Pat Regan: THE 'HISTORICAL' JESUS - just a product of 1st century myth makers?

A solid foundation for contemporary spirituality, or an ancient deception created to manipulate the trusting flock?

Unfortunately for committed Christians, claims for a historical Jesus cannot possibly provide us with rational clarification or dependable evidence for a 'real' person of this particular name.

Remarkably, the actual issue of an alleged historical Jesus figure seldom confronts the devout believer. Doubt equates with evil in the well-controlled, guilt-fuelled, mind of the faithful. So, it's never a subject that reaches proper debate!

The trusting (and frequently fanatical) influence of blind faith vehemently obsesses the mental process of most propaganda - accepting believers. Doctrinal authorities and even apologetic academics, quietly omit the central question of trustworthiness concerning substantiation for a supposed worldly Jesus.

The uncomfortable truth of the matter gets quietly concealed by traditionally accepted teachings, spiritual deception, successful ecclesiastical propaganda, and contemptible assertions that have no possible anchor in reality.

HOW THE JESUS MIND SCREW WORKS...

Contemporary Christian missionary fundamentalists apparently base all their religious dogmatism on nothing but blind uncompromising faith, hijacked older rehashed Pagan myths and commonly-accepted old-time biblical falsehoods, with no genuine historical basis!

The ramshackle, cherry-picked, historicity surrounding the bogus yet widely-accepted Jesus Christ figure is based on third - hand literature and fables. Fancifull tales that have been adulterated for centuries, via biblical rewriting twists and turns to keep the ignorant populace under control and ensure that power-seeking church-based authorities kept their social monopoly intact over the unsuspecting native masses.

Would claimed evidence for the existence for a physical/historical Jesus stand up to serious analysis in a modern court of law?

Not one person has the smallest amount of material evidence to support claims for an historical Jesus. No dwelling place, no artefacts, examples of carpentry, or Jesus-produced manuscripts or art works.

All assertions and fanciful claims about a real physical Jesus originate from vague writings by other people.

There is no authoritative present-day Roman record that proves Pontius Pilate ever executed a man called Jesus. Demoralizing as it is to theologically-biased historians and pious believers there is not a single contemporary document that truly substantiates an historical Jesus.

All writings regarding Jesus were written many years after the supposed living period of the alleged Jesus from either, people who had never met a physical Jesus, unidentified authors or from counterfeit, mythical or figurative writings.

Put simply, all sources for a worldly Jesus developed from hearsay accounts (which later took on their own fictitious authenticity) that would today be laughed out of a court of law if a concomitant story about some other unproven figure were to emerge.

Hearsay is inadmissible as proof.

GOSPEL PROOF, OR THE BIGGEST SCAM IN HISTORY...?

Contemporary Christians claim that the historical reliability of the so-called gospels is well established. This is certainly not the case and amounts to nothing more than fundamentalist wishful thinking.

For most part, 'respected' accounts of a flesh-and blood Jesus come from the four canonical gospels of the Bible. These gospels did not come into the Bible as original and dependable sources from the authors themselves, but to a certain degree from the dictatorial authority of early Church fathers who of course had a sectarian axe to grind in the social structure of the day.

We do not know who actually wrote them and none of the gospels were written during the assumed life of Jesus, nor do the unidentified authors make the claim to have ever being introduced to a worldly Jesus. Furthermore, none of the original gospel manuscripts exist today, thus we only have copies of quite useless reproductions which make fanciful claims for authenticity quite silly.

The established Church has described the gospel authors as the Apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, but renowned academics now know from critical textural investigation that there simply is no feasible evidence that the gospel writers could have served as the Apostles described in the gospel narratives.

Today, sanctimonious priests, pastors, and vicars ministering their well-practised propaganda to their trusting flocks still wrongly describe these authors as the genuine disciples of Jesus Christ. This claim is totally misleading and erroneous in the extreme. Blind faith never lets historical fact get in its way!

Numerous versions of the Bible still uphold the falsehood of labelling the stories as: 'The Gospel according to St. Luke,' etc. No apostle would have proclaimed his own beatification before the initial Church establishment of sainthood.

The Gospel of Mark possibly dates from around AD 70, Matthew and Luke from around AD 85–90, and John AD 90–110. However, The first papal canonization of which there are positive documents was that of St. Udalricus in 973.

The gospels portray narrative stories, written virtually in the third hand description. Any person wishing to describe themselves as a genuine observer of events would naturally write as the first person, not as a third party to get this information.

One author may have been simply an interpreter, of the next gospel, while yet another is clearly fictitious wishful thinking.

The Gospel of John for instance deviates with described events in Luke, Mark and Matthew. Moreover, Matthew's writer had evidently gained his information from Mark's Gospel and utilised this particular literature for his own particular aims.

He shaped his narrative to appeal mainly to Jewish scriptural tradition. He enhanced the grammatical content of Mark’s Gospel and corrected what he believed to be theologically significant and extended the claimed miracles and supernatural substance therein.

The person behind Luke’s gospel acknowledges himself to be an interpreter of previous literature and 'not' a person giving an eyewitness account. Modern academics have indicated that the author of Luke was likely to have lived as a gentile, or was even a Jewish female.

Another vital point is that numerous widely accepted statements of Jesus claim to have been made by the alleged godman himself, while he was on his own, i.e. without company.

Thus, who actually heard what he said? To our present-day knowledge, even the clever old Romans had not perfected the mobile phone or text messages at that time! Talk about putting words into someone else's mouth. Can religious propaganda gets any dafter than this?

This ludicrous situation becomes even more confusing when the Evangelists give their testimonies regarding what Jesus actually 'thought' about.

To whom did Jesus disclose his innermost thoughts? Undoubtedly, the gospels utilize specialist techniques that fiction writers still use to this day.

Midrash for instance refers to an old Jewish technique of biblical interpretation, or what may be perceived as an adulteration of earlier texts, resulting in new material that bears little similarity or significance to its original format. Basically, this gives the latest writer(s) the liberty to screw around with previous data and put their 'own' biased slant on events. This is exactly what the Church has done with their cherry-picked set of gospels, which are clearly nothing more than sugar-coated documents of Christian propaganda.

The gospels then can only give us at best passed on hearsay, and at worst fallacious tales created by monotheistic zealots and their fundamentalist masters intent on designing a certain coloured worldview. This ancient ruse then was hatched to indoctrinate the rest of society with their own particular end-of-time, messianic credo.

Remember also that New Testament writings were created subsequent to the assumed death of Jesus from unidentified authors and no New Testament documents exist today.

After nearly two thousand years, the original manuscripts would be lost though age and persistent usage. Therefore, the copies we have may be seen as accurate transcriptions without scribal errors or intentional alterations. However, most of the later intentional changes were injected as improvements on the earlier volumes, to make the Christian fable more convincing and attractive and thus gain more converts. Potential changes added after this time would have been immense and given the current writers in power the opportunity to spin the allegedly 'holy' documentation to suit the narrative required at any given time period. Religious propaganda was real power over the masses and the activists behind the many biblical rewrites knew just how to use it.

Any contemporary jury would certainly throw such poppycock so-called biblical evidence/gospel truth out of court within minutes and fine the guilty party for perjury.

Whatever the real facts behind this gospel situation may be we are always confronted with untrustworthy methodology and highly doubtful sources of reference.

In the real quest for truth, which may inadvertently slay a few sacred cows along the way, it's utterly crucial to realise that the gospel yarns themselves cannot serve as prime examples of eyewitness accounts because they came as products of the limited minds of the nameless authors, and not from the characters themselves.

The Jesus figure we are told about today in the New Testament results in the first instance simply from first-century mythmaking.

We must also realise that there are no records whatever of Jesus's life in the Roman documentation of that fiery period. This serious omission must tell us a great deal since this figure supposedly (by biblical accounts anyway) motivated so much social unrest during this period.

One would genuinely expect there to be countless expertly-written records regarding the arrest, trial and assumed execution of Jesus, or some of the political notoriety reported that the gospel writers portray so freely. But no! The Roman histories are deathly silent, even though they are usually quite methodical.

Flavius Josephus alone produced countless volumes, many of which survive and he is far from being the only historian of Palestine (or whatever that land was called back then) in this period whose writings have survived in some structure. Furthermore there is no trustworthy account in Josephus to substantiate an historical Jesus figure.

Josephus was a historian who was so exceptionally systematic that he would write a three page history of the trial and execution of an ordinary thief. He wrote at great length about John the Baptist, but on Jesus, his two diminutive references are gravely doubted by scholars as being authentic.

The writings of Josephus have come down to us only through biased Christian sources and none prior to the fourth century. These writing are known to have been tampered with by Christians (with obvious missionary agendas) , which makes them, as an accurate source of reference, quite unacceptable and invalide.

So why are the references in Josephus doubted?

According to foremost Josephus academics the use of the Christian reference to Jesus being the "Messiah" is highly dubious coming from a Jewish historian, particularly from one who treated other messianic aspirants quite severely.

This claim alone would make him a suspect of sedition. Origen mentions that Josephus actually declared that Vespasian fulfilled the messianic oracles. Origen, writing approximately a century before Eusebius, says twice that Josephus "did not believe in Jesus as the Christ".

Letters claimed as great evidence by Christians for a historically-proven Jesus figure, supposedly produced by Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, Thallus, Philo of Alexandria, Emperor Hadrian, Justus of Tiberius, Lucian of Samosata, etc, were written 'after' the events they alluded to. Consequently, such laughable so-called proof amounts to nothing more than more third-hand hearsay, passed on from pillar to post. Such hearsay originated, by and large, from 'Christian' sources and with no basis in actual fact.

Of course, the passage of time has also ensured that the iron-fist authority of biased Church fathers made 'suitable' alterations to vast tracts of so-called evidence, which is little other than wishful priestly thinking and useless religious propaganda.

Again, such declared 'evidence' would be laughed out of court in this day and age and seen as the groundless fundamentalist propaganda that it really is. The old Marvin Gaye song comes to mind: "I heard it through the Grapevine!"

Tacitus, the famous Roman historian, is the earliest Pagan writer to talk of Jesus as a man executed by Pilate. Rather than expressing information he gleaned out of some notable archive this was in all probability derived from simple Christian rumour about a supposedly human originator of the movement, recently circulating in the Rome of Tacitus’ day (c.115).

About the same time, the Roman historian Suetonius's report about Jews in Rome creating social unrest under "Chrestus" in the reign of Claudius is so short and vague that it may not be about Christ and Christians at all.

At any rate, it would hardly provide any witness to an historical Jesus figure. The term 'Chrestus' was common at the time, meaning good or useful. Scholars have highlighted 126 people from Rome named Chrestus, and 59 of them were slaves.

Mentions of Jesus in the Jewish Talmud (attributed to rabbis who lived around the end of the first century) are wholly untrustworthy, due to them not being written down before the third century.

These above accounts are so obscure and abstract that they can barely be related to the man-made Jesus figure, standing instead as mere articles of blind, uncompromising, faith - not provable fact!

Christian theology is based on transforming the man-made Jesus figure into yet another heathen fertility resurrection/dying god; another Tammuz, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, Osiris, marked by their annual death and renewal which magically symbolises the Earth’s natural fertilisation and the spiritual renewal within us all.

The early Church fathers begrudgingly saw how attractive such ancient and wise organic Pagan concepts were to the masses, so adopted them for their own newly created Jesus deity.

This missionary stratagem led to a corruption of original wholesome Pagan concepts because polytheistic/pantheistic, well-balanced, philosophy is largely tolerant and well able to adopt other polytheistic deities and traditions into its worldview.

For instance, the Romans amalgamated many of their deities and traditions with the native Celtic pantheon and even set up shrines to both sets of gods/goddesses.

Conversely, monotheistic philosophy is exclusive and intolerant. It states that its vision of the godhead is the only way to salvation and that all other faiths are corrupt or in league with Satan. It subverts and then, when the opportunity permits, eventually either converts or oppresses smaller faiths, which it sees as competitors. World history of fundamentalist missionary activity against many older cultures substantiates this fact.

Countless individuals who are today attracted to the Pagan religion are unable to differentiate between pantheism and monotheism and thus unable to see just how the two worldviews are totally incompatible.

Many have fallen for the charismatic charms of smiling evangelists in their midst that have successfully manipulated their minds to accept a theological mish-mash of Christo/Pagan ideas that can never ultimately work.

Pagan and Christian cosmologies are incomprehensible as the monotheistic Church has its sacred duty (which is of course based on olden falsehoods as we have seen) to make every person on the globe one of its own.

Perhaps though, groups or individuals that are indeed in any way fascinated by interfaith liaison with the Church (along with all its fraudulent claims for a historically-orientated mangod) actually belong to the Church! Because this is where their hearts and loyalty truly belong? .

VIRGIN BIRTH OF AN ALLEGED JESUS: IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE SOMETHING NEW?

The Egyptian goddess Neith was perceived as a Virgin-Mother.

Isis gave birth as a virgin to the Egyptian god Horus.

Attis was son of the virgin Nana. His birth was believed to have been celebrated on 25th December.

The Roman savoir Quirinus was born of a virgin.

Adonis/Tammuz was born of the virgin Myrrha.

Mithra/Mithras was born of a virgin (supposedly on 25th Dec.)

Zoroaster was also born of a virgin.

Krishna was born of a virgin

Buddha was birthed by the virgin Maya.

Indra was born of a virgin.

These are just a few examples which show that this concept of Virgin Birth is nothing new. Ancient images of Isis and child, etc, vastly predate the Christian Madonna and child illusion. Christian apologists are quick to shed doubt on such information yet the facts remain that the Bible/gospel authors incorporated such data into their growing theology.

Numerous mythical figures such as Horus, Bacchus, Hercules, Osiris, Mithra, Hermes, Prometheus and Perseus (and possibly their cross- parallel divine equating figures from different cultures) were frequently accredited with the following important aspects:

All lived in a time prior to the alleged Jesus figure

All had a deity for a parent

All had a human virgin for a mother

All had their birth announced by heavenly display

All were believed to have been born in December

All had an attempt on their life by a despot while they were a baby

All met with a brutal demise

All rose again after their death

Clearly, the unknown authors of the gospels were so impressed that they utilised this type of Pagan mythological information when creating their own accounts, to foster us with an historical Jesus figure and his myth.

THE BIBLE

The Bible was constructed by countless religious activists who were either at the top of this fraudulent assembly line or were simple minions in its ultimate formation.

Each new translator gave their own specially biased slant to the earlier literature, each century saw new additions based by the personal or political whims of the latest rewriters.

Editing and basic construction of the Bible came from club members of the early Christian Church.

Doctrinal authority within the Church possessed the raw fundamental text matter and decided 'exactly' what would appear in the Bible. There occurred ample opportunity and motivation to modify or create (slip in) new writings that might reinforce the religion/political position of the Church and namely the leading members of the Church themselves.

Subsequent to the original languages being translated into the Latin tongue, it was only a matter of time before the original language could be done away with. This clever Church ruse gave further power and exclusivity to an already corrupt doctrinal system, which was controlled by an aggressive and uncompromising theocratic machine like the world has never seen.

During the Middle Ages, severe penalties may ultimately have been applied to any commoner caught reading the Bible incorrectly. Perceived heretical misinterpretations of scripture was something the Church was paranoid about. This was largely because the priesthood was painfully conscious of the inaccuracy, irregularity, contradictions, and blatant lies that peppered the greatly rewritten text material within the Bible.

Church authority had to be preserved at all costs over the populace, thus the common individual in the street remained no wiser due to enforced theocratic ignorance. The dictatorially fostered fraud within the Bible continued without challenge, as it largely does to this day.

Numerous outrageous frauds were perpetrated on the trusting and largely ignorant populace. Christian historians concede the deceitfulness of the early Church and they confess that the martyrs, saints, traditions and customs of the Christian Church were stolen from ancient Pagan sources. In fact the whole Christian calendar is blatantly moulded on the earlier heathen agricultural year.

Moreover, many Christian and secular historians freely admit that events in the New Testament were taken from much earlier Pagan mythology. As we have mentioned above, the death and subsequent resurrection idea for a god occurred in numerous pre-Christian tales. The 'real' meaning of this divine concept is the demise and rebirth of nature's cycle each new coming season.

The Church simply substituted this wholesome Pagan wisdom, by swapping a Sun god for a son - of - God! This was a clever and effective missionary ploy to manipulate the native people away from their ancient heathen birthright.

There are claimed to be some two hundred gospels, epistles and other books relating to the worldly existence of Jesus. Out of these, only twenty seven are acknowledged by church authority. The other one hundred & seventy three have been declared by the Church to be fraudulent documents and heretical writings; i.e., meaning they did not fit unto the Church's monopolising narrative.

Hundreds of known early Church forgeries exist. The early Church fathers found it rather too easy to lie and deceive when the situation suited their theoretic intentions. Dishonesty was apparently quite acceptable to them on many occasions.

The 4th century Church father and bishop of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazanzius, wrote to St. Jerome:

"A little jargon is all that is necessary to impose on the people. The less they comprehend, the more they admire."

Possibly the greatest figure in Christian antiquity Augustine of Hippo, freely wrote of his desire for censorship:

"It is lawful, then, to him that discusses disputes and preaches of things eternal, or to him that narrates of things temporal pertaining to religion or piety, to conceal at fitting times whatever seems fit to be concealed."

The 4th century Bishop and ecclesiastical historian, Eusebius, openly bragged that he deceitfully concealed all that would be a disgrace to early Christianity. Too many Church authorities to mention here have followed his early example over the centuries - as they still do today.

Eusebius apparently even related, as truth, a preposterous account of directing a letter to Jesus Christ and then receiving a response. If that’s not enough to merit questioning of his word try this for size. Eusebius claimed:

"on some occasions the bodies of martyrs who had been devoured by wild beasts, upon the beasts being strangled, were found alive in their stomachs."

Unfortunately, a plethora of examples of early Christian wishful- thinking and unadulterated deceit abound, which simply adds further proof to the dubious authenticity behind this particular belief system. Add to this the fact that such one-sided ecclesiastical authorities edited and reformed vast swaths of the Bible and you get a clearer picture of the subterfuge residing under the surface of Christian doctrinal belief, which is always asserted as unchallengeable gospel truth by irate fundamentalists.

The persistent Christian belief of a physical resurrection of Jesus after his supposed death is (like all other aspects of this ancient fabrication of truth) a development of blind faith and powerful sectarian propaganda, with no foundation in historical fact.

MIRACLES - EXCLUSIVE TO THE JESUS MYTH?

Please note also that Pagan deities (and real persons) were accredited with not only performing plenty of miracles, they did the identical miracles that the alleged Jesus figure did and some long before the Church created his mythology.

When Josephus described Vespasian the Roman Emperor as the Messiah, he was of course referring to an actual historical human being and real life proceedings, not a man-made mythical figure such as Jesus.

It is very revealing to also note that Vespasian was recorded by Tacitus (and Suetonius etc) as curing a blind man with his spittle. A Messianic figure (but this time a real historical man) making the blind see again. Vespasian is also reported to have healed the lame - sound familiar?

Christian theologians, intent on creating a suitable story for their Jesus figure, borrowed heavily from Pagan mythology as the following will show:

Asclepius was the son of Apollo, he reputedly raised the dead and cured the sick.

Isis healed the sick.

Pythagoras prophesized, healed the sick and calmed storms.

Dionysus changed water into wine.

Poseidon walked on water.

Countless more examples, which antedate Christianity, exist. Before the Christian myth was first thought out, hundreds of Pagan miracles were believed to have occurred and many were dead ringers for the supernatural tales of the assumed Jesus figure.

THE RESURRECTION MYTH

THE ASSUMED RESURRECTION OF JESUS HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT THE CENTRE OF FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN BELIEF

Crucified gods 'before' the Christians got hold of the story...

In ancient times It was supposed that execution by crucifixion concerned the highest extremes of suffering possible to be endured by ordinary man. Therefore, a divine being must undergo such misery as a model of bravery and courage.

The deity must prove that he’s prepared to experience the utmost hardship and desolation to satisfy his faithful followers. The god must be greater than his subjects and able to suffer the most heinous method of death, without complaint.

Suffering death via crucifixion gave the dramatic event a passionate finishing touch, which 1st century myth makers used so well to complete their Jesus fantasy. However, the Christian theology assembly line, which undertook the making of all fraudulent gospel and biblical materials took the Jesus resurrection story from much earlier heathen tales.

A few examples to consider:

Ixion of Rome 400 BC: known as “The crucified spirit of the world."

Bali of Orissa: Crucified 725 B.C.

Mithra of Persia: Crucified, 600 B.C.

Crite of Chaldea: Crucified, 1200 B.C.

Thammuz/Dumuzi/Adonis of Syria: Crucified 1160 B.C.

Wittoba of the Telingonesic: Crucified 552 B.C.

Iao of Nepaul: known as "the crucified saviour" Crucified 622 B.C.

Hesus of The Celtic Druids: Crucified 834 B.C.

Quexalcote of Mexico: Crucified (between two thieves) "for the sins of mankind" 587 B.C.

Quirinus of Rome: Crucified 506 B.C.

Prometheus: Crucified 547 B.C.

Crucifixion of Thulis of Egypt, 1700 B.C.

Indra of Tibet: Crucified 725 B.C.

Atys of Phrygia: Crucified 1170 B.C.

Furthermore, Osiris was crucified in the heavens by some accounts as was Horus.

Many of those figures mentioned above had identical aspects in their respective legendary tales to the Christ myth which they predated by centuries. I believe there are many others too, in fact too many to mention herein.

The Church, wanting to keep the monopoly on this divine concept, used every available effort to cover up from public knowledge the fact that it had stolen this literature from previous Pagan mythology. It is quite surprising at how successful the Church has been in containing this particular fraud even to this very day!

Of course irate Christian missionary apologetics will twist and seek to rearrange the data supplied herein, yet if their attempts were to result in even 90% of the ancient Pagan crucifixion/resurrection/virgin birth myths being somehow discredited this would still give us a 10% certainty on the fraudulent nature behind the exclusivity of their own beliefs. Sorry, but the whole Christian theology is taken from more ancient source material.

Conclusions.

1. The Bible is a fraudulent volume of greatly adulterated documents created by religious zealots wanting to foster a certain, coloured monotheistic worldview on the rest of society. Apologetics still seek to enforce this hoax-based cosmology on us today.

2. The gospels are a list of contradictory narrative writings created by unknown authors, after the assumed death of Jesus Christ, with a purpose to reunify the Jewish religious system for their own sectarian ends.

3. All claimed evidence for an historical Jesus figure, including his assumed birth, life, death, and resurrection is based on third-hand hearsay and is a result of 1st century myth making.

4, The Bible, gospels and the whole Jesus myth are blatant early Christian adoptions of much earlier Pagan legends, which can be traced back to ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia, Samaria, etc.

5. All Christian societies are founded on this olden theocratic lie and fraudulent claims, with no genuine foundation in real fact.

6. Polytheism and Monotheism are and always will be incompatible due to unchangeable Church doctrine, which demands evangelical mission to all other faiths.

7. Christianity is not the native faith of any land.

8. The virgin birth, miracles, crucifixion, and alleged resurrection of the assumed Jesus figure were all divine concepts taken by the earliest Christ Cult activists from much older Pagan mythology, to support their paternalistic, one god, agenda.

The root of Christian fundamentalist faith is then clearly nothing more a very clever, ancient theocratic deception used once, as it still is today, by religious missionaries, zealots, politicians, teachers, academics and in fact anyone with a sectarian axe to grind to control the trusting minds and hearts of the population!

This monotheistic, power-based, fraudulent system of mind control and mental delusion has twisted once wholesome native heathen polytheistic traditions that linked man with the cycles of the earth, moon, sun, and stars into something that it never was.

The beautiful and educational ancient Pagan myths of our ancestors were wise analogies for these essential seasonal events and never meant to be corrupted into man-made fantasies that give power to certain elitist priesthoods in positions of total power.

The root of Christian fundamentalist faith has no foundation in historical fact and amounts to nothing more than wishful-thinking, and anciently passed on gossip!

Supposedly 'real' godmen come and go throughout history and the alleged Jesus Christ figure is just the latest version!