Jesus Never Existed

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Jesus Never Existed

Epistles

Many scholars attempt “chronologies” of the life of Paul, yet Acts of the Apostles is a naive fantasy and the Pauline letters of themselves provide few clues in time or place.  Bringing Paul’s epistles seamlessly into the story of the church proves to be an impossible task, for collectively the letters offer no continuous narrative and no one has any real idea of the sequence of their composition. Hence the enduring “uncertainty” in the origin of the letters and their stark incompatibility with the “authorised” early history of the faith.

Pious reflection and wishful thinking assemble the epistles into the “life” of the apostle, delicately extracting a few perceived “facts” from the embarrassing mythology of Acts, as pegs on which to hang the garments. Yet the epistles are themselves full of hyperbole, the inane and the wondrous. Paul, no less than Peter, struts across a stage that exists only in the dreams of those who would speak in his name and rule with his authority. Myth is not truth.

Letters Home
 
A collection of purported “letters” – twenty one in all – augments the fable of Jesus contained in the Gospels. The arrangement of the anthology within the New Testament is not chronological but, for the most part, is by descending order of length, just like another famous collection of pious pontification, the surahs of the Koran! Most of the letters are addressed to churches rather than individuals, a clear indication that they are not real letters at all. Another clue that they are in fact theology masquerading as correspondence is the sheer length of several of them – “Romans”, for example, is longer than many ancient books. All of the epistles are troubled by inconsistency and anachronism.
 
Together with the book of Acts, the epistles serve a crucial purpose: they provide a bridge between the pageant in Palestine set out in the Gospels and the emergent churches of the late 2nd century. The letters tie, if not the saviour himself, then a few of the supporting actors (James, Peter, John, Jude and above all, Paul) to the churches where the real world “Church Fathers” first staked their claim to heaven’s secrets and their own profane authority. The very existence of purported “letters” buttress the myth of a unified church. The epistles “proved” their churches legitimate, validated the priestly claims to “pastoral authority” and endorsed the episcopal right to rule as servants of Christ.
 
As with the Gospels, “tradition” rather than history ascribes authorship to all of the so-called epistles and places them (with some difficulty) in the historical framework. Precisely when they were written, by whom they were written, and where they were written, remains a matter of endless speculation. Always the orthodox intent is to place the epistles within the purported lifetime of the apostles, an infinite loop of pious logic: the apostles date the epistles and the epistles date the apostles.
 
As it stands, we have no copy of a New Testament letter earlier than the 3rd century, that is, nothing that pre-dates the fierce sectarian conflicts and acrimonious doctrinal battles of the 2nd century – a time when “pseudepigraphy” and bogus apostolic writings were primary weapons in the war of “Christianities”.
 
 
Bold, Catholic and Fake
 
 Epistles of Peter, James, John, and Jude
 
“Love NOT the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.’ – 1 John 2.15.
 
 
Several of the New Testament epistles are known as “Catholic” because there is no pretense that they are correspondence to an individual or even an individual church. They are addressed to the “whole church”. Many authorities regard these seven works as “pseudepigraphical” (in plain English, fake). Put aside the distorting lens of Christian faith and it becomes obvious why: they belong in that period of fractious debate that characterised Christianity of the 2nd not the 1st century.
 
 
1 & 2 Peter, Jude
 
“The two letters of Peter are damned by their style and by their references to Paul’s collected letters and pagan persecution.”
– Robin Lane Fox (The Unauthorized Version, p136)
 
 
Just what did Peter,”Prince of the Apostles”, record for posterity? Some welcome insights into the early days with his Lord? Perhaps an allusion to his faux pas in the Garden of Gethsemane or a reminiscence of that awesome resurrection appearance? Not a bit of it. “Peter” writes as a church manager, anxious to keep the organisation under control.
 
1 Peter is not so much a letter as a baptismal sermon, written in a Greek milieu. It claims to originate in “the church that is at Babylon”, understood as a coded reference to Rome, and apparently is addressed to Jewish Christians (“strangers”) scattered across Rome’s Asian provinces. They are a “chosen generation”, facing “manifold temptations”. Submission is the watchword. The brethren are urged to be “as obedient children”(1.14), as “newborn babes” (2.2), to “submit to every ordinance of man … unto governors … for the Lord’s sake.” (2.13,14). Slaves are urged to be subject to masters “with all fear” (2.18), wives to be subject to husbands “chaste and with fear” (3.2), the younger to “submit to the elder” (5.5). All this subservience, it seems, is in the sight of God “of great price.” The end of all things is “at hand” (4.7).
 
Yet none of this can originate with an “unlearned and ignorant” fisherman called Peter (Acts 4.13). Its excellent Greek, use of the Septuagint for scriptural references, including a description of JC’s death drawn from Isaiah 53 – odd for an eye-witness! – betrays a different origin. The reference to Rome as “Babylon” is an obvious anachronism (Rome was only so-called after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 yet Peter we are told died at the hands of Nero around 64! 1 Peter is late and fake.
 
2 Peter purports to be the last testament of a man facing a martyr’s death (so why doesn’t Peter feature in Paul’s “prison letters”?). Its intent is t

Earliest extant “epistles”?
3rd century copies!

Chester Beatty Papyrus “P46” – Romans

The conventional claim is that the earliest Christian writings are the letters of St Paul, and these are said to date from between 48 and 60 AD.

But NO original documents exist and the authenticity of Paul’s epistles has been doubted since the 18th century.

The earliest copies extant are from the 3rd century, the trophies of a 1930s American copper millionaire, Chester Beatty. Beatty bought parts of eleven biblical codices from dealers in Cairo. One codex contains the four gospels and Acts, another the letters of Paul, and a third a late 3rd century copy of Revelation.

Significantly, the Pauline letters in the “P46” papyri are arranged in an unusual order and exclude the pastorals.

Was the Pauline corpus still a work-in-progress in the 3rd century?

Hebrews: Undisputed fake


” The author has been traditionally identified with Paul … However, it is clear that the attribution of the letter to Paul (first by Clement of Alexandria in the late 2nd century) was promoted to gain acceptance within the canon….

But it is clear that the real author is unknown…

Tertullian, writing about AD 220, attributes it to Barnabas but this is because he saw a similarity to the spurious Epistle of Barnabas, which is an extravagantly anti-Jewish tract.”

– B. Linders, The Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews (Cambridge, 1994, p15,16)

 

Luther opined that the author of Hebrews was Apollos, Calvin thought Luke.

Why not have a guess yourself?

Taking the epistle?

“The text which has been misused to support a literal view of the entire Bible’s inspiration is itself the work of an author who has lied about his identity.”

– Robin Lane Fox (The Unauthorized Version, p136)

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”

– 2 Timothy 3.16.

Temple goes up in flame

“So Titus retired into the tower of Antonia, and resolved to storm the temple the next day, early in the morning, with his whole army, and to encamp round about the holy house. But as for that house, God had, for certain, long ago doomed it to the fire; and now that fatal day was come …“

– Josephus, Wars 6.4.5.

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