The Crucifixion Hoax

Part Five

 By
Abdullah Smith
(He is a new convert to Islam)

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]

 

 

The gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called “synoptic” because they share the common source; they all depend on the ‘Q’ gospel to derive information about Jesus, based on oral traditions.

 

Scholars assert that Q was a sayings gospel, containing the earliest strata of the most “authentic” words of Jesus, but it does not exist today. There is no physical evidence for Q, and the Church fathers never alluded to Q.

 

http://www.answers.com/topic/q-document

 

Q is very similar to the Gospel of Thomas, discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi Egypt, containing 114 sayings of Jesus originally translated from the Greek. 

 

But few Christians are aware that Thomas belongs to the Gnostic sect, whom regarded the story of Jesus as purely allegorical.

 

The Literalist Christians followed Paul, a man who never met Jesus. During the centuries of persecution, burning of books, and assassination of characters, the Gnostics were defeated:

 

These can be broadly categorized into two different schools. On the one hand there were those we will call Literalists, because what defines them is that they take the Jesus story as a literal account of historical events. It was this school of Christianity that was adopted by the Roman Empire in the fourth century CE, becoming Roman Catholicism and all its subsequent offshoots. On the other hand, however, there were also radically different Christians known as Gnostics.' These forgotten Christians were later persecuted out of existence by the Literalist Roman Church with such thoroughness that until recently we knew little about them except through the writings of their detractors. Only a handful of original Gnostic texts survived, none of which were published before the nineteenth century.

 

(Timothy Freke, The Jesus Mysteries: Was the “Original Jesus” a Pagan God?  p. 7)

 

The Gnostics denied the resurrection of Jesus, saying that he never possessed a physical body, but it was a “phantom body” on the cross.

 

According to modern scholarship, Paul was a Gnostic:

 

Many Gnostic groups claimed Paul as their founding father and Gnostics calling themselves "Paulicians" continued to flourish, despite persistent persecution from the Roman Church, until the end of the tenth century. Paul wrote his letters to churches in seven cities, which are known to have been centers of Gnostic Christianity during the second century. These Christian communities were led by the Gnostic sage Marcion, for whom Paul was the only true apostle. One thing is for sure: if Paul really were as anti-Gnostic as the Literalists claim, then it is astounding how many Gnostic texts quote him or are actually attributed to him. The followers of Marcion even had a gospel, which they claimed was written by Paul. (ibid, p. 160)

The ultra-conservatives keep insisting on a “physical” resurrection of Jesus. Paul, whose work pre-dates the first Gospel, insists on the exact opposite. His fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians could not possibly be clearer. I invite you to read to reread that passage for yourself. This passage is almost pure Platonism. Paul knows only a spiritual resurrection.  (Tom Harper, The Pagan Christ, p. 174)

 

The Gnostic plan of salvation was radically different from the Literalists. The Literalists today are insisting that salvation is attained through the “blood of Christ”, yet the “blood of Christ” has failed to solve mankind’s problems.

 

Perhaps I am lacking in piety or some basic instinct, but I know I am not alone in finding the idea of Jesus’ death as atonement for the sins of all humanity on one level bewildering and on the other morally repugnant. Jesus never to my knowledge said anything to indicate that forgiveness from God could only be granted after or because of the cross. For Christ’s Sake Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1986 pg. 75, Tom Harper

"God sacrificed his own son in place of humans who needed to be punished for their own sins might make some Christians love Jesus, but is an obcene picture of God. It is almost heavenly child abuse, and may infect out imagination at more earthly levels as well. I do not want to express my faith through a theology that pictures God demanding blood sacrifices in order to be reconciled to us." (John Dominic Crossan, Who is Jesus, p. 145-146)

This doctrine (atonement) is a blasphemy against the justice of God. It is highly unjust, inhuman and ungodly, to sacrifice the life of an innocent man, for washing off the sins of sinners. God Almighty is never unjust even in least degree, how this injustice and unkindness can ever be attributed to Him. God Almighty is Absolute and Merciful enough to forgive the sins, even without sacrifices. (Dr. Roshan Enam, Follow Jesus or Follow Paul? p. 52)

 

Here is a brief explanation of the Gnostic salvation:

 

The Jesus story is a perennial myth with the power to impart the saving Gnosis, which can transform each one of us into a Christ, not merely a history of events that happened to someone else 2,000 years ago. (The Jesus Mysteries, p. 13)

 

 

Jesus died only for the Jews!

 

The Bible refers to Israel as the “sheep” (Ps. 100:3, Mic. 2:12, Matt. 10:6-7, 15:24) and the Gentiles are usually called “goats” (Matt. 24:32-33).

 

Jesus said he would only die for the Jews:

 

All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. (Matthew 25:32-33)

 

“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep... even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep." (Matthew 10:11, 15)

 

 

 

More Evidence! The evolution of ‘many’

 

The Gospels of Matthew and Mark repeat the word “many”.

 

Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45)

 

For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24)

 

John is the last gospel, dating from 100 CE, and there was a sudden change from the words “for many” to “the world”.

 

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)

 

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:2)

 

And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. (Luke 24:47)

 

Where is the concept Jesus died “for the sins of mankind” in Matthew and Mark? There is no statement because it simply does not exist; the Gentiles are excluded from the “redemption of Christ”.

 

 

 

Did Satan remove the sins?

 

Yes! Satan took the sins of mankind, not Jesus!

"It was seen, also, that while the sin offering pointed to Christ as a sacrifice, and the high priest represented Christ as a mediator, the scapegoat typified SATAN, the author of sin, UPON WHOM THE SINS OF THE TRULY PENITENT WILL FINALLY BE PLACED". – (Ellen G.H. White, The Great Controversy, p. 422)

"As the priest, in removing the sins from the sanctuary, confessed them upon 

the head of the scapegoat, so CHRIST WILL PLACE ALL THESE SINS UPON SATAN, the originator and instigator of sin". – (ibid, p. 485) emphasis added

 

 

Jesus never prophesied his death!

 

The Gospels were not written from an historical perspective, they were written to enhance the Gospel story.

 

Jesus never prophesied his own crucifixion, rather these sayings were put into his mouth, and it was okay to fabricate these verses according to the culture. There were no “copyright laws” back then; it was permissible to borrow from others without asking!

 

"The concept of plagiarism was unknown in the ancient world. Authors freely copied from predecessors without acknowledgment. Sages became the repository of free-floating proverbs and witticisms.  For the first Christians, Jesus was a legendary sage: it was proper to attribute the world’s wisdom to him. The proverb in Mark 2:17, for example, is attested in secular sources (Plutarch and Diogenes for example)...in the parallel to the Markan passage, Matthew adds a sentence taken from the prophet Hosea (Matt 9:13)."  ["The Five Gospels." Translations of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.]

 

Now read the following quotations:

 

“…The Gospels, however, were religious dramas used for worship and as a form of evangelism. They were meant not to impart history but to buttress and convey belief. The editor of John’s Gospel (the least historical of them all) boldly and honestly states his aims in the text itself when he says, “But these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah”. The goal is to establish the faithful and to create new converts, not to create an authentic biography. (Tom Harper, The Pagan Christ, p. 126)

 

As a Christian literary genre, a gospel is a brief, popular writing in the language of the common people that probably arose outside Palestine in Gentile regions. Its purpose was as propaganda for the early Christian movement. Gospels contain reminiscences of Jesus and his ministry; but their use was to be evangelistic, and their interest was religious, not strictly historical or biographical in the modern sense of those terms. The aim of gospels, as John 20:31 asserts, is to evoke and strengthen faith in Jesus the Christ: “these are written as that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name”. Certainly the center of a gospel is Jesus of Nazareth, but its primary concern is not facts about him but faith in him.

 

The gospels were written by people more interested in a living Lord present in their midst than in Jesus the historical man from Nazareth. Many scholars now hold that much of what is placed on the lips of Jesus in the Gospels was put there by Gospel writers (just as the writers of Hellenistic history placed speeches on the lips of famous persons). It is really the understanding that Gospels are faith documents that has led to what is called the “quest for the historical Jesus”. (Bonnie Thurston, Women in the New Testament, p. 63)

 

The New Testament contains unreliable surmises…Let me cite one fairly typical and significant example, from the opening page of the first chapter of Norman Perrin’s important and influential book, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus. Perrin gives his reasons why teaching ascribed to Jesus is likely to be rather a teaching that stems from the early Church, not from Jesus himself. I quote the first three reasons, “The early Church made no attempt to distinguish between the words the earthly Jesus had spoken and those spoken by the risen Lord through a prophet in the community…” “The early Church absolutely and completely identified the risen Lord of her experience with the earthly Jesus of Nazareth…” “Further, the gospel form was created to serve the purposes of the early Church, but historical reminiscence was not one of those purposes”. (John C. Meagher, The Five Gospels, 1989, p. 9)

 

Jesus could not have foreseen his rejection, death, and resurrection, as the idea of a suffering, dying, and rising Messiah or son of Man was unknown to Judaism. (Israel Knohl, The Messiah before Jesus, The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 2)

 

Only 16% of all events whereby Jesus was the principal actor are historically accurate and only 18% of the Jesus sayings—primarily parables and aphorisms- are historically accurate http://www.westarinstitute.org/Jesus_Seminar/jesus_seminar.html

 

Some of the events in the early mission of Jesus] were not strictly true but were added to the story of Jesus by the early Christians to express their faith in him as a Messiah."  [London Daily Mail, page 12, 15/July/1984] 

 

“The number of deliberate alterations made in the interests of doctrine is difficult to assess.”  [Bruce M. Metzger's "The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration", 1964]

It is clear that Jesus never foretold his death, he tells false prophecies, misquotes the Old Testament, and contradicts himself, so how can the Gospels be accurate?

 

We are only touching the surface; they contain Historical Errors, and other discrepancies.

 

"Eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were not actually spoken by him."

 

"Biblical scholars and theologians alike have learned to distinguish the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith. It has been a painful lesson for both the church and scholarship. The distinction between the two figures is the difference between a historical person who lived in a particular time and place...and a figure who has been assigned a mythical role, in which he descends from heaven to rescue humankind and, of course, eventually returns there." (The Five Gospels, pp. 3-5)