NON-BIBLICAL WITNESSES TO THE WEAK EVIDENCE FOR THE TRUTH OF THE JESUS STORY AND BY EXTENSION HIS EXISTENCE

Here are non-biblical witnesses that Jesus lived before the first century and was a man of perfect mystery and therefore that there was nothing but flimsy evidence for him if any.

The Talmud says that Pinhas, the priest and grandson of Aaron who was the brother of Moses killed the man we know to be Jesus. We know that this Pinhas must be that person for the Talmud would not record a forgotten and unimportant person without clarification especially when there was a Pinhas in the Old Testament. It speaks of him as if he were somebody we can find out about so this must be the biblical Pinhas. This puts Jesus’ existence at fourteen centuries before the time given by the New Testament. The Koran says that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a sister of Moses because it calls her the sister of Aaron (Sura 19:28). Sura 3:5 says that Mary and Aaron had the same father. The gospel Mary had nothing in common with Aaron for she was not even a member of the priestly line. The Koran would say if it did not mean a literal sister so literal sister it is. The book never places Jesus in the time designated in the New Testament. The Koran though late is evidence for a tradition against the Christian one that said Jesus lived in the first century. It preserves a tradition that merely slips out of the Talmud. Muhammad would not have had the intelligence to discover that slip so the information came from another source.

There is a scripture called Melchizidek which was found at Nag Hammadi in 1945. It claims to record revelations given to this priest of Abraham’s time and it claims that Melchizidek was Jesus Christ. Their alleged author was killed by crucifixion and rose from the dead. The hostile angelic powers did this to him according to what a group of people said to him after he came back from the dead and was addressed as Melchizidek. Nobody knows when this book was written but when it predicts the coming of the heretics who will deny that Christ had real human body it may date to the first century. It lists Old Testament figures and puts Melchizidek right after Noah therefore it says that Jesus Christ lived at the time of Abraham – long before the birth of Moses. The existence of a Jesus who lived that long ago would be doubtful.
 
Tatian who composed a harmony of the four gospels in the middle of the second century argued with the Greeks that God becoming a man was not ridiculous because their own Gods became man. But these Gods were mythical and the Greeks he contended with didn’t mean any of it literally so unless Tatian believed that the gospels were only true as myths not as history only then can what he said make sense (The Silent Jesus on the WWW). Tatian told his pagan critics that they should believe in his Christian religion because it makes up stories about Jesus its god just like they do (The Second Century Apologists, http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/century.htm).

Theophilus of Antioch who may have been the Theophilus for whom the Gospel of Luke was written was unable to give Autolycus an example of a man who rose from the dead (The Silent Jesus). Certainly he believed that Jesus rose but believed that there was no earthly evidence for it but only the testimony of faith inspired by God. What he was looking for was something to persuade this man that it was not only a truth revealed by God but a historical one but he had nothing. He rejected the gospels as having apologetic value for those who wanted proof of miracles and prophecy and men coming back from the dead. He rejected the most important evidence for the existence of Jesus and that makes him as good as a person who denied the existence of Jesus outright.
 
Conclusion
 
There is no independent evidence that Jesus existed.  That on its own could mean that we should be agnostic about him. The evidence that Jesus did not exist is stronger than that he did exist. And the evidence for his existence is spurious and worthless. And whatever has the ring of truth makes sense only as been borrowed from the lives of real but very different persons. It is mad to expect people to suffer and die for him because of these facts though the gospels and the Christian religion demand it. My book, They Hid the Four Gospels, gives further proof that the gospel story was not known in the early years or even thought of.
 
The most convincing evidence shows that Jesus never existed. The evidence that he did is useless and is largely make-believe. The evidence that he didn’t is authenticated by the fact that it is more like accidental slips which makes it totally convincing. This is the biggest secret the world has ever had, the most important man to supposedly walk on this world in fact never lived.
 
WORKS CONSULTED

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Asking them Questions, Various, Oxford University Press, London, 1936
Belief and Make-Believe, GA Wells, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1991
Concise Guide to Today’s Religions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks, 1983
Did Jesus Exist? GA Wells, Pemberton, London, 1988
Did Jesus Exist? John Redford, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1986
Documents of the Christian Church, edited by Henry Bettenson, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979
Early Christian Writings, Maxwell Staniforth Editor, Penguin, London, 1988
Encyclopaedia of Heresies and Heretics, Leonard George, Robson Books, London, 1995
Encyclopaedia of Unbelief, Volume 1, Ed Gordon Stein, (Ed) Prometheus Books, New York, 1985
Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
Fundamentalism and the Word of God, JI Packer, Inter Varsity Press, Leicester, 1996
Handbook to the Controversy With Rome, Volume 1, Karl Von Hase, The Religious Tract Society, London, 1906
He Walked Among Us, Josh McDowell and Bill Wilson, Alpha Cumbria, 2000
In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1996
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Jesus, AN Wilson, Flamingo, London, 1993
Jesus and the Goddess, The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Thorsons, London, 2001
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Jesus – One Hundred Years Before Christ, Professor Alvar Ellegard Century, London, 1999
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Jesus Hypotheses, V Messori, St Paul Publications, Slough, 1977
Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten, Element, Dorset, 1994
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Jesus the Evidence, Ian Wilson, Pan, London, 1985
Jesus the Magician, Morton Smith, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1978
Jesus under Fire, Edited by Michael F Wilkins and JP Moreland, Zondervan Publishing House, Michigan, 1995
Lectures and Replies, Thomas Carr, Archbishop of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1907
Let’s Weigh the Evidence, Barry Burton, Chick Publications, Chino, CA, 1983
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Putting Away Childish Things, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1994
Runaway World, Michael Green, IVP, London, 1974
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Saint Saul, Donald Harman Akenson, Oxford University Press, New York, 2000
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Why I Believe Jesus Lived, C G Colly Caldwell, Guardian of Truth, Kentucky
 
The WWW

Who is GA Wells? Rev Dr Gregory S. Neal
www.errantskeptics.org/G_A_Wells.htm

The Silent Jesus
www.askwhy.co.uk/awcnotes/cn4/0325SilentJesus.html#Justin

Apollonius the Nazarene, The Historical Apollonius versus the Historical Jesus
www.apollonius.net/bernard1e.html

Why Did the Apostles Die? Dave Matson,
 www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1997/4Why97.html
 
The “Historical” Jesus by Acharya S
www.truthbeknown.com/historicaljc.htm

How Did the Apostles Die?
www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1997/4/4front97.html

History’s Troubling Silence About Jesus, Lee Salisbury
www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=102

Steven Carr discusses the Christian and apostolic martyrs
www.bowness.demon.co.uk/martyrs.htm
www.bowness.demon.co.uk/martyrs2.htm

Challenging the Verdict
A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ
http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/CTVExcerptsOne.htm
http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/CTVExcerptsTwo.htm
http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/CTVExcerptsThree.htm#Twelve

The Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, Peter Kirby
http://home.earthlink.net/~kirby/

The Martyrdoms: A Response, Peter Kirby
www.bowness.demon.co.uk/martyrs3.htm

A Sacrifice in Heaven,
http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/supp09.htm

The Evolution of Jesus of Nazareth
http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/partthre.htm

The Jesus of History, a Reply to Josh McDowell by Gordon Stein
 www.infidels.org/library/modern/gordon_stein/Jesus.html

Josh McDowell’s Evidence for Jesus – Is It Reliable?, by Jeffrey J Lowder www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/chap5.html

A Reply to JP Holding’s “Shattering” of My Views on Jesus
www.infidels.org/secular_web/new/2000/march.html

Robert M Price, Christ a Fiction
www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/fiction.html

Earliest Christianity G A Wells
www.infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/earliest.html

The Second Century Apologists
http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/century.htm

Existence of Jesus Controversy, Rae West
www.homeusers.prestel.co.uk/littleton/gm1_jesu.htm

Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story by Richard Carrier
www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/index.shtml

Jesus Conference,
www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_sd/jconf_hall.html
 
Jesus Conference,
www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/jconf_stuckenbruck.html
 
The Testament of Levi Concerning the Priesthood and Arrogance
www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-08/anf08-07.htm#P378_53868.

Sherlock Holmes Style Search for the Historical Jesus
www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/bp/890/history.html
 
The Ascension of Isaiah
www.earth-history.com/sacred-ascension-Isaiah.htm

Apollonius of Tyana: The Monkey of Christ? The Church Patriarchs, Robertino Solarion www.apollonius.net/patriarchs.html

What About the Discovery of Q? Brad Bromling
www.ApologeticsPress.org
 
Wells without Water, Psychological Buffoonry from the Master of the Christ-Myth, James Patrick Holding
www.tektonics.org/JPH_WW.html

Critique: Scott Bidstrp [sic] on The Case for Christ by James Patrick Holding
www.tektonics.org/bidstrup02.html

GA Wells Replies to Criticism of his Books on Jesus
www.infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/errant.html

The Ossuary Scam: A Critical Analysis of the “James” Ossuary
http://www.atrueword.com/index.php/article/articleprint/15/-1/1/

The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, Acharya S
www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htm
 
The Historical Jesus
http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/index.html
 
BIBLE VERSION USED
 
The Amplified Bible
The King James Version