Reasons I Doubt the Divinity of Christ

Reasons I Doubt the Divinity of Christ

The man barely traveled never leaving Judea. You’d think God would want to get the word out to the rest of the world.
He never preached to Gentiles, aka non-Jews. Thus Christianity is actually a perversion of his preachings if one were to believe the biblical accounts of Christ. It was Peter and Paul who reached out to the rest of the world. Thus Jesus did want anything to do with us.
The crucifixion had to be the most anti-climactic ways of ending the story. Dies in less than three hours? This is the Son of God? Wouldn’t it have been more impressive if God had protected his son? Maybe some thunder and lightning as “The Christ” used the Force to throw his warders off. Not dying like a pussy in record time (No one has ever died in three hours via crucifixion. It’s impossible).
Jesus has no history. No historians of the time mention Jesus. Suetonius (65-135) does not. Pliny the Younger only mentions Christians (Paulists) with no comment of Jesus himself. Tacitus mentions a Jesus, but it is likely that after a century of Christian preaching Tacitus was just reacting to these rumours, or probably talking about one of the many other Messiah's of the time. Josephus, a methodical, accurate and dedicated historian of the time mentions John the Baptist, Herod, Pilate and many aspects of Jewish life but does not mention Jesus. (The Testimonium Flavianum has been shown to be a third century Christian fraud). He once mentions a Jesus, but gives no information other than that he is a brother of a James. Jesus was not an unusual name, either. Justus, another Jewish historian who lived in Tiberias (near Kapernaum, a place Jesus frequented) did not mention Jesus nor any of his miracles. It is only in the evidence of later writers, writing about earlier times, that we find a Jesus.
The heirs of his priesthood, the Pope and the Church, do not readily deliver miracles like in olden times nor do they speak to God. They don’t even speak to God!!! Aren’t they supposed to have an “in” with the guy? To perform a miracle one is granted sainthood because it is considered rare, rather laughable since God is supposed to grant power to those that follow Him and preach his Word. And if the priests of God can’t speak to Him then what separates them from us?
How readily the Apostles of Christ were wiped out after his death. Doesn’t God defend any of his people?
The fact that Christianity as we know it is nowhere near what Jesus originally preached. Pagan holidays co-opted, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches creating their own demi-gods (saints), the increasing modernizing and secular nature of the Churches (Hell is rarely mentioned and believed in, demons not thought to be real, Satan even doubted). Only through changes and flexibility, not by God’s will to save humanity, did the faith become a worldwide phenomenon.
The fact that Jesus repeatedly never claimed to be the Son of God (in some texts). Maybe he realized the depravity of deity. The man was a philosopher. The real Jesus was not religious. In fact, the biggest problem He had was with religious people: Those who saw holiness as a matter of tradition and ritual rather than of the heart. The real Jesus never asked his disciples to be religious, but instead to open their lives and hearts to the real power of the living God.
· Possibility that Jesus was merely a cult leader. A very common belief, accepted (in part if not in full) by Christian liberals is that someone who claimed to be a prophet and messiah (there were many such people appearing amongst the Jews) is the historical Jesus. His life story has been intermingled with older pagan myths, and it is very hard for us to see his true life or message to the extent that we have little or no information about him, he is effectively without historical basis because the real figure is obscured by the mythical one. God-Man myths were very popular and pre-dated the God-Man of Jesus by thousands of years. They all shared a common format which (or "vegetation myths") is that the Son of God has 12 disciples, and is betrayed and killed by a traitor. Popular myths such as the virgin birth, miracles, curing the blind and ill are also familiar and common aspects of these myths. As such, such events were assumed to be true of the historical Jesus. These myths became interwoven amongst the stories of someone who might have been real. Many Jewish sayings became attributed to this character, and sayings of John the Baptist too. Stories about the disciples were assumed to be true and not simply symbolic stories as the original gnostic Christians believed. Once people wrote pseudipigraphically under the names of the disciples people accepted them as true too. The rest is history, but initially is based on mistaken pseudo-historical accounts.

· Jesus was a Mysteries Religion man. Perhaps the most historically correct of all the theories is the apparently true theory that Christianity started out as much more Gnostic than it became from the 2nd century onwards, and the stories of Jesus and the disciples match those of other Mystery religions and Pagan religions precisely because Christianity was another Mystery Religion. Literalist Christianity as we know it was the Outer Mysteries of this spiritual religion. It explains why the historical centres of Christianity were all gnostic when literalist Christians went back to research the past, and why so many Pagan god-man elements are part of Christianity. It also explains why none of the scholars of the time mention Jesus or the miracles around his life, because even the Christians themselves knew that they were symbolic stories, not actual events. Only later, and this is something Paul himself complains about, did the masses accept the Outer Mysteries of Christianity without accepting the true, deeper spiritual meanings of the story.

History led up to Christianity, it didn’t simply appear out of the blue. "Elements that were common in Pagan mystery of religions include much of the religious content of Christianity. All elements of Jesus' life such as the events around his birth and death and ministry were also said of other god-men of the time. Peripheral elements such as there being twelve disciples were similarly present in other more ancient religions and sometimes with an astonishing amount of duplication. First century critics of Christianity voiced these accusations that Christianity was nothing but another copy of common religions, they are not new accusations.
All the actual sayings and teachings of Jesus were also not new, and much of the time speeches attributed to Jesus are more like collections of Jewish and Pagan sayings. Even distinctive texts like the Sermon on the Mount are not unique. If we remove all the content that Jesus could not have heard and repeated himself, there is nothing else left. If we remove the supernatural elements of Christianity that are copies of already existing thought and religion, there is nothing left which is unique! Even much of the sayings of subsequent Christians is not unique; Jesus appears to not have taught anyone anything that was not already present in the common culture of the time. This shows us that not only did Christianity follow on, as expected, from previous thought in history but that we do not even need to believe in God or supernatural events in order to account for the history of Christianity. Stephen Hodge very usefully lists many of the similarities found in the Dead Sea Scrolls to the teachings and organisation of Jewish Christianity. He also concludes that these Jewish documents make the teachings and appearance of Jewish Christianity less revolutionary."

"Progression of literalist Christianity" by Vexen 2003 May 12

"... the collection is really an invaluable cross-section of religious material that reveals for the first time just how rich and varied Jewish spiritual life was at that time. The scrolls offer an intellectual and devotional landscape into which Jesus and his movement can be placed. No longer does Jewish Christianity seem an inexplicable, isolated occurrence.

In other words, the true value of the Dead Sea Scrolls is that they help provide a genuine context for what was to become Christianity."

"All biblical scholars agree that, apart from their intrinsic value, the sectarian scrolls are of tremendous importance as background information to the social and religious conditions in Judaea that led to the rise of Christianity.

[There are] subtle implications that can be derived from the Qumran texts, for they not only provide interesting parallels to Christian concepts and practice but tend to reduce the uniqueness of the Yeshua movement."

"The Dead Sea Scrolls" by Stephen Hodge, Introduction p3-4 & Conclusion p217-218

"The only pre-Christian man to be buried and resurrected and deified in his own lifetime, that I know of, is the Thracian god Zalmoxis (also called Salmoxis or Gebele'izis), who is described in the mid-5th-century B.C.E. by Herodotus (4.94-96), and also mentioned in Plato's Charmides (156d-158b) in the early-4th-century B.C.E. According to the hostile account of Greek informants, Zalmoxis buried himself alive, telling his followers he would be resurrected in three years, but he merely resided in a hidden dwelling all that time. His inevitable "resurrection" led to his deification, and a religion surrounding him, which preached heavenly immortality for believers, persisted for centuries.

The only case, that I know, of a pre-Christian god actually being crucified and then resurrected is Inanna (also known as Ishtar), a Sumerian goddess whose crucifixion, resurrection and escape from the underworld is told in cuneiform tablets inscribed c. 1500 B.C.E., attesting to a very old tradition."

"Kersey Graves' The World's Sixteen Crucified Savior" criticized by Richard Carrier



Jesus and the other God-men are personifications of the Sun. "The reason why all these narratives are so similar, with a godman who is crucified and resurrected, who does miracles and has 12 disciples, is that these stories were based on the movements of the sun through the heavens, an astrotheological development that can be found throughout the planet because the sun and the 12 zodiac signs can be observed around the globe. In other words, Jesus Christ and all the others upon whom this character is predicated are personifications of the sun, and the Gospel fable is merely a rehash of a mythological formula (the "Mythos," as mentioned above) revolving around the movements of the sun through the heavens.
For instance, many of the world's crucified godmen have their traditional birthday on December 25th. This is because the ancients recognized that (from an earthcentric perspective) the sun makes an annual descent southward until December 21st or 22nd, the winter solstice, when it stops moving southerly for three days and then starts to move northward again. During this time, the ancients declared that "God's sun" had "died" for three days and was "born again" on December 25th. The ancients realized quite abundantly that they needed the sun to return every day and that they would be in big trouble if the sun continued to move southward and did not stop and reverse its direction. Thus, these many different cultures celebrated the "sun of God's" birthday on December 25th. The following are the characteristics of the "sun of God":

The sun "dies" for three days on December 22nd, the winter solstice, when it stops in its movement south, to be born again or resurrected on December 25th, when it resumes its movement north.
In some areas, the calendar originally began in the constellation of Virgo, and the sun would therefore be "born of a Virgin."
The sun is the "Light of the World."
The sun "cometh on clouds, and every eye shall see him."
The sun rising in the morning is the "Savior of mankind."
The sun wears a corona, "crown of thorns" or halo.
The sun "walks on water."
The sun's "followers," "helpers" or "disciples" are the 12 months and the 12 signs of the zodiac or constellations, through which the sun must pass.
The sun at 12 noon is in the house or temple of the "Most High"; thus, "he" begins "his Father's work" at "age" 12.
The sun enters into each sign of the zodiac at 30°; hence, the "Sun of God" begins his ministry at "age" 30.
The sun is hung on a cross or "crucified," which represents its passing through the equinoxes, the vernal equinox being Easter, at which time it is then resurrected.
***

Who were the first Christians?
1.) Ebionite Christians were the true Christians: Aramaic-speakers like Jesus and his apostles, they would have been the Jewish witnesses to Jesus' ministry and preaching. From this starting point, Jesus' teachings spread. They also, however, spread from Saul of Damascus, who renamed himself Paul and who preached an anti-Ebionite version of Christianity for the gentiles, which was much easier to follow and more popular.

2.) Gnostic Christians: With stories, myths and beliefs that are exactly the same as Christian ones in many of the little details, gnostic beliefs manage to pre-date Christians ones by over 200 years. They understood what the stories of the NT really meant. Jesus didn't really exist, but was a collection of such earlier stories, rewritten in Greek, with Greek names. This is the approach taken by historians such as Freke & Gandy.

3.) Pauline / Roman Christians: When the Roman-backed instance of Christianity went in search of the ancient centres of Christianity, they discovered to their horror that the Ebionites and Gnostics pre-dated them. Their un-Christian answer was to edit verses, burn books, arrest and harass the other poverty-stricken Christians until no opposition was left. The form of Christianity that we have inherited from the Roman Empire is far from what Christianity originally was.