We know less than you might think about the lives of Buddha, Abraham, Jesus, Muhammed, and most other religious “founders.”
Author David Fitzgerald is a history buff whose primary fascination is the early history of religion. When he researched the origins of Christianity, he was astounded to discover how little evidence we have about Jesus as a historical person. The least fantastical stories about the life of Jesus are found in the four New Testament gospels, but the four gospels that made it into the New Testament—and others that did not—were written generations after any historical Jesus rabbi would have lived. They contradict each other and contain miraculous events that in any other context we would simply call magic, mythology, or fairy tales. These events echo “tropes” that were common in the folklore of the region, like the idea of a woman impregnated by a god, or talking animals, or transmutation (one substance turning into another), or magical healings, or a person returning from the dead, or being/becoming a deity.
The historical record is so frayed, and so stitched together with obvious myth and legend, that Fitzgerald began wondering whether the man, Jesus, had ever actually existed. He soon discovered he was not alone. Were the stories about Jesus mythologized history (meaning that stories of a real person had mythic elements added over time—like Davie Crockett killing a bear when he was only three)? Or were they historicized mythology (meaning that legends of a mythic personage had historical details added as the stories were retold)? Ancient writings offer us plenty of both. Alexander the Great performed miracles. The three wise men of the Christmas story received names and biographies during the Middle Ages.
For generations now, academic Bible scholars have been gradually transferring bits of the gospel stories out of the History bucket and into the Mythology bucket. As inquiry tools have become more advanced, what we “know” about any historical Jesus has shrunk. The vast majority of relevant experts do think that a real person lies at the heart of the stories. If you want to understand why, read or listen to New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman or James McGrath. But either way, we can be confident that biblical portraits of Jesus offer little clarity about whoever he may have been. The form of the gospels, their contents, internal contradictions and most likely dates of writing suggest that they are largely the stuff of legend.
That’s OK says Fitzgerald. As several scholars have pointed out, we don’t need to know who Jesus was or even whether he existed in order to better understand the emergence of Christianity. There are, as it turns out, patterns in how religions emerge, whether or not the iconic founder was a single flesh-and-blood person. These patterns have to do with cultural and technological evolution, which will be highlighted in Part 2 of this series.
But one key piece of the pattern is this: Most major religions have founders who are wrapped in layers and layers of obvious mythology—to the point that little of interest remains when the myths are peeled away. Christianity is far from unique when it comes to sketchy evidence about an ostensible founder who is now heralded as a prophet, god or demi-god. For centuries—or even millennia—religious teachings have pointed to great individuals, prophets, demi-gods, or supernatural beings as the source of divine revelation. But looking closely at these claims can be rather like holding cotton candy in the rain.
As Fitzgerald began to write and speak publicly about his doubts regarding Jesus, he was surprised to be contacted by Buddhists and former Muslims who informed him that they were having similar debates in their respective circles—arguments over whether the Buddha, Prince Siddhartha Gautama, or the Prophet Muhammad, actually existed! As with Jesus, the vast majority of relevant experts assume that the stories of Muhammad are rooted in a real person. But even assuming these larger-than-life figures did once exist in the flesh, the doubts reflect how remarkably little about their lives or any direct roles they (rather than their legends) may have played in history.
Judaism – Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and other Old Testament Figures
Most non-Christians and non-fundamentalist Christians recognize stories like the Garden of Eden, Tower of Babel, and Noah’s Flood as sacred myths which sought to explain natural disasters or bolster moral rules or tribal identity. A devastating meteor strike may have inspired stories about Sodom and Gomorrah or the walls of Jericho (or then again, maybe not), but we lack archeological evidence for major Biblical stories including the conquest of Canaan and the flight from Egypt. We have nothing to back up stories of the Patriarchs from Abraham to Moses and Joshua.
Evidence on the ground fails to show any sign of Israel’s lauded monotheism until the better part of a millennium afterwards. Even then, archeology suggests that David and Solomon existed, but the grandeur of their fabled kingdoms and royal exploits likely did not. To modern eyes, the real David and his “united monarchy” might look like a bandit chieftain of a cow-town in the wild Judean hill country.
Daniel Lazare tells the story this way:
“Judah, the sole remaining Jewish outpost by the late eighth century B.C., was a small, out-of-the-way kingdom with little in the way of military or financial clout. Yet at some point its priests and rulers seem to have been seized with the idea that their national deity, now deemed to be nothing less than the king of the universe, was about to transform them into a great power. They set about creating an imperial past commensurate with such an empire, one that had the southern heroes of David and Solomon conquering the northern kingdom and making rival kings tremble throughout the known world. From a “henotheistic” cult in which Yahweh was worshiped as the chief god among many, they refashioned the national religion so that henceforth Yahweh would be worshiped to the exclusion of all other deities.”
Jewish history doesn’t start approaching historical reliability until centuries later, with well-corroborated events such as the Babylonian conquest and exile, and even the accounts from these and later periods show extensive bias from the scribal factions that wrote them. For instance, they demonize successful, long-lasting rulers such as Manasseh and the Omride dynasty (including the notorious queen Jezebel), while heaping praise on short-lived but pious failures like Josiah.
Islam – Muhammad
The Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th century are well-established and undeniable—but the same is not true of the prophet who was the purported inspiration behind them. Before these military conquests, Arabia was a region of many different tribes, including urban merchants, nomadic Bedouin, and Jewish and Christian communities. The pagan Arabs worshipped hundreds of gods, including the three goddesses Al-Lat, Manat, and al-Uzza, mentioned in the notorious “Satanic Verses”of the Qur’an, and high gods like Hubaal and Allah. Features we associate with Islam, such as pilgrimages to the sacred Kaaba in Mecca (originally a thousand-year-old shrine to Hubaal), were important parts of the region’s religious life for centuries before the Muslim era.
According to tradition, it was the prophet Muhammad who united the Arabian tribes and wrote the Qur’an. But there are curious inconsistencies in the official story. Early mentions of Muhammad are oddly non-specific and, at least twice, are accompanied by a cross. The word Muhammad itself is not just a proper name, but an honorific title (“The Praised One”) —and it is possible it originally referred to Jesus, as pockets of Christianity were well established in the region. Crosses appear on some coins of this era and in some early ostensibly Muslim architecture.
Though orthodox Muslims believe Muhammad received the Qur’an directly from the archangel Gabriel (Jibril in Arabic), as much as a third of the Qur’an appears not only to pre-date Muhammad, but to be derived from various earlier Syrian Christian liturgical writings.
According to the standard account, the Qur’an in its present form was distributed in the 650s— but in example after example of important correspondence and records, no one—neither Arabians, Christians nor Jews—ever mentions the Qur’an until the early eighth century.
During the early years of the Arab conquests, accounts by conquered peoples never mention Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur’an. The Arab conquerors are called “Ishmaelites,” “Saracens,” “Muhajirun,” “Hagarians” —but never “Muslims.” Approximately two generations after Muhammad’s official death date, the first references to Islam and “Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam” appear. Around the same time, Islamic beliefs begin to appear on coins and inscriptions, and certain common Muslim practices such as reciting from the Qur’an during mosque prayers begin.
But no record of Muhammad’s reported death in 632 appears until more than a century later. After the Abbasid dynasty supplants Abd al-Malik’s Umayyad line in the mid-8th century, the first complete biography of Muhammad finally appears and biographical material begins to proliferate (at least 125 years after his supposed death). The Abbasids also accuse their Umayyad predecessors of gross impiety, and Abbasids, Ummayyads and Shiites all write new hadiths against one another.
All these and still other inexplicable elements of early Islamic history suggest that, incredible as it seems, Islam and the Qur’an and the shape of Muhammad’s biography were results rather than causes of the Arabian conquests.
Buddhism – Buddha
Scholars are careful not to put too much confidence in any of the professed historical facts of the Buddha’s life. Trying to establish even a ballpark figure of when he lived with any degree of confidence has proven to be deeply problematic. Many scholars tend to place him around the 6th or 5th century BCE, but Tibetan Buddhist traditions put his death in the 9th century BCE (about 833 BCE), while the Eastern Buddhist traditions (China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan), believe he died over a century earlier than that (949 BCE). In any case, it was not until the early second century CE—or roughly half a millennium after Buddha’s life—that the first biography of Buddha was written in the form of an epic poem called the Buddhacarita.
According to tradition, the Buddha’s teachings were only transmitted orally for several centuries. By the time the earliest Buddhist scriptures were first written down, large numbers of rival Buddhist schools existed—each with their own competing collection of Buddha’s teachings. Virtually all of these have been lost, though some have been partially reconstructed through translations into Chinese, Korean, and Tibetan. However, our surviving and reconstructed canons differ from one another so greatly that scholars are unable to tell which, if any, represent the “original” or “authentic” Buddhist scriptures.
Daoism—Lao-Tze
According to venerable tradition, the founder of Daoism, Laozi (aka Lao-Tze, Lao Tzu, Lao Dan, or “Old Master”) wrote his teachings in a short book named after him in the sixth or early fifth century BCE. Modern scholars disagree. Based on archaeological evidence, competing collections of sayings attributed to Laozi began to be written down probably from the second half of the fifth century BCE, grew, competed for attention, and gradually came to be consolidated over the following centuries until the Laozi probably reached a relatively stable form around the mid-3rd century BCE.
Nearly every fact about Laozi is in dispute, including the name Laozi itself. The most common biographical account of his life was recorded around 94 BCE in Sima Qian’s Shiji, (or “Records of the Grand Historian”). Scholars today take the Shiji with a grain of salt. According to Daoism scholar William Boltz, it “contains virtually nothing that is demonstrably factual; we are left no choice but to acknowledge the likely fictional nature of the traditional Lao tzu [Laozi] figure.”
Sikhism—Gurū Nānak
Sikhism has only been around for about five hundred years, a Johnny-come-lately compared to most world religions. Its founder, Gurū Nānak, said to have lived c. 1469-1539, was the first of a line of ten founding gurus of the faith. Virtually everything known about him comes from Janamsakhis, or “birth-stories” of the life of Guru Nanak and his early companions. These miracle-laden tales are replete with supernatural characters and extraordinary events like conversations with fish and animals. They come in many versions, which often contradict each other, and in some cases have clearly been tinkered with to beef up the role of this or that disciple or advance the claim of some faction. Oddly, they don’t begin to appear until 50-80 years after his death, and many more come in during the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries.
Sikhs hold that The Guru Granth Sahib, their scripture, was composed predominantly by Nānak and the first six gurus (along with the poetry of thirteen Hindu Bhakti movement poets and two Sufi Muslim poets). However, the Adi Granth, its first rendition, was compiled by the fifth guru, Guru Arjan Dev (1564–1606) in 1604, generations after the faith’s supposed beginnings, and the final edition of Sikh scriptures, the Guru Granth Sahib, was not finished until a full century after that, in 1704.
Confucianism – Confucius
Confucius, or “Master Kong,” a.k.a. K’ung Fu-tzu, Kǒng Fūzǐ, etc., is said to be a 5th century BCE figure, though his earliest biography appears 400 years after his death. The Analects attributed to him was actually composed sometime during the Warring States period (476–221 BC) and reached its final form during the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD).
Jainism – Rishabhanatha
Jainism claims that Rishabhanatha, the first of its twenty-four founding Jain Tīrthaṅkara, meaning teachers, was born millions and millions of years BCE, lived for 8.2 million Purva years—one Pūrva (पूर्व) equals 8,400,000 years, squared, in Western reckoning—and was 4,950 ft. tall. Skipping forward a bit, in the 9th century BCE, their 23rd Tirthankar, Parshvanatha,is born. He is a mere 13 1/2 feet tall and lives for but 100 years.
Despite this impressive (some might say incredible) pedigree, observers could be forgiven for suspecting that the religion actually started with the 24th and final (and shortest) Tirthankar, Mahavira, supposedly born at the beginning of the 6th century BCE; the actual year varies from sect to sect. It’s difficult to say for certain, as tradition also holds that starting around 300 BCE, Mahavira’s teachings, transmitted orally by Jain monks, were gradually lost, and the first written versions did not arrive until about the 1st century CE—at least, according to one branch of Jainism, a fact disputed by rival factions.
In Summary
Not all religions claim great men—or god-men—as founders. Shinto & Hinduism are two of the oldest religions still widely practiced. Historically, Hinduism is considered a fusion of multiple Indian cultures over millennia, while Shinto emerged from the beliefs and practices of prehistoric Japan. As such, there is no single founder figure of Hinduism or Shinto. Other religions, like Baháʼí and Mormonism have known founders, but we also have clear documentation of the ways in which they borrowed from and adapted earlier religions. Mirza Hoseyn ‘Ali Nuri, founder of Baháʼí, drew on Bábism, which is itself a spin-off of Shia Islam. Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, amended and appended Christianity. Despite claims of divine inspiration or intervention, the natural history of these religions is pretty clear.
But as with other information sets that replicate and spread (for example: DNA, internet memes or culture), changes can accumulate in small or large increments, introduced gradually or in large chunks. As bits get handed down, people instinctively “correct” those that don’t make sense or are no longer acceptable before passing them on. If we strip away the founding stories and look at religions with a critical eye, some of these corrections become obvious.
Looking at the big picture, patterns emerge in this process, patterns that are shaped by cultural and technological evolution and the gradual accumulation of knowledge. And that is the topic of Part 2 in this series.
Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including The Huffington Post, Salon, The Independent, Quillette, Free Inquiry, The Humanist, AlterNet, Raw Story, Grist, Jezebel, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.
AwayPoint 
Superb piece, Valerie.
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Thank you!
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Agreed! This is a keeper and I’m eagerly awaiting the next installment.
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I came to this conclusion many years ago now that Jesus is a very doubtful character. A very close study of the New Testament will reveal this, and it’s all biblical.
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Good material, Valerie.
The study of Christian origins and its first several decades of development is fascinating. As with the formative stages of other religions, we (especially but not exclusively biblical and historical scholars) have barely begun to examine and understand the 2nd and third level leaders, groups and concepts of Christianity.
We know VERY little of the original disciples, notable among them was the leader, James. We know only a little even about Peter, historically, and he probably didn’t leave us those “epistles”. We know Christian faith went promptly to N. Africa. But the New Testament seems to purposely ignore that early and “heterodox” branch so details are sparse until Clement of Alexandria.
In all that, however, we should recognize and seek to better understand the methods and motivations of Paul, the Gospel writers of the generation overlapping with him or just following, etc. One of the most damaging myths emerging via Luke and proto-orthodox writers after the NT is the concept of a single revealed and united “Church”. Rather, the reality was many similar but often conflicting sects from the BEGINNING.
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FIRSTLY!
The preaching was ORAL. The Traditions were ORAL. It was only when believers like Saul/Paul came along that LETTERS were written to churches and these made up most of the New Testament.
There is no way you can use 21st standards to 1st century situations.
SECONDLY:
The WAY, which was the name given to the first Jewish followers of Jesus/Yashua of Nazareth and beliefs are based on the Hebrew Scriptures.
THIRDLY!
When the Gentile converts outnumbered the Jewish followers of the WAY, changes started to appear and in the 3rd century, the WAY became ROMAN CHRISTIANITY.
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Excellent! Thank you.
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Not only did Jesus not exist but the town of Nazareth did not exist at the so-called time of Jesus.
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New archaeological evidence from Nazareth reveals religious and political environment in era of Jesus
Nazareth, once thought to have been a small village, likely to have been a town of around 1,000 people, new evidence suggests
Nazareth may be best known for its famous ancient resident — Jesus — but as British-Israeli archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre notes in this week’s The Times of Israel Podcast, the once small village with huge name recognition existed well before and well after his lifetime.
Alexandre discusses what archaeology tells us about the Jews who lived in Nazareth and its surroundings two millennia ago, and how by hewing into the soft chalk stone under the village houses the residents evaded taxes, and also may have saved their skins during the Great Revolt against the Romans in 66 CE.
Based on excavated evidence, the tiny, off-the-beaten-path hamlet was inhabited from the Iron Age (10th–8th centuries BCE) onward. It was only in the 1850s that the Europeans turned the one-camel town into a holy site, and the village turned into the sprawling modern Arab Israeli city we find today.
Alexandre published a new excavation report on Nazareth in the current issue of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s ‘Atiqot journal that describes its early settlement history and findings from her excavations and those of other researchers. What is arguably of most interest in the report is what was discovered in very bedrock of the village.
Among her digs, in 2009, Alexandre discovered the first example of a residential building from the time of Jesus. It was found near today’s Church of the Annunciation, which was constructed in 1969 on top of three earlier churches, including a 4th century CE structure. In her report, Alexandre describes the structure as “a simple house comprising small rooms and an inner courtyard was inhabited in the late Hellenistic and the Early Roman periods.” In earlier excavations on the site, some early Roman period storage pits and cisterns were also found.
In a Times of Israel Podcast interview this week, Alexandre says that Jewish settlers came to the Galilee during a northward expansion of un-landed Hasmonean soldiers and others from the late Hellenistic to Early Roman periods (late second century BCE to early or mid-second century CE). Among these residents who arrived during the Judeans’ manifest destiny movement were presumably the family of Jesus’s mother Mary.
Salvaging knowledge ahead of development
Alexandre has been excavating sites in the Lower Galilee on behalf of the IAA for the past three decades. Born in London, she immigrated to Israel in 1980 and earned an MA in archaeology at Tel Aviv University before moving north.
Today’s booming, packed Nazareth is not at all on the scale of the little village where Jesus was raised, she says.
“The Nazareth that we know today is really the result of the second half of the 19th century development onwards. Because it was only in about the 1850s that the Europeans began to develop their interest in Nazareth as a Holy City, a city holy to Christianity. All the main European powers started taking interest and they built churches and other institutions,” she said.
However, if we were to step back in time and visit Nazareth at the time of Jesus, we would see a very small village settled by a few families. Around Nazareth there were larger, important towns such as Tzippori (Sephoris), which was only about 5 kilometers to the west of Nazareth, as well as the village of Kana, near today’s Kfar Kana, which was 3-4 kilometers to the north from Nazareth.
Alexandre said that scant excavations in Nazareth have not uncovered any ritual baths or synagogues, but it was clearly a Jewish settlement due to the types of pottery found, as well as the chalk-stone vessels, which were only used by the Jewish populations of the era because they were not susceptible to ritual impurity.
There are geographical, environmental explanations for Nazareth being so small, she said. Nazareth was set in a small basin surrounded by hills and wasn’t very accessible. It did have a water supply from what is called today Mary’s Well, and there is evidence of some limited terraced agriculture, as well as pasture fields. But since the town wasn’t located on a roadway, “people didn’t go through Nazareth unless they specifically wanted to go there. And that was really the reason that it remained a small site until the 19th century.”
While there once was a lack of first-century evidence in Nazareth, recent excavations have conclusively demonstrated that in Jesus’ day, Nazareth was a backwater village of around 50 houses about four acres in size and populated by devout Jews of modest means.10
In the historical biographies of Jesus in the Bible, Nazareth is identified as his hometown by each of the writers: Mathew (Mt 2:23), Mark (Mk 1:24), Luke (Lk 18:37), and John (Jn 19:19). Some 30 years after Jesus’s death and resurrection, Christians were still known as the “sect of the Nazarenes.” (Acts 24:5). These writers, along with the many people who spoke about “Jesus of Nazareth” were familiar with the village. Upon hearing that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, one even asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn 1:46)
Some have objected that Nazareth is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) nor in any other ancient sources outside of the New Testament. This is true, and with good reason: Nazareth was too small and too insignificant to have warranted being described. This in itself is evidence that Nazareth truly was the hometown of Jesus; who would make up a place like this for the hometown of the Messiah?
Vlaminck, Benedict. 1900. A Report of the Recent Excavations and Explorations Conducted at the Sanctuary of Nazareth. Washington, D.C.; Viaud, Prosper. 1910. Nazareth et ses deux églises de l’Annonciation et de Saint-Joseph d’après les fouilles; Bagatti, Bellarmino. 1969. Excavations in Nazareth I: From the Beginning till the XII Century (SBF Collectio Maior 17). Jerusalem; Bagatti, Bellarmino. 2002. Excavations in Nazareth II: From the 12th Century until Today (SBF CollectioMaior 17). Jerusalem.
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Fascinating, thanks. I have read a lot about this topic but your work here puts more of these founding myths all together – v handy!
“we don’t need to know who (whoever) was or even whether he existed” – indeed it helps to be vague, it makes things more flexible!
BTW, I was fascinated to see how little we actually know about Shakespeare! And he lived in the 16th century.
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It is quite amazing just how fluidly you have pursued a theme and applied it to all these ‘religions’.
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Pingback: Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed Stepped into History . . . Or Maybe They Didn’t | Evangelically Atheist
Small detail: the “meteor strike” claim regarding the Sodom and Gomorrah story has come in for massive criticism: Tall el-Hammam: an airburst of gullibility https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2021/10/tall-el-hammam-gullibility.html, Tall el-Hammam; an airburst of gullibility; it gets worse https://paulbraterman.wordpress.com/2021/10/14/tall-el-hammam-an-airburst-of-gullibility-it-gets-worse/, and publication pending by Mark Boslough, leading authoritiy on such impacts
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Thank you. I added “or maybe not” into the text and the Panda’s Thumb link.
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Small detail. You should be aware that the paper claiming to have discovered evidence of a meteor strike that gave rise to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah has come in for severe criticism, including from a leading expert on meteor strikes. See e.g. Tall el-Hammam: an airburst of gullibility https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2021/10/tall-el-hammam-gullibility.html and Tall el-Hammam; an airburst of gullibility; it gets worse https://paulbraterman.wordpress.com/2021/10/14/tall-el-hammam-an-airburst-of-gullibility-it-gets-worse/
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Basically, there is very little reason for any information about Jesus to have been made in his lifetime, nor for some generations after. Similar for the other figures.
Scholars who try to make these wide-ranging arguments only show their ignorance of how and WHY information was recorded. They think in MODERN terms, without recognizing ancient criteria don’t match modern. So, for Jesus, there is ZERO reason for mention of Jesus to occur in ANY Roman documents at the time, and only after the rise of the prominence of Christianity for it to occur later. The author apparently has little knowledge of the OTHER literature floating around at the time, which must makes them look like a fish out of water.
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You can’t be serious? No reason for Roman historians nor Jewish ones to even mention the catalyst for a new religion supposedly sweeping the middle east like a wave with “signs and wonders” (according to Christendom at least)? If zombies are rising from the grave, if the sky is turning dark at noon with a concomitant earthquake in city governed by the Romans and important to Jewish historians it is beggars the imagination that someone would not have reported it.
But keep up with the hand-waving.
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David Fitzgerald responds:
You’re half right. Many critics of the gospels point out (rightly) that Jesus doesn’t appear in any contemporary extra-biblical texts, but don’t stop to ask whether we would expect Jesus and/or events in the Gospels to attract notice. In most case, the answer is no. But that is NOT to say there is zero reason for any non-biblical writers to mention Jesus at all. In fact, in NAILED, I list out several non-biblical writings, both Jewish and Roman/Greek, that DO have reason to mention Jesus and/or the gospel events presented.
In fact, it’s worse than that: we DO have reports of over a dozen lesser, wanna-be messiahs of the early first century – none of whom are anywhere as impressive as Jesus is in the Gospels – and yet all of them manage to do what he couldn’t; make a dent in the historical record.
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I have for years pointed out the commonality in the religious narratives that appear in practically every major religion. Virgin birth – Check; Worker of miracles – Check; Ascended to heaven – Check; Lived a spartan life – Check… The list goes on.
I think it says a lot about us as human beings that we have certain things in common: We make music, we dance, we have creation myths, we use mind-altering substances, we view those outside our tribes as less than human, to name a few.
That we seem to need religion is glaringly obvious to me.
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Indeed. And how do we as unbelievers set about meeting this need?
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Religion provides community, safety, and even transcendence for those included in the tribe. I worry that we humans have discovered secular ways to meet these needs (and other important needs that religions claim to meet, like morality) many times throughout history, but either their message was not impactful and got lost/absorbed into religions, or the people who spread these secular messages became deified in later generations for base human reasons like greed and lust for power/control.
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For me: I come from a long line of preachers and evangelists. My mind set from an early age was to find extraordinary proof for extraordinary claims. Needless to say, the scriptures of every religion I studied fell flat. They invariably required the suspension of reason to achieve “faith.”
That is not to say there was no wisdom to be found in those scriptures. If one follows the recipe for getting along with your neighbor, it is a good roadmap for social harmony. I’ve found that in Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and just about any other. They all codify social behavior.
I’ve come to believe that it isn’t necessary to have a religion to have a meaningful, productive and harmonious life. Is there a God? I don’t know and I am totally comfortable today with the knowledge that the question will never be answered to me.
Historically, what was unknowable to us was the realm of God(s) and beyond our understanding. Then, with logic, experimentation and careful observation, the limits of our knowledge were set further out from us, thus God receded further into the mists of space and time. I believe that religion in its essence is an attempt to answer the most basic questions of existence: Where do we come from? Why am I here? What will happen to me when I die? When did the world begin? Why are things as they are?
The short answer to your question is that we do not need religion. To be an unbeliever is to be free to discover who we are and to be free of the fear of divine retribution when we deviate from what scriptures tell us is sinful. We are free to define what is good and meaningful in our life.
Paul, celebrate that freedom.
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Indeed. We freely find meaning by exploring our humanity, or accept the meaning offered to us in the name of some divinity. Not a hard choice
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WordPress won’t let me like, so I’m liking your comment here!
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For every person who claims that his god is real but all of those other gods and religious figures were made up . . . establishes that you can make up gods that a majority of people on the planet believe in. (Christians are not a majority, constituting only about one third of the religious worldwide–and that is an overestimate as that is “of the adults”.)
So, this making up a god out of whole cloth has been done hundreds and hundreds of times . . . but not in our case. Ours is real.
I am currently reading “False Witness” by Keith Mitchell and he is making a great case that all Christians got it wrong, that Paul hoodwinked all Christians into believing something not preached by Jesus or any of his disciples. Fascinating book. The arguments are well researched and if valid, could show that Christians have been sold a god made up out of whole cloth for millennia.
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I can’t seem to find “False Witness” by Keith Mitchell on Amazon or any other source. Needless to say, I’m very intrigued by your reference.
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To bluearkie: Try looking for that title under “Keith Michael.”
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Try looking under “Keith Michael.”
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AHHHHHHH, but isn’t God and Religion great for Atheist and Agnostic alike. Think what would they be writing about if they weren’t there.
THINK: Ehrman, Bart. 2015. Did Nazareth Exist?
He was striding high for a few years, but if you are too smart for him and don’t play his game, he will bar you.
All Religions make great employment for lots of people, worldwide.
The same goes for Psychology & Psychiatry!
The pedophilia of Freud is steeped in the Babylonian Talmud:
KETHUBOTH, 11a-11b.
“Rabba said, It means (5) this: When a grown up man has intercourse with a little girl it is nothing, for when the girl is less than this (6), it is as if one puts the finger in the eye (7), but when a small boy has intercourse with a grown up woman, he makes her as `a girl who is injured by a piece of wood’ “.
(footnotes) “(5). Lit., `says’. (6) Lit., `here’, that is, less than three years old. (7) Tears come to the eyes again and again, so does virginity come back to the little girl under three years.”
KETHUBOTH, 11a-11b.
“Rab Judah said that Rab said: A small boy who has intercourse with a grown up woman makes her (as though she were ) injured by a piece of wood (1). Although the intercourse of a small boy is not regarded as a sexual act, nevertheless the woman is injured by it as by a piece of wood(a dildo).”
(footnotes) “(1) Although the intercourse of a small boy is not regarded as a sexual act, nevertheless the woman is injured by it as by a piece of wood.”
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Valerie, your breadth of knowledge is staggering. Really great information.
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Thank you!– but David Fitzgerald gets the credit here. I interviewed him and then worked out from there.
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Quetzalcoatl, the snake god of the
ancient Aztecs, is the only true deity.
All other gods are false.
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Amazing work! I am excited to read part 2! I find the true history of cultural development, which clearly is influenced by the opinions and experiences of literally billions of people over generations, is much more fascinating and informative (though impossible to fully articulate due to the immense amounts of time and information) than the end result of hand-me-down mythology that we end up with. Regardless of how we sift the available information, we only have access to a thimbleful. I do value the attempt to improve the quality of the contents of that thimbleful immensely though!
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I so enjoy your writing.
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I love your writings Valerie, but WordPress is the worst site ever. Frequently I cannot comment at all, today I am unable to “like” anybody. I wish you would switch to a different service to present your excellent material.
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I’ve never had any such problem. Maybe you have a conflict with your browser or your popup blockers?
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I see the same thing but usually I think it’s just a delay.
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Regardless of your conclusion, I think yours is a wonderful piece of writing.
Your view surely is one way to look at it, but quoting Ehrman doesn’t disprove historicity of Jesus.
I will leave just something from the other side, to prevent your comment section becoming an echo chamber.
(1) I’ve watched Ehrman debating James. R. White, and learned defending Christianity is not without solid ground. If one wants to ask questions they can keep asking, but it doesn’t disprove anything because there are also reasonable explanation. If you are really serious about knowing his claim really stand against the counter argument, I recommend you take the time to watch the debate.
We can distort and interpret the extrabiblical source in light of what we want to understand, but it doesn’t change the facts that those writings exist.
(2) And three monotheistic religions have different claim about the historical fact – the death of Jesus and resurrection. Islam claims Jesus didn’t die; Judaism claims he died and didn’t rise again, Christianity claims he died and resurrected. Only one has to be right. Regarding other “religions” (or called religion-but a, there probably may be less to prove something empirically, so they are not in the same category.
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/historical-jesus/rediscovering-the-historical-jesus-the-evidence-for-jesus
(3) equating New Testaments and mythology is so far from the truth. Any one who deeply studied, or who actually read the myths and compared them side by side would see it’s so different.
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/jesus-and-pagan-mythology
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TL;DR: 1) There really isn’t much solid ground, but a lot of consensus on conjecture and declarations. 2) Is a false dilemma, there are more possibilities. 3) The NT is drawn from popular mythological tropes of the day filtered through a Jewish lens and mixed with real events; recycling stories with spin is as old has humanity. William Lane Craig is very good at word salads and verbal prestidigitation. He’s a smart guy, but not as smart as he thinks he is, and he suffers major biases.
1) I’ve partially watched this (before), but I have read Bart Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist?” I do prefer reading over watching video’s, the amount of stopping and rewinding to get the exact wording is laborious (transcripts are rarely available for such things). I have to say Ehrman’s book was trash, which is a real contrast to his other works. Not everything he says is wrong; he does have some good things to say toward the end. The problem with the book is he relies a lot on Appeal to Authority. Expertise is one thing, but when the major thrust is AUTHORITY, one has to wonder what actual evidence exists. A lot of what is considered as evidence is really just conjecture (along with a bit of posturing, academics are very prone to such). Stepping away from authority, there is consensus, but consensus isn’t evidence, it’s just a bunch of people agreeing on the same thing (often without more than a cursory glance and relying on academic stature). Consensus used to be that the earth is static and plate tectonics was fiction, that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned, and the Arizona crater was a volcano that blew itself out. Consensus does serve a function, but does not constitute evidence. I understand when trying to figure things out you have to go out on a limb, but over time the limb become mistaken for solid ground and we go out further. By the end of the book, I couldn’t definitively say yes or no. Going off of evidence, the answer is a solid no. Relying on the writings, all the sources for the writing are christians. Even in cases where the author isn’t a christian, he’s using christian sources, at best, or hearsay. That’s evidence of people talking about something, not proof that what they said is real. Ehrman also makes false analogies, such as the lack of evidence for Pontius Pilate (literally, only a stone with his name carved in it), and yet we don’t deny his existence, but what we have for Pontius is more than what exists for jesus. Also, we know that a former slave of Herod the Great, Simon of Peraea, was a messiah claimant. Simon is both insignificant, he’s a slave, and significant, he’s a messiah claimant just like jesus. There have been hundreds of claimants, yet, scores of historians failed to record the one significant claimant who’s preaching drew thousands who then supposedly witnessed numerous miracles. Ehrman’s book is an extreme contrast to his other works. Which is odd.
2) Actually, all could be wrong. One having to be “right” is a false dichotomy. There are more possibilities than just the 3 presented.
3) I find a lot of people make the mistake of using differences to “disprove” the parallels between a lot of the jesus myths and other myths. The gospel myths aren’t original, there are a lot of parallels to other myths that were popular in the day mixed in with actual places and events, much in the way Sherlock Holmes takes place in London. Just like in the Old Testament, looking at the Noah flood myth, it has many of elements of the Gilgamesh’s flood myth, but it is not identical. If I wrote a book about a boy sorcerer (not wizard) who’s parents died in a car accident (no killed) and he grew up in a walk-in closet (not under the stairs) and went to a enchanters (not wizarding) school, no one for a second would buy that the superficial differences mean my story is in any way original. We can look at movies that rip off other movies and see them for what they are, we can see common tropes being rehashed in space operas and detective stories, yet when it comes to the jesus myth plagiarizing other popular myths, christians are in complete denial.
After delving deep into the topic, I came away with in all likelihood, there was no actual historical figure. If jesus is an amalgamation of other illiterate, itinerant preachers, he is a myth, not a historical figure. Every other possibility is 0, unless new evidence comes to light, possible, but with thousands of people looking for hundreds of years the likelihood is almost nil. Truth is, cults never needed an actual god, during that time the existence of gods was just taken as rote. The only thing needed was people making a claim. One need only look at the success of cult of Glycon. Even as the falsehood was being pointed out, people wanted to believe.
Thanks for the links. Though I question everything Mr. Craig says due to his massive bias confirmation multiplied by his motivated reasoning (to quote MR Craig: “I want to list five reasons why I think we ought to assume that the gospels are reliable until proven wrong.” That’s now how evidence works, it’s starting with the conclusion. It would be tantamount to running a justice system that assumes guilt until proven innocent, that’s how media works, not evidence.) He does make a lot of declarations, but while Free Thinkers might be “a hundred years out of date,” it’s because christians continue to rely on 100-year-old arguments – often rebranded. As long as christians keep using 100-year-old crappy research, free thinkers have to continue to answer the arguments. Religious academics may have abandoned them long ago, however, the memo hasn’t made it out of the ivory tower. It’s like the continued use of Pascal’s wager: it’s better to believe than not. They know the argument, but not the problems with it. If that is the motivation “to believe” and god can see into your heart of hearts, then god would know you’re merely hedging your bets. That argument is also be equally applicable to every religion.
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Great article. As a secular humanist sitting in church (yes, you read that right), I began to ponder if the census was even a real event. When I got home, I did some checking, it was. But it occurred 10 years after the death of Herod the Great. So, jesus was born both before Herod and after his death. That might account for Joseph’s two divergent family lines. When I delved deeper, I found that the evidence for a jesus was literally stories (the sources of which were all christians – no bias there!) and a stone carved with Pontius Pilate’s name. That was it. The name Jesus was also a common name, being a derivative of Joshua. I eventually read Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist?. His conclusion was, “yes.” Damn near everything he presents was utter trash. I have a lot of respect for him and have enjoyed his other books, but this one was a garbage. I had to wonder if he wrote it just to placate some people. One such example was some argument from disgrace (I don’t remember his actual wording), no cult would have it’s hero so utterly disgraced and cast down. Um, that only makes the narrative stronger, and there are many myths with gods dying.
I seriously doubt the myths were based around an actual person, I’m very much in the historicized mythology camp. While I can’t deny with 100% certainty that there was no such person and the lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, it still means there is no evidence even for the existence of a historical jesus at all. Reasonable doubt means that I am certain, but I’m open to new, verifiable evidence. After nearly 2000 years of just accepting what we’re told, we are finally able to verify that a lot of what was taken as “gospel” is not factual.
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An unbiased logical analysis reveals more than we know on the surface. Methodology of spreading and selling religion should be a subject of serious study
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