Did Jesus Christ Really Live?
Scientific inquiry into the origins of Christianity
begins to-day with the question: "Did Jesus Christ really live?" Was
there a man named Jesus, who was called the Christ, living in Palestine nineteen
centuries ago, of whose life and teachings we have a correct account in the New
Testament? The orthodox idea that Christ was the son of God -- God himself in
human form -- that he was the creator of the countless millions of glowing suns
and wheeling worlds that strew the infinite expanse of the universe; that the
forces of nature were the servants of his will and changed their courses at his
command -- such an idea has been abandoned by every independent thinker in the
world -- by every thinker who relies on reason and experience rather than mere
faith -- by every man of science who places the integrity of nature above the
challenge of ancient religious tales.
- Not only has the divinity of Christ been given up,
but his existence as a man is being more and more seriously questioned. Some
of the ablest scholars of the world deny that he ever lived at all. A
commanding literature dealing with the inquiry, intense in its seriousness
and profound and thorough in its research, is growing up in all countries,
and spreading the conviction that Christ is a myth. The question is one of
tremendous importance. For the Freethinker, as well as for the Christian, it
is of the weightiest significance. The Christian religion has been and is a
mighty fact in the world. For good or for ill, it has absorbed for many
centuries the best energies of mankind. It has stayed the march of
civilization, and made martyrs of some of the noblest men and women of the
race: and it is to-day the greatest enemy of knowledge, of freedom, of
social and industrial improvement, and of the genuine brotherhood of
mankind. The progressive forces of the world are at war with this Asiatic
superstition, and this war will continue until the triumph of truth and
freedom is complete. The question, "Did Jesus Christ Really Live?"
goes to the very root of the conflict between reason and faith; and upon its
determination depends, to some degree, the decision as to whether religion
or humanity shall rule the world.
- Whether Christ did, or did not live, has nothing at
all to do with what the churches teach, or with what we believe, It is
wholly a matter of evidence. It is a question of science. The question is --
what does history say? And that question must be settled in the court of
historical criticism. If the thinking world is to hold to the position that
Christ was a real character, there must be sufficient evidence to warrant
that belief. If no evidence for his existence can be found; if history
returns the verdict that his name is not inscribed upon her scroll, if it be
found that his story was created by art and ingenuity, like the stories of
fictitious heroes, he will have to take his place with the host of other
demigods whose fancied lives and deeds make up the mythology of the world.
- What, then, is the evidence that Jesus Christ lived
in this world as a man? The authorities relied upon to prove the reality of
Christ are the four Gospels of the New Testament -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John. These Gospels, and these alone, tell the story of his life. Now we
know absolutely nothing of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, apart from what is
said of them in the Gospels. Moreover, the Gospels themselves do not claim
to have been written by these men. They are not called "The Gospel of
Matthew," or "The Gospel of Mark," but "The Gospel
According to Matthew," "The Gospel According to Mark,"
"The Gospel According to Luke," and "The Gospel According to
John." No human being knows who wrote a single line in one of these
Gospels. No human being knows when they were written, or where. Biblical
scholarship has established the fact that the Gospel of Mark is the oldest
of the four. The chief reasons for this conclusion are that this Gospel is
shorter, simpler, and more natural, than any of the other three. It is shown
that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were enlarged from the Gospel of Mark.
The Gospel of Mark knows nothing of the virgin birth, of the Sermon on the
Mount, of the Lord's prayer, or of other important facts of the supposed
life of Christ. These features were added by Matthew and Luke.
- But the Gospel of Mark, as we have it, is not the
original Mark. In the same way that the writers of Matthew and Luke copied
and enlarged the Gospel of Mark, Mark copied and enlarged an earlier
document which is called the "original Mark." This original source
perished in the early age of the Church. What it was, who wrote it, where it
was written, nobody knows. The Gospel of John is admitted by Christian
scholars to be an unhistorical document. They acknowledge that it is not a
life of Christ, but an interpretation of him; that it gives us an idealized
and spiritualized picture of what Christ is supposed to have been, and that
it is largely composed of the speculations of Greek philosophy. The Gospels
of Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are called the "Synoptic
Gospels," on the one hand, and the Gospel of John, on the other, stand
at opposite extremes of thought. So complete is the difference between the
teaching of the first three Gospels and that of the fourth, that every
critic admits that if Jesus taught as the Synoptics relate, he could not
possibly have taught as John declares. Indeed, in the first three Gospels
and in the fourth, we meet with two entirely different Christs. Did I say
two? It should be three; for, according to Mark, Christ was a man; according
to Matthew and Luke, he was a demigod; while John insists that he was God
himself.
- There is not the smallest fragment of trustworthy
evidence to show that any of the Gospels were in existence, in their present
form, earlier than a hundred years after the time at which Christ is
supposed to have died. Christian scholars, having no reliable means by which
to fix the date of their composition, assign them to as early an age as
their calculations and their guesses will allow; but the dates thus arrived
at are far removed from the age of Christ or his apostles. We are told that
Mark was written some time after the year 70, Luke about 110, Matthew about
130, and John not earlier than 140 A.D. Let me impress upon you that these
dates are conjectural, and that they are made as early as possible. The
first historical mention of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, was made
by the Christian Father, St. Irenaeus, about the year 190 A.D. The only
earlier mention of any of the Gospels was made by Theopholis of Antioch, who
mentioned the Gospel of John in 180 A.D.
- There is absolutely nothing to show that these
Gospels -- the only sources of authority as to the existence of Christ --
were written until a hundred and fifty years after the events they pretend
to describe. Walter R. Cassels, the learned author of "Supernatural
Religion," one of the greatest works ever written on the origins of
Christianity, says: "After having exhausted the literature and the
testimony bearing on the point, we have not found a single distinct trace of
any of those Gospels during the first century and a half after the death of
Christ." How can Gospels which were not written until a hundred and
fifty years after Christ is supposed to have died, and which do not rest on
any trustworthy testimony, have the slightest value as evidence that he
really lived? History must be founded upon genuine documents or on living
proof. Were a man of to-day to attempt to write the life of a supposed
character of a hundred and fifty years ago, without any historical documents
upon which to base his narrative, his work would not be a history, it would
be a romance. Not a single statement in it could be relied upon.
- Christ is supposed to have been a Jew, and his
disciples are said to have been Jewish fishermen. His language, and the
language of his followers must, therefore, have been Aramaic -- the popular
language of Palestine in that age. But the Gospels are written in Greek --
every one of them. Nor were they translated from some other language. Every
leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, four hundred years ago, has
maintained that they were originally written in Greek. This proves that they
were not written by Christ's disciples, or by any of the early Christians.
Foreign Gospels, written by unknown men, in a foreign tongue, several
generations after the death of those who are supposed to have known the
facts -- such is the evidence relied upon to prove that Jesus lived.
- But while the Gospels were written several
generations too late to be of authority, the original documents, such as
they were, were not preserved. The Gospels that were written in the second
century no longer exist. They have been lost or destroyed. The oldest
Gospels that we have are supposed to be copies of copies of copies that were
made from those Gospels. We do not know who made these copies; we do not
know when they were made; nor do we know whether they were honestly made.
Between the earliest Gospels and the oldest existing manuscripts of the New
Testament, there is a blank gulf of three hundred years. It is, therefore,
impossible to say what the original Gospels contained.
- There were many Gospels in circulation in the early
centuries, and a large number of them were forgeries. Among these were the
"Gospel of Paul," the Gospel of Bartholomew," the
"Gospel of Judas Iscariot," the "Gospel of the
Egyptians," the "Gospel or Recollections of Peter," the
"Oracles or Sayings of Christ," and scores of other pious
productions, a collection of which may still be read in "The Apocryphal
New Testament." Obscure men wrote Gospels and attached the names of
prominent Christian characters to them, to give them the appearance of
importance. Works were forged in the names of the apostles, and even in the
name of Christ. The greatest Christian teachers taught that it was a virtue
to deceive and lie for the glory of the faith. Dean Milman, the standard
Christian historian, says: "Pious fraud was admitted and avowed."
The Rev. Dr. Giles writes: "There can be no doubt that great numbers of
books were then written with no other view than to deceive." Professor
Robertson Smith says: "There was an enormous floating mass of spurious
literature created to suit party views." The early church was flooded
with spurious religious writings. From this mass of literature, our Gospels
were selected by priests and called the inspired word of God. Were these
Gospels also forged? There is no certainty that they were not. But let me
ask: If Christ was an historical character, why was it necessary to forge
documents to prove his existence? Did anybody ever think of forging
documents to prove the existence of any person who was really known to have
lived? The early Christian forgeries are a tremendous testimony to the
weakness of the Christian cause.
- Spurious or genuine, let us see what the Gospels can
tell us about the life of Jesus. Matthew and Luke give us the story of his
genealogy. How do they agree? Matthew says there were forty-one generations
from Abraham to Jesus. Luke says there were fifty-six. Yet both pretend to
give the genealogy of Joseph, and both count the generations! Nor is this
all. The Evangelists disagree on all but two names between David and Christ.
These worthless genealogies show how much the New Testament writers knew
about the ancestors of their hero.
- If Jesus lived, he must have been born. When was he
born? Matthew says he was born when Herod was King of Judea. Luke says he
was born when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria. He could not have been born
during the administration of these tow rulers for Herod died in the year 4
B.C., and Cyrenius, who, in Roman history is Quirinius, did not become
Governor of Syria until ten years later. Herod and Quirinius are separated
by the whole reign of Archelaus, Herod's son. Between Matthew and Luke,
there is, therefore, a contradiction of at least ten years, as to the time
of Christ's birth. The fact is that the early Christians had absolutely no
knowledge as to when Christ was born. The Encyclopedia Britannica says:
"Christians count one hundred and thirty-three contrary opinions of
different authorities concerning the year the Messiah appeared on
earth." Think of it -- one hundred and thirty-three different years,
each one of which is held to be the year in which Christ came into the
world. What magnificent certainty!
- Towards the close of the eighteenth century,
Antonmaria Lupi, a learned Jesuit, wrote a work to show that the nativity of
Christ has been assigned to every month in the year, at one time or another.
- Where was Christ born? According to the Gospels, he
was habitually called "Jesus of Nazareth." The New Testament
writers have endeavored to leave the impression that Nazareth of Galilee was
his home town. The Synoptic Gospels represent that thirty years of his life
were spent there. Notwithstanding this, Matthew declares that he was born in
Bethlehem in fulfillment of a prophecy in the Book of Micah. But the
prophecy of Micah has nothing whatever to do with Jesus; it prophesies the
coming of a military leader, not a divine teacher. Matthew's application of
this prophecy to Christ strengthens the suspicion that his Gospel is not
history, but romance. Luke has it that his birth occurred at Bethlehem,
whither his mother had gone with her husband, to make the enrollment called
for by Augustus Caesar. Of the general census mentioned by Luke, nothing is
known in Roman history. But suppose such a census was taken. The Roman
custom, when an enrollment was made, was that every man was to report at his
place of residence. The head of the family alone made report. In no case was
his wife, or any dependent, required to be with him. In the face of this
established custom, Luke declares that Joseph left his home in Nazareth and
crossed two provinces to go Bethlehem for the enrollment; and not only this,
but that he had to be accompanied by his wife, Mary, who was on the very eve
of becoming a mother. This surely is not history, but fable. The story that
Christ was born at Bethlehem was a necessary part of the program which made
him the Messiah, and the descendant of King David. The Messiah had to be
born in Bethlehem, the city of David; and by what Renan calls a roundabout
way, his birth was made to take place there. The story of his birth in the
royal city is plainly fictitious.
- His home was Nazareth. He was called "Jesus of
Nazareth"; and there he is said to have lived until the closing years
of his life. Now comes the question -- Was there a city of Nazareth in that
age? The Encyclopedia Biblica, a work written by theologians, the greatest
biblical reference work in the English language, says: "We cannot
perhaps venture to assert positively that there was a city of Nazareth in
Jesus' time." No certainty that there was a city of Nazareth! Not only
are the supposed facts of the life of Christ imaginary, but the city of his
birth and youth and manhood existed, so far as we know, only on the map of
mythology. What amazing evidence to prove the reality of a Divine man!
Absolute ignorance as to his ancestry; nothing whatever known of the time of
his birth, and even the existence of the city where he is said to have been
born, a matter of grave question!
- After his birth, Christ, as it were, vanishes out of
existence, and with the exception of a single incident recorded in Luke, we
hear absolutely nothing of him until he has reached the age of thirty years.
The account of his being found discussing with the doctors in the Temple at
Jerusalem when he was but twelve years old, is told by Luke alone. The other
Gospels are utterly ignorant of this discussion; and, this single incident
excepted, the four Gospels maintain an unbroken silence with regard to
thirty years of the life of their hero. What is the meaning of this silence?
If the writers of the Gospels knew the facts of the life of Christ, why is
it that they tell us absolutely nothing of thirty years of that life? What
historical character can be named whose life for thirty years is an absolute
blank to the world? If Christ was the incarnation of God, if he was the
greatest teacher the world has known, if he came to save mankind from
everlasting pain -- was there nothing worth remembering in the first thirty
years of his existence among men? The fact is that the Evangelists knew
nothing of the life of Jesus, before his ministry; and they refrained from
inventing a childhood, youth and early manhood for him because it was not
necessary to their purpose.
- Luke, however, deviated from the rule of silence
long enough to write the Temple incident. The story of the discussion with
the doctors in the Temple is proved to be mythical by all the circumstances
that surround it. The statement that his mother and father left Jerusalem,
believing that he was with them; that they went a day's journey before
discovering that he was not in their company; and that after searching for
three days, they found him in the Temple asking and answering questions of
the learned Doctors, involves a series of tremendous improbabilities. Add to
this the fact that the incident stands alone in Luke, surrounded by a period
of silence covering thirty years; add further that none of the other writers
have said a word of the child Jesus discussing with the scholars of their
nation; and add again the unlikelihood that a child would appear before
serious-minded men in the role of an intellectual champion and the fabulous
character of the story becomes perfectly clear.
- The Gospels know nothing of thirty years of Christ's
life. What do they know of the last years of that life? How long did the
ministry, the public career of Christ, continue? According to Matthew, Mark
and Luke, the public life of Christ lasted about a year. If John's Gospel is
to be believed, his ministry covered about three years. The Synoptics teach
that Christ's public work was confined almost entirely to Galilee, and that
he went to Jerusalem only once, not long before his death. John is in
hopeless disagreement with the other Evangelists as to the scene of Christ's
labors. He maintains that most of the public life of Christ was spent in
Judea, and that Christ was many times in Jerusalem. Now, between Galilee and
Judea there was the province of Samaria. If all but the last few weeks of
Christ's ministry was carried on in his native province of Galilee, it is
certain that the greater part of that ministry was not spent in Judea, two
provinces away.
- John tells us that the driving of the money-changers
from the Temple occurred at the beginning of Christ's ministry; and nothing
is said of any serious consequences following it. But Matthew, Mark and Luke
declare that the purification of the Temple took place at the close of his
career, and that this act brought upon him the wrath of the priests, who
sought to destroy him. Because of these facts, the Encyclopedia Biblica
assures us that the order of events in the life of Christ, as given by the
Evangelists, is contradictory and untrustworthy; that the chronological
framework of the Gospels is worthless; and that the facts "show only
too clearly with what lack of concern for historical precision the
Evangelists write." In other words, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote,
not what they knew, but what they imagined.
- Christ is said to have been many times in Jerusalem.
It is said that he preached daily in the Temple. He was followed by his
twelve disciples, and by multitudes of enthusiastic men and women. On the
one hand, the people shouted hosannas in his honor, and on the other,
priests engaged him in discussion and sought to take his life. All this
shows that he must have been well known to the authorities. Indeed, he must
have been one of the best known men in Jerusalem. Why, then, was it
necessary for the priests to bribe one of his disciples to betray him? Only
an obscure man, whose identity was uncertain, or a man who was in hiding,
would need to be betrayed. A man who appeared daily in the streets, who
preached daily in the Temple, a man who was continually before the public
eye, could have been arrested at any moment. The priests would not have
bribed a man to betray a teacher whom everybody knew. If the accounts of
Christ's betrayal are true, all the declarations about his public
appearances in Jerusalem must be false.
- Nothing could be more improbable than the story of
Christ's crucifixion. The civilization of Rome was the highest in the world.
The Romans were the greatest lawyers the world had ever known. Their courts
were models of order and fairness. A man was not condemned without a trial;
he was not handed to the executioner before being found guilty. And yet we
are asked to believe that an innocent man was brought before a Roman court,
where Pontius Pilate was Judge; that no charge of wrongdoing having been
brought against him, the Judge declared that he found him innocent; that the
mob shouted, "Crucify him; crucify him!" and that to please the
rabble, Pilate commanded that the man who had done no wrong and whom he had
found innocent, should be scourged, and then delivered him to the
executioners to be crucified! Is it thinkable that the master of a Roman
court in the days of Tiberius Caesar, having found a man innocent and
declared him so, and having made efforts to save his life, tortured him of
his own accord, and then handed him over to a howling mob to be nailed to a
cross? A Roman court finding a man innocent and then crucifying him? Is that
a picture of civilized Rome? Is that the Rome to which the world owes its
laws? In reading the story of the Crucifixion, are we reading history or
religious fiction? Surely not history.
- On the theory that Christ was crucified, how shall
we explain the fact that during the first eight centuries of the evolution
of Christianity, Christian art represented a lamb, and not a man, as
suffering on the cross for the salvation of the world? Neither the paintings
in the Catacombs nor the sculptures on Christian tombs pictured a human
figure on the cross. Everywhere a lamb was shown as the Christian symbol --
a lamb carrying a cross, a lamb at the foot of a cross, a lamb on a cross.
Some figures showed the lamb with a human head, shoulders and arms, holding
a cross in his hands -- the lamb of God in process of assuming the human
form -- the crucifixion myth becoming realistic. At the close of the eighth
century, Pope Hadrian I, confirming the decree of the sixth Synod of
Constantinople, commanded that thereafter the figure of a man should take
the place of a lamb on the cross. It took Christianity eight hundred years
to develop the symbol of its suffering Savior. For eight hundred years, the
Christ on the cross was a lamb. But if Christ was actually crucified, why
was his place on the cross so long usurped by a lamb? In the light of
history and reason, and in view of a lamb on the cross, why should we
believe in the Crucifixion?
- And let us ask, if Christ performed the miracles the
New Testament describes, if he gave sight to blind men's eyes, if his magic
touch brought youthful vigor to the palsied frame, if the putrefying dead at
his command returned to life and love again -- why did the people want him
crucified? Is it not amazing that a civilized people -- for the Jews of that
age were civilized -- were so filled with murderous hate towards a kind and
loving man who went about doing good, who preached forgiveness, cleansed the
leprous, and raised the dead -- that they could not be appeased until they
had crucified the noblest benefactor of mankind? Again I ask -- is this
history, or is it fiction?
- From the standpoint of the supposed facts, the
account of the Crucifixion of Christ is as impossible as is the raising of
Lazarus from the standpoint of nature. The simple truth is, that the four
Gospels are historically worthless. They abound in contradictions, in the
unreasonable, the miraculous and the monstrous. There is not a thing in them
that can be depended upon as true, while there is much in them that we
certainly know to be false.
- The accounts of the virgin birth of Christ, of his
feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes, of his
cleansing the leprous, of his walking on the water, of his raising the dead,
and of his own resurrection after his life had been destroyed, are as untrue
as any stories that were ever told in this world. The miraculous element in
the Gospels is proof that they were written by men, who did not know how to
write history, or who were not particular as to the truth of what they
wrote. The miracles of the Gospels were invented by credulity or cunning,
and if the miracles were invented, how can we know that the whole history of
Christ was not woven of the warp and woof of the imagination? Dr. Paul W.
Schmiedel, Professor of New Testament Exegesis at Zurich, Switzerland, one
of the foremost theologians of Europe, tells us in the Encyclopaedia Biblica,
that there are only nine passages in the Gospels that we can depend upon as
being the sayings of Jesus; and Professor Arthur Drews, Germany's greatest
exponent of the doctrine that Christ is a myth, analyses these passages and
shows that there is nothing in them that could not easily have been
invented. That these passages are as unhistorical as the rest is also the
contention of John M. Robertson, the eminent English scholar, who holds that
Jesus never lived.
- Let me make a startling disclosure. Let me tell you
that the New Testament itself contains the strongest possible proof that the
Christ of the Gospels was not a real character. The testimony of the
Epistles of Paul demonstrates that the life story of Jesus is an invention.
Of course, there is no certainty that Paul really lived. Let me quote a
passage from the Encyclopaedia Biblica, relative to Paul: "It is true
that the picture of Paul drawn by later times differs utterly in more or
fewer of its details from the original. Legend has made itself master of his
person. The simple truth has been mixed up with invention; Paul has become
the hero of an admiring band of the more highly developed Christians."
Thus Christian authority admits that invention has done its work in
manufacturing at least in part, the life of Paul. In truth, the ablest
Christian scholars reject all but one of the Pauline Epistles as spurious.
Some maintain that Paul was not the author of any of them. The very
existence of Paul is questionable.
- But for the purpose of my argument, I am going to
admit that Paul really lived; that he was a zealous apostle; and that all
the Epistles are from his pen. There are thirteen of these Epistles. Some of
them are lengthy; and they are acknowledged to be the oldest Christian
writings. They were written long before the Gospels. If Paul really wrote
them, they were written by a man who lived in Jerusalem when Christ is
supposed to have been teaching there. Now, if the facts of the life of
Christ were known in the first century of Christianity, Paul was one of the
men who should have known them fully. Yet Paul acknowledges that he never
saw Jesus; and his Epistles prove that he knew nothing about his life, his
works, or his teachings.
- In all the Epistles of Paul, there is not one word
about Christ's virgin birth. The apostle is absolutely ignorant of the marvelous
manner in which Jesus is said to have come into the world. For
this silence, there can be only one honest explanation -- the story of the
virgin birth had not yet been invented when Paul wrote. A large portion of
the Gospels is devoted to accounts of the miracles Christ is said to have
wrought. But you will look in vain through the thirteen Epistles of Paul for
the slightest hint that Christ ever performed any miracles. Is it
conceivable that Paul was acquainted with the miracles of Christ -- that he
knew that Christ had cleansed the leprous, cast out devils that could talk,
restored sight to the blind and speech to the dumb, and even raised the dead
-- is it conceivable that Paul was aware of these wonderful things and yet
failed to write a single line about them? Again, the only solution is that
the accounts of the miracles wrought by Jesus had not yet been invented when
Paul's Epistles were written.
- Not only is Paul silent about the virgin birth and
the miracles of Jesus, he is without the slightest knowledge of the teaching
of Jesus. The Christ of the Gospels preached a famous sermon on a mountain:
Paul knows nothing of it. Christ delivered a prayer now recited by the
Christian world: Paul never heard of it. Christ taught in parables: Paul is
utterly unacquainted with any of them. Is not this astonishing? Paul, the
greatest writer of early Christianity, the man who did more than any other
to establish the Christian religion in the world -- that is, if the Epistles
may be trusted -- is absolutely ignorant of the teaching of Christ. In all
of his thirteen Epistles he does not quote a single saying of Jesus.
- Paul was a missionary. He was out for converts. Is
it thinkable that if the teachings of Christ had been known to him, he would
not have made use of them in his propaganda? Can you believe that a
Christian missionary would go to China and labor for many years to win
converts to the religion of Christ, and never once mention the Sermon on the
Mount, never whisper a word about the Lord's Prayer, never tell the story of
one of the parables, and remain as silent as the grave about the precepts of
his master? What have the churches been teaching throughout the Christian
centuries if not these very things? Are not the churches of to-day
continually preaching about the virgin birth, the miracles, the parables,
and the precepts of Jesus? And o not these features constitute Christianity?
Is there any life of Christ, apart from these things? Why, then, does Paul
know nothing of them? There is but one answer. The virgin-born,
miracle-working, preaching Christ was unknown to the world in Paul's day.
That is to say, he had not yet been invented!
- The Christ of Paul and the Jesus of the Gospels are
two entirely different beings. The Christ of Paul is little more than an
idea. He has no life story. He was not followed by the multitude. He
performed no miracles. He did no preaching. The Christ Paul knew was the
Christ he was in a vision while on his way to Damascus -- an apparition, a
phantom, not a living, human being, who preached and worked among men. This
vision-Christ, this ghostly word, was afterwards brought to the earth by
those who wrote the Gospels. He was given a Holy Ghost for a father and a
virgin for a mother. He was made to preach, to perform astounding miracles,
to die a violent death though innocent, and to rise in triumph from the
grave and ascend again to heaven. Such is the Christ of the New Testament --
first a spirit, and later a miraculously born, miracle working man, who is
master of death and whom death cannot subdue.
- A large body of opinion in the early church denied
the reality of Christ's physical existence. In his "History of
Christianity," Dean Milman writes: "The Gnostic sects denied that
Christ was born at all, or that he died," and Mosheim, Germany's great
ecclesiastical historian, says: "The Christ of early Christianity was
not a human being, but an "appearance," an illusion, a character
in miracle, not in reality -- a myth.
- Miracles do not happen. Stories of miracles are
untrue. Therefore, documents in which miraculous accounts are interwoven
with reputed facts, are untrustworthy, for those who invented the miraculous
element might easily have invented the part that was natural. Men are
common; Gods are rare; therefore, it is at least as easy to invent the
biography of a man as the history of a God. For this reason, the whole story
of Christ -- the human element as well as the divine -- is without valid
claim to be regarded as true. If miracles are fictions, Christ is a myth.
Said Dean Farrar: "If miracles be incredible, Christianity is
false." Bishop Westcott wrote: "The essence of Christianity lies
in a miracle; and if it can be shown that a miracle is either impossible or
incredible, all further inquiry into the details of its history is
superfluous." Not only are miracles incredible, but the uniformity of
nature declares them to be impossible. Miracles have gone: the miraculous
Christ cannot remain.
- If Christ lived, if he was a reformer, if he
performed wonderful works that attracted the attention of the multitude, if
he came in conflict with the authorities and was crucified -- how shall we
explain the fact that history has not even recorded his name? The age in
which he is said to have lived was an age of scholars and thinkers. In
Greece, Rome and Palestine, there were philosophers, historians, poets,
orators, jurists and statesmen. Every fact of importance was noted by
interested and inquiring minds. Some of the greatest writers the Jewish race
has produced lived in that age. And yet, in all the writings of that period,
there is not one line, not one word, not one letter, about Jesus. Great
writers wrote extensively of events of minor importance, but not one of them
wrote a word about the mightiest character who had ever appeared on earth --
a man at whose command the leprous were made clean, a man who fed five
thousand people with a satchel full of bread, a man whose word defied the
grave and gave life to the dead.
- John E. Remsburg, in his scholarly work on "The
Christ," has compiled a list of forty-two writers who lived and wrote
during the time or within a century after the time, of Christ, not one of
whom ever mentioned him.
- Philo, one of the most renowned writers the Jewish
race has produced, was born before the beginning of the Christian Era, and
lived for many years after the time at which Jesus is supposed to have died.
His home was in or near Jerusalem, where Jesus is said to have preached, to
have performed miracles, to have been crucified, and to have risen from the
dead. Had Jesus done these things, the writings of Philo would certainly
contain some record of his life. Yet this philosopher, who must have been
familiar with Herod's massacre of the innocents, and with the preaching,
miracles and death of Jesus, had these things occurred; who wrote an account
of the Jews, covering this period, and discussed the very questions that are
said to have been near to Christ's heart, never once mentioned the name of,
or any deed connected with, the reputed Savior of the world.
- In the closing years of the first century, Josephus,
the celebrated Jewish historian, wrote his famous work on "The
Antiquities of the Jews." In this work, the historian made no mention
of Christ, and for two hundred years after the death of Josephus, the name
of Christ did not appear in his history. There were no printing presses in
those days. Books were multiplied by being copied. It was, therefore, easy
to add to or change what an author had written. The church felt that
Josephus ought to recognize Christ, and the dead historian was made to do
it. In the fourth century, a copy of "The Antiquities of the Jews"
appeared, in which occurred this passage: "Now, there was about this
time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a
doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as received the truth with
pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the
Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the
principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved
him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again
the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand
other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named
from him, are not extinct at this day."
- Such is the celebrated reference to Christ in
Josephus. A more brazen forgery was never perpetrated. For more than two
hundred years, the Christian Fathers who were familiar with the works of
Josephus knew nothing of this passage. Had the passage been in the works of
Josephus which they knew, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen an Clement of
Alexandria would have been eager to hurl it at their Jewish opponents in
their many controversies. But it did not exist. Indeed, Origen, who knew his
Josephus well, expressly affirmed that that writer had not acknowledged
Christ. This passage first appeared in the writings of the Christian Father
Eusebius, the first historian of Christianity, early in the fourth century;
and it is believed that he was its author. Eusebius, who not only advocated
fraud in the interest of the faith, but who is know to have tampered with
passages in the works of Josephus and several other writers, introduces this
passage in his "Evangelical Demonstration," (Book III., p.124), in
these words: "Certainly the attestations I have already produced
concerning our Savior may be sufficient. However, it may not be amiss, if,
over and above, we make use of Josephus the Jew for a further witness."
- Everything demonstrates the spurious character of
the passage. It is written in the style of Eusebius, and not in the style of
Josephus. Josephus was a voluminous writer. He wrote extensively about men
of minor importance. The brevity of this reference to Christ is, therefore,
a strong argument for its falsity. This passage interrupts the narrative. It
has nothing to do with what precedes or what follows it; and its position
clearly shows that the text of the historian has been separated by a later
hand to give it room. Josephus was a Jew -- a priest of the religion of
Moses. This passage makes him acknowledge the divinity, the miracles, and
the resurrection of Christ -- that is to say, it makes an orthodox Jew talk
like a believing Christian! Josephus could not possibly have written these
words without being logically compelled to embrace Christianity. All the
arguments of history and of reason unite in the conclusive proof that the
passage is an unblushing forgery.
- For these reasons every honest Christian scholar has
abandoned it as an interpolation. Dean Milman says: "It is interpolated
with many additional clauses." Dean Farrar, writing in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, says: "That Josephus wrote the whole passage
as it now stands no sane critic can believe." Bishop Warburton
denounced it as "a rank forgery and a very stupid one, too."
Chambers' Encyclopaedia says: "The famous passage of Josephus is
generally conceded to be an interpolation."
- In the "Annals" of Tacitus, the Roman
historian, there is another short passage which speaks of "Christus"
as being the founder of a party called Christians -- a body of people
"who were abhorred for their crimes." These words occur in Tacitus'
account of the burning of Rome. The evidence for this passage is not much
stronger than that for the passage in Josephus. It was not quoted by any
writer before the fifteenth century; and when it was quoted, there was only
one copy of the "Annals" in the world; and that copy was supposed
to have been made in the eighth century -- six hundred years after Tacitus'
death. The "Annals" were published between 115 and 117 A.D.,
nearly a century after Jesus' time -- so the passage, even if genuine, would
not prove anything as to Jesus.
- The name "Jesus" was as common among the
Jews as is William or George with us. In the writings of Josephus, we find
accounts of a number of Jesuses. One was Jesus, the son of Sapphias, the
founder of a seditious band of mariners; another was Jesus, the captain of
the robbers whose followers fled when they heard of his arrest; still
another Jesus was a monomaniac who for seven years went about Jerusalem,
crying, "Woe, woe, woe unto Jerusalem!" who was bruised and beaten
many times, but offered no resistance; and who was finally killed with a
stone at the siege of Jerusalem.
- The word "Christ," the Greek equivalent of
the Jewish word "Messiah," was not a personal name; it was a
title; it meant "the Anointed One."
- The Jews were looking for a Messiah, a successful
political leader, who would restore the independence of their nation.
Josephus tells us of many men who posed as Messiahs, who obtained a
following among the people, and who were put to death by the Romans for
political reasons. One of these Messiahs, or Christs, a Samaritan prophet,
was executed under Pontius Pilate; and so great was the indignation of the
Jews that Pilate had to be recalled by the Roman government.
- These facts are of tremendous significance. While
the Jesus Christ of Christianity is unknown to history, the age in which he
is said to have lived was an age in which many men bore the name of
"Jesus" and many political leaders assumed the title of
"Christ." All the materials necessary for the manufacture of the
story of Christ existed in that age. In all the ancient countries, divine
Saviors were believed to have been born of virgins, to have preached a new
religion, to have performed miracles, to have been crucified as atonements
for the sins of mankind, and to have risen from the grave and ascended into
heaven. All that Jesus is supposed to have taught was in the literature of
the time. In the story of Christ there is not a new idea, as Joseph McCabe
has shown in his "Sources of the Morality of the Gospels," and
John M. Robertson in his "Pagan Christs."
- "But," says the Christian, "Christ is
so perfect a character that he could not have been invented." This is a
mistake. The Gospels do not portray a perfect character. The Christ of the
Gospels is shown to be artificial by the numerous contradictions in his
character and teachings. He was in favor of the sword, and he was not; he
told men to love their enemies, and advised them to hate their friends; he
preached the doctrine of forgiveness, and called men a generation of vipers;
he announced himself as the judge of the world, and declared that he would
judge no man; he taught that he was possessed of all power, but was unable
to work miracles where the people did not believe; he was represented as God
and did not shrink from avowing, "I and my Father are one," but in
the pain and gloom of the cross, he is made to cry out in his anguish:
"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" And how singular it
is that these words, reputed as the dying utterance of the disillusioned
Christ, should be not only contradicted by two Evangelists, but should be a
quotation from the twenty-second Psalm!
- If there is a moment when a man's speech is
original, it is when, amid agony and despair, while his heart is breaking
beneath its burden of defeat and disappointment, he utters a cry of grief
from the depth of his wounded soul with the last breath that remains before
the chill waves of death engulf his wasted life forever. But on the lips of
the expiring Christ are placed, not the heart-felt words of a dying man, but
a quotation from the literature of his race!
- A being with these contradictions, these transparent
unrealities in his character, could scarcely have been real.
- And if Christ, with all that is miraculous and
impossible in his nature, could not have been invented, what shall we say
of Othello, of Hamlet, of Romeo? Do not Shakespeare's wondrous characters
live upon the stage? Does not their naturalness, their consistency, their
human grandeur, challenge our admiration? And is it not with difficulty that
we believe them to be children of the imagination? Laying aside the
miraculous, in the story of the Jewish hero, is not the character of Jean
Valjean as deep, as lofty, as broad, as rich in its humanity, as tender in
its pathos, as sublime in its heroism, and as touchingly resigned to the
cruelties of fate as the character of Jesus? Who has read the story of that
marvelous man without being thrilled? And who has followed him through his
last days with dry eyes? And yet Jean Valjean never lived and never died; he
was not a real man, but the personification of suffering virtue born in the
effulgent brain of Victor Hugo. Have you not wept when you have seen Sydney
Carton disguise himself and lay his neck beneath the blood-stained knife of
the guillotine, to save the life of Evremonde? But Sydney Carton was not an
actual human being; he is the heroic, self-sacrificing spirit of humanity
clothed in human form by the genius of Charles Dickens.
- Yes, the character of Christ could have been
invented! The literature of the world is filled with invented characters;
and the imaginary lives of the splendid men and women of fiction will
forever arrest the interest of the mind and hold the heart enthralled. But
how account for Christianity if Christ did not live? Let me ask another
question. How account for the Renaissance, for the Reformation, for the
French Revolution, or for Socialism? Not one of these movements was created
by an individual. They grew. Christianity grew. The Christian church is
older than the oldest Christian writings. Christ did not produce the church.
The church produced the story of Christ.
- The Jesus Christ of the Gospels could not possibly
have been a real person. He is a combination of impossible elements. There
may have lived in Palestine, nineteen centuries ago, a man whose name was
Jesus, who went about doing good, who was followed by admiring associates,
and who in the end met a violent death. But of this possible person, not a
line was written when he lived, and of his life and character the world of
to-day knows absolutely nothing. This Jesus, if he lived, was a man; and if
he was a reformer, he was but one of many that have lived and died in every
age of the world. When the world shall have learned that the Christ of the
Gospels is a myth, that Christianity is untrue, it will turn its attention
from the religious fictions of the past to the vital problems of to-day, and
endeavor to solve them for the improvement of the well-being of the real men
and women whom we know, and whom we ought to help and love.