[Dave Lane]

Et tu Jesus?

There is nothing intrinsically improbable in a radical 1st century rabbi called Jesus. And any figure who emerged as a sage or soothsayer in ancient Palestine is unlikely to have left much evidence of his existence.

But whilst we might entertain, perhaps, a few epithets of reported wisdom from such a guru, it would remain extremely doubtful that any attributed words were actually spoken by him, whatever the claims made today for "oral transmission."

Thus, for example, we can accept the report from Josephus (our only source) that a Jesus ben Ananias caused disquiet in Jerusalem with a non-stop doom-laden mantra of ‘woe to the city’ but suspect that Josephus is using poetic licence when he reports this particular Jesus as saying, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against the whole people." (Josephus, Wars 6:3).

Bearing in mind that ancient languages had no symbol for quotation marks and made no distinction between a verbatim account of someone's speech and an accurate paraphrase, Josephus may well be providing a close paraphrase. He was present in Jerusalem at the time (62AD) and wrote his history within about a decade of the event.

Not only was Josephus an eyewitness to much of the drama he described but also had access to Roman imperial archives and military commentaries, the hupomnemata. Josephus can also be checked against archaeological data, and, notwithstanding the occasional exaggeration, what he writes is generally confirmed.


A Fake Witness

As it happens, we have an inordinate amount of Jesus dialogue. Nothing particularly novel or unique is put into his mouth, though much of it is contradictory or obscure. None of it comes from a reliable source.

The Gospel of Thomas (found in a Coptic translation at Nag Hammadi and in Greek fragments at Oxyrhynchus), for example, presents 114 "secret" sayings of Jesus, many of which are rephrased quotations from Jewish scripture and over half resemble dialogue which turns up in the New Testament. Others are simply silly:

"Saying 7: Jesus says: 'Blessed is the lion which a man eats so that the lion becomes a man. But cursed is the man whom a lion eats so that the man becomes a lion!'"
"Saying 114: Simon Peter said to them, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."



Regular Christians, of course, are not very happy with the "5th Gospel" and cast doubt on its "reliability." The sayings are not (yet?) embedded in narrative stories to give them a semblance of historical reality and no miracles are mentioned. "Fake teachings, invented by the Gnostics" is the cry.

But does wrapping epithets of folk wisdom into a series of "incidents" and "encounters" – even with a miracle thrown in for good measure – make a fraud any less a fraud? Jesus supposedly spoke in Aramaic but the gospels were written in Greek. Literal translation from one language to another inevitably breaks down at numerous points. Not surprisingly the scholars of the Jesus Seminar dismissed more than eighty per cent of the godman's words as invention.


Who Says?

Who would have noted anything "Jesus of Nazareth" said before he emerged as a bona fide spiritual leader? Yet Luke (2.48,49) quotes the godman at the age of 12 in the "temple incident".

Ok, so let's grant that after her son made the big time Mary becomes the proud mum, full of anecdotes about her illustrious offspring ... Maybe she even reminisced about traipsing off to Bethlehem, even Egypt.

But Mary isn't everywhere. Matthew 3 reports dialogue between the godman and John the Baptist (let alone a voice from heaven!) in the wilderness of Judaea. Only when the Baptist gets imprisoned does JC choose his disciples so they wouldn't have been present either. So where does this little story originate, other than in the fertile mind of the gospel writer?

Ok, let's concede "unknown and unstated bystanders" run off to tell the tale ... In fact, we have to rely on such hearsay again and again: JC's night time chat with Nicodemus, his conversation with a Samaritan woman, when his disciples are off shopping, etc., etc.

But we're still not out of the woods. On several occasions the gospel writers quite specifically report Jesus’ conversations when neither they nor any other humans were present.

Who would have had the faintest idea of what Jesus said when he was on his own? For example, chapter 17 of the Gospel of John is entirely taken up with a monologue addressed by a solitary Jesus to God himself.

Matthew (4.3,10) tells of JC in the wilderness and having conversations with Satan.

Now how would Matthew know what was said? Are we to imagine Jesus reminisced, "Hey guys, one time I was in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights and guess who showed up ... ?"

If we take this step we may as well dream up the whole nine yards ...


Write your own Jesus Lore!

The gospels provide detailed "Jesus action" for the last year or so of his life but are deafeningly silent about the other 30-odd years. 90% of the godman's biography is missing.

No problem! Taking a lead from Holy Mother Church, creative religious fraudsters have had a grand time colouring in the missing years.

If you like, Jesus travelled with Joseph of Arimathea to Britain to learn druidic lore at Glastonbury. He even built a hut with his own hands.

Or if you prefer, our hero went off to India to spend 17 years as both a student and teacher of Buddhist and Hindu holy men. They affectionately called him Issa.

Other options involve Tibet, Japan and, if you're a Mormon, America.

Why not have Jesus visit your own home town?

In days of lore, a man who never existed can not only be anything, he can be anywhere!