Jesus Lied - He Was Only Human: Debunking the New Testament (27 page)

It’s important to note that the first group has a definite number, as opposed to the second, which is just said to be a “great crowd”. This “great crowd’ refers to those who will survive the coming “tribulation”, which will destroy the then current sinful generation.

Most biblical scholars agree that this number is to be interpreted literally, and that John was adamant that the realms of Heaven would be reserved for Jewish male virgins only. Someone please pack the Ezy-Glide™!

All jokes aside, the New Testament is quite clear that only men shall enter the kingdom of heaven. Even some of the gospels, and epistles omitted by the Council of Nicaea have Jesus making this declaration outright, including the Gospel of Thomas, who writes that Jesus taught “every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”

How the fuck does a woman accomplish this? With a strap on?

What do you think about that, ladies? I guess it doesn’t make Paul’s comment “It is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church” seem so bad by comparison.

Unfortunately, we’ve all had to attend at least one funeral in our lives. As for myself, I’ve been to several in the last few years, all were Christian burials. It was at the last funeral I attended, however, that it dawned on me that the Minister actively lied to all present when he said, “We can take comfort, as her faith in Jesus Christ as her savior means that she is now reunited with her husband, Bob, in heaven, who passed away 20 years prior.” This, of course, was not the first time I’d heard these comforting words from those of the cloth, and no doubt you’ll hear similar sentiments made at any of the thousands of Christian funerals taking place every day.

Notwithstanding the well-meaning intentions of the respective clergy that preside over funerals, my question is why do they lie to us? Is it their intention to deceive, or have they failed to read and or comprehend the ‘ascension to heaven’ related verses in the Bible?

Again, the Bible is very clear on the terms and conditions with respect to entry to afterlife; Jesus must return to earth riding atop a white fluffy cloud (really) in order to bring judgment upon mankind. Only at the conclusion of sorting the
“wheat from the chaff,”
will the righteous fly into heaven to reside by Jesus’ side, with great marble mansions:

If you really believe that an eccentric head-case of a Jew, who has been dead for 2,000 years, will return to earth in such a manner, then you have a far greater imagination than I. I will leave you with the philosophical words of Christian Justin Martyr, who wrote in his book
‘Second Apology’
:

In other words, according to the Christian doctrine, we non-believers, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Indigenous and Aboriginals, et al are destined for an ass reaming in Hell. Christianity: “a religion of inclusive tolerance and solidarity”? I think not!

If the passage to Hell is paved with a rejection of the reported words of Jesus via his mystery biographers, then the following old joke stands as a beacon for rationality:

Take a second to think about this joke, because in all seriousness, churches have sent missionaries to far off lands for hundreds of years, with intent to convert the barbarian heathens into Christians.

Some modern critics of the doctrine of Hell include Jonathan Kvanig, who wrote
The Problem of Hell
. He claims that even if Hell were seen as a choice rather than as punishment, it would be unreasonable for any kind of god, especially a supposedly all-loving one, to give such flawed primates as ourselves the incredible weight of responsibility of determining our own eternal destinies. Kvanig is a Christian, his belief is that a loving God would not abandon a person until they had made a rational, final decision, under favorable circumstances, to reject Jesus.

According to Kvanig, those who make decisions under duress, stress, or in a depression should be given a chance to make the ‘right’ decision at a time that all information is available for them to do so.

At the end of the day, people will routinely interpret the Bible to mean exactly what they want it to mean. There is equal support and denouncement of everything, you just need to find the right verse, quote it out of context, and bam, prostitution is legal and you’re allowed ten slaves from neighboring nations… go for Mexicans though, they’re better cooks.

What of the billions of children who die a tragically premature death and never realize an opportunity to learn and or submit themselves to Jesus Christ? And what of the up to fifty percent of pregnancies which self-terminate? Well, the early Christian theologian St. Augustine concluded, in the fifth century, that infants who die without baptism were to be confined to the fires of Hell.

This became the belief of Christians for the next eight hundred years, although no passage in the Bible supported such supernatural speculation. By the 13
^th
century, theologians referred to the “limbo of infants” as a place where un-baptized babies were deprived entrance into the gardens of heaven, and the sight of God, but did not suffer because they died not knowing of Jesus.

In 1983 the Code of Canon Law specified that,
“Children whose parents had intended to have them baptized but who died before baptism, may be allowed church funeral rites by the local ordinary.” How does the Church police the “intention”?

Then in our century, in 2007 in fact, the 30-member International Theological Commission revisited the ridiculous concept of limbo. The Catholic Commission of Cocks-in-frocks came away with no absolute determination of what happens to babies post-death. Imagine that, twenty first century university trained theologians are unable to determine what happens after death, according to the Christian faith, but yet over 2 billion people alive today will accept the ramblings of a likely illiterate schizophrenic tradesman from the first fucking century?

This doctrine portrays Christianity for what it truly is – a mish mash of ideas, ideals, ideologies and hopes, put in place by various committees. Committees who, in reality, had no idea of understanding any of what they purport to understand.

This is a crucial question, especially when you consider we don’t have independent, eyewitness accounts of Jesus, outside of the Bible and the non-canonized Gospels. Naturally, it’s fair to assume that Jesus would have created some kind of publicity from his proclaimed miracles, and that these ‘signs’ would (or should) have been conclusive proof to all Jewish residents of the world at the time, that Jesus truly was the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies.

But the Jewish priests, elders, and populace at large rejected Jesus wholly and fully. Obviously, this carries through to today whereby Judaism completely rejects the idea of Jesus being God, or a person of a Trinity, or even a mediator of God… most don’t even believe that there was a historical Jesus.

From the Jewish perspective, Jesus had not fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament, and had fallen well short of embodying the qualifications of the Messiah foretold in Old Testament prophecy. It’s fair to assume that the Jewish people should have known a Messiah when they saw one because THEY WROTE THE OLD TESTAMENT.

It amuses me whenever I have been in a room where an argument has erupted between a Christian and an Orthodox Jew, and the former says, “We know Jesus is the Son of God because he fulfilled the Messianic prophecies.” To which the Jew replies, “Can you read Hebrew? Have you read the Tanakh? Well, don’t tell us we are wrong when it was us that wrote the job description for the Messiah, and Jesus wasn’t even in the same zip code!”

The term ‘Messiah’ is an English translation of the Hebrew “Mashiach”, which means “Anointed One.” According to the Old Testament it refers to a person initiated into God’s service by being anointed with oil, and there are several vague passages which refer to this ceremony in Exodus 29:7, 1 Kings 1:39, II Kings 9:3. What the Hebrew Bible isn’t vague on though is what it is that the Messiah is ordained to accomplish while here on earth, he is to:

1. Build the Third Temple

To save you the effort of counting, there were only two temples. The second destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD No new temple was ever rebuilt.

Jesus failed.

2. Gather all Jews back to the land of Israel

Jesus failed.

3. Usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease.

Jesus really failed, dismally!

4. That the Hebrew God will be universally followed and therefore uniting humanity as one.

Hahahahaha! Here’s an experiment for you, go to your local happy-clapper Christian church this next weekend, stand in front of the congregation and announce to them that they are worshipping the same god as the Jews of Israel and the Muslims of Arabia. Here’s a hint, wear a bulletproof vest! Jesus failed!

Failing to meet any of the four clear objectives above meant that the person failed to meet the expectation of the Messiah, as this was what God had promised to the prophets. Well, Jesus failed on all four of those objectives. No new temple, the Jews were scattered from their Holy Land, we are as far from world peace as we have ever been, and there are more than one billion Muslims who believe the world will one day bow to Mohammed and Allah.

To quote Stephen L Harris, Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Religious Studies at California State University and author of
T
he New Testament: A Student’s Introduction:

Of course, Christian apologists have a rebuttal for everything. Nine times out of ten the counter argument is lunacy and fluff. The Jesus defense, a weak and hopeful one, is that Jesus WILL fulfill all of these objectives in his Second Coming. The same Second Coming promise that he is 1,900 years late on, and counting. Oh, and the same second coming that Paul predicted. Oh, and the same second coming that every bloody ‘prophet’, ‘sage’, and lunatic (notwithstanding Sarah Palin, George Bush and, well, most republicans) has also promised.

The conclusion that we are left with is so freaking simple, and we’ve alluded to it so many times throughout this book, that your forehead should be bruised face-palming yourself repeatedly; Jesus lied.

Ok, we’ve uncovered the created mythology of Jesus Christ’s life. The question is now; did such a man exist at all? Was there a Jesus of Nazareth, a man that lived, breathed, and wandered the Galilee countryside? This is a difficult question to answer, at least definitively. What we do know, based on much that we have covered, is that all sources about Jesus derive from hearsay accounts. Simply, no one has even a singular piece of physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, works, or self-written manuscripts. In other words, all claims about Jesus and his life are derived from the writings of other people. Devastating to Christian believers is that not a single contemporary writing makes mention of such a person, outside of documents proven to be fraudulent.