that escaped and survived were eventually destroyed by Pauline Christians as heretics—though they, remaining closer to the original tradition, had always considered the Pauline Christians the heretics.
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/paulorigin.html#jerufate
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_intr1.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcsi2.htm
As Cascioli points out, while no historian mentions Jesus, there is a line of messianic figures in history, of which Judas the Gualonite is the most important verified one for our considerations. It is Judas's eldest son, who Cascioli refers to as “John of Gamala” (though his circumcision name has been lost to us), that Cascioli believes to be the historical basis for Jesus. Cascioli asserts that John lived in the same area that Jesus was supposed to have lived, at the same time that Jesus was supposed to have lived, and had disciples with the same names that Jesus was supposed to have had. But “John of Gamala” was no heavenly savior—he was a violent terrorist. Even so, this might not invalidate him as being the historical basis for Jesus as much as some might think, as a good deal of data seems to suggest that Christianity did indeed start off as a war movement and later expunged most of these elements after the hope of a successful Jewish militant revolt against Rome became unfeasible. Were the facts of John of Gamala’s life incorporated into the story of a mythical Christ figure to serve the purposes of a religious cult that wanted their savior to be written into history? Was John of Gamala himself the founder of Christianity and his name changed to hide the group’s wrathful origins? Was some other poor individual, considered too insignificant by his contemporaries to even be mentioned by historians, the heir to both a mythological and historical tradition? It is not clear. However, whereas the messiah had always meant an earthly savior that would bring about an earthly “Kingdom of God”—that is to say, the Holy Jewish Empire—the Christian groups that existed after the fall of the Jewish temple in 70 CE at the hands of a victorious Rome against a defeated Jewish insurgency, whatever their origin, had good reason to make their “messiah” and “kingdom” a peaceful and spiritual one—as well as make themselves look pro-Roman and anti-Jew. Dr. Abruzzi does a good job discussing the evidence for this on his website, the link for which is below. A “mostly harmless” article also discusses this and sites excellent sources. One can also read Marvin Harris’s book Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches in which he discusses the militant messiah issue. Or you can see Monty Python’s The Life of Brian in which they do a fairly good, and entertaining, job of discussing this issue. P.S.—Brian is Jesus.
http://www.luigicascioli.eu/traduzioni/en_argomenti.htm
http://www.drabruzzi.com/jesus_movement.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/biz3/mostlyharmless/jesus.html
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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