Guest Writer: Kapyong

Jesus left no footprint

Surprisingly, Jesus himself actually left NO footprint on history.
BELIEF about Jesus, and discussion about that belief, and eventually enforcement of that belief DID leave a huge footprint.

But Jesus himself - nothing.
Not one single contemporary historical reference.

Philo doesn't mention him, nor Seneca, nor Justus of Tiberius, all of whome probably should have.
Nor do a couple dozen other writers mention him who could have : http://members.iinet.net.au/~desmodeu/Christianity/EarlyWriters.html

No Christian met Jesus, or anyone who met Jesus
Even more incredibly - NOT ONE single Christian records personally meeting Jesus (except for 2 Peter, a forgery from mid 2nd century.)

Nor do we have a single Christian claim to have met any key figures from the Gospel stories - such as Mary or Joseph (what happened to them?), or Lazarus (when did he die?), or Mary Magdalene or Martha or any of the apostles even !

Apologists will bring up Papias, and Polycarp and claims by Ireneus - claiming examples of people who met disciples of Jesus - but when you examine the claims they actually amount to stories that some other person apparently met a guy in bar who knew Jesus....

Of course - I should point out that not one of the NT books is by anyone who ever met Jesus - according to modern NT scholars that is. (Believers still believe their faithful beliefs that they were.)

The Big DISconnect
So, what we see is a complete DISconnect between the two groups :

• the people IN the NT stories vs
• the people who WROTE the stories.

The NT epistles are about the heavenly Jesus - there is no historical Jesus in them, just a few strange tidbits that believers insist are earhly references (e.g. "born of woman" - but every human is born of woman! why would anyone say that unless there was a belief that Jesus was NOT born of woman, right? And we DO see exactly that - early Christians who did NOT believe Jesus was born of woman, such as the docetics who thought he was a pantom.)

But none of them describes any earthly Jesus, no connection with Jesus, no mention of meeting Jesus, no conversations "Jesus said to me ...", or "I was there when Jesus did ..."

None of them mention the trial, any miracles, Mary of Joseph etc.

Jesus story started with G.Mark
Then, G.Mark arrives on the scene in early-mid 2nd century, which can be clearly seen here:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~desmodeu/Christianity/Table.html

That table makes it crystal clear that the Gospel stories ABOUT Jesus, only became known AS the Gospels became known. In other words, before the Gospels, no Christian knew any of the stories at all - just a Risen Christ, a spiritual being, a "heavenly man" according to Paul.

G.Mark is a masterpiece of religious literature, midrash, allegory - what ever you may call it. It is a cleverly constructed written work whose episodes are mostly crafted from the Tanakh (the OT.)
http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark_index.html

THAT was how the myth of Jesus of Nazareth myth was created - the author of G.Mark had no intention of fooling anyone, he didn't lie, nor did he mean it to be taken as history.

So - G.Mark was the first - it has the least, and the less developed story about Jesus, the other Gospels simply embelish G.Mark in different ways. But G.Mark didn't arrive until mid 2nd century (if you argue otherwise, you will have to explain sequence seen here :
http://members.iinet.net.au/~desmodeu/Christianity/Table.html)

But G.Mark was a CENTURY later
By then, Jerusalem had suffered a disastrous losing war with the Romans twice - first they destroyed the Temple and much of the city and killed many people (AD70), then again in AD 130 they finished the job and razed the city the ground (a word beloved by scrabble players meaning to destroy down to ground level) and erased Judea from map, and completely expelled the people, again.

So, it was a CENTURY since the time of Jesus, after everyone had been killed, and Jerusalem razed - THEN the Gospel stories of Jesus arose. So who could argue? Christians love to say "how could Jesus be a myth? people would have said it wasn't historical". To which the obvious rejoinder is "who? who was left a century later after Jerusalem had suffered two Roman destructions ?"

The earlier books - the epistles such as James, Jude, Peter etc. have nothing historical to be challenged! Have a look for instance at the book of James and Jude - allegedly both Jesus BROTHERS according to scripture. Neither of these books shows any signs of even knowing about a historical Jesus, nor does either of them mention being a brother of Jesus, nor that the other is a brother. Clearly the legend about brothers was unknown until the Gospel stories arose in early-mid 2nd century.

Jesus is a myth
In short -

• no-one met Jesus
• no-one met anyone who met Jesus

But what happened was :

• people wrote about Jesus
• people BELIEVED about Jesus
• people wrote MORE about Jesus
• people started believing Jesus was historical
• belief in Jesus became required under pain of death for centuries

Now, over a millenium later, the church's strangle hold on our thinking and questioning has gone, and we can take a long hard look at the Gospels.

And lo!
The Gospels are just as historical as The Golden Ass of Apuleis or the Greek Myths... Jesus was just as real as Hercules

K.