Jesus of Nazareth, known as Jesus Christ, known as the Son of God, known as God himself, is widely acknowledged to be one of the most famous individuals in history. We know his story: Born of a virgin, he performed numerous miracles and made many divine pronouncements during his short, 33-year life. He spoke of a dedication to God, of a spiritual inwardness, of love and forgiveness. He suffered greatly for his beliefs, and asked his followers to likewise suffer for theirs. He promised redemption from sin, and eternal life in heaven. Ultimately he gave his life for the salvation of mankind. His bodily ascension into heaven was proof of his promise. In the end, his teachings led to the foundation of one of the great religions of the world.

That Jesus should be counted among the most famous people in history is hardly surprising. Time Magazine ranked him #1 in all of history, and a slightly more technical study done by MIT University ranked him #3 (behind Aristotle and Plato). His followers literally number in the billions. There are about 2.1 billion Christians on Earth today, roughly 1/3 of the planet, making Christianity the #1 religion globally. The United States is strongly Christian; about 77% of Americans call themselves Christians, which encompasses some 250 million people. It’s clear that Jesus, as the nominal founder of the Christian church, is among the most important and influential persons who ever lived.

But some historians and researchers have made a startling claim: that Jesus, the Son of God, never existed. They say that Jesus Christ was a pure myth. Is that even possible? Surely not, we reply. This most-influential founder of the most-influential religion of Christianity surely had to exist. And he surely had to be the miracle-working Son of God that is proclaimed in the Bible. How could it be otherwise? we ask. How could a venerable, two-thousand-year-old religion, with billions of followers throughout history, be based on someone who never existed? Impossible! Or so we say.

If that were the case, if Jesus never existed, imagine the consequences: an entire religion, and the active beliefs of billions of people, all in vain. All of Christianity based on a myth, a fable, even—as I will argue—a lie. Why, that would be catastrophic. The Crusades, the religious wars, the burning of heretics, the Inquisition, the countless lives led in hope of heaven and fear of hell—all in vain.

Or consider a slightly less radical but still earth-shaking possibility: that Jesus existed, but he was just a man: an entirely ordinary—and entirely mortal—teacher of morality. What if Jesus was just a simple preacher, a Jewish rabbi, who spoke in defense of the poor and the underprivileged, and through his various social agitations, managed to get himself executed by the Roman authorities? And what if his body was unceremoniously buried in some non-descript grave somewhere in Palestine, never to be seen again? What if there were no virgin birth, no Sermon on the Mount, no miracles, no raising of the dead, no walking on water, no bodily resurrection? Well, that would be nearly as bad as if Jesus never existed at all. All of Christian history would still be founded on a myth or on a lie. It would still be a sham. And all the efforts of Christians worldwide, throughout all of history, would still be in vain. This is the view that I will defend in this book.

Note that it’s very important to distinguish between the two conceptions of ‘Jesus.’ If someone asks, “Did Jesus exist?” we need to know if they mean (a) the divine, miracle-working, resurrected Son of God (sometimes called the biblical Jesus), or (b) the ordinary man and Jewish preacher who died a mortal death (sometimes called the historical Jesus). Christianity requires a biblical Jesus, but the skeptics argue either for simply an historical Jesus—which would mean the end of Christianity—or worse, no Jesus at all.

It’s my purpose in this book to argue that the miracle-working, ascended-to-heaven, Son-of-God Jesus never existed. I will, however, accept the historical Jesus: the Jewish preacher who lived and taught at that time, who was a social agitator that incited his fellow Jews against the Romans, and who therefore got himself crucified. (Crucifixion was generally reserved for crimes against the State.) Unlike the other skeptics, I have good reasons for believing that a mortal, historical Jesus did exist. But I agree with them that the miracles, the resurrection story, and most of his alleged sayings were pure myth.

It’s my further purpose to explain how and why the biblical Jesus myth—the Jesus lie—came to be constructed, and how it came to influence world history. It is a shocking story, frankly, and one that has only been hinted at before. Bits and pieces of this counter-narrative have been discovered and examined throughout history, but the whole picture has never been clearly pieced together until now. In recent years, political correctness and contemporary liberal dogma both have conspired to suppress any such discussion. The media have no interest in examining this alternate story, for reasons that I will explain. Western governments have little incentive, and much disincentive, for promoting open talk of this issue. Christians obviously don’t want to hear any talk of a Jesus myth, nor—as I will explain—do Jews or Muslims. In short, hardly anyone in power, and many ordinary people, have no desire to consider the radical thesis that Jesus, Son of God, never existed. And yet it is of untold importance.

Now of course, I cannot prove my thesis. I cannot give an ironclad, bullet-proof argument that the Jesus story was a hoax. Part of the problem is the notorious difficulty of “proving a negative”—that is, it can be difficult or sometimes impossible to prove that some alleged event did not happen. The other issue is that the circumstances of that place and time are so obscure, and our hard knowledge so limited, that little of anything can be stated with certainty. Nor, of course, can the Christians prove the biblical account of events. Their entire case rests on the Bible, and this document is riddled with difficulties, as I will show. In this sense, we are on equal footing; neither of us can definitively prove our case. But the weight of evidence, and archeological history, and common sense, all point to the very strong likelihood that a divine Jesus never existed, and that his story was constructed for very specific reasons and purposes.

But there is an additional problem for Christian defenders. It is a common rule of argumentation that whoever makes the more extraordinary claims holds the primary burden of proof. To makes claims about a virgin birth, or a miracle-working Son of God, or being risen from the dead, are, to say the least, extraordinary claims. Therefore, in the debate about Jesus’ existence, it is the Christian, and not the skeptic, who holds the burden of proof. If I claim that the biblical Jesus did not exist, and a Catholic theologian claims he did, then I merely need to show the implausible and unlikely nature of such an event, along with a lack of any corroborating evidence. The theologian, by contrast, must give definitive, positive evidence that such a miracle man actually existed, and did and said what is claimed in the Bible. My standard of proof is much lower, his is much higher. In other words, it is much, much easier for me to ‘win’ such a debate. I think this will become clear as my argument proceeds.

When confronted with the case against Jesus, and the strong likelihood of his mythological stature, Christians typically find themselves unable to defend their version of events. Sensing defeat, they frequently retreat to one of two commonly-held views that they see as their ultimate safe havens. It’s worth mentioning these briefly now, at the outset, in order to get them out of the way.

First: “Christianity relies on faith, not reason. Therefore, rational arguments against it, or against Jesus, have no effect. We simply believe the Christian story, and that’s good enough.”

This is a very convenient ‘get out of jail free’ card that religious people like to play. But it doesn’t work. It’s worth noting that all of Western civilization is based on the idea of rationality and reason, from its very inception in ancient Greece around 600 BC. Reason is older than Christianity, and is the foundation of everything that we have achieved. It’s not that faith has no place, but if we allow faith to override reason in our ideological thinking, we surrender the very basis of our own culture. It’s self-defeating and self-destructive.

Furthermore, many of the most famous Christian theologians in history were eminently rational; Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin, to name a few, were all justly famous for their reason-based arguments. A true Christian should never have to surrender reason, even in the name of faith.

Additionally, even if we want to place an emphasis on belief, we still need to have a reason to believe. If our beliefs aren’t rational, we are liable to believe absolutely anything: pixies, magic dragons, unicorns, you name it. We might start burning people as witches, or try casting out demons, or rely strictly on prayer to heal serious diseases. A society ruled by non-rational beliefs is a very dangerous one, and not something that anyone would truly want to live in.

Second: “It doesn’t matter if the Jesus story is true. Belief still helps people to live better lives and become better people.”

This is tantamount to surrender. The entirety of the Christian faith is based on the idea that Jesus was the Son of God, that he actually came to Earth to save us, and that he actually died and was bodily risen. The whole religion collapses into absurdity if the Jesus story is false. If Jesus promises us eternal life, and threatens non-believers with eternal damnation, this only matters if he actually existed, and if he was right. If we are willing to accept that the Jesus story may be a myth, then we must also be willing to accept that his more esoteric ideas, like heaven and hell, might also be myths.

Further, can it really be beneficial to accept a myth as truth? Can one really live a happy, successful, and meaningful life dedicated to a false story, or to a lie? Take the case of Santa Claus. This story may be useful to keep naughty little children in line, but it ‘works’ only because of their ignorance and naiveté. Even if we could keep up the charade for years, would it be ethical to do so? Surely not; ultimately it would lead to terrible outcomes. And if there were a whole society of Santa-believers, can we envision them leading a truly good life? Of course not. It should be self-evident that a life based on self-deception or falsehood can never turn out well.

Granted, certain ideas attributed to Jesus could be considered beneficial: the Golden Rule, love thy neighbor, aid the poor, human equality, the virtue of hope. (Recall, however, that the 10 Commandments are from the Old Testament; they are, strictly speaking, Judaic rather than Christian.) But one doesn’t need to be a Christian to love thy neighbor, or to aid the poor, or to treat others kindly. There are independent and thoroughly rational reasons to do these things, as many other philosophers and religious figures have noted, both before and after Jesus. The fact that some people find these things helpful in no way justifies a general belief in the Christian story.

I therefore have to conclude that it does matter, profoundly, if the Jesus story is true or false. Anyone, any alleged Christian, who tries to claim that it doesn’t matter can hardly be taken seriously.

Jesus, we are told, was God. Skepticism about Jesus therefore naturally leads to skepticism about God—that is, the Judeo-Christian God who created the world in six days, who created Adam and Eve, who caused the Great Flood, who sent his only son to save mankind, and who loves each and every one of us. Generally speaking, in this book I will ignore questions about God’s nature and existence, in order to focus on the Jesus story and its origins. Technically, God’s existence is independent of Jesus’ existence. Even if Jesus were a total myth, there could still be, in theory, a God. Orthodox Jews believe in God but not Jesus. Muslims believe in God (Allah) but not a divine, son-of-God Jesus who died and was risen. The two issues are distinct.

That being the case, I will say just a few words here about God, and specifically, about what is rational and what is irrational about him.

It’s common knowledge that there have been many religions in world history—more than 4,000, by some estimates. Each of these has a different conception of God or the gods. Clearly, the vast majority of them must be in error. More likely, all of them are in error. As the saying goes, “They can’t all be right, but they can all be wrong.” Odds are that every religion has seriously defective beliefs about God or the gods, to the point where we can say almost nothing conclusive about the divine. We cannot even be sure that gods exist.

If we set aside atheism for a moment, it seems that all the world religions could agree on just two propositions about God:

1. God is the Supreme Being or ultimate reality.
2. God is that which is most revered.

Despite the vast and irreconcilable difference amongst religions, virtually everyone could accept these two claims. If we stuck to just these two views, there would be no religious disagreements, no religious wars, no religious strife at all.

But of course, with just these two claims, one cannot construct a functioning religion—one that builds temples, grows in numbers and wealth, and projects power around the world. You can’t have “the Church” without a lot more to God than that. That’s why the various religions have been compelled to add additional qualities to God, to create additional stories about him, to bring him to Earth, and so on.

Perhaps surprisingly, there are a number of qualities that we can attribute to God without being irrational, provided that we are careful how we define them. For example, God can logically, rationally, and consistently be said to have the following properties:

• God is uncreated.
• God is perfect.
• God is eternal.
• God is omnipresent.
• God is one.
• God is a mind or spirit.

Rational thinkers throughout history have attributed some or all of these to a divine Being. They are not contradictory, they are not illogical, and they do not lead to irreconcilable paradoxes.

But even these are not enough for most religions. These still don’t allow anyone to build up a church, a complex doctrine, or to exert power over people. Therefore theologians have introduced yet additional qualities, ones that do allow for conventional religion:

• God is a ‘person’ (someone who loves, forgives, punishes, etc).
• God ‘speaks’ to humans.
• God is omniscient.
• God is omnipotent.
• God is supernatural.
• God does good acts.
• God saves some and condemns others.

These qualities cause major problems. While I can’t detail it here, they lead to all sorts of problems: contradictions, paradoxes, absurdities, and sheer mysteries.

The biggest problem of all comes when we believe that God is a moral being: someone who is good, kind, benevolent, just, etc. This notion is central to Christianity but it leads directly to what we call the Problem of Evil.^[1] In short, the problem is this: The world is plagued by all varieties of evils, including murder, rape, war, violence, illness, disease, accidents, famine, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes. These cause massive human suffering and death, every day. But the world is allegedly overseen by a benevolent and loving God who wishes well for us humans, who are, after all, created in his image. This moral God, furthermore, is all-powerful; he can instantly do whatever he wishes. How is it, then, that humans suffer such vast and unending evils? God has the power to halt or prevent every conceivable evil. And yet he does not. Why?

Suffice it to say that there is no rational answer to this question. It seems that God either does not really care about our suffering—in which case he’s not all good—or he’s not really able to do anything about it—in which case he’s not all powerful. In other words, God is either not a moral being, or he’s not all-powerful. He clearly can’t be both at the same time. And yet that’s exactly what Christianity, and many other religions, want us to believe. It’s an unsolvable dilemma. The Problem of Evil has no answer.

Apart from the Problem of Evil and other paradoxes, we have the simple observation that there is no evidence of God. He doesn’t come and speak to us anymore. He doesn’t appear in burning bushes or clouds of smoke and fire. He doesn’t send down his sons (or daughters) to enlighten us. Science has no need to postulate God, since everything that happens is covered by the laws of physics. Miracles no longer happen—meaning, events that don’t have straightforward scientific explanations. Why is God hiding?^[2]

Because he remains hidden, people cannot agree on God, and hence they fight and die in his name. Why would he allow this to happen? Of the more than 4,000 religions, at least 3,999 of them are wrong about God; how can we tell which is right? Or what if they are all wrong? What if we think we are doing the right thing, but God is secretly angry with us? What if all those who rigorously attend church every Sunday are, in God’s eyes, unthinking sheep who will ultimately be punished? How can we ever really know what God likes, or doesn’t like? We have no answers to these questions, and we never will. It does no good to say, “Well, God is mysterious.” This is another religious cop-out. It’s a meaningless statement that can be used to cover over any inconvenient problem. It’s another sign of surrender.

The only reasonable conclusion is that God—if he exists at all—is limited in many ways. He can be a kind of ultimate reality, and we can indeed revere him. He can have any of the first set of properties shown above, but none of the second group. But even these “acceptable” qualities are arbitrary human constructions. We choose them because we like them, but that’s it. We have no real reasons, no evidence, to make any such claims. Based on the actual evidence, it seems that there is no God at all.^[3] But if it makes us feel better to invent him, and give him a few, limited qualities, there is little harm in doing so.

Enough about God. My focus here is Jesus, and we have many interesting things to learn about him.

When we try to make a rational and critical inquiry into Jesus, we are immediately confronted with a serious issue, namely, “the problem of the experts.” This problem has several different aspects, all of which make it very hard for the average reader to ascertain the truth.

Writers on Christianity tend to fall into three groups: academics, journalists, and independent researchers. In all three cases, we are confronted with the fact that we typically never know the religious beliefs of the writer. And for good reason. All three groups of individuals want to portray themselves as unbiased and neutral investigators, and so they have a strong incentive to hide their true beliefs from the reader. But those beliefs are there nonetheless, and they strongly influence which questions are asked, which ideas are examined, and what conclusions are drawn.

Consider the academics. The vast majority are either (a) faculty of a religious-based institution, or (b) members of a religious studies department in an ordinary, secular university. In either case, if they are experts in Christianity, nearly all are Christians. This obviously colors their outlook, and imposes severe constraints on the kinds of ideas that they will consider. Of the few non-Christian academic writers on Christianity, many are Jews (e.g. Martin Buber, Paul Goodman, Alan Dershowitz), and a few (e.g. Reza Aslan) are Muslims—and these carry their own baggage. For obvious reasons, open-minded, critically-thinking, non-religious faculty members rarely become experts in Christianity.

Journalists have their own issues. They typically have no advanced degrees, and thus do not really understand how to do serious academic research. They furthermore are in the business of selling books—lots of books. This means that they don’t really care about serious academic research. Their chief motive is income, not truth. Additionally, their employers would certainly take a dim view of their careers if they decided to publish something outside the conventional bounds.

Independent researchers typically suffer from all the above problems: no advanced education, no understanding of detailed and careful research, religious bias, and the need to sell books.

Of course, everyone has a kind of bias about religion. Even the atheists and professional skeptics have hidden or unexamined assumptions. So be it. The best we can hope for is that our experts are open and honest about their biases, which will allow us, the readers, to better judge their writings.

I too have my biases, I’m sure. But let me be as transparent as I can. I was “raised” Presbyterian but rarely attended and never committed to the church, ever. I have been a religious skeptic since my early teens, and I recall debating my religious classmates even in middle school. I hold advanced degrees in mathematics and philosophy, and I’ve been teaching philosophy at a campus of the University of Michigan since 2003. I’m not an atheist, but my religious stance changes depending on the circumstances; sometimes I’m an agnostic, sometimes a pantheist, sometimes a polytheist. In no sense am I a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I like to think that I am as unbiased as possible, perhaps more so than nearly any present-day writer on Christianity. I am a paid professor, so I do not need to sell books to make a living. I write what I think is true and important. Whether these facts result in a useful and honest book on Jesus, I leave it to the reader to decide.

As one can obviously see by now, I am a ‘Jesus skeptic.’ But I’m far from the first. There have been many such skeptics in the past, and their numbers appear to be growing. In recent times this group has been referred to as “Christ Mythicists,” meaning those who deny the existence of the biblical, divine Jesus (though not necessarily the historical human Jesus). Christ Myth Theory, or CMT, is also popular with atheists in general, since it feeds into their view that God too does not exist.

So, why this book? Why do we need yet another Jesus skeptic?

To answer this question, let me give a brief overview of some of the prominent skeptics and their views. I will argue that their ideas, though on the right track, are woefully short of the truth. They lack the courage or the will to look hard at the evidence, and to envision a more likely conclusion: that Jesus was a deliberately constructed myth, by a specific group of people, with a specific end in mind. None of the Christ mythicists or atheist writers have, to my knowledge, articulated the view that I defend here.

But first a quick recap of the background and context for the idea of a mythological Jesus. The earliest modern critic was German scholar Hermann Reimarus, who published a multi-part work, Fragments, in the late 1770s. Strikingly, his view is one of the closest to my own thesis of any skeptic. For Reimarus, Jesus was the militant leader of a group of Jewish rebels who were fighting against oppressive Roman rule. Eventually he got himself crucified. His followers then constructed a miraculous religion-story around Jesus, in order to carry on his cause. They lied about his miracles, and they stole his body from the grave so that they could claim a bodily resurrection.^[4] This is quite close to what I will call the ‘Antagonism thesis’—that a group of Jews constructed a false Jesus story, based on a real man, in order to undermine Roman rule. But there is much more to the story, far beyond that which Reimarus himself was able to articulate.

In the 1820s and 30s, Ferdinand Baur published a number of works that emphasized the conflict between the early Jewish-Christians—significantly, all the early Christians were Jews—and the somewhat later Gentile-Christians. This again is a key part of the story, but we need to know the details; we need to know why the conflict arose, and what were its ends.

In 1835, David Strauss published the two-volume work Das Leben Jesu—“The Life of Jesus.” He was the first to argue, correctly, that none of the gospel writers knew Jesus personally. He disavowed all claims of miracles, and argued that the Gospel of John was, in essence, an outright lie with no basis in reality.

German philosopher Bruno Bauer wrote a number of important books, including Criticism of the Gospel History (1841), The Jewish Question (1843), Criticism of the Gospels (1851), Criticism of the Pauline Epistles (1852), and Christ and the Caesars (1877). Bauer held that there was no historical Jesus and that the entire New Testament was a literary construction, utterly devoid of historical content. Shortly thereafter, James Frazer published The Golden Bough (1890), arguing for a connection between all religion—Christianity included—and ancient mythological concepts.

It was about at this time that another famous Christian skeptic emerged: Friedrich Nietzsche. In his books Daybreak (1881), On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), and Antichrist (1888) he provides a potent critique of Christianity and Christian morality. Nietzsche always accepted the historical Jesus, and even had good things to say about him. But he was devastating in his attack on Paul and the later writers of the New Testament. He viewed Christian morality as a lowly, life-denying form of slave morality, attributed not to Jesus but to the actions of Paul and the other Jewish followers. Along with Reimarus, Nietzsche provides the most inspiration for my own analysis.

Into the 20th century, we find such books as The Christ Myth (1909) and The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus (1926), both by Arthur Drews, and The Enigma of Jesus (1923) by Paul-Louis Chouchoud. All these continued to attack the literal truth claimed of the Bible.

More recently, we have critics such as the historian George Wells and his book Did Jesus Exist? (1975). Here he assembles an impressive amount of evidence against an historical Jesus. Bart Ehrman has called Wells “the best-known mythicist of modern times,” though in later years Wells softened his stance somewhat; he accepted that there may have been an historical Jesus, although we know almost nothing about him. Wells died in 2017 at the age of 90.

Similar arguments were offered by philosopher Michael Martin in his 1991 book, The Case against Christianity. Though a wide-ranging critique, he dedicated one chapter to the idea that Jesus never existed. Martin died in 2015.

Among living critics, we have such men as Thomas Thompson, who wrote The Messiah Myth (2005); he is agnostic about an historical Jesus, but argues against historical truth in the Bible. By contrast, Earl Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle, 1999), Tom Harpur (The Pagan Christ, 2004), and Thomas Brodie (Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus, 2012) all deny that any such Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. Richard Carrier, in his book On the Historicity of Jesus (2014), finds it highly unlikely that any historical Jesus lived.

Perhaps the most vociferous and prolific Jesus skeptic today is Robert Price, a man with two doctorates in theology and a deep knowledge of the Bible. Though agnostic on the historical Jesus, Price argues that much of Christian theology is a synthesis of pre-Christian mythology, and hence devoid of truth content. He thus qualifies as a proponent of the “Christ Myth” thesis. His extensive writings include Deconstructing Jesus (2000), The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (2003), Jesus Is Dead (2007), The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems (2012), and Killing History (2014). Price’s central points can be summarized as follows:

1. The miracle stories have no independent verification from unbiased contemporaries.
2. The characteristics of Jesus are all drawn from much older mythologies and other pagan sources.
3. The earliest documents, the letters of Paul, point to an esoteric, abstract, ethereal Jesus—a “mythic hero archetype”—not an actual man who died on a cross.
4. The later documents, the Gospels, turned the Jesus-concept into an actual man, a literal Son of God, who died and was risen.

I find some truth in all these claims, as I will show. But there is much more to the story than Price is willing to entertain. Perhaps this relates to his personal situation. Price seems to rely heavily on book sales and speaking fees for income; he is very much in “the Jesus business.” I can’t help but think that this affects what he says and writes.

These men, then, are perhaps the most authoritative critics of the traditional account of Jesus. They know their stuff, and they know how to do research. But of course, this does not make them right, or even guarantee an open and honest assessment. It does guarantee a clever and learned critique, though.

There are many other books attacking the Jesus story, but the vast majority are written by marginally qualified individuals. Some are atheists, some are members of competing religions, some are just out to sell books. Most lack the advanced degrees that would indicate an ability to do careful, detailed research. I leave it to the reader to investigate these as desired.^[5] Hence my suggestion: Examine the qualifications of the writer before buying the book!

With the exception of Nietzsche, all of the above individuals exhibit a glaring weakness: they are loathe to criticize anyone. No one comes in for condemnation, no one is guilty, no one is to blame for anything. For the earliest writers, I think this is due primarily to an insecurity about their ideas and a general lack of clarity about what likely occurred. For the more recent individuals, it’s probably attributable to an in-bred political correctness, to a weakness of moral backbone, or to sheer self-interest. In recent years, academics in particular are highly reticent to affix blame on individuals, even those long-dead.^[6] This is somehow seen as a violation of academic neutrality or professional integrity. But when the facts line up against someone or some group, then we must be honest with ourselves. There are truly guilty parties all throughout history, and when we come upon them, they must be called out.

Consider this: There are very good reasons (as I will show) for believing that none of the Jesus miracle stories are true. And yet someone, at some point in time, wrote them down as if they were true. The conclusion is clear: someone lied. When you write obvious falsehoods and portray them as literal truth, that’s a lie. The questions then are, Who lied?, When?, and Why? I will address these matters in due time. For now I simply note that none of our brave critics, our Jesus mythicists, seem willing to pinpoint anyone: not Paul, not his Jewish colleagues, not the early Christian fathers—no one. A colossal story has been laid out about the Son of God come to Earth, performing miracles, and being risen from the dead, and yet—no one lied? Really? Can we believe that? Was it all just a big misunderstanding? Honest errors? No thinking person could accept this. Someone, somewhere in the past, constructed a gigantic lie and then passed it around the ancient world as a cosmic truth. The guilty parties need to be exposed. Only then can we truly understand this ancient religion, and begin to move forward.

Let me now lay out the basic facts of Christian history, as we understand them today. I use the word “fact” advisedly, because it is very hard to determine such things with certainty, and there are skeptical voices on nearly every issue. Still, in the next chapter I will present the most widely-accepted information that we have that relates to the origins of Christianity and to the tales of Jesus. Today, thanks to on-going scientific research and archeological analysis, we know much more about those ancient times than in decades past, and we can have much more confidence regarding what did, or did not, happen.

There is so much obfuscation and mystery surrounding Jesus and the Bible that it can be almost impossible to get a straight story on things. It’s true that little can be said with certainty. But as with any historical situation, some things about Christianity are generally accepted as true and others are considered highly likely by a majority of experts. This being the case, let me lay out the least contentious and most widely-accepted facts about this religion. These facts will serve as a foundation to later claims about what is likely to have occurred, and what is unlikely.

As we all know, Christianity is more properly understood as Judeo-Christianity. Therefore we must begin with an account of early Judaism and the history of the Jewish people. These facts have a direct bearing on the formation of Christianity and its aftermath, to the present day.

Consider, first of all, the ancient origins of Judaism and the corresponding events of the Old Testament (OT), otherwise known as the Jewish (or Hebrew) Bible. The original patriarch, Abraham, apparently lived some time between 1800 and 1500 BC—he being the traditional father of not only Judaism and thus Christianity but a leading prophet of Islam as well.^[7] The next major figure, Moses, lived around 1300 BC, and some time afterward the “Five Books of Moses” began to take shape, likely at first as an oral tradition.^[8] These five books, as we know, would eventually form the Pentateuch (or Torah)—the beginning of the OT. They are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

We are fairly confident that a people called “Israel” existed at this time, thanks to the discovery of the Merneptah Stele—an engraved stone created around 1200 BC. It is the earliest known reference. The stele includes this line: “Israel is laid waste and his seed is not.” This sentence has some interesting implications that I will discuss later on.^[9]

The remaining 30-odd OT books were added over the next one thousand years, with the set becoming complete around 200 BC. These books were written in Hebrew, but a Greek translation—called the Septuagint—was begun about this time, completed circa 50 BC. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which date to the first century BC, contain fragments from every book of the Hebrew OT, and thus are our earliest proof that the complete document existed by that time. Whether it appeared any earlier is a matter of speculation.

If we are to accept the tradition, then, the OT was written over a period of some 1200 years. Lacking any original texts, we have no way of knowing how much change or editing occurred over that time. We also have no factual information on any of the alleged authors. In essence, all we know of the OT is that it was written and modified over hundreds of years by unknown individuals, and first appears in history with the Dead Sea Scrolls around 50 BC.

Dating of the OT texts is one thing; accuracy is another matter altogether. First of all, the earliest dates cited above are purely conjectural, since we have no recorded reference to the travails of Moses prior to about 850 BC. Furthermore, archeologists have discovered evidence in recent years that refutes many of the historical claims of the OT. For example, Israeli archeologist Ze’ev Herzog has shown the increasing discrepancies between archeological data and the biblical stories.^[10] Efforts in the 1900s to confirm the OT yielded a plentitude of new information, but this “began to undermine the historical credibility of the biblical descriptions instead of reinforcing them.” Scholars were confronted with “an increasingly large number of anomalies,” among these are, first, “no evidence has been unearthed that can sustain the chronology” of the Patriarchal age. Second, of the Exodus, “the many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites’ presence in Egypt, and are also silent about the events of the Exodus”.^[11] Third, the alleged conquest of Canaan (Palestine) by the Israelites in the 1200s BC is refuted by archeological digs at Jericho and Ai that found no existing cities at that time. Even the famed monotheism of the early Jews is undermined by inscriptions from the 700s BC that refer to a pair of gods, “Yahweh and his consort, Asherah.”

An overall picture thus comes into view: There was a Jewish people, called “Israel,” in the region of Palestine from at least the 1200s BC who engaged in a number of conflicts with the surrounding peoples, including the Egyptians. They recorded their own history in the books of the OT, but with substantial amounts of embellishment and speculation, such that many claims are unsubstantiated by modern research. And from the texts themselves, we know that this people viewed themselves as specifically chosen or blessed by their god, Yahweh or Jehovah, and that they saw all others as pagan non-believers, to be treated with contempt.^[12]

In the wake of the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, his great empire became fragmented. One large piece fell to the Macedonian general Seleucus in 312 BC, who promptly began his own expansion, now known as the Seleucid Empire. This empire included present-day Palestine and the Jewish people. The Jews were naturally unhappy with foreign rule and continually opposed Seleucus’ government. Eventually, in 165 BC, the Maccabees led a successful revolt against it, reestablishing Jewish rule over Palestine. The resulting Hasmonean dynasty was formed in 141 BC and reigned for some 80 years.

Farther to the west, however, was growing another and greater empire, that of the Romans. They were rapidly expanding to the east, and in the year 63 BC they incorporated the territory of Palestine. Suddenly the Jews were once more subject to foreign rule.

The Jews have had a long history of foreign occupation. In past centuries they lived under the Persians, the Babylonians, Alexander the Great, and Seleucus, to name the major figures. All this time, they apparently adapted to their foreign rulers, even as they continued to periodically resist and revolt.

Things were different under the Romans. The Jews were rather quickly and dismissively subsumed into the Empire. Jewish resistance began almost immediately, and the Romans pushed back. Within two years of taking power, the Romans were deporting Jews and selling them as slaves.^[13] By the year 6 AD at the latest, the militant Jewish “Zealot” movement had formed, becoming a so-called fourth sect of Judaism.^[14] They advocated violent resistance toward Romans, Greeks, and even fellow Jews who collaborated with the foreigners. Notably, there are reasons to believe that both Jesus and Paul were Zealots.^[15]

Pressure on the Jews increased in the first decades of the Christian era. In the year 19, Emperor Tiberius expelled the Jews from Rome for aggressive proselytizing and for criminal activity. In 30, a high-ranking Roman official, Sejanus, made efforts to “destroy the Jewish nation,” presumably for similar reasons.^[16] In addition to allegedly passing judgment on Jesus, the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, who governed Palestine from 26 to 36 AD, was known for his aggressive treatment of the Jews. But things grew even worse for them after his removal from power and the ascension of Emperor Caligula in Rome. Hayim Ben-Sasson writes, “The reign of Caligula (37-41 AD) witnessed the first open break between the Jews and the Empire. … [R]elations deteriorated seriously during [this time].”^[17]

Jesus, we presume, was crucified in the year 30.^[18] And Jewish opposition, and repression, accelerated. In 38, the governor of Alexandria, A. A. Flaccus, took harsh action to restrict Jewish power and influence in that city. According to Philo, he also initiated violent pogroms that resulted in many fatalities.^[19] Just three years later, Emperor Claudius issued his third edict, Letter to the Alexandrians, in which he accused those Jews of “fomenting a general plague which infests the whole world.” This is a striking passage; it suggests that Jews all over the Middle East had succeeded in stirring up dangerous agitation toward the empire. It also marks the first occurrence in history of a “biological” epithet used against them. By the year 49, Claudius had to undertake yet another expulsion of Jews from Rome.

All this set the stage for the first major Jewish revolt, in the year 66. Also called the First Jewish-Roman War (there were three), this event was a major turning point in history. It eventually drew in some 75,000 Roman troops, who battled against perhaps 50,000 Jewish militants and thousands of other partisans. The war lasted for four years, ending in Roman victory and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70. It remains in ruins to this day; only the western wall (“Wailing Wall”) still exists.

There would be two more Jewish wars: in 115-117 (the Kitos War), and in 132-135 (the Bar Kokhba Revolt). Thousands died in each, but both ended in Roman victory.

Returning specifically to Christianity, I must note a central fact of the entire religion: The Bible is an entirely Jewish document. Front to back, cover to cover, A to Z, Old Testament and New—the Bible is an entirely Jewish document. The morality, the theology, the social attitudes, the worldview…all thoroughly Jewish. The Old Testament obviously so; it was written by Jews, about Jews, and for Jews. The same holds with the New Testament, although with a slight twist: it was written by Jews, about Jews, but for non-Jews. This twist is crucial to the whole Jesus story.

So let’s look specifically at the New Testament. Regarding this most important document, Nietzsche put it well, I think: “The first thing to be remembered, if we do not wish to lose the scent here, is that we are among Jews.”^[20] That is, all the characters are Jews, and all the writers—as far as we can determine—were Jews.

Let me start with Jesus. Everything, the sum total, of what we know about Jesus comes ultimately from the four Gospels: Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Paul is no help here; his 13 epistles (letters) contain virtually no factual information about Jesus. The other NT letters are likewise useless. So we are stuck with the Gospels. The immediate problem is that the Gospels are unreliable when it comes to factual, historical information. They seem to be a mixed bag—some fact, some fiction. The hard part is separating the truth from the falsehood.

If we temporarily set aside the various miracle stories, let’s assume for now that the rest is factual information. What do we then know about Jesus? The first fact, above all, is that he was Jewish. If the Gospels tell us anything of certainty, it’s that Jesus was a Jew. In fact, he was a Jew from birth, because both his father Joseph and his mother Mary were Jews. Joseph, we read, was “of the house of David” (Luke 1:27), and the Gospel of Matthew opens with a lengthy genealogy leading to him from Abraham. Mary was a woman “born under the law [of Judaism]” (Gal 4:4), and she was a blood relative of Elizabeth, of the tribe of Levi (Luke 1:5, 36). Both parents attended Passover every year (Luke 2:41) and both “performed everything according to the [Jewish] law of the Lord” (Luke 2:39).

Jesus himself is repeatedly called ‘Rabbi’ (Mark 9:5; 11:21; 14:45; Matt 26:25; John 1:38, 49; 3:2; 4:31). He celebrated Passover (John 2:13). The Gospel of Matthew opens with these words: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” We read in Hebrews that “it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah” (7:14). He regularly attended the local synagogue (Luke 4:16). Jesus himself told the people that he came “to fulfill the [Jewish] law and the[Jewish] prophets” (Matt 5:17) and called on his followers to “keep the [10] commandments” (Matt 19:17). He even claimed to be the Messiah, the Jewish savior (John 4:26). And of course everyone thought of him as “king of the Jews” (Matt 2:2; John 19:3).

This much, then, is clear: Jesus, Joseph, and the Virgin Mary were all Jews.

For some Christians, this will come as a shock in itself. Jesus is “the original” Christian, they will say; he can’t be Jewish! But this arises from an understandable confusion about what it means to be a Jew. Jewishness refers to two distinct qualities: ethnicity and religion. There are ethnic Jews and there are religious Jews, and the two are independent. Ethnicity is a matter of genetics; you are born with it, and it cannot change. Religion, of course, is entirely a matter of choice, and it can change from day to day. Ethnic Jews, like any ethnicity, carry distinct genetic markers that are passed on to each new generation. These can even be identified by DNA analysis; they are real and objective signs of a Jewish ethnicity. But the Jewish religion, Judaism, can be adopted by anyone.

Jesus (the man) was born to ethnically Jewish parents,^[21] and thus he was ethnically a Jew. All his physical characteristics, including such things as height, facial appearance, eye color, hair color, and so on, would have been consistent with all other ethnic Jews of that place and time. As for religion, from the passages above we see that he also was raised with, and practiced, Judaism. On both counts, then, Jesus was a Jew.

What about the 12 disciples (later, apostles)? We know so little about any of them that it’s hard to be conclusive, but it seems certain that all 12 were Jews. The mere fact that there were 12 seems to mirror the “twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt 19:28). When Jesus takes the 12 to Jerusalem, he predicts that he himself will be turned over “to the Gentiles” (Matt 20:19), that is, to the non-Jews; Jesus would not speak this way unless his disciples were all Jews. Furthermore, as noted, they frequently called him ‘Rabbi,’ a term that only Jews would use. Clearly, “we are among Jews.”

In our focus here on the facts, it seems that the next person we know with some certainty is Paul. Paul is a major figure in our story, the key to understanding what happened at that time. I note, first of all, and despite what many people think, that Paul was not one of the 12 disciples. He never knew Jesus personally. He was not even a Christian until the year 33, some three years after the crucifixion.

Born as Saul in Tarsus (modern-day Turkey) around the year 6 AD, Paul was a Pharisee, an elite, orthodox Jew, “a Hebrew born of Hebrews” (Phil 3:5). He also may have been a Zealot, advocating violent resistance to Rome. Speaking in Acts (22:3), Paul says “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia.” He continues: “I was a zealot for God…” (CJB, DLNT) or “I was zealous for God…”—the translations vary. Elsewhere he says, “I was more of a zealot for the traditions handed down by my forefathers than most Jews my age…” (Gal 1:14). There is a subtle difference between him saying “I was a zealot…” and “I was a Zealot…”; the text is not clear, and interpretations differ. But it seems clear that he was an ardent Jewish nationalist opposed to Roman rule, as was the case with most elite Jews of the time.^[22]

Saul was not only anti-Roman; he was anti-Christian. As a younger man, he “laid waste to the church” (Acts 8:3) and imprisoned its followers. He was even complicit in murder. He consented to the stoning death of the Christian Stephen (Acts 8:1). Even after the crucifixion in the year 30, Saul was “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). At one point he admitted directly that “I persecuted this Way [of Jesus] to the death” (Acts 22:4).

But he had an epiphany in the year 33. On his way to Damascus (now, Syria), Saul allegedly saw an intense bright light in the sky and then heard a voice, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4, 26:14). It was the risen Jesus, informing him that he was now to be a “chosen instrument” to “carry [Jesus’] name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel” (Acts 9:15)—in other words, to build the Christian church. So he changed his name from the Jewish ‘Saul’ to the Gentile ‘Paul’ (Acts 13:9) and began his work.

For the next 20 years we have no recorded documentation of any kind by Paul. The Book of Acts, which was anonymously written sometime in the 90s,^[23] claims that Paul undertook his so-called first journey to Cyprus and parts of present-day Turkey, but the dates are utterly unclear. Acts simply uses phrases like “for a long time” or “no little time,” but, oddly, gives no precise dates. We presume it was in the late 40s and lasted perhaps two years.

Starting around the year 50, we do have, apparently, some actual concrete evidence: the first letters by Paul himself. Of the 13 Pauline epistles, the earliest two are Galatians and 1 Thessalonians, both now dated to about the year 50 or 51. This was also the time that he began his second journey, which ran through present-day Turkey, into northern Greece, through Athens, and then back to Jerusalem. Paul’s remaining 11 letters appear to date between the mid-50s and the mid-60s.

At some point Paul was imprisoned in Rome, probably around the year 60, and lived there under house arrest for two years. Oddly, this is where his story ends. Acts simply stops at those two years (28:30). It says nothing of what happened afterward, and nothing of Paul’s death. This is doubly odd because Acts was written at least 20 years after Paul died; it’s almost as if the author deliberately chose not to finish Paul’s life story. Much later, in the 100s and 200s, various writings appeared that claim he was beheaded or crucified, possibly in the late 60s or the year 70. But these accounts are so far removed from the actual events that they have little credibility.

If Paul was dead by the year 70, then he just missed the destruction of the Temple that dealt a shattering blow to the Jewish community. But something else happened around that time, something equally significant: the appearance of the first Gospel, Mark. It’s an astonishing fact that, in all of Paul’s letters, nothing indicates any knowledge of any of the four Gospels. Surely, in 13 letters, Paul would have wanted to quote his savior or to cite a fact from his biography.^[24] But we find nothing like this; no quotes from Jesus, no facts about his past, no virgin birth, no miracle stories. All these are found only in the Gospels. So why didn’t Paul cite the Gospels? The conclusion is obvious: They did not yet exist. And indeed, this is what modern scholarship confirms.

Mark, as mentioned, seems to have been written around the year 70, nearly four decades after the crucifixion. It was the first text to mention any details about Jesus’ life, to record his sayings, and to document his alleged miracles. The next two Gospels, Matthew and Luke, were written in the mid-80s. They largely repeated, but also embellished and supplemented, many of the same stories.^[25] And John was not written until the mid-90s—a full 60 years after the death of Jesus. These late dates raise many problems for the conventional Jesus story, as I will explain.

The other major problem with the Gospels is authorship. Formally they are anonymous. Mark is “the Gospel according to Mark.” It’s written in third-person grammar, like a textbook, rather than as the personal account of a specific man. The same is true of Matthew. Luke is different; it’s a first-person essay directed to a generic person, “Theophilus,” which simply means “beloved of God.” The fourth Gospel, John, returns to the third-person style of Mark and Matthew.

Many people, including most scholars, assume that each Gospel was written by its namesake, i.e. Mark by someone named Mark, Luke by Luke, etc. But even if true, we have absolutely no information on who these individuals actually were. Some like to believe that “Matthew” was the apostle named Matthew, and that “John” was apostle John, but again, this is sheer speculation. “Mark,” we are told, was a friend of apostle Peter. A “Luke” is mentioned by Paul as his friend (Col 4:14; Phil 1:24), but we have no way of knowing if this is the (later) Gospel author. It’s significant that all we get are generic first names, and no biographical details at all.

In any case, it’s almost certain that all the Gospel writers, whoever they were, were Jews. All four contain numerous references to the OT, something that would only be expected of elite and educated Jews. Matthew has the most references—something like 43 direct citations. Mark and Luke have about 20 each, John around 15. But if we include indirect references, parallel wording, and other allusions, the numbers double or triple.

Matthew is clearly and heavily Jewish, the “most Jewish” of the Gospels. No scholars dispute this. Mark has been challenged by some writers, calling him, if not a Gentile, then “a heavily Hellenized” Jew—but still a Jew nonetheless. The confusion seems to arise because he was writing to and for Gentiles; this is an important fact, as I will explain. But it doesn’t change the Jewish authorship.

Luke, though, is claimed by some to be a Gentile work. But this doesn’t hold up to critical analysis. First, Paul himself claims that the word of God was given to the Jews (Rom 3:2) and therefore the Gospel, as the word of God, must have been written by a Jew. Second, the claim that ‘Luke’ is a Gentile name is irrelevant; other Jews, notably Paul, changed their names upon conversion to the cause. Third, Luke is never cited as a Gentile, and his alleged companion, Paul, is never condemned for fraternizing with such a Gentile. Luke furthermore had detailed knowledge of Jewish religious customs, as we see in (1:8-20); Gentiles would not know this. Finally, he claims intimate knowledge of the Virgin Mary, including what is “in her heart” (2:19)—something that a non-Jew would be unlikely to know.

But what about the final Gospel, John? This appears to be the most anti-Jewish—some would say, anti-Semitic—of the four. This could not possibly have been written by a Jew, true? Not quite. We need to observe an important point here. The nascent Christian movement, occurring entirely within the Jewish community, found substantial internal dissent. Orthodox Jews did not believe that their Messiah had come in the form of this “Jesus,” and they strongly resisted any claims to the contrary. In a sense, they wanted to “kill” the Jesus story (we can see where this is leading!). Paul and his small band of Jewish Christians thus had to combat the anti-Christian sentiments of the majority of Jews, particularly the Jewish elite of the day. John, then, reads much more naturally as an account of intra-Jewish squabbling rather than as a Gentile attacking “the Jews.”

John is, indeed, heavily critical of the Jews. They “sought to kill” Jesus (7:1). In his Gospel we read of Jesus’ own harsh words:

You [Jews] are of your father the devil… He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.^[26] (8:44)

But this and other strong language does not indicate a Gentile-written anti-Semitism. Again, there is a compelling argument to be made that this is best seen as Jewish in-fighting. As James Dunn says, “John, in his own perspective at least, is still fighting a factional battle within Judaism rather than launching his arrows from without, still a Jew who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, Son of God, rather than an anti-semite.”^[27] John was targeting the Jewish elite, his main adversaries. Michael Coogan agrees:

Although its scathing portrayal of “the Jews” has opened it to charges of anti-Semitism, a careful reading of the Gospel reveals “the Jews” to be a class designation, not a religious or ethnic grouping; rather than denoting adherents to Judaism in general, the term primarily refers to the hereditary Temple religious authorities.^[28]

And Delbert Burkett offers this commentary:

John once appeared to be a Hellenistic Gospel, full of non-Jewish ideas. Now, however, scholars have come to recognize that it arose among a community of Jewish Christians. … Several passages in the Gospel indicate that it arose among Jewish Christians who were being expelled from the synagogue. These [Jews] came into conflict with the larger Jewish community because of their high esteem for Jesus and their rejection of the traditional institutions of Judaism.^[29]

Even if the Gospels underwent later modification by Gentiles, as Price and others suggest, this does not change their essentially Jewish nature.

The remainder of the NT also seems very likely to have had Jewish authors. The lengthy Hebrews—which is claimed by some to have been written by Paul—is addressed to Jews and contains at least 36 direct references to the OT. James is addressed to “the twelve tribes in the Dispersion,” and so is 1 Peter. It’s clear that Gentiles would not be lecturing to Jews about God. The other short letters are ambiguous but contain nothing to indicate Gentile authorship.

At some point, of course, Gentiles did join the church and start writing about it. The earliest Church Fathers were probably Gentiles, including Clement of Rome (died ca. 100) and Ignatius of Antioch (d. 110). The same holds for the second generation of Fathers, which would include Quadratus (d. 129), Aristides of Athens (d. 135), Polycarp (d. 155), and Papias (d. 155). Certainly by the time of figures like Marcion, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen—in other words, mid-second century to mid-third century—we are dealing strictly with Gentiles.

As an aside, I note here that, by the late 300s, the intra-Jewish squabbling recorded in the Gospels had converted to true anti-Semitism, by Christian Gentiles directed toward the Jews. Thus we witness the harsh statements by the likes of Gregory of Nyssa (Jews are “murderers of the Lord, murderers of prophets, rebels and full of hatred against God… leaven of the Pharisees, Sanhedrin of demons, accursed, utterly vile, quick to abuse, enemies of all that is good”), John Chrysostom (the synagogue is “a brothel… It is a den of robbers and a lodging for wild beasts… [T]he Jews themselves are demons”), and Jerome (the synagogue is “a den of vice, the Devil’s refuge, Satan’s fortress, a place to deprave the soul”).

To summarize this section: Paul now appears as a religious fanatic and ardent Jewish nationalist, willing to resort to violence and even kill non-Jews in order to drive out the Romans. (Later I will also affix to him the label ‘master liar.’) Paul knew nothing of “the four Gospels,” because they did not exist in his lifetime. The Gospel writers themselves were all Jews, as likely were the anonymous authors of the remainder of the NT. The Gospels as documents were likely written between 70 (Mark) and the mid-90s (John).

With this factual background in place, we can now examine precisely why the traditional Jesus story is not true. Then we will be one step closer to my central argument: namely, that since the biblical Jesus story is false, it was evidently constructed by Paul and his fellow Jews in order to sway the gullible Gentile masses to their side and away from Rome.

The Bible makes a number of ordinary and extraordinary claims regarding Jesus. The most dramatic of these qualify as miracles: a star appeared in the sky and led men to his birthplace; he was born of a virgin; he walked on water; he fed thousands with a few fish; he healed some two dozen people; he raised at least three people from the dead; and he himself bodily ascended to heaven. Such events are the prime basis for believing that he was a divine man, a Son of God, even a god himself. They are the ultimate justification for accepting Jesus as our ‘savior’ and thus as worthy of a new religion.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary justification. At a minimum, they require some justification. At a bare minimum, they require any justification. In the case of Jesus, unfortunately, we have no justification. In other words, we have no evidence for anything like these miracles occurring at all, let alone by a Jesus of Nazareth. In fact we have no evidence that an historical Jesus even existed, until decades after his death. We have no bodies, no tombs, no physical remains, no letters, no engravings—nothing that counts as evidence. We have no evidence.

In addition to this, we have documented dates for the various writings of Paul, of the Gospels, and others who commented on the Christians. But these spell big trouble for the standard view. In no sense do these dates align with what we would expect for the appearance of God incarnate. They are not merely ‘puzzling’; they strongly suggest that there are drastic errors in their portrayal of events.

So we have two major categories of problems. I will call these (1) the Problem of the Evidence, and (2) the Problem of the Chronology. The first considers that which we do not have, and the second that which we do. Let me examine each of these problems in turn.

Miracles are funny things. First, they seem to be, by and large, things of the past—the distant past. We just don’t have miracles anymore. Of course, there are “miraculous” recoveries from illness and disease, and the “miraculous” finding of lost children. But these have entirely natural explanations. Their alleged miraculous nature can never be proven. Rather, I’m referring to the grand and glorious kind of miracles: parting of seas, voices booming out from the sky, the raising of the dead, large-scale physical transformations, storms ceasing upon command. Such things would be very impressive indeed. Yet, for some reason, they just don’t seem to happen anymore.

A second fact about miracles is that, in many cases, they are somewhat like rainbows: they appear, and then they vanish without a trace. Or at least, over the course of time, all possible evidence of them vanishes. It’s very easy to posit miracles in the past when all traces of evidence are gone.

Take, for example, the Virgin Mary. How could we demonstrate that she was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus? We have no hope of proving such a thing, one way or the other. Even if we had her full bodily remains, we could not prove or disprove her virginity. This situation is, of course, very convenient for those promoting the conventional story; it’s very useful to be able to make claims that can never possibly be refuted. Unfortunately, most of the ‘Jesus miracles’ are of this sort; there is no conceivable evidence that could prove or disprove them. People risen from the dead eventually (I presume!) die again anyway. People divinely healed don’t, presumably, have ‘miracle scars’ or other traces of their miraculous recovery. Physical remains are all but non-existent.

The best we can hope for in such cases is corroboration: that is, of someone else—an independent, unbiased (or even biased!) observer—acting as a witness. This is not proof, but it is at least a kind of substantiating evidence. Every one of the ‘Jesus miracles’ had at least one witness—someone who, in theory, could have written, spoken, or otherwise recorded what he or she had seen. Some of the miracles had many witnesses; some, thousands. There were many, many opportunities for documentation of the miracles. And yet, nothing exists.

Let’s take a look at a few of the specific miracles, in order to better understand the problem of the evidence.

Apart from the virgin birth (or rather, pregnancy), the very first Jesus miracle was the Star of Bethlehem. We know the story: a star appears “in the east” and guides three wise men to the manger where baby Jesus lay. This simple story is rife with problems. The first is a kind of chronological problem: Paul never mentions the star, or Bethlehem, or anything about Jesus’ birth. The first Gospel, Mark, does not mention the star or the birth; instead, it starts right in with the adult Jesus. The star does not appear in Luke, and it does not appear in John. The only place it appears is in the Gospel of Matthew (2:1)—written some 85 years after the alleged event. This fact alone argues against its veracity.

But more to the point, if a miraculous star did appear in the heavens, as an actual celestial event, most likely someone would have documented it. Ancient astronomers have been doing similar things for millennia. Eclipses have been documented as far back as 2,000 or 3,000 BC. Halley’s Comet was documented in China in 240 BC, and again by the Babylonians in 164 BC. Surely, if the star were so impressive, someone would have documented it. But no such record exists.

Furthermore, we have the embarrassingly obvious fact that one cannot “follow” a star, certainly not to any specific point on Earth. Stars, or any celestial object, “move” throughout the night as the Earth rotates. Your star that is first in “the east” will soon be, perhaps, over your head, and then later to “the west.” To follow this star would be to walk in circles. And even someone were to take a “snapshot” view of a star and move in that direction, that of course could not direct you to any specific place. At best you are simply walking in a straight line. The story makes no sense. Perhaps, as some have said, the entire star incident was a “pious fiction.” No harm there, surely—unless it was the first of many.

Let’s move now to the specific miracles performed by Jesus. Depending on how we count them, there are something like 36 specific miracles claimed of him—all recorded in the four Gospels. By Gospel, the numbers are:

Mark: 19 miracles
Matthew: 22
Luke: 21
John: 8

(Note that many overlap, with different Gospels recording the same miracle.)

We can break down the 36 miracles into three categories: raisings from the dead (3), healings (24), and natural events (9). These are all listed in Appendix A.

We note some interesting trends. Mark, for example, has only one raising of the dead—Jairus’ daughter. Matthew repeats this. So does Luke, but he adds another: the widow’s son. John, for some reason, ignores both of these but comes up with a new one, the famous Lazarus tale. Strange how the most famous raising-of-the-dead story appears not until the very last Gospel, some 60 years after the alleged event.

Mark recounts 13 miracle healings (which include exorcisms). Matthew repeats 11 of these, and then adds four new ones. Luke covers 12 of the Mark/Matt miracles, but then adds another four of his own. John, inexplicably, ignores all the previous healing miracles, but then describes three brand new ones.

It’s a similar story with the nature miracles. Mark has five. Matthew repeats these, and then adds one of his own. Luke cover two of the previous ones, then adds a new one. John includes two old miracles, but then adds two new.

What are we to think of this? Did the miracle stories just not quite make the rounds back then? Especially, we recall, since all these documents were written 40 years or more after the crucifixion. Did the writers, perhaps, feel a need to increase the miracles over time, to make the Jesus story just a bit better? Or to take ordinary events and make them extraordinary?

Amazingly, it’s not only Jesus who performs miracles. I think many would be surprised to learn that Paul, Peter, and in fact all the apostles have done them.

Paul’s are documented in Acts. There we read that he makes a man blind (13:11), heals the sick (14:10, 28:8), and even raises the dead! (20:9-12). Paul generally performed “extraordinary miracles” (19:11), and indeed was viewed as “a god” (28:6)—at least, by the author of Acts.^[30]

For his part, Peter walked on water (Mt 14:30), healed the sick (Acts 3:7, 9:34), and also raised the dead (9:40). Apostle Philip healed the sick (6:8). Generally speaking, all the apostles performed “signs and wonders” (2:43, 5:12), and in Matthew we read that Jesus specifically directed his apostles to “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons” (10:8). Quite a task that Jesus has laid at their feet.

But let me return to the question of evidence. Most of Jesus’ miracles were conducted in front of only a small number of people—in some cases, just one. Still, each witness then had an opportunity to tell his story, to write it down, or to engrave something in stone. Imagine the interest today, for example, in finding Lazarus’ tombstone: “Here lies Lazarus. Died age 40, raised from the dead by Jesus Christ, died again aged 78”—or something similar. That’s not proof, but it would be a compelling bit of evidence. But nothing like that exists.

Some of the miracles had many witnesses, the prime example being the ‘fishes and loaves’ story. Not many people realize that there were two such incidents. Mark (6:30-44) tells us, first, that Jesus fed “five thousand men” with “five loaves, and two fish.” Then a bit later, Mark (8:1-13) informs us that he fed “about four thousand people” with “seven loaves…and a few small fish.”^[31] Therefore we have 9,000 witnesses to a miracle. Surely some of those people, perhaps many, would have somehow documented the event. Even if they were illiterate peasants, they still knew rabbis or other men who could write. And according to John, they did tell such men. He writes that the Pharisees were worried by all the miracles: “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation” (Jn 11:47-48).^[32] This is revealing: the masses knew about the miracles, the elite Jews knew about them, and surely the local Romans had heard rumors, at least. And yet, no one documented anything.

The point bears repeating. During Jesus’ entire lifetime, from, say 3 BC to 30 AD, not one person—not a Christian, not a Jew, not a Roman, not a Greek—wrote anything about the miracles, what Jesus said, or what his followers did. No one wrote anything. It’s as if nothing extraordinary happened at all.

This would be all but impossible if the Jesus story were true. Consider the situation of Pontius Pilate. Here he is, governor of Palestine, located some 1,400 miles from Rome as the crow flies. He has his hands full already with rebellious Jews. He is struggling to keep order, when appears…the Son of God, a Jew, who is working all sorts of miracles. Undoubtedly he would be writing furiously back to Rome, asking for help, advice, extra centurions, you name it. The Romans were excellent record-keepers; surely any such astonishing letters would have survived. And yet we have not one.

At the same time there lived a famous Jewish philosopher, Philo. He was born around 20 BC, and thus was an adult at the time of the Bethlehem star. He lived well past the crucifixion, dying about the year 50 AD. He would have been the ideal man to record everything about a Jewish miracle-worker and savior.^[33] He wrote about 40 individual essays, which now fill seven volumes. Yet he says not one word about Jesus or the Christian movement.

It gets worse. For the next 20 years after the crucifixion, we still have no evidence. From the years 30 to 50 AD, not one thing has survived that documents Jesus or his miracles: not a letter, not a book, not an engraving, nothing. Nothing by Jews, nothing by Christians, nothing by Romans—nothing. This is utterly inexplicable, if the Jesus story is true. On the other hand, if Jesus were simply a minor insurrectionist who was executed one day, it’s not at all surprising that nothing remains. In fact, it’s exactly what we would expect.

And yet, it’s worse still. We know that, from the year 50, we have a few letters by Paul. These letters are finished when Paul dies around the year 70. Now, of course, his letters cannot count as evidence, because it is exactly his accounts of Jesus that we are trying to validate. Apart from Paul’s letters, from the years 50 to 70, we still have no evidence. Nothing by other Christians, nothing by Jews, nothing by Romans—nothing.

And still it gets worse. The Gospels appeared between 70 and the mid-90s. But they, too, cannot count as evidence because it is precisely these documents that need confirmation. Apart from the four Gospels, from 70 to the mid-90s, we still have no evidence.

In sum: for the entire period of the early Christian era—that is, from say 3 BC to the mid-90s AD—we have no corroborating evidence from anyone who was not party to the new religion. Not a shred of anything exists: documents, letters, stone carvings…nothing at all. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this problem. This fact alone argues for a huge inconsistency with the Biblical account.

When confronted with this damning situation, Christian apologists typically have two excuses. First: “All evidence was lost.” Of course this is theoretically possible, but it is extremely hard to believe. A body of material, consisting of surely hundreds or thousands (including copies) of contemporaneous documents citing the miracles of Jesus, some written by friends, some by enemies, some by neutral bystanders, all lost to history. This, despite having countless historians, researchers, journalists, and others searching hard for two thousand years. This is all but impossible.

The second excuse: “All documents of the time were repressed or destroyed, either by the Jews or the Romans.” Is it possible that both the Jews and the Romans—all of them—were so shocked by the appearance of the Son of God that they both deemed it an unspeakable secret of some kind, never to be written or spoken about? And to have all remaining evidence utterly destroyed? The Jews, perhaps, had something to fear in this Jesus, but they were not so scared that they couldn’t push for his execution. And once he had arisen, did they then realize the magnitude of their crime, and vow to say or write nothing? Perhaps.

But the Romans, particularly those back in the imperial capital, would not have been so equally frightened. They didn’t believe the superstitions of the Jews, and surely would have placed no weight on any alleged miracles or resurrection. Any panicked letters from Pilate would have been given calm and pragmatic replies. Even Pilate would not have been overly-impressed. Once Jesus of Nazareth was executed, he was done and gone forever. The sheer fact of his crucifixion proved to all Romans that he was no miracle man, no Son of God. There likely would have been a few final ‘case closed’ letters to Rome, and that was that. Certainly no mass suppression or destruction of evidence. The Romans had no reason to do so.

And it wouldn’t have only been government officials doing the writing. Many important intellectuals of the day would certainly have been in a position to document the coming of God. Men such as Petronius, Seneca, Martial, and Quintillian all lived in the immediate aftermath of the crucifixion and would have been ideally situated to write about Jesus’ extraordinary life. So too with Philo, the Jewish philosopher, as I noted above. And yet not one of these men wrote a single word about him.

And apart from Romans and Jews, there were many neutral parties who might have commented: Phoenicians, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks—all had no vested interest in the Christian story and thus could have easily written about the alleged miracles. But not one of them did.

I must conclude, then, than neither the ‘lost’ excuse nor the ‘repression’ excuse holds any water. It is simply not possible for such a monumental event to have occurred and yet not a shred of documentation from that time remains.

Given the above, one could be excused for thinking that there is no corroborating evidence at all of an early Christian movement. But of course that’s not true. There is evidence, along with fairly well-accepted dates. The problem for Christians is that it’s not at all what we would expect. Rather than helping, the evidence that we do possess is actually detrimental to their cause.

Recall that the very first documented bits of evidence are the letters by Paul. They date from around 50 AD to his death in the late 60s. Next comes the Gospels: Mark (ca. 70 AD), Matthew and Luke (ca. 85), and John (ca. 95). Paul’s dates are to be expected, given that he was the founder of the movement. It does seem strange that his first 20 years are lost, with no letters or other documentation at all. Perhaps most of his early work was local, not requiring letters. Or perhaps he was so unknown that no one felt an urge to save his correspondence. But when his new church began to go global around the year 50, then we should rightly expect to see some documentation—and we do. The Pauline chronology poses no real concerns for us.

The Gospels, however, are very problematic for Christians. Consider this obvious question: Why did it take someone nearly 40 years to write down what Jesus had said? Wouldn’t that have been the first thing someone would have done, once it was clear that he ascended to heaven? What about his 11 surviving disciples (not including Judas, of course)? Each one of them should have been furiously documenting every word, every sound that they could recall from their savior’s lips. There should have been 11 well-written, complete, and consistent gospels within a year of Jesus’ death. Instead we have—nothing. The 11 men, now apostles, more or less vanish from the face of the Earth. No letters, no books, no engravings, no tombstones, no life histories—nothing.^[34]

Then Paul comes along, and he too gives us nothing on the life of Jesus. No—we must wait 40 years after Jesus’ death for Mark to document his life history and teachings; forty years after death, and 70 years after birth. By all accounts, Mark never knew or met Jesus. Therefore he got all his information second-, third-, or fourth-hand. If the information was written down, it is lost. If it was not written down, then it was sustained orally, and this is a notoriously unreliable method of transmission. In essence, we have no way of determining how accurate Mark is, and good reason to think it is highly altered, perhaps centering around a core of rather ordinary information about a rather ordinary Jesus of Nazareth. The other Gospels, being later in time, are even less likely to be reliable.

But it gets worse. The dates that we have for the four Gospels, cited above, are conjectures based on much later manuscripts and fragments. It’s not as if we have an “original Mark” from the year 70. Not even close. The oldest existing portion of Mark is the Chester Beatty fragment P⁴⁵, which includes about half of the Gospel. It dates to about the year 250. We have no idea how many changes, transcription errors, or other modifications may have occurred in those intervening 180 years. The oldest full copy of Mark comes in the Vatican Codex, which is even later, dating to around 350. So half of Mark underwent unknown changes for 180 years, and the other half for 280 years. And yet we are expected to have complete confidence in this document as the literal word of God.

The oldest fragment of any Gospel comes with Rylands P⁵², a mere scrap of papyrus that contains a few words from John. It supposedly dates to 125, but this is based strictly on handwriting analysis and not carbon dating or other physical techniques. The earliest Matthew fragment, P¹⁰⁴, again containing just a few words, dates to 175. The oldest Luke fragment, P⁷⁵, to around 200. We can see that we have no access to any of the original Gospels, and all underwent unknown modifications for decades or centuries.

The dating of the Gospels represents a kind of ‘internal’ chronology problem. But there is also an external one. It relates to the question of corroborating evidence from outside the sphere of the church. Above I showed that, for nearly the entire first century, all we have are Paul’s letters and the four Gospels. And since these documents are the very ones in question, they cannot serve as their own confirmation. We need something independent, and that’s what we do not have.

But then along comes Josephus. Born around the year 37, he, like all Jewish elite, was a member of the resistance to Rome. He fought in the first Jewish-Roman war and was captured in 67. Emperor Vespasian decided to free him in 69 to serve as a high-level slave and translator. In exchange for a modest freedom, Josephus willingly sided with the Romans, changing his name to Flavius Josephus. In time he wrote two major books: The Jewish War (ca. 75) and Antiquities of the Jews (ca. 93).^[35] The former told the story of the first Jewish war, and the latter gave a history of the Jewish people.

As an elite, educated Jew living in Palestine just after the crucifixion, Josephus was perfectly situated to comment on Jesus. He would have known all the stories and legends inside and out. As a writer, he certainly would have recorded these events in his books.

So, what did he write? His first book, The Jewish War, contains nothing on Jesus or the Christians. Granted that the topic was the war and not religion, but even so, it would have been difficult to avoid mention, had he heard about Jesus. The most reasonable conclusion is that, as of the year 75, he had heard nothing. His void on Christianity is inexplicable if the Jesus story is true, but it’s exactly as expected if the early Christian movement, now post-Paul, had barely begun.

By 93, though, things change. Now, for the first time in history, we find independent, non-Christian confirmation of an actually existing Christian movement. In Antiquities, Josephus writes one paragraph, and then one additional sentence, on the Christians. Here is the first passage, known as the ‘Testimonium Flavium’:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. (Bk 18, Ch 3, 3)

A fascinating passage, to be sure. Here we have all the basics of the Christian story in a nutshell. And yet even here, there are problems. Almost no one accepts that this passage was originally written by Josephus. Rather, the literary analysts have determined that words were added or modified at a later date. But the experts cannot agree on what was changed, when, or by whom. “He was the Christ” seems an obvious interpolation (insertion), but it’s very likely that other edits occurred.

Unfortunately, like most ancient documents, we have no “original.” What we have are copies of copies from much later dates. In this case, the oldest copy of this critical passage comes from the Christian apologist Eusebius, from roughly the year 324. We can only imagine what changed in the intervening 230 years.^[36]

Josephus’ second passage includes this line: “Albinus…assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others” (Bk 20, Ch 9, 1). But nothing more here on Jesus. The reference to a brother James is consistent with Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother” (Gal 1:19).^[37]

I’ll not debate the authenticity of these passages here. For my purposes, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not at all surprising that, by the 90s AD, there would be a visible Christian movement. But by all accounts, it was small and insignificant, based on the scant space that Josephus allows to the topic. Of course, it doesn’t prove that any of the reported things actually happened; all it shows is that someone believed that it happened.

Josephus is important because he is the first non-Christian to confirm that a Christian movement existed, at least by the late first century AD. But what about the Romans? I already noted that Pontius Pilate evidently wrote nothing about Jesus, nor did any other early Roman commentator. Eventually, though, the Romans did get around to mentioning the new religion. And the first to write about it was the great historian Tacitus.

Tacitus was born in the year 58 to an aristocratic family. Between 98 and 105 AD he wrote four books, including the highly important work Histories. As it happens, not one of them so much as mentions Jesus or the Christians.

But his final work, Annals, which dates circa 115 AD, does include two sentences on them. In section 44 of Book 15 we read the following:

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

Nero, it seems, was anxious to blame someone for the Great Roman Fire of 64 AD. Apparently he placed it on a “hated” group, the Christians, “a most mischievous superstition.” The passage is likely authentic but yet odd in that we have no other reference to Christians in Rome at the time of Nero, or of Nero actually blaming them for anything. Perhaps Tacitus is recording what he heard or read elsewhere, and was unable to actually confirm.

But this is not relevant here. What matters is the stunning fact that it took until the year 115—80 years after the crucifixion, nearly 120 years after the miracle birth—for the first Roman to document the Christians. And even then, he grants them all of two sentences.

A second Roman reference—and the third non-Christian—comes from Pliny. Like Tacitus, Pliny was an educated and highly literate aristocrat. By the year 110, at around age 50, he had assumed the position of imperial governor of a province in the north of present-day Turkey. In a letter to Emperor Trajan, from about the same time as Tacitus’ Annals, he writes an extended critique of the Christian movement. Over the course of about five paragraphs, Pliny explains his need to repress the Christians, including executing the non-citizens and shipping citizens to Rome for punishment. Christianity is described as a “depraved, excessive superstition,” and Pliny is worried that the “contagion of this superstition” is spreading. But still, he thinks it “possible to check and cure it.”

Pliny’s suggestions aside, what we find here is a fascinating account of a growing but troublesome new religion. The Romans were generally tolerant of other religions, and thus we must conclude that there was something uniquely problematic about this group. It may perhaps have been their Jewish origins, or the fact that they embodied particularly repellent values. We lack the details here to determine the cause of the enmity. But in any case, it seems clear that the early Christians were not simple apostles of love. Something else was going on with this group that the Romans found truly galling and, indeed, a kind of threat to the social or moral order.

In this chapter I hope to have shown that the utter lack of expected evidence is damning for the biblical Jesus, and what evidence we do have is equally damning in its own way. There is nothing to be said for the Christian side of the story. It’s a lose-lose proposition. Therefore the only reasonable conclusion is that the traditional Jesus story must be false.

And yet, something happened. We know for certain that by the mid-90s or early 100s latest, Christians were becoming noticed and causing trouble for the empire. We are fairly sure that Paul lived and wrote between the mid-30s and late-60s, and that the Gospels first appeared between 70 and 95. The issue now before us is to reconstruct the details regarding what may have actually happened.

But we have a bit more preparatory work to do first. We know that the first Christians were all Jews, from Jesus and Mary down to the apostles and Gospel writers. We know that the Jews had been under pressure from Rome since the occupation began in 63 BC. What we have yet to examine is why the Jews were so antagonistic to Rome, the depth of their hatred, and the extent to which some of them, at least, were willing to go to drive out the Romans. Jewish attitudes toward others, and the attitudes of others toward them, need to be made clear so that we can better understand the milieu in which Paul and his band of friends were able to construct such a monumental Jesus hoax.

In the early years of Christianity, Jews are front and center. As I have already shown, the entire early Christian movement and the entire Bible itself are thoroughly and completely Jewish. We have seen how the traditional Jesus story cannot be true, due to the lack of contemporaneous evidence and the many internal and external chronology problems.

Let’s now examine, first, how the Jews viewed themselves and others. Then we will take a look at how others—mostly Greeks and Romans—viewed them. An understanding of these attitudes, on both sides, is critical to a proper perspective of the origins of Christianity.

Fortunately for us, Jewish attitudes are clearly documented in the Bible. We can see there, simply by reading the OT text, how they felt about themselves and the other nations around them.

Earlier, in chapter one, I cited the well-known fact that the Jews consider themselves the “chosen people” of God. There are a number of passages that support this idea. Already with Abraham, in the Book of Genesis, we read that God made special promises and commitments to him: “To your descendents I will give this land [of Canaan/Palestine]” (Gen 12:7). Later God adds this: “I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendents after you, throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant… And I will give to you, and to your descendents after you, the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession” (17:7-8). Not quite yet ‘chosen,’ but still a privileged people, to be sure.

Then in Exodus, God speaks to Moses: “You [Jews] shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:5-6).

But things don’t become clear until the last book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy. Moses recalls the words of God: “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth” (Deut 7:6). For emphasis, God repeats this proclamation: “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth” (14:2). The point could hardly be more succinct.

If the Jews are chosen by God, then everyone else is, of necessity, not chosen. If Jews are first class humans in the eyes of God, everyone else is second-class at best. And indeed, Jews do view themselves as distinct, special, and superior to others. As Exodus states, “We are distinct…from all other people that are upon the face of the earth” (33:16). Similarly, the Hebrew tribe is “a people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations” (Numbers 23:9).

Furthermore, and to the point, if God gave the Jews a kind of dominion, they can then feel justified in imposing upon others—and harshly. Already in Genesis we read: “Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you” (27:29). In Deuteronomy, God promises the Jews “houses full of all good things, which [they] did not fill, and cisterns hewn out, which [they] did not hew, and vineyards and olive trees, which [they] did not plant” (6:11). Moses adds that “you shall rule over many nations” (15:6), and “they shall be afraid of you” (28:10).

And outside the Pentateuch, we read in Isaiah: “Foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall minister to you…that men may bring you the wealth of the nations” (60:10-11); or again, “aliens shall stand and feed your flocks, foreigners shall be your plowmen and vinedressers…you shall eat the wealth of the nations” (61:5-6). In light of all these passages, Jewish attitudes become somewhat more comprehensible.

Now of course, we have to be clear that all this is really their view of themselves. No one believes that God literally came to Abraham and Moses and said those things. These religious documents are a reflection of how the Jews viewed themselves. They saw themselves as special, different, ‘select,’ and thus they put these ideas into the mouth of their God. Certainly, no one would deny a people pride in themselves. But these extreme statements go far beyond normal bounds. They indicate a kind of self-absorption, a self-glorification, perhaps a narcissism, perhaps a conceit. To be chosen by the creator of the universe, and to be granted right to rule, ruthlessly, over all other nations, bespeaks a kind of megalomania that is unprecedented in history.

Clearly, when other people began to encounter these ideas and the attitudes that derived from them, one would expect a backlash. And there was. Hence we find a consistent thread of opinions from non-Jewish observers, for centuries, who are repelled by such arrogance.

The first sign of trouble comes with the very first mention of a people called “Israel.” As I mentioned in chapter 2, we have a large engraved stone, the Merneptah Stele, from around the year 1200 BC that references that nation. The one relevant line is this: “Israel is laid waste and his seed is not.” Evidently there existed a people called Israel at that time; they got into some kind of conflict with the people who carved the stone; and Israel was badly defeated. It’s hard to infer much more, but clearly this is an inauspicious start to the Jewish people.

A second ancient, and also negative, reference comes from another stone, the Tel Dan Stele. Carved around 850 BC, this engraving records a King Hazael boasting of his victory over the kings of Israel and the “House of David.” It seems that Israel had invaded his father’s country in the past, and Hazael was now exacting revenge. The details are hazy, but it’s clear that Israel was once again a belligerent people, and once against paid a price.

Next we shift to the Bible itself, and the story of the Exodus. Early in that book we read that the Jews are still in Egypt, having travelled there at the end of Genesis. An unnamed new pharaoh arises, and he has an issue with the Jews. “Behold,” he says, “the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war befall us, they join our enemies and fight against us…” (Ex 1:10). In general, “the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel” (1:12). Eventually the pharaoh drives Moses and the Jews out of Egypt and into Palestine, where they establish the Kingdom of David by 1000 BC.

It should be clear that, even back then, that mass expulsions were an extraordinary event, not to be undertaken lightly. There was evidently something about the Jews—perhaps their arrogance, perhaps their deceit, perhaps, as the pharaoh said, their disloyalty to their host nation—that caused this action. Below I will cite a few later and illuminating commentaries on this particular event.

Another revealing incident occurred in the year 410 BC, in the southern Egyptian city of Elephantine. A Jewish community and temple existed there since about 650 BC, and in 525 BC the Persian king Cambyses invaded and incorporated the territory into his empire. Pragmatic people that they were, the Jews quickly allied themselves with the new ruler, but this had the negative effect of placing them on the side of the foreign invaders and against the indigenous Egyptians. Peter Schafer writes, “the Jews are the supporters of the hated foreign rule and do not join…in the struggle against the oppressors”.^[38] It was furthermore only the Jews who were targeted: “[A]lthough members of different ethnic origin were stationed at Elephantine, it is solely the Jews against whom the Egyptian priests direct their animosity”.^[39] Despite official directive to support the Jewish community, local Persian commander Vidranga found them objectionable and indeed intolerable; he soon sided with the Egyptian rebels, against the Jews. Vidranga pillaged and destroyed the Jewish temple in 410 BC. Once again, where the Jews settled amongst other peoples, they seem to have made enemies.

The first outsiders to explicitly comment on the Jews were the Greeks. Through sea-faring trade and imperial expansion they came into contact with many groups of the eastern Mediterranean, including Egyptians, Phoenicians, Syrians, and Jews. The earliest direct references come from Aristotle’s star pupil Theophrastus. He had a concern about one of their customs: “the Syrians, of whom the Jews (Ioudaioi) constitute a part, also now sacrifice live victims… They were the first to institute sacrifices both of other living beings and of themselves”.^[40] The Greeks, he added, would have “recoiled from the entire business.” The victims—animal and human—were not eaten, but burnt as “whole offerings” to their God, and were “quickly destroyed.” The philosopher was clearly repelled by this Jewish tradition.

Hecateus of Abdera, working somewhat after Theophrastus, wrote a text: On the Jews. Two fragments survive, one by Josephus and the other by Diodorus. Generally speaking both fragments are sympathetic, and thus it’s striking that the latter includes this observation on the story of the Exodus: “as a consequence of having been driven out [of Egypt], Moses introduced a way of life which was to a certain extent misanthropic and hostile to foreigners”.^[41] One can certainly understand the anger of any people who have been driven from their place of residence. But why should this translate into misanthropy—that is, hatred of mankind in general? It’s as if the Jews took out their anger on the rest of humanity. Perhaps it was a case of extreme resentment combined with extreme stubbornness. Or perhaps an outcome of their self-perception as embodied in their religious worldview.

It was around that time that the Macedonian general Ptolemy I came to rule Egypt. His military, for various reasons, could not conscript Egyptian citizens, and so a mercenary army was necessary. Ptolemy had a ready supply at hand in the Jews. Emilio Gabba relates that the king employed 30,000 Jews, chosen from among his many prisoners of war. “Well paid and highly trustworthy, they served to keep the native population at bay, and the natives apparently retaliated against them from time to time”—a situation that recalls the previous events in Elephantine.^[42] This, in addition to the cultural and religious quirks, was another basis for indigenous animosity towards Jews. But again this incident is revealing. It’s understandable to want to get out of prison, but one must wonder at the evident readiness of the Jews to side with their enemies, for pay, and to do so enthusiastically, with little compunction.

But there is still a lingering question here: Why were the Jews driven out of Egypt? Egyptian high priest Manetho (ca. 250 BC) tells of a group of “lepers and other polluted persons,” 80,000 in number, who were exiled from Egypt and found residence in Judea. There they established Jerusalem and built a large temple. Manetho comments that the Jews kept to themselves, as it was their law “to interact with none save those of their own confederacy.” As the story continues, the Jews (“Solymites”) marshaled allies from amongst other ‘polluted’ persons, returned to Egypt, and temporarily conquered a large territory. When in power they treated the natives “impiously and savagely,” “set[ting] towns and villages on fire, pillaging the temples and mutilating images of the gods without restraint,” and roasting the animals held sacred by the locals.^[43] This is a very different version than we read in the Jewish Bible.

The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes ruled over the territory of Judea in the early second century BC. Internal Jewish disputes elevated to a general insurrection, which angered him. His army invaded Jerusalem in 168 BC, killing many Jews and plundering their great (second) temple. Greek philosopher Posidonius adds that, upon seizing the temple, Epiphanes freed a Greek citizen who was being held captive, only to be fattened up for sacrifice, and eaten. This was allegedly an annual ritual. He further remarks that the Jews worshipped the head of an ass, having placed one of solid gold in their temple.

The decline of the Seleucids coincided with Roman ascent. Rome was still technically a republic in the second century BC, but its power and influence were rapidly growing. Jews were attracted to the seat of power, and travelled to Rome in significant numbers. As before, they grew to be hated. By 139 BC, the Roman praetor Hispalus found it necessary to expel them from the city: “The same Hispalus banished the Jews from Rome, who were attempting to hand over their own rites to the Romans, and he cast down their private alters from public places”.^[44] In even this short passage, one senses a Roman Jewry who were disproportionately prominent, obtrusive, even ‘pushy.’

Perhaps in part because of this incident, and in light of the Maccabean revolt some 30 years earlier, the Seleucid king Antiochus VII Sidetes was advised in 134 BC to exterminate the Jews. Referring to the account by Posidonius, Gabba explains that the king was called on

to destroy the Jews, for they alone among all peoples refused all relations with other races, and saw everyone as their enemy; their forbears, impious and cursed by the gods, had been driven out of Egypt. The counselors [cited] the Jews’ hatred of all mankind, sanctioned by their very laws, which forbade them to share their table with a Gentile or give any sign of benevolence.^[45]

Needless to say, Sidetes did not heed his counselors’ advice.

Two or three decades after Posidonius, around the year 75 BC, prominent speaker and teacher Apollonius Molon wrote the first book to explicitly confront the Hebrew tribe, Against the Jews. From his early years in Caria and Rhodes he would likely have had direct contact with them, and thus was able to write from personal experience. Molon referred to Moses as a “charlatan” and “imposter,” viewing the Jews as “the very vilest of mankind”.^[46] Josephus adds the following:

[Molon] has scattered [his accusations] here and there all over his work, reviling us in one place as atheists and misanthropes, in another reproaching us as cowards, whereas elsewhere, on the contrary, he accuses us of temerity and reckless madness. He adds that we are the most witless of all barbarians, and are consequently the only people who have contributed no useful invention to civilization.^[47]

The Jews are ‘atheists’ in the sense that they reject the Roman gods. The ‘misanthrope’ charge recurs, having first appeared some two centuries earlier in Hecateus. But the complaints of cowardice, villainy, and recklessness are new, as is the statement that the Jews have contributed nothing of value to civilization. The rhetoric is clearly heating up.

In 63 BC, as we know, Roman general Pompey took Palestine. Thus it’s unsurprising that we find a quick succession of anti-Jewish comments by notable Romans. Four are of interest, beginning with Cicero. In the year 59 BC Cicero gave a speech, now titled Pro Flacco, that offered a defense of L. V. Flaccus, a Roman propraetor in Asia. Flaccus was charged with embezzling Jewish gold destined for Jerusalem. Strikingly, Cicero begins by noting the power and influence of the Jews:

You know what a big crowd it is, how they stick together, how influential they are in informal assemblies. So I will speak in a low voice so that only the jurors may hear; for those are not wanting who would incite them against me and against every respectable man.^[48]

It’s rather shocking that Cicero, speaking near the height of Roman power, should voice this concern—if even as a mock concern.

He continues on, noting that the senate had a long-standing policy of restricting gold exports, and that Flaccus was only enforcing this rule, not withholding the gold for himself. Here was his downfall: “But to resist this barbaric superstition (barbarae superstitioni) was an act of firmness, to defy the crowd of Jews (Iudaeorum) when sometimes in our assemblies they were hot with passion…” All the gold is accounted for, Cicero hastens to add. The whole trial “is just an attempt to fix odium on him” (recalling present-day attempts to smear ‘anti-Semites’). The Jewish religion is “at variance with the glory of our empire, the dignity of our name, the customs of our ancestors.” That the gods stand opposed to this tribe “is shown by the fact that it has been conquered, let out for taxes, made a slave.”

Ten years later Diodorus Siculus wrote his Historical Library. Among other things, it again recounts the Exodus:

[T]he ancestors of the Jews had been driven out of all Egypt as men who were impious and detested by the gods. For by way of purging the country of all persons who had white or leprous marks on their bodies had been assembled and driven across the border, as being under a curse; the refugees had occupied the territory round about Jerusalem, and having organized the nation of Jews had made their hatred of mankind into a tradition… (34, 1)

The Library then includes a retelling of Antiochus Epiphanes’ takeover of the Jewish temple in 168—the same event found in the earlier work of Posidonius. But this is no mere duplication; it demonstrates an acceptance and endorsement of that account. Here, though, it is Antiochus Epiphanes, not his successor Sidetes, that was urged “to wipe out completely the race of Jews, since they alone of all nations avoided dealings with any other people and looked upon all men as their enemies”.^[49]

Upon entering the temple Antiochus finds a statue of a bearded man on an ass—Moses, the one “who had ordained for the Jews their misanthropic and lawless customs.” Antiochus’ advisors were “shocked by such hatred directed against all mankind,” and therefore “strongly urged [him] to make an end of the race completely.” In his magnanimity, he declined.

The great lyric poet Horace wrote his Satires in 35 BC, exploring Epicurean philosophy and the meaning of happiness. At one point, though, he makes a passing comment on the apparently notorious proselytizing ability of the Roman Jews—in particular their tenaciousness in winning over others. Horace is in the midst of attempting to persuade the reader of his point of view: “and if you do not wish to yield, then a great band of poets will come to my aid…and, just like the Jews, we will compel you to concede to our crowd” (I.4.143). Their power must have been legendary, or he would not have made such an allusion.

The last commentator of the pre-Christian era was Lysimachus. Writing circa 20 BC, he offers another variation on the Exodus story, placing it in the reign of the pharaoh Bocchoris (or Bakenranef) of 720 BC. On his version, the Jews, “afflicted with leprosy, scurvy, and other maladies,” sought refuge in Egyptian temples. The oracles advised Bocchoris to cleanse the temples, to banish the impious and impure, and “to pack the lepers into sheets of lead and sink them in the ocean”—which he did. The exiled ones, led by Moses, were instructed to “show goodwill to no man,” to offer “the worst advice” to others, and to overthrow any temples or sanctuaries they might come upon. Arriving in Judea, “they maltreated the population, and plundered and set fire to the [local] temples.” They then built a town called Hierosolyma (Jerusalem), and referred to themselves as Hierosolymites.^[50] If indeed they persecuted the indigenous population, one can see in this a distant predecessor to the current Israeli atrocities in Palestine.

The charge of misanthropy, or hatred of mankind, is significant and merits further discussion, especially in light of the Christian story. It has recurred several times already—in Hecateus, Posidonius, Molon, Diodorus, and now Lysimachus. This is striking because the Romans were notably tolerant of other sects and religions, owing in part to their polytheistic worldview. A society of many gods implicitly recognizes religious diversity; if there are many such beings, who can claim complete knowledge of the divine realm? Monotheism, in contrast, claims exclusive and absolute knowledge; it has one God and one truth. Therefore other religions with other god(s) are necessarily false. Thus it’s reasonable to assume that the Jews, as the first monotheists of the Middle East, did not reciprocate Roman tolerance.

In fact this seems to have been a general rule throughout history: religious intolerance derives from the monotheistic fundamentalists (Jews, Christians, Muslims), not the polytheists or religious pluralists. In the case of the Jews, though, monotheistic arrogance was combined with racial distinctness and other cultural characteristics, resulting in a deeply-embedded misanthropic streak. This likely sanctioned abusive and brutal treatment of Gentiles. Sometimes this appears explicitly, as in a recent statement by leading Orthodox Rabbi Yosef, who said, “Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world—only to serve the people of Israel. They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat” (Jerusalem Post, 18 Oct 2010). It would be difficult to find a cruder statement of Jewish misanthropy.

The turn of the millennium was significant on several counts. Rome had formally become an empire under Augustus, as of 27 BC. Jesus of Nazareth was (allegedly) born 3 BC. Jewish philosopher Philo was active at this time, as was perhaps the most infamous ‘anti-Semite’ of that age, Apion. Apion’s notoriety derives not so much from his accusations—which for the most part were preexisting ones—but instead for his renown amongst the upper classes of Alexandrian society, and because Josephus elected to title one of his own books Against Apion. A sample of the criticisms laid by Apion in his book Against the Jews include:

• the leprosy-ridden Exodus story;
• an etymology of the Jewish term ‘Sabbath’ that derives from ‘tumors of the groin’;
• numerous tales of Jewish foolishness or naiveté;
• well-deserved mistreatment by Cleopatra (withholding of corn during a regional famine, and various conflicts with the Jewish king Herod);
• Jews’ failure to erect statues of the emperors;
• tendency “to show no goodwill to a single alien, above all to Greeks”;
• unjust laws;
• sedition;
• “erroneous” religious practices;
• failure to produce any geniuses in the arts or crafts;
• not eating pork;
• circumcision.

Again, little in the way of original criticisms, but apparently sufficiently influential to warrant a refutation.

Additionally, there were solid, objective reasons for the Roman public to be wary in that first century. With the Roman incorporation of Judea in 63 BC, Jews flocked to the imperial capitol in ever-greater numbers. Once again, the authorities took action. Emperor Tiberius expelled them in the year 19 AD:

He abolished foreign cults, especially the Egyptian and Jewish rites, compelling all who were addicted to such superstitions to burn their religious vestments… [Other Jews] were banished from the city, on pain of slavery for life if they did not obey.^[51]

The expulsion did not succeed. Eleven years later, as we recall from chapter two, Sejanus found reason to oppose them again.

Back in Rome, anti-Jewish actions continued. In 49, Claudius once again had to expel them. In a fascinating line from Suetonius circa the year 120, we find mention of one ‘Chrestus’ (Latin: Chresto) as the leader of the rabble; this would be perhaps the fourth non-Jewish references to Jesus. “Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Claudius] expelled them from Rome”.^[52] This is an important observation that, even at that late date, the Romans still identified Christianity with the Jews.

Despite all this, the beleaguered tribe still earned no sympathy. The great philosopher Seneca commented on them in his work On Superstition, circa 60. He was appalled not only by their ‘superstitious’ religious beliefs, but more pragmatically with their astonishing influence in Rome and around the known world, despite repeated pogroms and banishments. Seneca first derides the Jews as lazy because they dedicate every seventh day to God: “their practice [of the Sabbath] is inexpedient, because by introducing one day of rest in every seven they lose in idleness almost a seventh of their life…”^[53] “Meanwhile,” he adds,

the customs of this accursed race (sceleratissima gens) have gained such influence that they are now received throughout all the world. The vanquished have given laws to their victors.

Seneca is clearly indignant at their reach.

Then came the historic Jewish revolt in Judea, during the years 66 to 70. The Romans were surely gratified; to their mind, the Jews received their just deserts.

The second century of the Christian era saw a continued string of critical comments, for the most part reiterations of past complaints that were evidently still valid. Quintillian (circa 100) observed that, just as cities can bring together and exacerbate the problem of social undesirables, so too Moses knit together scattered individuals into a single Jewish tribe: “founders of cities are detested [when] concentrating a race which is a curse (perniciosam) to others, as for example the founder of the Jewish superstition”.^[54] Additionally, Damocritus’ book Peri Ioudaion (On the Jews) remarked that “they used to worship an asinine golden head, and that every seventh year they caught a foreigner and sacrificed him”^[55]—in contrast to the story by Manetho in which the sacrifice was an annual event.

This brings us once again to Tacitus. In the previous chapter I quoted his early remarks on Christianity—the first, in fact, by any Roman commentator. There I cited his late work Annals, but here it is his other main work, Histories, that is relevant. In Book V, Tacitus recounts historical events from the year 70 AD. Roman general Titus had been sent to subjugate Judea once and for all. He found allies in the indigenous Palestinians, “who hated the Jews with all that hatred that is common among neighbors” (5.1). The enmities of that region are deep-seated.

Tacitus then breaks off the narrative to give an account of the origin of the Jews—that “race of men hateful to the gods” (genus hominum invisium deis). He offers two or three variations, apparently siding with Manetho. The religion of Moses, he adds, is diametrically opposed to that of the Romans: “The Jews regard as profane all that we hold sacred; on the other hand, they permit all that we abhor.” He continues:

Whatever their origin, these rites are maintained by their antiquity: the other customs of the Jews are base and abominable (sinistra foeda), and owe their persistence to their depravity. For the worst rascals among other peoples…always kept sending tribute and contributions to Jerusalem, thereby increasing the wealth of the Jews; again, the Jews are extremely loyal toward one another, and always ready to show compassion, but toward every other people they feel only hate and enmity (hostile odium).

“As a race,” he adds, “they are prone to lust,” and have “adopted circumcision to distinguish themselves from other peoples” (5.5). Tacitus notes their abstract monotheism, suggesting that this is yet another cause of friction. He closes the section with the comment that “the ways of the Jews are preposterous (absurdus) and mean (sordidus).”

In besieging Jerusalem, and consequently the mighty Jewish temple, Titus had the Jews trapped. There was thought of sparing the temple, but Titus opposed this option. For him, “the destruction of this temple [was] a prime necessity in order to wipe out more completely the religion of the Jews and the Christians.” These two religions, “although hostile to each other, nevertheless sprang from the same sources; the Christians had grown out of the Jews: if the root were destroyed, the stock would easily perish”.^[56] The passage closes by noting that 600,000 Jews were killed in the war.

Such are his comments on the “obnoxious and superstitious race” (gens superstitioni obnoxia; 5.13)—a group who are the “most despised” (despectissima) of subjects and “the basest of peoples” (taeterrimam gentum; 5.8).

The second Jewish war, in 115, gave further cause for critique. Cassius Dio describes the Jewish brutality graphically in his Roman History:

Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put a certain Andreas at their head, and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would eat the flesh of their victims, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing; many they sawed in two, from the head downwards; others they gave to wild beasts, and still others they forced to fight as gladiators. (Bk 68.32)

The third and final Jewish uprising occurred just a few years later, in 132. The reasons for this were many, but two stand out: the construction of a Roman city on the ruins of Jerusalem, and Emperor Hadrian’s banning of circumcision: “At this time the Jews began war, because they were forbidden to practice genital mutilation (mutilare genitalia)”.^[57]

Dio describes the conflict in detail. “Jews everywhere were showing signs of hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly overt acts”.^[58] They were able to bribe others to join in the uprising: “many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter.” For those today who argue that Jews were perennially the cause of wars, this would provide some early evidence. Hadrian sent one of his best generals, Severus, to put down the insurgency. Through a slow war of attrition, “he was able…to crush, exhaust, and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived.”

Two final figures close out the second century. Famed astronomer Ptolemy was also a bit of an astrologer, and took to using the stars to explain earthly conditions. In his Apotelesmatica of 150 AD, Ptolemy observes that the tribes of Palestine, including Idumaea, Syria, Judea, and Phoenicia, have some common characteristics.

These people … are more gifted in trade and exchange; they are more unscrupulous, despicable cowards, treacherous, servile, and in general fickle, on account of the stars mentioned. [The Judaeans in particular] are in general bold, godless, and scheming. (II, 3)^[59]

Given the four centuries of conflict with the people of that region, Ptolemy can hardly be blamed for viewing them as cursed by the heavens.

Finally we have Celsus, a Greek philosopher who composed a text, The True Word, sometime around 178. The piece is striking as an extended and scathing critique of the increasingly prominent Christian sect. Celsus’ main target is clearly Christianity, but in the process he makes a number of remarks on the Jews—all negative. Beginning with Moses, the Jews “were deluded by clumsy deceits into thinking that there was only one God” (I.23). They were “addicted to sorcery” and thus “fell into error through ignorance and were deceived.” Celsus mocks “the race of Jews and Christians,” comparing them all “to a cluster of bats or ants coming out of a nest, or frogs holding council round a marsh, or worms assembling in some filthy corner, disagreeing with each other about which of them are the worse sinners” (IV.23). “The Jews,” he adds, “were runaway slaves who escaped from Egypt; they never did anything important, nor have they ever been of any significance or prominence.” Fate has been justifiably harsh to them, and they are “suffering the penalty of their arrogance” (V.41).

Judeo-Christian theology, says Celsus, is a mish-mash of mythology and absurdity. “The God of the Jews is accursed” because he created, or allowed, evil in the world—a classic statement of the Problem of Evil.^[60] The cosmogony of Genesis is ridiculous, as is the creation story of mankind; “Moses wrote these stories because he understood nothing… [He] put together utter trash” (VI.49). In the long run Jewry is doomed—“they will presently perish” (VI.80).

So what can we conclude from this brief overview of some 600 years of the ancient world? To say that the Jews were disliked is an understatement. The critiques come from all around the Mediterranean region, and from a wide variety of cultural perspectives. And they are uniformly negative. I note here that it’s not a case of ‘cherry-picking’ the worst comments and ignoring the good ones. The remarks are all negative; there simply are no positive opinions on the Jews or early Christians.

A reasonable conclusion is that there is something about the Jewish culture that inspires disgust and hatred. As the saying goes, “When one person hates you, it’s probably them; when everyone hates you, it’s probably you.” Arrogance, insularity, superstition, self-absorption, and misanthropy surely all play a part. Monotheism is also a likely contributor, though indirectly.

In any case, it’s clear that the Jews had few if any friends in the ancient world. Their religion instructed them to despise others (Gentiles), and others in turn despised them. But the originating source was the Jews themselves: their religion, their worldview, their values. They were willing to use and exploit non-Jews for their own ends. They were willing to kill, and to die.

This situation feeds directly into the circumstances of the Roman occupation and Paul’s reaction. The preceding analysis suggests that Paul was interested in nothing other than saving ‘Israel,’ the Jewish people. We have seen a few textual clues indicating that he was willing even to commit murder in order to further his ends. Surely he hated the Romans with a vengeance, and yet he also could see the futility of confronting them directly. The violent Zealot movement would likely be crushed. Something much more subtle and clever would be required to undermine their position of power.

In the next chapter I will lay out my vision of the truth—of what I believe actually happened back in those murky days of the ancient Middle East.

We now have the background in place to begin to reconstruct the likely truth of what happened during the early years of Christianity. Again, I’ll not claim certainty here; no one can do that. But I think the ensemble of facts points to a clear scenario, one in which Paul and his band of fellow Jews constructed a Jesus hoax in order to weaken Roman rule and ultimately lead to its demise. It took a few centuries, but in the end, amazingly, it worked.

As an invading force in Palestine, the Romans were numerically a small minority, but they had access to limitless power. The Jews were also a small minority but had been able, prior to Rome, to acquire and hold power over the Palestinians. (The Hasmonean Dynasty held a territory roughly equal to present-day Israel, although it included the entire West Bank and a small portion of present-day Syria.) For their power, Rome required at least the tacit consent of the masses—and by and large, they achieved this. The Romans came, not as bloodthirsty slaughterers, but as bringers of civilization. They only fought if they encountered resistance. Their aim was not to kill masses of people, but to expand the Empire. As proof of this, they granted immediate citizenship to all qualified individuals who were absorbed into the newly-expanded realm. The general public held no predetermined antipathy to the Empire, and in fact may have welcomed it if they disliked their previous rule—as was likely the case in Palestine prior to Rome.^[61] Rome brought many benefits and few drawbacks; taxes always had to be paid, no matter who was in charge. And in any case, there were clear advantages to being a citizen of the greatest power on Earth.

Paul, as we have seen, was likely a member of the violent Zealot movement that was militantly opposed to the Romans and anyone collaborating with them. Paul even sanctioned murder to achieve his ends. As a teen, he likely remembered Tiberius’ expulsion of the Jews from Rome in 19 AD, and he certainly would have known of Sejanus’ attempt to “destroy” the Jews in the year 30. He likely was aware of Apion’s anti-Jewish tract that was circulating in educated society. All the while, Jews were actively and passively fighting against Roman rule. He would have seen his fellow Zealots rounded up and executed, some by the highly visible form of crucifixion, a punishment reserved for rebels, insurgents, and other criminals against the State. All in all, it would have been a highly depressing situation.

Many Jews were resolved to live and let live with the Romans. Herod Antipater (“Antipas”), nominal ‘king’ of the Jews, was one such collaborationist. He feared incurring the wrath of the Empire and urged his fellow elites to tamp down any insurrectionist activity. Most of them evidently heeded his advice. It surely didn’t take much of an argument; any sober-minded individual could see that militant resistance was futile.

Thus it was that, in the early 30s AD, Paul, as a (say) 28-year-old young man, came to contemplate his options. He hated the Romans, and detested the common Palestinians who were happily acquiescing to foreign rule. He must also have despised the entire Roman project—a civilizational force that began with the innovations of ancient Greece. The Greeks founded the Western worldview, an outlook that emphasized reason and rationality, empirical study of nature, and logic. The Greeks embraced life and sought to live it to its fullest. Any afterlife was sheer speculation for them, and so they placed all value on this life, their real life, rather than live for some unknown future. Like the Jews, the Greeks viewed themselves as superior to their ‘barbarian’ neighbors, but this was by dint of their accomplishments in life rather than some divine blessing. The Greek value system, now absorbed into the mighty Roman Empire, was visible for the world to see. Its success was transparent to all.

How could Paul oppose such a thing? Militant action was virtually suicidal. Political machinations, which might have worked with a regional power, were hopeless here. The Empire was too big, and Rome too far away, for anyone living in Palestine to have a direct impact. The Jews themselves were divided; some were willing to fight but most were resigned to sit it out, however long it might be. The Jews were, after all, famous for always taking the long-term view of things.

Then one day, perhaps while on his way to Damascus, young Paul had an idea: What if he could work on the masses—the poor, misguided, superstitious masses—to steer them away from Rome and toward the Jewish side? The local power of Rome rested on them, as a foundation, but they were like a shifting sandbar; if they could be ‘eroded,’ then perhaps the mighty Roman superstructure might begin to wobble and crack—at least in Palestine. If the masses could be subtly moved toward the Jews, or even simply morally degraded somehow—or best of all, both at once—then they would be of little use to Rome. The Romans might then eventually just give up and go away. And under the circumstances, that would certainly count as victory.

But how? This must have seemed an impossible task. Only a god, only a new religion could perform such a trick. And then it came, like a flash from the blue, “a light brighter than the sun”: an epiphany, a wondrous idea, Paul’s great innovation.

We can imagine him thinking to himself…

Jesus! He was that popular young rabbi from Nazareth that drew such large crowds of ordinary Jews. They loved and adored him. But he couldn’t keep his mouth shut! He would constantly talk about the need for the Jewish people to “rise up” against the Romans. Eventually—what was it, three years ago?—he got fingered by the Romans and was crucified along with two of his friends.

As I recall, he also had a penchant for speaking in esoteric terms, about a new kingdom of God that was coming soon, and about the evil, sinful nature of those devils, the pagan Romans. “Fight the devils,” he would say, and then your salvation is at hand.

People said that this Jesus was utterly divine. What if…he actually was God? A god in human form, as Homer and others wrote about? Or maybe, like the Egyptian pharaohs, a “son” of God? If that was the case, then the Romans crucified God! Why, that would make them the Devil incarnate.

What a great story. But what proof could we offer for it? Wait—didn’t his followers say that he arose from the dead to continue his ministry? There were some stories about how they stole his body from his grave only to claim a miraculous resurrection. No one really believed it. But…what if it were true? Or at least, true enough? That could be our proof.

And who’s going to know, anyway? That was three years ago and most people have already forgotten about him by now. But more importantly, the Gentile masses never heard about him at all. For them, his story would be brand new. And they’re the ones we need to reach

But what message could our “Jesus” take to the masses? We need to build sympathy to our side, of course, and to counter the Roman ideology. We need them to be pro-Jewish, but not make them Jews—no, that would never work. We need something new, a “third way” between Judaism and paganism.

Maybe, as a start, we could get them to worship our God, Jehovah, and not that ridiculous Roman pantheon. We need to convince them that God loves them, and that he sent his son to Earth to “save” them. Sure it’s ridiculous, but those superstitious, ignorant peasants will swallow almost anything. I think it could work…

Or so we can imagine.

It’s not a terribly farfetched or complicated story. A god-man comes to Earth, preaches loves for the masses, and promises to “save” them. He gets unjustly killed by the evil ones. He then rises up from the dead, proving to his followers that they, too, will be risen up, and bask in eternal life, if they follow him and his God. Those who don’t believe, or who side with the devils, will suffer God’s eternal damnation—notably, Paul never directly uses the word ‘hell,’ but the idea is there. This carrot-and-stick approach, Paul knows, is perfect for manipulating the superstitious masses.

This, in fact, is all we read in Paul’s letters. No complicated theology, no life history of Jesus, not even any miracle stories—just a god in human form who preaches love for all, and who was resurrected after death. Furthermore, the god-man is a Jew—that’s perfect. His “father” is Jehovah, the Jewish God—that’s also perfect. The story focuses on the afterlife, and thus is able to keep the masses in perpetual suspension, in a state of “hope,” for which they will expend their entire lives. The story also invites, even welcomes, suffering; all the better when it comes time to sacrifice for the cause. The whole outlook is thus simultaneously pro-Jewish and anti-Roman—an ideal situation.

But Paul needed one more thing: a message of resistance. It couldn’t be explicit; that would be too obvious, would never draw in the masses, and would probably get him executed. It had to be more subtle. No explicit mention of Rome at all; just “evil,” “Satan,” “the worldly powers.” That would suffice.

With these concepts in hand, Paul set off to build his church.

Before proceeding further, let me elaborate on a few of the above points. Some Christ mythicists have emphasized the mythological similarities between the traditional Jesus and other, more ancient god stories. Doherty, Price, and Thompson, among others, have argued that the many parallels with older mythologies suggest that Paul or the Gospel writers (or others) simply stole from more ancient traditions when they constructed the life of Jesus. I think this is true, although it’s probably less complicated than the mythicists suggest. All that matters for present purpose is the fact that there were preexisting ideas in circulation, for centuries, which would have made it easy for Paul to construct his limited Jesus story.

Let me just mention two sources here. First, consider the 14th-century BC pharaoh known as Akhenaten. Famous as the husband of Nefertiti and the father of King Tut, Akhenaten was almost certainly the world’s first true philosopher-king. As a young man and absolute ruler of Egypt, he demonstrated a remarkable capacity for deep metaphysical thought. His primary accomplishment was the displacement of the ancient Egyptian pantheon for a single god, Aten—the sun. As such, he created the first monotheism in world history. It may well have been the root source of ideas that ultimately became Judaism and Christianity.

Very little of Akhenaten’s writings remain, and much of his philosophy is obscure, but what little we have shows some intriguing parallels to the Jesus story and Christian theology generally. In particular, Akhenaten himself seems to take on a Christ-like aura. In the Longer Hymn, Akhenaten speaks in prayer directly to the Aten. He calls himself “your beloved son” and adds that “no one knows you [Aten] except Akhenaten, your son.” And further: “You have revealed yourself to me.”

The Aten, as the sun, brings light and life to the world: “You are the light of the Earth.” Indeed, “You are life itself, all live through you.” Near the end of the poem Akhenaten says, in a very Christ-like fashion, “You raise up the people for the son of your body.” At the close, Akhenaten speaks of his beloved queen Nefertiti, stating that she “lives and is rejuvenated forever and ever.”

We see similar themes in the Shorter Hymn. Again directly addressing the Aten, Akhenaten says “Your love is great, immense. … [Y]ou fill the Two Lands with your love.” Notably, this “rising” god actually, literally, rises! “Every heart acclaims your sight, when you are risen as their lord.” Akhenaten calls himself “your holy son” who “performs your praises.” In the final stanza, we read: “I am your son who serves you, who exalts your name. Your power, your strength, are firm in my heart.” He then reaffirms the monotheism: “You are One.” The parallels are truly fascinating.^[62]

A second likely source would have been much more well-known: Homer. Consider just the Iliad, which was composed sometime around 700 BC. Here we have numerous gods actively intervening in human affairs, somewhat as we see in the OT. As the arch-deity, Zeus plays the role of Jehovah. Homer’s universe didn’t really have a Satan, but he did have Hades, lord of the underworld. And there wasn’t really a hell, but they did have Tartarus, which was the darkest depth of the House of Death.

Of special interest are Homer’s many demi-gods—those who are half-human, half-god. Technically speaking, Jesus Christ was a demi-god. Christians like to speak about the “miracle” of immaculate conception, of God impregnating Mary, but that was a very old and well-worn idea. The Iliad is filled with such demi-gods, the most famous being Achilles (son of sea goddess Thetis and mortal Peleus). Zeus was notably prolific, having produced nearly a dozen “sons” by mortal women: Aeacus, Amphion, Dardanus, Heracles/Hercules, Iasus, Minos, Perseus, Pirithous, Polydeuces, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon. Other gods had sons as well:

Aphrodite was the mother of Aeneas, Poseidon fathered Theseus, and Hermes fathered Eudorus, to name three. Sometimes they had demi-god daughters; Helen of Troy was one such person (daughter of Zeus). One gets the impression, in fact, that demi-gods were all over the place in the ancient world; at one point Hera exclaims, “Many who battle round King Priam’s mighty walls are sons of the deathless gods” (16.533). As a demi-god himself, Jesus was old news.

There are other relevant themes. For Homer, gods frequently come to earth in human form. In Book 5, war god Ares appears on the battlefield “shaped like the runner Acamas” (5.532), to whip up the troops. Later, in Book 13, the god Poseidon appears “in a prophet’s shape” (13.84) to embolden two warriors; specifically, he “takes the build and tireless voice of Calchas” (13.57). Additionally, we find that the dead are occasionally “raised up” by the gods; when the demi-god Sarpedon was killed, Apollo “lifted Prince Sarpedon clear of the weapons, bore him far from the fighting, off and away…” (16.792). We also see Christ-like descriptions; for example, demi-gods “shine” and are a “light” unto the world: “the [mortal] woman bore the god [Hermes] a radiant son, Eudorus…” (16.220). Once again, we find a series of remarkable parallels. Paul and his cabal had plenty of material to draw from.

Paul likely employed these mythological precursors in his construction of Jesus. But as I said, he didn’t need any complicated storyline. For his purposes, he only needed Jesus to be God in human form, and to be risen after death. That’s it. The life history and teachings are largely irrelevant. We see all this directly in the writings. Take Jesus as God. In Philippians, Paul refers to “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God…” (2:6). Elsewhere, Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation” (Col 15:1). Such talk doesn’t recur until the very last Gospel, John.

Even more important for Paul is an emphasis on the resurrection. We see this even from the earliest letters, Galatians and 1 Thessalonians. In the former he refers, at the very beginning, to “Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (1:1). In the latter, he writes, “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again…” (4:14). In Romans we read of “Jesus Christ…designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” (1:4). Later in the same letter Paul says “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (6:4). And again: “Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead…” (8:34). In 1 Corinthians, Paul offers a more detailed and extended discussion: “Christ died for our sins…, he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (15:3). The importance of this event is then elaborated:

Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. (15:12-20)

Without a resurrection, all of Paul’s grand plans “are in vain.” No one will be convinced of Jesus’ divinity, and thus they won’t follow him. Again, even the life and sayings of Jesus were irrelevant for Paul. The divine resurrection was everything. Nietzsche, as usual, was to the point:

[Paul] invented his own history of earliest Christianity. … The Savior type, the doctrine, the practice, the death, the meaning of death, even what came after death—nothing remained untouched, nothing remained even similar to the reality. Paul simply transposed the center of gravity of the whole existence after this existence—in the lie of the ‘resurrected’ Jesus. At bottom, he had no use at all for the life of the Savior—he needed the death on the cross and a little more.^[63]

And that’s the core of the hoax. Everything else follows naturally.

With this simple theology in place, Paul was well-situated to interject his message of resistance to Rome. Throughout his letters we find numerous references to enslavement, revolution, insurrection, war, the importance of the disempowered masses, and so on. In the early Galatians we read of the need for Jesus “to deliver us from the present evil age” (1:4). Later, the “elemental spirits” seem to be an allusion to the Roman pantheon:

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods; but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more? (4:8-9)

‘Be not enslaved to the Roman gods,’ he seems to say. And again: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (5:1).

The same idea of turning away from the Roman “idols” appears in 1 Thessalonians: “For they themselves report…how you turned to God from idols” (1:9). It will only get worse under the Romans, but thankfully “Jesus…delivers us from the wrath to come” (1:10). Jesus won’t come, however, until there is a revolution first. Paul is explicit: “Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness [i.e. the emperor] is revealed, the son of perdition, who…takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God” (1 Thes 2:3-4). This likely refers to the fact that the Jews were appalled when the Emperor Caligula insisted on placing his own statue in their temple.

The letter to the Romans contains some revealing passages. We learn, first of all, who the real priority is in this scheme: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (1:16). To be saved, the Greek and Gentile must worship Jehovah: “is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also” (3:29). And indeed, the Gentiles are needed—to save Israel: “a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved” (11:25). “For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed” (15:18). If all goes according to plan, “then the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (16:20).

The most passages of interest, however, are found in 1 Corinthians. Paul speaks of a coming “end” in vague terms, but understood as an end of all earthly power—which of course was Rome. When Christ returns, “then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father [i.e. Jehovah], after destroying every rule and every authority and power” (15:24). And again, “the rulers of this age…are doomed to pass away” (2:6). By “kingdom of God,” Paul explicitly intends a concrete ruling authority: “For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power” (4:20). To achieve his ends, Paul is clear that he will do or say anything: to the Jews, he will be a Jew; to the Gentiles, a Gentile; to the weak, he will be weak; indeed, “I have become all things to all men” (9:19-22).

His emphasis on the “the weak” is interesting. Paul needed to reach the lowly Gentile masses, and thus he had to portray them as specially chosen by God. As in society, so too in the human body: “the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensible” (12:22). God himself gives “greater honor to the inferior part” (12:24). This is even more explicit in the anonymous letter of James: “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs to the kingdom…” (Jam 2:5). We of course see this idea later, famously, in Jesus’ proclamation that “the meek shall inherit the earth” (Matt 5:5).

But in Paul, the concept is presented with stunning clarity at the outset of 1 Corinthians. He aims directly to undermine the powerful, the wise, the learned—the Romans—in favor of the weak, ignorant, and dispossessed. At (1:19) Paul paraphrases Isaiah: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart.” Then comes the decisive passage:

For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are… (1:26-28; italics added)

Here he lays out the essence of the plan. The Romans are the powerful, the noble, the wise and learned; but God did not choose them. He chose you, the weak and ignorant masses. He explicitly chose “the foolish,” “the low and despised,” he even chose things that are not—in order to bring down the “things that are,” namely, the Roman Empire. All in all, a remarkable passage.

Again and again we see that “the weak” or “the meek” are the key to success. Christ himself is portrayed as meek (2 Cor 10:1), and Jesus himself allegedly told Paul “my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). Paul is thereby “content” with his own weakness: “for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

The message of rebellion is perhaps best summarized in Ephesians:

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. (6:11-13)

Paul goes on to speak cleverly of “the shield of faith,” “the helmet of salvation,” and “the sword of the Spirit”—nice cover language. No doubt, the real message got through.

Recall that all this was written prior to the first Jewish rebellion of 66-70 AD. War was in the air, but had not yet broken out. The Jews were ready to fight, but the Gentile masses had to be psychologically prepared for a coming esoteric “battle with Satan.” Thus we see, time and again, a message of conflict, war, insurrection. And where is that famed ‘message of love’ so endemic to Christianity? Love comes later; now it’s time to fight.

To recap, I am reconstructing the likely sequence of events, based on a total picture and complete analysis of the situation. Just as Paul’s life was ending, war broke out and the great Temple was destroyed. We can only imagine the distress and outrage of the Jewish community. Their hatred of Rome must have reached atmospheric heights. If the Jews had any illusions about peaceful coexistence, those were crushed. Military responses were no longer an option. Perhaps Paul’s ‘psychological’ ploy, the Jesus hoax, would work after all. But it would have to be taken to the next level.

Thus it was that Paul’s surviving followers—perhaps Mark, Luke, Peter, John, and Matthew—decided to pick up the game. This band of “little ultra-Jews”^[64] needed a more detailed story of Jesus’ life; Paul’s vague allusions to a real man would no longer suffice. Someone—“Mark”—thus decided to quote Jesus extensively and directly. Unlike Paul’s letters, this “gospel” (Paul’s word) would be intended for mass consumption. It had to be impressive—lots of miracles from their miracle-man. It would end up with 19 Jesus miracles wedged into the smallest of the four Gospels. And there were several other firsts. Here we read, for the first time ever, about the 12 apostles, Jesus as a carpenter, and the concept of hell. Here too Jesus makes a clever “prophecy” that the Jewish temple would be ruined (13:1-2)—an easy call to make, given that the temple was just actually destroyed!

Here we also get first details of the crucifixion process; interestingly, both the Jews and the Romans come in for blame. Jesus predicts that “the chief [Jewish] priests and scribes” will “condemn him to death,” and then “deliver him to the Gentiles [Romans]” who will “kill him” (10:33-34). This is revealing. Paul, Mark, and friends, of course, were working against two sets of opponents: the Romans, and their fellow ‘non-believing’ Jews, mostly the Pharisees and priests who could never accept that this “Jesus” was the Jewish Messiah. In fact, they almost certainly encountered far harsher resistance from their fellow Jews than from anyone else. The Pharisees in truth wanted to “kill” Jesus; they were his internal enemy. But Mark had to finger the Romans as the literal executioners, so that anger would be directed against them. It seems that Mark’s anger against his fellow Jews, however, got the better of him; for centuries afterward, Christians would blame the Jews for killing Christ, not realizing that the whole tale was a Jewish construction in the first place. Perhaps there’s a kind of justice in that irony after all.

Lastly, hints of rebellion now had to be downplayed by Mark. We now have to be like “mustard seeds,” small and inconspicuous, bidding our time, all while spreading the kingdom of God. Nevertheless, if push comes to shove, one must be ready to lay down one’s life for the cause: “For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for [Jesus’] sake and the gospel’s will save it” (8:35). Don’t give up hope, and never forget that “the last [will be] first” (10:31). Chaos is still in the cards: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (13:8). The Jews’ ultimate victory is coming soon: “there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power” (9:1). The end is near.

The Gospel of Mark evidently sufficed for some 15 years. It must have been effective at drawing in Gentiles and building a functioning church. But then perhaps things stalled a bit. Maybe the little Jewish band got impatient. Maybe they splintered over tactical issues. Whatever the reason, some time around the year 85, two of the group—“Luke” and “Matthew”—decided that they needed to write an even more detailed account of Jesus’ life. But evidently the two couldn’t agree on a single plan, so they worked apart, drawing from Mark’s story while weaving in other new ideas they had jointly invented. Each man went off on his own, drafting his own new gospel.

The new documents had much more detail than Mark; in fact, both were nearly twice as long as their predecessor. They had to keep the same basic story line, of course, but each man added his own embellishments. What was new? The virgin birth in Bethlehem, for one, and the whole manger scene. These now appeared, for the first time ever, some 85 years after the alleged event. We scarcely need to ask how much truth is in them. (I note as an aside that Matthew included the bit about the star, whereas that was apparently an unimportant detail to Luke, since he omitted it completely.) Luke included a vignette about Jesus as a 12-year-old (2:41-51), something utterly lacking in the other three Gospels. The Sermon on the Mount appears for the first time, though Matthew has a much longer version than Luke. In the sermon we find a number of famous sayings, all of which were never seen before: “the meek shall inherit the earth” (Mt 5:5), “you are the light of the world” (Mt 5:14), turn the other cheek (Mt 5:39; Lk 6:29), love thy enemies (Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27), “cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt 6:24), “judge not” (Mt 7:1; Lk 6:37)—all now recorded, for the first time, some 50 years after they supposedly occurred.

Other points were simply elaborations of themes from Mark. The anti-Jewish rhetoric now heats up a bit; the Jews are called “a brood of vipers” (Mt 3:7, 12:34, 23:33) and “lovers of money” (Lk 16:14). Hell becomes more prominent (Mt 5:22, 5:30, 10:28, 25:46; Lk 10:15, 12:5); evidently Paul’s scare tactics weren’t quite working. And there’s a greater emphasis on the virtue of suffering (Mt 10:22, 24:9; Lk 6:22).

Finally, revolutionary talk also increases. Mark’s passages are carried over in both, but we now find a number of strikingly explicit lines in each new Gospel. Followers must now virtually abandon their families for the cause:

• “Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake” (Mt 10:21).
• “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life” (Mt. 19:29).
• “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother… He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:35-37).
• “He who is not with me is against me” (Mt 12:30).
• “Henceforth in one house…they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Lk 12:52-53).
• “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26).

These are remarkably cult-like dictates, but perhaps appropriate for the Jewish-led Christian movement.

Then we have passages of outright militancy. In Matthew, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (10:34)—how very un-Christ-like! Luke has Jesus say, “I came to cast fire upon the earth… Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division” (12:49-51). Every man must do his part: “let him who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one” (Lk 22:36). Jesus becomes downright ruthless: “as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me” (Lk 19:27). All this is necessary because “the devil” rules all the kingdoms of the world (Lk 4:5-6). But not to worry; if we all stick to the plan, and “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world,” then “the end will come” (Mt 24:14). And so, sometime around the year 85, two new Gospels were released into the world.

Once again, these apparently sufficed for a good decade or so. But then one more member of the cabal, “John,” breaks rank and moves in yet a different direction. He feels the need for an intellectual and esoteric Jesus story, and so constructs a gospel using abstract, almost philosophical terms and concepts. It ends up as mid-length essay, between the short Mark and the longer Matt/Luke. Miracles are still there, but they are now down-played—just eight appear. We can imagine that John understood that his new, more intellectual audience would likely not be taken in by such nonsense. Also discarded is nearly all rebellious talk. Evidently the intellectual crowd would not be the ones taking up swords.

This fourth Gospel begins with a famously cryptic passage: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). I have analyzed this line in detail elsewhere,^[65] but in short, “Word” in the original Greek text is “Logos,” which is an ancient and complex philosophical concept meaning ‘speech,’ ‘word,’ ‘reason,’ or ‘logic.’ The notion that “Logos is God” or “Logos is with God” comes ultimately from Heraclitus, circa 450 BC. He believed in a kind of cosmic mind or intelligence, the Logos, that directed all events in the physical realm. This was a perfectly ‘weighty’ concept for John to equate with the esoteric Jesus, and so he borrowed it with impunity.

Correspondingly, John places a renewed emphasis on the idea that Jesus is literally God. Jesus says, “I proceeded and came forth from God” (8:42), and furthermore, “before Abraham was, I am” (8:58). “I and the Father are one,” he adds (10:30). And again: “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9).

Also new is an emphasis on the masses as being a sheep-like herd, and Jesus as their head sheep or shepherd. Jesus is “the Lamb of God” (1:29), and later we read an extended passage on Jesus as “the door of the sheep” (10:7), “the good shepherd,” one who “lays down his life for the sheep.” Near the end of the Gospel, the risen Jesus instructs his disciples to “feed my lambs” and “tend my sheep” (21:15-17). This is all consistent with a de-emphasis on revolution.

The Gospel ends, abruptly, with a suitably outrageous final line: “But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (21:25). An appropriately absurd closing for the final Gospel.

Thus understood, the whole sweep of events now makes sense. From the Roman invasion to Paul’s “vision” at Damascus, to his letters, to the first Jewish-Roman war, to the Gospels—it’s all now a coherent and consistent story. Far more coherent, in fact, than a literal tale of a demi-god come to earth to save humanity. But my alternate account has at least one important consequence: “Saint” Paul and his Jewish cabal turn out to be blatant liars. In fact, the epic liars of all recorded history.

Recall my explanation above, regarding how Paul and the Gospel writers had two sets of enemies: the Romans and their fellow elite Jews. In fact, they had a third enemy: the truth. Paul and crew knew they were lying to the masses, but they didn’t care. The Gentiles were always treated by the Jews with contempt, as I showed in chapter four. They could be manipulated, harassed, assaulted, beaten, even killed, if it served Jewish ends. This was not a problem for them. But what they did have to worry about were any dedicated and persistent truth-seekers in the world, who might take the trouble to expose their hoax. The cabal therefore had to oppose any intellectual methodology that might lead to the truth: empiricism, rationality, logic, common sense, ‘science.’ All these things would henceforth become enemies of the church, allied with the Devil.

As the initiator of the hoax, Paul earns the maximum amount of credit or, if you will, blame. His ‘moment at Damascus,’ if that’s what it was, kicked off the whole series of events. He constructed a simple and elemental lie, based on common ideas in mythology and a kernel of actual truth, in order to manipulate the Gentile masses for the benefit of the Jews. It was, quite frankly, a brilliant plan. But to successfully pull it off, Paul must have been a brilliant liar. He had to write down pure fiction as absolute truth. He had to lie to people’s faces and pretend to believe it. He had to entice and frighten innocent and simple-minded peasants into believing his outrageous concoction. And he did it. Paul—expert liar, artful liar, master liar.

Not that this is new news. In chapter four I cited numerous ancient sources who criticized Jewish misanthropy, and certainly a willingness to lie is compatible with that complaint. Ptolemy, for example, called the Jews “unscrupulous,” “treacherous,” “bold,” and “scheming.” Unfortunately the label of ‘liar’ has dogged them for centuries. In the early 1500s Martin Luther—founder of the Lutheran church—wrote a rather infamous book titled On the Jews and their Lies. There he declared that “they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it”^[66]—a statement that could well be a motto for the present work. I also note the striking irony of a man like Luther who was so opposed to Jewish lies, even as he himself fell for the greatest Jewish lie of all.

In 1798, the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant called the Jews “a nation of deceivers,” and in a later lecture he added that “the Jews…are permitted by the Talmud to practice deceit”.^[67] In his final book, Arthur Schopenhauer made some extended observations on Judeo-Christianity. He wrote, “We see from [Tacitus and Justinus] how much the Jews were at all times and by all nations loathed and despised.” This was due in large part, he says, to the fact that the Jewish people were considered grosse Meister im Lügen—“great master of lies”.^[68] Employing his usual blunt but elegant terminology, Nietzsche said this:

In Christianity all of Judaism, a several-century-old Jewish preparatory training and technique of the most serious kind, attains its ultimate mastery as the art of lying in a holy manner. The Christian, this ultima ratio of the lie, is the Jew once more—even three times a Jew.^[69]

Similar comments came from express anti-Semites. Hitler called the Jews “artful liars” and a “race of dialectical liars,” adding that “existence compels the Jew to lie, and to lie systematically”.^[70] And Joseph Goebbels, in his personal diary, wrote: “The Jew was also the first to introduce the lie into politics as a weapon. … He can therefore be regarded not only as the carrier but even the inventor of the lie among human beings”.^[71]

Finally, a remark by Voltaire seems relevant here. The Jews, he said, “are, all of them, born with a raging fanaticism in their hearts… I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race”.^[72] If a Jewish lie were to spread throughout the Earth, eventually drawing in more than 2 billion people, becoming the enemy of truth and reason, and causing the deaths of millions of human beings via inquisitions, witch burnings, crusades, and other religious atrocities—well, that could be considered a mortal threat, I think.

This, then, is my “Antagonism thesis”: Paul and his cabal^[73] deliberately lied to the masses, with no concern for their true well-being, simply to undermine Roman rule. This little group tempted innocent people with a promise of heaven, and frightened them with the threat of hell. This psychological ploy was part of a long-term plan to weaken and, in a sense, morally corrupt the masses by drawing them away from the potent and successful Greco-Roman worldview and more toward an oriental, Judaic view.

As we know, it took some time but the new Christian religion did spread, eventually permeating the Roman world. In the year 315, the emperor himself, Constantine, converted to Christianity. In 380, Emperor Theodosius declared it the official state religion. And just 15 years later, in 395, the empire fractured and the classic (western) half utterly collapsed. In the ensuing vacuum, Christianity rose to power—and in Rome itself, of all places. The victory was complete, some 350 years after Paul’s grand vision came to him in a flash, “brighter than the sun.”

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths
when we made known to you the power and
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ...
— 2 Peter 1:16

I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying…
— Paul, Romans 9:1

In what I am writing to you, before God,
I do not lie!
— Paul, Galatians 1:20

Let’s take stock at this point by briefly recapping the central facts. The oldest existing Bible dates from the year 350; as we move backward in time from there, our confidence in the actual text diminishes significantly—some parts being much more uncertain than others. Expert consensus is that the four Gospels date to the years 70 to 95 AD, and Paul’s letters to 50 to 70 AD. Paul, the Gospel authors, Jesus, Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and all twelve apostles were Jews. Many Jews had been in active and passive resistance to Rome from virtually the beginning of the takeover in 63 BC. Between the years zero and 93 AD we have absolutely no independent, corroborating evidence for such things as the Bethlehem star, any of Jesus’ 36 miracles, any of the apostles’ miracles, or any of the Christian-specific events depicted in the New Testament. Josephus’ brief reference in 93 is the first independent confirmation of the mere existence of a Christian movement, followed by Tacitus and Pliny around the year 115.

We further know for certain that the Jews had been in a confrontational and adversarial relationship with their neighbors from the very beginning, circa 1200 BC. We know that they viewed themselves as special, different, and superior to the rest of humanity, and that this attitude engendered a reactive hatred toward them by non-Jews that has resurfaced periodically ever since. All these facts are widely accepted by all parties, Christian and non-Christian alike.

How, then, can we account for the apparent discrepancies and inconsistencies? I have considered various approaches to this situation throughout this book. Let me summarize these, expressed in terms of four possible theories, each with a different response to the many problems that we face. The first is the conventional story:

1. Biblical Thesis: Jesus was the miracle-working Son of God who came to earth to save humanity. The Biblical account of his life is largely or entirely correct as written.

On this view, the reason we have no contemporary evidence of Jesus is either (a) it was destroyed by the Romans, or (b) it was accidentally lost to history. Paul’s account is true because he met personally with some of the apostles. Two of the Gospel writers were apostles (Matthew and John), and the other two were close colleagues of apostles, and thus they can all be trusted. Paul and his fellow Jews had no malicious intent whatsoever; they were honestly converted to Christianity and selflessly sought to bring the Good Word to all of humanity.

The large majority of Jesus skeptics, those mentioned in chapter one, seem to adopt a variation of the Mythicist Thesis:

2. Mythicist Thesis: Jesus was an entirely fabricated personage, based on ancient myth-archetypes. His story was created either by Paul, the Gospel writers, or various other later figures, out of whole cloth, in order to promote a religion and a church that would somehow benefit them personally.

The problems of evidence and chronology all point, they say, to a wholly constructed mythical man, a divine Jesus, that tapped into the human subconscious by calling upon classic archetypes. Paul’s (or whoever’s) motives are either unknown or, presumably, were a desire for self-glorification and power by placing themselves at the center of a new religion. For this they risked persecution and death.

I have argued for something else:

3. Antagonism Thesis: Jesus was an historical person but not the Son of God. His story is a fanciful elaboration of a few grains of truth, created by Paul and his friends, in order to create an anti-Roman ideology aimed at corrupting and confusing the masses and thus undermining the empire.

My thesis addresses the question of motive, something that’s utterly lacking in the other skeptics. I have shown how the Jews had a deep hatred for the Gentile masses and the Romans in particular, and thus how individuals would have done anything—including lie, and including placing themselves at mortal risk—to benefit the Jewish people. The mythicists and other skeptics have no good account of a motive; the mere quest for personal gain is highly dubious. The low chance of success, combined with a high risk of imprisonment and/or execution, would more than offset any nebulous anticipated advantage.

But there are other possibilities, some less pernicious than a mythicist or antagonist analysis. For example, what if Jesus was merely an historical figure, but his accomplishments became embellished over time, ultimately acquiring legendary and even divine status? And what if someone, upon hearing these amazing stories, then decided—with all good intention—to document them? We can call this the Rumor Thesis:

4. Rumor Thesis: Stories of an exceptional but mortal man, an historical Jesus, got exaggerated and embellished over time through oral retellings. After some 40 years, “Mark” heard the stories, innocently believed them, and wrote them down as literal truth. This happened again, after 50 years, to “Matthew” and “Luke,” and again after 60 years to “John.”

This is theoretically possible but highly unlikely. Even in ancient times, people were not idiots. How could a Mark accept, without any apparent evidence or confirmation, such fantastic tales? And accept them so completely that he would write them down as factual truth, as real and actual events? And then how could the same thing happen three more times, to three different individuals?

Furthermore, the Rumor Thesis cannot account for Paul. He was too close to actual events to have innocently believed any such stories, which in any case could not likely have become so incredibly exaggerated in a few years. Paul was a clever man; could he really have fallen so completely for a bogus tale of a Jewish messiah, that he would dedicate his life to spreading the story? It seems highly dubious, to say the least.

Are there other possible theses? Perhaps, but I am unaware of any other plausible options. I think we must opt for one of these four.

Of the above possibilities, I think it’s clear that the Biblical Thesis is simply untenable; the problems of evidence and chronology jointly demonstrate that the miraculous life of a divine Jesus is a virtual impossibility. The Mythicist Thesis is possible but has a major flaw, namely the lack of sufficient motive. The Rumor Thesis presumes that Paul and the Gospel authors were gullible idiots who couldn’t tell fact from fiction; but from what little we can discern, that seems most unlikely. The Antagonism Thesis is by far the most credible analysis. It best accounts for all the known facts, and identifies an actual and fact-based motive for the whole construction. All signs point to a Jesus Hoax.

So, what’s the counter reply to the Antagonism Thesis? The basic elements of it have been around for over a century. Obviously it had been considered before and apparently rejected, since none of the recent Jesus skeptics defend it. What would they say in reply, to challenge that thesis?

In fact I have raised this question with a number of experts, precisely so that I could gauge the strength of the thesis. Let me mention their comments and then offer my responses.

“It’s not clear that all the Gospel authors, apart from Matthew, were Jews. John certainly was not.”

As I’ve replied earlier, the Gospel of Mark was written for a Gentile audience and thus takes on the superficial appearance of a Gentile work. There is a strong consensus that Mark himself was Jewish. The extensive OT references in all four Gospels argue strongly for Jewish authorship. There is no real evidence that Luke was a Gentile save his name, but as we know from Paul, it was not unheard of for Jews to change to Gentile names. The scattered anti-Jewish statements in all the Gospels—especially John—more reflect an internal Jewish battle over ideology than an external, Gentile attack. Paul is clearly and obviously Jewish, although some skeptics, such as Robert Price, argue that the letters weren’t even written by a “Paul” but by a much latter Gentile Christian, such as Marcion. This is a very fringe view, but even if true, it doesn’t undermine my thesis; it just shifts priority for the hoax to the Gospels. The letters then simply become late-added “substantiation,” also fraudulent, by some duped Gentile.

“You are making sweeping generalizations. Not all Jews opposed Rome, and not all NT writers and characters are necessarily Jewish.”

On the first point, of course, as I stated, many Jews acquiesced to Roman rule. Probably a large majority accepted it, even if begrudgingly. But the elite Jews were sure incensed, and there was certainly a substantial minority of Zealots and others violently opposed. My thesis doesn’t require that all or even most Jews opposed Rome, only that a small band—Paul and friends—did so, and acted on that basis. Regarding the NT writers, that’s addressed above. Regarding the characters in the story—Jesus, Mary, Joseph, et al—we can only go by the words written down, and the text is conclusive: all were Jews.

One knowledgeable colleague listed a number of specific problems for any such hoax theory:

There is another popular response that needs to be addressed: Who would die for a lie? That is, why would Paul and the others undergo persecution, harassment, and risk of imprisonment or death for their hoax? I think there’s a clear answer here: as Jews, they were all, already, under persecution by the Romans. As extremist, fanatical Jews, they were willing to do anything, and suffer any punishment, in order to help “Israel.” And the more their nascent movement seemed to catch on, the harder they would have been willing to push it. Gentiles have a hard time understanding this, but Jews, like Arab and Muslim extremists, are quite willing to die for their cause.

Regarding specifically the idea that Jesus was a revolutionary Zealot rather than a Son of God, Christian apologists have another ready reply: “That’s an old and discredited thesis, put forth by the likes of S. G. F. Brandon in the 1960s. No one accepts that idea anymore”.^[75]

This is worth examining for a moment. Samuel George Frederick Brandon was a British professor of religion who died in 1971. In his books Jesus and the Zealots (1967) and The Trial of Jesus (1968) he indeed argued that Jesus was a Zealot. He certainly made some observations that are consistent with my antagonism thesis. He rightly understood that the Jewish Christians’ main aim was “the restoration of Israel’s freedom and sovereignty,” and that therefore, they would have been “instinctively hostile to the Gentiles” who wanted to join the church.^[76] Later he correctly notes that “the end which that ‘gospel’ [of the Jewish Christians] had in view, namely, the vindication of Israel, implied both an overthrow of Rome and the punishment of the Gentiles.”^[77] That’s exactly right, but he never considers the possibility that the Jews actively lied precisely in order to deceive the detested Gentiles, as a means to overthrow Rome.

Midway through Jesus and the Zealots, Brandon offers a concise explanation for why the ‘revolution’ thesis—precursor of antagonism—is not well-received today:

The mere idea that the Jewish Christians might have countenanced violent resistance to the Romans provokes an instinctive rejection in the minds of most people today, inured as they are to a long-established tradition that the original disciples must have been quiet and peaceable men, if not actually pacifists. But, on analysis, that tradition is based upon no clear and irrefutable New Testament evidence. … [A] parallel series can also be produced indicating an opposite attitude, such as “I have not come to bring peace but a sword”…^[78]

In his other book Brandon continues to develop the revolutionary angle: “Jesus’ activity in Jerusalem coincided with an insurrection there, in which the Romans were directly involved”.^[79] And again later on, he adds, “Judaea was seething with unrest from the natural Jewish resentment of the Roman yoke and the activities of the Zealots”.^[80] But even with all this acknowledgement, Brandon again never considers the possibility that the Jews lied to further their cause—and that changes everything.

In his analysis of Brandon, Price hits the nail on the head, explaining where he went awry: “On Brandon’s hypothesis, Christianity has mutated from a failed revolutionary movement…into a quietistic, Rome-accommodating faith community and sought desperately to hide their now-repudiated anti-Roman roots”.^[81] But the convergence of evidence does not support that view. There is no reason that the militant Jews would have given up; rather, they changed direction. Brandon’s best defense is that the last Gospel, John, does indeed drop most all talk of revolution, as I noted previously. But that is better attributed to John’s new, more intellectual audience than to any utter resignation on the part of the cabal.

The main point, though, is that the apologists never quite get around to explaining how exactly the Zealot thesis has been “discredited.” And they can’t. They can point to Jesus saying “love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek,” but that’s about it.

Let me take a moment to respond to a number of questions that may arise at this point—some of which I’ve covered already, and some not.

Question: “Okay, as a Christian I’ve read and absorbed your whole shocking message. What am I supposed to do about all this?”

Answer: First, try to confirm as much of the evidence cited here as possible. Check my quotations, pull out your Bible and confirm the passages I cite. Satisfy yourself that I have given you a straight story. Next, go to your local church leader and confront them with the evidence (or lack thereof). Their response will confirm everything you need to know. Then, make it clear to them that you have been swindled. Tell them you want your money back. And your time. And your life—everything that you’ve invested, and lost, in the most famous hoax in history.

Question: “Lots of Christians actually don’t take the Bible literally. For them, the miracles and all that other stuff are just stories intended to give lessons in morality. They don’t really believe that they happened. So why isn’t it ok to just accept that sort of ‘minimalist’ Christianity?”

Answer: If you allow that the miracles aren’t real, how do you know that the rest isn’t real? Where can we draw the line between fact and fiction? We have almost no reason to believe that any of it is real. The most important miracle of all was the resurrection—was that one, too, just a story? If so, the whole basis for Christianity goes down the drain. Then it’s just some guy saying, “be kind to the poor,” “help your neighbor,” “love God,” etc. Do we need a church and a religion to tell us that?

And what were those guys thinking who wrote that fiction about the miracles? Did they know they were writing fiction? But they sold it as truth—why did they lie? These are precisely the questions I’ve tried to answer here.

Question: “What about all those pro-Roman, anti-war passages?: ‘Render unto Caesar’ (Mark 12:17), ‘let every person be subject to the governing authorities’ (Rom 13:1), ‘pay your taxes’, ‘perish by the sword’ (Mt 26:52), ‘turn the other cheek’ (Mt 5:39)—not to mention, ‘love thy neighbor’!^[82] Don’t these undermine your thesis?”

Answer: This is the “peaceable Jesus” reply. We all know those famous lines, and they get repeated ad nauseum. My general reply is (a) the Jewish cabal was compelled to insert such lines for cover; too much explicit talk of rebellion was dangerous. Also (b) these relatively few lines are outnumbered by far more that imply rebellion and war—see my discussion in chapter five. And in any case, “rendering to Caesar” says nothing about not also working for his downfall. And sure, you may perish by the sword, but that’s what happens in war. I particularly appreciate “love thy neighbor”: Who, after all, was “the neighbor” if not the Jew?

Question: “What about all the OT prophecies fulfilled in the NT?”

Answer: This is clear: When you have extensive knowledge of the prophecies, you can bake their realization right into the text that you are constructing. Not to mention the actual historical events that Jesus “predicted” in the year 30, when you are writing his lines in the year 80 or 90. The prophecy game was rigged.

Question: “Why do you accept the idea of an historical Jesus?”

A: Paul needed a kernel of truth for his hoax. What better way than to take a real person who was really crucified for his pro-Jewish, anti-Roman activities, and turn him into God? This makes complete sense. Other than this, neither I nor anyone else has evidence for an historical Jesus. The execution of a minor insurrectionist would not be expected to leave any trail, and he didn’t.

Question: “The Jews come off looking pretty bad here. Isn’t all this terribly anti-Semitic?”

Answer: Not at all. Just because I claim that a handful of Jews lied to the public two thousand years ago, this has no necessary connection to Jews in general or Jews today. People are overly sensitive these days, particularly about Jews, probably because we hear so much about them and anti-Semitism in the media. It can’t reasonably have anything to do with World War Two or the Holocaust, since that ended more than 70 years ago and nearly all the actual victims are now gone—despite the fact that the media and Hollywood are working hard to continually remind the public of Jewish suffering during the war and of the evils of Nazism. I see no good reason why Jews should continue to merit special sensitivity.

Question: “How could so many people be fooled for so long? It doesn’t seem possible.”

Answer: Actually there have been several famous examples in history when many people, even many smart people, have been fooled for a very long time. The Donation of Constantine was a fraudulent document in which Emperor Constantine allegedly gave his empire to the Catholic Church in 315 AD. In fact it was forged in the 700s and not exposed until 1440 by Lorenzo Valla. As a second example, consider the “celestial sphere” that supposedly held the stars. This was postulated to exist as far back as the 300s BC, and was endorsed by Plato and Aristotle. The sphere was widely held to be true well into the 1500s—a false belief that was sustained for nearly two thousand years. The same time period corresponded to a belief in “the four elements”: fire, air, earth, and water. Witches have been condemned and burned since at least 300 BC, and during the peak period in Europe—from 1450 to 1750—some 500,000 were killed. In all these cases, millions of people were fooled, deceived, or otherwise attached to false beliefs for centuries. It’s no surprise that millions could still be wrong.

Question: “Why is all this even important? It was so long ago, and no one really knows what happened back then.”

Answer: Even for those who aren’t religious, it should still be clear that any forgery that holds the belief of three-quarters of Americans, and one-third of all humanity, is a matter of greatest importance. Those in academic or intellectual circles may find all this much ado about nothing. But we can easily forget how seriously some people take the Bible. Roughly 42% of Americans believe in Biblical creationism, and about the same number think Jesus will return to Earth by 2050. About 53% of all Americans say that religion is “very important” in their lives. Let there be no doubt: this is a subject of greatest importance.

For those who don’t take religion all that seriously, many of them see church as more of a social club than anything else. But even so, who above age six would be happy to join a ‘Santa Claus Club’ or an ‘Easter Bunny Club’? Christians need to own up to the fact that they have been swindled, and then see if anything can be salvaged of their religion. Keep the social club, do charity work, help the poor—just dump the bogus metaphysics.

Question: “I’ve read all your points, and even though I have nothing to say in reply, I frankly don’t care. You have your opinion, I have mine, and I’m never going to change my mind.”

Answer: Then good luck to you, my friend!

And then perhaps another question comes to mind: Why haven’t we heard anything about all this before? Surely, if the case were so compelling, one might say, we would have seen it in movies, or heard news stories about it, or had it taught in schools. And yet nowhere—not even in our universities—do we hear this matter discussed. Why is that?

This is an enlightening question. We need to ask this: Who would have an incentive to examine the truth on this whole subject? Christians, obviously not. No one in the Christian hierarchy wants people to explore the truth, even though it’s highly likely that many of them do know it. Once you have an organization in place, salaries to pay, mortgages, monthly bills, and taxes, you need the whole business to keep functioning. Christians have every reason to sustain the hoax, not get to the bottom of it.

Jews have no interest in the truth here, either. As the ‘bad guys’ in the hoax story, Paul and friends threaten to cast a negative light on all Jews. This is particularly true when we look at the millennia-long history of critical comments on the Jews, as discussed in chapter 4. Any unearthing of these facts would require a lot of subtle explaining, to say the least. Rather than admit to a Jewish lie, present-day Jews would rather not bring up the subject at all. Particularly so, when millions of Christian Zionists are ideologically on their side. It’s simply a no-win situation for Jews, and so they let that dog lie (pun intended).

One might think that Muslims would be eager to criticize Jews and Christianity, and to expose any hoax. Yes and no. Islam, of course, is part of the Abrahamic lineage and thus is ultimately wedded to Judeo-Christianity, whether it likes it or not. Muslim monotheism derives ultimately from Judaic monotheism, just as it does for Christianity. All the Abrahamic religions worship the Jewish God; Muslims simply changed his name.

Islam furthermore accepts Jesus as a “prophet” and even grants him a kind of divine status—though they disavow his resurrection. The Quran has a number of interesting passages on him. Jesus (“Isa”) performs miracles, but only with Allah’s “permission” (III.49, V.110). Jews neither killed nor crucified him (IV.157), and so he did not die a martyr’s death. In a particularly impressive miracle, the Quran states that the infant Jesus spoke immediately upon birth: “He said: ‘Surely I am a servant of Allah; He has given me the Book and made me a prophet, and He has made me blessed…’” (XIX.30-31). Muslims therefore cannot accept either a mythicist Jesus nor even a merely historical Jesus; they need a semi-divine miracle man as well.

Governments are nominally neutral on religion, especially in the United States with its famous “separation of church and state.” They should, therefore, have an interest only in historical truth. When they draft school curricula for millions of public school children, it’s clear that they should at least present a mythicist alternative to traditional orthodoxy, as one line of thinking. But such information has yet to appear in any public text, to my knowledge.

But there is a deeper reason, I think, for why they avoid criticizing Christianity. Governments everywhere want compliant populations. They want citizens who will respect authority without question, follow the laws, accept its power, and not be too inquisitive. They like people who simply have faith in government, and who more or less blindly trust them. And in Christianity, rulers have found an ideology that can serve their interests. They can play up the ‘peaceable Jesus’ storyline—love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, Jesus as “our paschal lamb” (1 Cor 5:7) or our “shepherd” (Jn 10:11), followers as “sheep,” (Mk 6:34, Jn 21:15)—while directing any militant undertones toward the “devil” of their choosing. Governments have no interest in turning over that applecart.

Colleges and universities are somewhat better, often having panels or speakers who challenge the Christian view. But the Antagonism Thesis is particularly difficult to discuss since it casts blame on Jews, and any negative talk about them risks ostracism or worse, even in our “liberal” and “free speech” universities.

What about our irreverent media and Hollywood filmmakers—those who are so willing to commit sacrilege against any social norm or moral standard? I suspect this has something to do with the extensive role played by Jewish Americans. It’s uncontroversial that Hollywood has been dominated by Jews for decades; a relatively recent article in the LA Times cites Jewish heads of nearly every major Hollywood studio.^[83] And it’s not just the movie business. All the major media conglomerates have a heavy Jewish presence in top management. If they should decide that Jewish malevolence at the heart of the Christian story “looks bad,” then they obviously won’t bring it up at all—not in the news, not on TV, not in books.^[84]

Sometimes, of course, we do hear about the Jesus controversy in our media. But always in carefully crafted ways. A good example came during Easter 2017, in an article on the British website Guardian.com, written by Cambridge University professor Simon Gathercole.^[85] The subtitle notes that “some claim that Jesus is just an idea, rather than a real historical figure.” “But,” it adds, “there is a good deal of written evidence for his existence.” Gathercole says that evidence for an historical Jesus is “long-established and widespread.” “Within a few decades”—if 60 to 80 years counts as “a few decades”—Jesus is “mentioned by Jewish and Roman historians”—actually, one Jewish (Josephus) and one Roman (Tacitus), for a total of about ten sentences. The evidence, says Gathercole, “is early and detailed,” citing Paul’s letters and the Gospels. But we have seen the many problems with those, and in any case they don’t count as independent evidence. “It is also difficult to imagine why Christian writers would invent such a thoroughly Jewish savior in a time and place where there was strong suspicion of Judaism.” Actually, not difficult at all: the “Christian” writers were Jews who were trying to build an anti-Roman church based on a Jewish God and a Jewish savior. They just had to make sure that the enemy was “the devil” and not “Rome.”

When asked about the present controversy over Jesus’ existence, Gathercole cites only the Frenchman Michel Onfray, and deftly avoids mention of any other skeptic. He cites two pseudo-skeptics—Maurice Casey and Bart Ehrman—as declaring any mythicist approach to be “pseudo-scholarship.” When asked about any archeological evidence for Jesus, he offers a few confusing words about Cleopatra and the Shroud of Turin, only to conclude that “the documents [Epistles, Gospels, Josephus, Tacitus] form the most significant evidence”—which is a virtual admission of failure. As Gathercole well knows, there is no physical evidence. In the end, he never makes clear the distinction between the historical Jesus (the man) and the biblical Jesus (the Christ). We can accept the man, even if there is very little actual evidence, but we cannot accept any of the miraculous biblical account. And the man alone, as I’ve said repeatedly, means the end of Christianity.^[86]

I rest my case. By all accounts, and despite protests to the contrary, Christianity indeed seems to be a “cleverly devised myth” (2 Pet 1:16)—a lie, a hoax—foisted upon the innocent and gullible masses simply for the benefit of Israel and the Jews. Jesus perhaps spoke the truth when he said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel” (Mt 15:24), and a few true words even slipped from Paul’s mouth, as he was awaiting “the full number of Gentiles [to] come in” so that “all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:26). But it’s in the Gospel of John that we read one of the bluntest statements of truth, wherein Jesus says, “You [Gentiles] worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews” (4:22). We know what we are doing, say the Jews. You Gentile Christians don’t even know what you’re worshipping—which in fact is us and our God. But that’s okay. Just leave everything to us; “salvation is of the Jews.”

But it’s Paul who’s really the star of this show. Paul comes across as a masterly and artful liar—one of the all-time greats in world history, a man who can lie with impunity about the soul, the afterlife, God, everything. This unprincipled scoundrel, who admits to being “all things to all men,” would do anything or say anything to win his “kingdom of God” here on Earth. His mournful cries of “I do not lie!” are revealed as nothing other than an inveterate liar caught in the act.

Let me close by citing Nietzsche one more time. At the end of Antichrist he brutally condemns the lying, world-maligning, soul-destroying Saint Paul:

Then Paul appeared—Paul, the chandala hatred against Rome, against ‘the world,’ become flesh, become genius, the Jew, the eternal Wandering Jew par excellence. What he guessed was how one could use the little sectarian Christian movement apart from Judaism to kindle a ‘world fire’; how, with the symbol of ‘God on the cross,’ one could unite all who lay at the bottom, all who were secretly rebellious, the whole inheritance of anarchistic agitation in the Empire, into a tremendous power. “Salvation is of the Jews.”

Christianity as a formula with which to outbid the subterranean cults of all kinds, those of Osiris, of the Great Mother, of Mithras, for example—and to unite them: in this insight lies the genius of Paul. His instinct was so sure in this that he took the ideas with which these chandala religions fascinated, and, with ruthless violence, he put them into the mouth of the ‘Savior’ whom he had invented, and not only into his mouth—he made something out of him that a priest of Mithras too could understand.

This was his moment at Damascus: he comprehended that he needed the belief in immortality to deprive ‘the world’ of value, that the concept of ‘hell’ would become master even over Rome—that with ‘the beyond’ one kills life. (sec. 58)

With his fabricated “Jesus” and his fabricated “afterlife,” Paul drained all value from this world, the real world. It turned believers into weak and subservient sheep, ones whose lives are oriented around the manufactured sayings of a marginal rabbi and of prayer to Jehovah, the invisible God of the Jews. It took a few hundred years, but when enough people fell for the hoax, it helped to bring down the Roman Empire. And when people—lots of people—still believe it after two thousand years, it cannot but degrade society, weighing us down, blocking us from attaining that which we are capable of, that which was only hinted at in the greatness of Athens and Rome. And all for the salvation of the Jews.

Jesus saves. I truly believe this. Jesus—the real Jesus, and his real story—will someday save us from a two-thousand-year-old nightmare. As he himself said, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn 8:31). Then he really will deserve his title as the most famous man in history.

36 Miracles of Jesus