CONVERSATIONS IN THE PANTHEON - The Truth about God and Religion

The Christ Myth

Thomas: The really important question is, what happened after the crucifixion? The disciples must have been devastated. Jesus' death must have precipitated a crisis on them. They must have been in total disarray fearing for their own life. Their teacher and leader was suddenly taken away and their hopes for a good life had come to an abrupt end. Did the Sanhedrin go after them? What did they do? How did they manage to survive?

Mary: Jesus' death certainly would have come as a shock to them. They had been following him for two years and suddenly he was gone in a way that put their own lives at risk. But neither the Thomas Gospel nor the Reconstructed Q-Gospel says anything about them. They had devoted themselves completely to him and he failed them. Moreover, the Nazarenes were far away from home in a large city that perhaps they didn't even know. They were strangers and easy to spot.

The bible says that, after Jesus died, his disciples dispersed to spread his teachings far and wide. However, without Jesus' charisma they probably knew that they would have little success. His brother James (James the Just),the designated next in command, must have realized that they were in a tight spot and in danger of losing their lives unless they could come up with something big and quickly. They needed a plan to save their hides. Nothing less than a miracle would do. And they quickly came up with one – they resurrected Jesus. They turned him into a divinity – a mythical figure with supernatural powers.

Mathew: You're twisting the story. Only God could have resurrected him. That had been his plan all along. This was the moment god was waiting for to show his people the power he possessed.

Mary: Even God couldn't have done it. In all likelihood, they stole Jesus' corpse and simply proclaimed that he had arisen from the dead. Then they spread stories of encounters with him in different places, and on the fortieth day, when the body would have been corrupted beyond recognition, they announced his ascension to heaven. After that, they moved from place to place spreading the fantastic news. With a miraculous story like that they could get people's attention and be well looked after.

Each disciple would eventually have his own followers, and they could preach as Jesus had done before them, except that they now had an incredible story that would eventually become a best seller. The story line was simple: the Messiah came, he died for our sins, came back from the dead and ascended to heaven to sit on the right hand of the father; and he would come again to judge the living and the dead.

Jesus was transformed into Christ, which in the Greek language means the anointed one. In the Hebrew language, the word is Messiah.

Thomas: I like it! Based on all that we know today, it's a plausible story and infinitely more likely than the biblical one because it doesn't require any miracles, which are denied by the laws of nature. Nobody comes back from the dead! We know that humans are mortal; Jesus was human, born of Mary, also a human; therefore, Jesus was mortal. Mortals don't come back from the dead; as Jesus was mortal, the logical conclusion is that he couldn't come back from the dead.

Mathew: Let me remind you that the Pharisees, the Jewish sect that Saul of Tarsus belonged to, believed in the resurrection of the dead by a divine being. So, the biblical resurrection of Jesus by god was not an incredible story.

Mary: You're quite correct, Mathew. On the other hand, the Sadducees, who were the upper class, rejected the notion of resurrection by divine power. They, who were well educated and understood deductive logic, knew better!

The other great myth is his ascension to heaven. It's impossible! For that to happen, his body would have had to be converted into energy (light). While Einstein theorized that mass can be converted into energy, and the atomic bomb was proof that it can be done, the human body does not convert itself into light energy. It's an impossibility. The light beam the apostles reported seeing during his ascension was imagined, not real.

Mathew: But God could have made it happen! God can work miracles. He's omnipotent. There is nothing he can't do. The holy spirit impregnated Mary so she could give birth to god's child. In the same way he could have raised Jesus from the dead and brought him to heaven to meet his father.

Mary: I don't know if God exists, or not. If he does, he probably would have found a better way of birthing his son. Why use an intermediary? Why didn't he create a goddess for himself and have lots of divine sons and daughters? Virgin birth smacks so much of the greek gods birthing children with mortals, just for the fun of it. And like virgin birth, the ascension of Jesus to heaven smacks of greek mythology.

Mathew: While you don't believe in virgin birth, you should know that it was not so uncommon in ancient cultures. For example, the ancient Hindus believed that the God Vishnu descended into the womb of Devaki and was born as her son Krishna. In ancient Egypt, Ahmose conceived Hatshepsut when the divinity Amun touched her nose with the symbol of life (ankh). According to Zoroastrian tradition, Zoroaster (aka Zarathustra) was conceived by his mother (Dughdova) when a beam of light from the sky engulfed her. Jesus' virgin birth is thus not unique. It cannot be simply dismissed as you do.

Mary: It may not be unique, but it's still incredible in today's world, just like all the others you mentioned. In any case, how do you know all this stuff.

Mathew: I don't do research on religions like you do, but I pick up stuff here and there.

Mary: The disciples had a good plan and it worked. It kept them alive and they had a new mission that would also keep them well fed. But without Saul of Tarsus they wouldn't have gotten very far. A year after hearing their story, he had an epiphany ..... there is money and fame to be had from this dead dude, and all we need to do is convince people that he was the messiah. So, he went to work with enormous commitment. His epistles make up a good portion of the New Testament.

Saul's objective was to help the others spread the story throughout the Roman world, starting with the small enclaves populated by the Jewish diaspora. He must have been a marketing genius because eventually the name of Jesus Christ became known throughout the empire, As inquiries came in for more information, from different parts of it, Saul didn't miss the opportunity to respond with weighty letters expounding his new religion. Saul of Tarsus was initially inimical to Jesus' followers, but when he recognized the opportunity to do something big, he joined them and changed his name to Paul.

Mathew: It couldn't have been that simple. People might have been poor, but they weren't stupid! Nevertheless, as a good Christian I find your story amusing, but not at all plausible. You have been very clever at twisting even the smallest weakness of the bible to cast great doubt in the power of the almighty.

Mary: I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Saul's brilliant strategy was to have God on his side. Like Mohamed six centuries later, Paul created a direct line to God. The almighty appeared to him many times and, just like Mohamed, everything he wrote or said were God's words. Clearly, Mohamed had studied Saul very carefully.

Thomas: Have you found anything in your research that would corroborate your story?

Mary: In his Quest for the Historical Jesus, Nobel Laureate Albert Schweitzer asks some critical questions about the gospel story of Jesus. What if the whole thing should turn out to be nothing but a literary invention – not only the incidents and discourses, but also the personality itself, which is assumed as the starting point of the whole [christian] movement? What if the gospel history were only a late imaginary embodiment of a set of exalted ideas, and these were the only historical reality from first to last?

For centuries, intelligent people have been questioning the biblical account of Jesus because it doesn't stand up to the realities of the post-enlightenment world, and even less to the realities of the high-tech world.

Thomas: Whether we believe it or not is a different matter, but even Mathew would agree that your story is fascinating. It certainly gives me food for thought. Where Mathew and I would disagree, I'm sure, is that I find this so much more plausible than the biblical narratives, which are are fraught with so many errors and inconsistencies. I look forward to next week for a continuation.

Mathew: You're quite right Thomas. I certainly find it amusing, but not at all credible. Even the creation stories are more credible than this.