Was Jesus a real person? A growing number of scholars think not.

Courtesy of Alternet:  

Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.” In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity. 

At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a “historical Jesus” became mythologized. 

For over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians—most of them Christian—analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into the Bible and those that didn’t, in attempts to excavate the man behind the myth. Several current or recent bestsellers take this approach, distilling the scholarship for a popular audience. Familiar titles include Zealot by Reza Aslan and How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman. 

But other scholars believe that the gospel stories are actually “historicized mythology.” In this view, those ancient mythic templates are themselves the kernel. They got filled in with names, places and other real world details as early sects of Jesus worship attempted to understand and defend the devotional traditions they had received. 

The notion that Jesus never existed is a minority position. Of course it is! says David Fitzgerald, author of Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All. For centuries all serious scholars of Christianity were Christians themselves, and modern secular scholars lean heavily on the groundwork that they laid in collecting, preserving, and analyzing ancient texts. Even today most secular scholars come out of a religious background, and many operate by default under historical presumptions of their former faith.

The article then lays out five somewhat compelling reasons to believe that Jesus was made up out of whole cloth. 

1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef. In the words of Bart Ehrman: “What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus have to say about him? Nothing. As odd as it may seem, there is no mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries. There are no birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates; there are no expressions of interest, no heated slanders, no passing references – nothing. 

2. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus’ life, which become more crystalized in later texts. Paul seems unaware of any virgin birth, for example. No wise men, no star in the east, no miracles. Historians have long puzzled over the “Silence of Paul” on the most basic biographical facts and teachings of Jesus. Paul fails to cite Jesus’ authority precisely when it would make his case. What’s more, he never calls the twelve apostles Jesus’ disciples; in fact, he never says Jesus HAD disciples –or a ministry, or did miracles, or gave teachings. 

3. Even the New Testament stories don’t claim to be first-hand accounts. We now know that the four gospels were assigned the names of the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, not written by them. To make matter sketchier, the name designations happened sometime in second century, around 100 years or more after Christianity supposedly began. 

 4. The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other 

5. Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons. They include a cynic philosopher, charismatic Hasid, liberal Pharisee, conservative rabbi, Zealot revolutionary, nonviolent pacifist...etc..

This may be one of my all time favorite subjects, and it is nice to revisit it once in awhile and take break from all of the political stuff that takes up so much of my time. 

My personal opinion, going back to my teen years, is that essentially EVERYTHING about Jesus is manufactured to sell a product, much like Ronald McDonald or the Jolly Green Giant.

However I have been surprised to read from various scholars, most recently Reza Aslan, that the current consensus is that Jesus was an actual personae though virtually everything the Bible says about him is bullshit.

So I'm interested, what do you think?

Religious scholar Reza Aslan slams televangelist Joel Osteen and the Christian prosperity movement.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

During a question and answer session, the University of California at Riverside professor was asked about the portrayal of Jesus in movies. 

“I love all fictional presentations of Jesus. I think they are fantastic, whether it is the Last Temptation of Christ or The Passion — both of which are fiction. But — sorry about that, did I break that to you? — but again for me what is fascinating about those is it is just a representation of what I have been talking about all along, which is the incredible malleability of the Christ story, the way that it can become whatever you want it to become.” 

Aslan said his favorite representation of Jesus was from the 1970 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, and then pivoted to the issue of the prosperity gospel. 

“The fastest growing Protestant movement in North America is this movement that is referred to as the prosperity gospel,” he said. “This is the gospel preached by people like Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes — and when I say people, I mean charlatans. The argument of the prosperity gospel, if I can put it flippantly, is that Jesus wants you to drive a Bentley. That is basically what the argument is. That what Jesus wants for you is material prosperity, and that if you literally give, you will literally be given tenfold. That’s not a metaphor, as it is in most churches. It is literal. You give me $10 and Jesus will give you $100.” 

“This is as profoundly an unscriptural interpretation of Jesus that exists,” Aslan remarked. “I mean, if there is one thing that is just so clear cut and just not open to interpretation at all of any kind when it comes to Jesus’s message, it is his condemnation of wealth.” 

“And yet, not only does this version of Christianity exist, as I say, it is honestly the fastest growing version of Protestant evangelical Christianity in North America. That’s because Jesus can be whatever you want him to be, and the Christian message can be whatever you want it to be.”

I have been saying this for years.

I actually find many of the things attributed to Jesus to be quite admirable, but modern Christianity has drifted so far from what he supposedly taught that it bears virtually no resemblance to anything that could have possibly been inspired by his words.

So today, like Aslan says, the Christian message can be whatever those who claim to represent his teachings want it to be.

And sadly they so much more often focused on what using his name can do for them, than in what sharing his teaching can do for others. 

This is not to suggest that he was a demigod, or that he even existed, but there are things of value in the words that they claim he spoke. And the value should not be minimized by reducing it to mere dollars and cents.

Especially when the Gospels specifically condemn that kind of thinking out of hand. 

Author, and religious scholar, Reza Aslan says that "Self-styled 'defenders of Christianity,' like Palin and Limbaugh, peddle a profoundly unhistorical view of Jesus."

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin are starting to sour on the new pope. 

In response to Pope Francis’ first Apostolic Exhortation, in which the pontiff denounced “trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” these two paragons of the far right – both of whom regularly invoke the teachings of Jesus to bolster their own political views – have suddenly turned their backs on the man whose actual job description is to speak for Jesus. 

Sarah Palin complained that Pope Francis sounded “kind of liberal” in his statements decrying the growing global income equality between the rich and the poor (she has since apologized). 

Rush Limbaugh went one step further. “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope,” he harrumphed into his giant microphone. 

Limbaugh, in his trademarked conspiratorial style, speculated that the pope’s tirade against “widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion” must have been forced upon him by somebody else. “Somebody has either written this for [the pope] or gotten to him,” he said. 

Limbaugh is right. Somebody did get to Pope Francis. It was Jesus. 

Self-styled “defenders of Christianity,” like Palin and Limbaugh, peddle a profoundly unhistorical view of Jesus. Indeed, if you listened to those on the far right you would think that all Jesus ever spoke about was guns and gays.

Aslan then goes onto point out just how different the Jesus of the Bible is from the conservative version that is bandied about by the Right Wing.

While modern Christianity has tried to spiritualize this message of Jesus, transforming his revolutionary social teachings into abstract ethical principles, it is impossible to overlook the unflinching condemnation of the wealthy and powerful that permeate Jesus’ teachings. 

“How hard it will be for the wealthy to enter the Kingdom of God!” (Mark 10:23). 

As one can imagine, such a radical vision of the world would have been both profoundly appealing for those at the bottom rungs of Jesus’ society, and incredibly threatening for those at the top. The fact is not much has changed in two thousand years, as Palin and Limbaugh have proven. 

Yet if these “culture warriors” who so often claim to speak for Jesus actually understood what Jesus stood for, they would not be so eager to claim his ideas for their own. In fact, they’d probably call him a Marxist.

I do not always agree with Reza Aslan, but on this topic he is quite correct. And the truly pitiful thing is how Christianity, on its face a religion of acceptance and social justice, was so easily hijacked by those who used it as an excuse to amass great wealth and power and then use it to subjugate those who they considered dangerous to their ambitions or unworthy of their charity.

And who does THAT remind you of?

Very interesting, and much more revealing, interview with Reza Aslan, author of "Zealot."

I usually do not post videos that are this long but I did this time because I found this interview to be very interesting in that it explains what Aslan believes about the existence of Jesus, how much of what we think we know about Jesus is accurate, and how he, a scholar who studies religions, can remain an adherent of Islam.

Essentially Aslan is saying that nobody is supposed to take what is written in the Bible literally, including the words attributed to Jesus, but that what was written was supposed to provide a description of what the authors wanted readers to believe went on and describe the kind of man that people already believed Jesus to be.

He essentially says that where modern believers go wrong is in their desire to take what is written in the Bible as literal fact, when in fact it is Gospel truth, in that it is meant to impart a deeper "truth" about who they believed Jesus and other Biblical figures were rather than to paint an accurate picture of who they were and what they said.

Personally I find that explanation fascinating. To me it appears that the first step toward understanding the teachings in the Bible, or Quran, is to simply have faith, and to read them from that perspective, since without faith the books are of no value, either historically or as factual account of the lives of the characters within.

Since I simply cannot get past that first hurdle, my readings of the Bible have left me confused and sorely unimpressed.

Now another thing that Cenk Uygur was able to get out of Aslan, is the answer to a question that has been driving me crazy since I saw his first interview concerning this book.

You see Aslan has essentially destroyed one of my most personally held beliefs about the study of religion. And that is that somebody who REALLY studied religion, and compared them to one another, simply could NOT continue to be a person of faith.

Aslan's answer still leaves me with a lot of question about his faith, but it does answer the question, to some degree, as to how a learned individual could still believe in a supernatural being "beyond the materiel world."

I especially enjoyed this quote "Anyone who says 'I believe in Christianity' or I believe in Islam' misses the point. Christianity and Islam are not 'things to believe' they are signposts to God. They are a means to an end, not an end in and of themselves." 

I don't think this is the way much of Christianity is presented in this country, but it does make some sense.

Of course I still don't find myself compelled to believe any of it, but at least I can respect a learned person wanting to find a way to relate to something that they take on faith alone.