Jesus: Fact or fiction?

I’ve long believed that the literary Jesus is akin to Paul Bunyan, obviously not a real person but grounded in the life of an actual human being around whom some distinctive characteristic caused fantastic tales to accumulate. I think that, mainly, because I can more easily imagine a man whose life is exaggerated by admirers — like the lumberjack who was the prototype for Paul Bunyan — than a son of god who is invented out of thin air.

But a growing number of bona fide serious-minded scholars now believe just that — that there never was a Jesus, that every bit of the orthodox Christian narrative is fiction.

When lined up in the order in which they were composed, the accounts of the life and works of Jesus reveal that he was originally worshipped as a celestial being who never had a body, never had a ministry or disciples, and never appeared in person to anyone. Later writings brought him “down to earth” in physical form, adding increasingly fantastic story elements as time went on, in tales which were carefully set in a time and locale conveniently inaccessible to verification. While Christian writings all show signs of continual reworking as the theology evolved (an activity that continues to this day!), there are no independent accounts of Jesus or any of his supposed disciples from the entire century during which the religion supposedly began.

I conclude that the figure of Jesus was invented by one faction in a diverse religious landscape in an effort to create an “apostolic succession” of authority – “our priests were taught by priests that were taught by followers of Jesus Christ himself, in person”. But even if I’m completely wrong about that, it is undeniable that the only evidence that exists for a living, breathing, walking, talking Jesus is weak, contradictory, or simply fraudulent.

The full paper, by Peter Nathnagle, is here.

Well … who knows? I am not a Christian, I believe Abraham was a madman and his god the invention of a deranged mind, and that all the thousands of other gods are probably inventions, too. What is more, I think a set of ethical teachings grounded on Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son is perverse and deserves contempt.

So I don’t actually have a dog in the fight over Jesus’ historicity. But insofar as questioning the historicity of Jesus bespeaks a decline of Christianity’s influence in our shared life, I think it’s a good conversation to have.

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