Tag: Christianity

The Religion Paul Invented

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Paul’s reasoning

How did Christianity become the baffling religion it is today? A cloud of obscurity surrounds the first decades of the Christian movement. A few things we do know. Jesus started Christianity, but Paul of Tarsus, better known as Paul the Apostle, turned Christianity into the religion we know today. Paul was first a Pharisee who devoutly observed Jewish religious laws before becoming a follower of Christ. One thing we should know about Paul is that the scriptures were precious to him, far more valuable than the facts. Truth, in his view, is thus not according to the facts like Jesus taught, but according to the scriptures.

It is a matter of the utmost importance as it explains why Christianity has become the religion it is today. In Paul’s view, everything about Christianity should have a scriptural foundation. Paul’s education as a Pharisee is probably the reason why. We shouldn’t underestimate the consequences. Probably, everything about Jesus that is ‘according to the scriptures’ is a fabrication. The label ‘according to the scriptures’ should serve as a red flag, signalling ‘invented by Paul.’ Hence, ‘Jesus rose on the third day according to the scriptures’ means ‘Paul made up that Jesus rose on the third day.’

Christianity began as a small Jewish sect founded by an end-time prophet who claimed to be the Messiah. Many Jews awaited a Messiah but expected a strong leader who would liberate the Jewish nation from Roman occupation. Jesus didn’t live up to their hopes, and the Romans had him crucified. That wasn’t the end of Christianity, but just the beginning. Likely, he later appeared to some of his followers, thus demonstrating that he lived eternally and was the Son of God. It is hard to see how Christianity could have survived otherwise. That gave the Christians new hope and inspired them to carry on, which is the origin of Pentecost and the belief in the Holy Spirit.

Paul, whose name was first Saul, was initially a fervent persecutor of Jesus’ followers. When travelling to Damascus, he received a vision. According to his own words, a bright light flashed from heaven, knocking him to the ground. He heard a voice he identified as Jesus accusing Saul of persecuting him. Today, we would call the experience a psychosis. The encounter temporarily blinded Saul. His companions led him to Damascus. There, Ananias, a Christian disciple in Damascus, restored Saul’s sight and baptised him.

It was a turning point in his life and an event that shaped the future of humankind. It was a personal calling. His response was not to consult any human being (Galatians 1:16). In other words, he didn’t go for a reality check. Instead, he went his own way and started preaching among the Gentiles (Galatians 1:15-16). Paul preached his own distinct gospel, which he claimed was revealed to him. He didn’t meet with most of the other Apostles for fourteen years (Galatians 2:1-10). He saw Simon Peter after three years, as well as Jesus’ brother (Galatians 1:18-19). His mission succeeded. Indeed, God works in mysterious ways. In The Triumph of Christianity, Bart Ehrman attempts to reconstruct Paul’s reasoning, the foundation of Christian thought.

His vision proved to Paul that Jesus still lived as his followers claimed. Jesus had died, so he was resurrected, Paul reasoned. And therefore, he must be the long-awaited Messiah. That posed a few theological problems for Paul. The Romans had humiliated Jesus and executed him. So, why did Jesus have to die? Paul came up with an answer. In many religions, including Judaism during Passover, people sacrifice animals to please the gods.1 The Gospels agree that Jesus died either on the day of Preparation for the Passover or on Passover itself. Now, that doesn’t seem like a coincidence, so that pushed Paul’s thinking in this direction. Paul must have known that Jesus believed himself to be Adam. Adam led us out of Paradise, and Jesus would return us to it.

And so, Paul reasoned that Jesus came to undo what Adam had done. The Jewish religion doesn’t place such a dramatic weight on the Fall. It definitely wouldn’t justify human sacrifice, or worse, murdering the Son of God. To make the argument work, Paul inflated the significance of the Fall to epic proportions. That is why Christianity, contrary to Judaism and Islam, places such an emphasis on sin. Paul turned Jesus into the sacrificial Lamb of God. In his view, we are all sinners because Adam was, but Jesus saved us by sacrificing himself. It is a novel idea not found in the Jewish religion and scriptures. The Jewish religion opposes human sacrifice, and it is even blasphemous to think that God would require it, so this is alien to Jews, which made Paul’s innovation truly remarkable.

The Lamb of God

The sacrificial lamb is a revolutionary new type of saviour, someone who, by his death, provides redemption to his followers. According to Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the disciples shared bread and wine during the Last Supper. And Jesus said, ‘Take it; this is my body,’ and, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.’ It is outside the Jewish tradition and part of the sacrificial lamb imagery. So, did Jesus say these words, or did Paul invent them? Probably the latter. Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 11:23-26),

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

It begins with, ‘For I received from the Lord.’ In other words, the origin of this tradition lies in Paul’s imagination rather than in Jesus’ words at the Last Supper. It is unlikely that Jesus laid that out in detail during Paul’s psychosis. It is therefore noteworthy that the Gospel of John fails to mention it. The Gospel of John comes from a separate tradition outside Paul’s influence, and its sources may include an eyewitness account. In the first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes (1 Corinthians 15:3-5),

For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Simon Peter and then to the twelve Apostles.

It is another for-I-received sentence, so many scholars believe these things have been passed on to him, possibly by fellow Christians as a creed, and that it reflects the earliest Christian beliefs.2 However, the repeated reference to the scriptures makes the supposed creed suspect of being a product of Paul’s creative ingenuity. He has proven himself capable of writing a beautiful poem about love, so it wouldn’t be that hard for him. A passage in Isaiah can explain the ‘died for our sins according to the scriptures’ (Isaiah 53:4-6),

Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

You need not be too imaginative to apply this to Jesus, even though Isaiah had someone else in mind. Concerning the raising on the third day, Hosea 6:2 may come to assistance, as it says, ‘On the third day he will restore us.’ The larger the body of scriptures, the easier cherry-picking becomes. What comes next is even more unbelievable. Jesus supposedly appeared to more than five hundred at the same time. Paul was such a fantasist that it is unlikely to have happened.

Paul tried to answer the question of why God made Jesus sacrifice himself, which is a profoundly troubling question for a Jew. As a religious Jew, he looked for the answer in the scriptures, so facts were of secondary importance. Facts were never that important in religion, and are something scientists may care about. And humans are creatures who live by stories rather than facts. So, think of it as doing God’s work rather than lying. That was probably how Paul viewed it as well. And for good reason, because his diligent work united the early Church, a tremendous achievement.

And so, we should be cautious in concluding that Jesus believed that he had to die for our sins. The Gospel of John fails to mention that Jesus died for our sins, even though John the Baptist calls Jesus ‘Lamb of God’ twice in the first chapter. It is a modification. The other Gospels don’t mention this when describing the same event. It is an image from Pauline theology, so there is no chance that John the Baptist said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.’ And despite the author of John supporting the claim that Jesus died for our sins in his letter, that could be telling. After all, the letter expresses the author’s opinion, which Pauline theology could have influenced, while the Gospel of John is his redacted account of the evidence handed to him.

Jesus’ teachings were another reason that led Paul to believe Jesus had to die for our sins. So, what did Jesus teach? It was the forgiveness of sins. Mark tells us that John the Baptist preached baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and that he baptised Jesus (Mark 1:4-9). These also became Jesus’ teachings. Jews already practised ritual immersion and washing for purification, spiritual cleansing, and as a conversion rite, so John the Baptist operated within an existing tradition.

Jesus began as one of John’s followers, a fact the Gospels don’t mention for obvious reasons. Instead, they say that John was the messenger sent ahead of Christ, thereby fulfilling a prophecy of Isaiah (Mark 1:1-3), which suggests that it is contrived. John the Baptist probably had said something like, ‘Jesus comes to take away our sins’ rather than ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.’ Nevertheless, it gives a possible answer to the question of why Jesus had to die, so the conclusion Paul arrived at is not far-fetched.

It leaves us with the question of why Jesus willingly went to the cross. Mark tells that Jesus was deeply distressed and troubled. He prayed that the cup would be taken from him (Mark 14:32-36), which is a very different prayer from the one in John (John 17), where he hopes to await great glory. Many scholars think it is a later embellishment to explain that Jesus died in accordance with the will of God. Such an explanation doesn’t presume an intimate relationship between God and Jesus. And so, it probably was Jesus’ choice, perhaps made under duress. Jesus could have avoided the execution by rescinding his claims of being the Messiah and the Son of God. That would be denying the truth and his mission. Believing himself to be Adam and eternally living, he expected to survive, which emboldened him and strengthened his resolve. And don’t forget what people do for love.

Defining the Christian faith

It must have been God’s plan to save Her/His people this particular way, thus by Jesus sacrificing himself, Paul reasoned further, so observing Jewish religious laws is not critical for your salvation, nor do you have to be a Jew. Jewish religious laws being irrelevant is another truly revolutionary thought for a Pharisee. Prophecies in the Jewish Bible foretold that all the nations would accept the God of the Jews. To Paul, Jesus was the fulfilment of these prophecies. After all, Jesus was Adam, the father of humankind. And from Adam, God made all the nations that inhabit the Earth (Acts 17:26), so Jesus’ message applied to everyone, not just Jews alone. There were already Gentile Christians, and Paul preached to them, so that was his view from the outset. Making them all adhere to Jewish religious law proved ‘a bridge too far’ and could hamper the spread of the religion. Paul then concluded that rejecting false gods and having faith in Jesus would be enough. Paul believed he was God’s missionary to spread the good news.1

Paul was a knowledgeable scholar of the Jewish scriptures, whereas the other Apostles lacked such education. He shaped the beliefs of the early Church and the future Christian religion by establishing the theological foundation of the Christian faith. Paul defined God’s image as the Father, the amalgamation of the Jewish Yahweh and the Christian Mother Goddess. The product of this processing became a hybrid, a Father who can give birth. Jesus also became a hybrid, thus a human who is also godlike. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says, ‘Abba, Father.’ (Mark 14:36) More than a decade before Mark, Paul used that particular phrasing twice (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6). You read Paul’s words in the Gospel of Mark, just like at the Last Supper. Also, ‘The Twelve’ is a quote you can trace back to Paul. Likely, there were no twelve disciples. It took Paul over a decade to work out his new theology, and perhaps also countless sleepless nights.

Around 55 AD, Paul wrote that the woman came from man (1 Corinthians 11:7-8), thereby reasserting the biblical account from Genesis rather than the original Christian account, of which we can still find traces in the Gospel of John. In Galatians, Paul also writes that God sent His Son, who was born of a woman (Galatians 4:4). That Jesus was born of a woman is a statement of the obvious. You don’t need to stress that, even if God is Jesus’ Father. If God were a Father, this factoid could be one of the most uninteresting disclosures of the entire letter. The original Christian teaching, which Paul rejected, was that Jesus was Adam reincarnated, so he was born of God. Paul claimed that Jesus is the Son of God the Father rather than Adam. And so, he was born of a woman rather than God. For once, Paul didn’t lie by stressing that particular factoid. It is also noteworthy that he didn’t write ‘born of a virgin.’ Had he known about the virgin birth, it would have been worth mentioning. By 55 AD, no one still knew of this miracle.

For religious Jews, it was blasphemy to say that God was a woman who married Jesus. And so, it was probably also problematic to many Jewish converts, while non-Jewish converts had no problem with it. The Greek and Roman traditions had several gods and goddesses who had children with humans. For the Greeks and the Romans, God being a woman marrying a man who lives eternally is not that spectacular, while it is unthinkable for Jews. That made uniting the early Church an enormous challenge. To Paul, a former Pharisee, the truth of the scriptures mattered more than the facts. He could dismiss the Christian creation story and change God’s gender. Not having been a firsthand witness and not having spoken much to the other Apostles for the first fourteen years further helped him maintain his independent and particular perspective.

And the facts created problems that Paul’s imagination could solve. In the first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes, ‘It is reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans don’t tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. And you are proud!’ (1 Corinthians 5:1-2). Possibly, a scribe watered down this controversial fragment during copying. The man could have slept with his mother. After all, it is sexual immorality that even pagans don’t tolerate. And the Christians in Corinth took pride in it, a remarkable response. Perhaps they believed this man followed the example of Christ.

Paul’s unique advantage, which placed him in the position to shape Christian theology, was that, apart from being an educated scholar with a dedication to the scriptures, he was not a firsthand witness to the events. To him, reality had to fit the scriptures rather than the other way around. He never met Mary Magdalene and Jesus, and didn’t meet with the other Apostles during the first years of his preaching. It allowed him to develop his theology, independent of the facts.

As a Jew preaching among the Gentiles, he could bridge the gap between the Jewish and the Gentile views. His theology appealed to Jewish Christians because it connected Christianity to the Jewish scriptures and portrayed Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. At the same time, his preaching tours and letter writing provided him with a support base among the Gentile Christians as well, who saw Jesus as godlike. Pauline theology also shares that view. God the Father became the compromise between Yahweh and the Mother.

Paul’s diligent labour provided Christianity with an elaborate theological foundation, and his view could also bring unity within the early Church, so it prevailed. Most people only knew Jesus from stories, and few knew the details, so it was possible to sway opinions with false stories. It is still possible today, even when everyone can check the facts. The outcome of Paul’s intervention was that Christianity became an entirely different religion. Had a close follower of Jesus from 30 AD accidentally run into a time portal and leapt into the future, he wouldn’t have recognised his religion already in 100 AD, let alone today.

Spreading the good news

Paul dedicated his life to spreading the good news that faith in Jesus could save everyone. During his many travels, he founded Christian communities. His mission wasn’t easy. His message caused upheaval, and Jews expelled him from their synagogues several times. But he was determined and worked hard. Paul’s gospel of personal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, which is open to everyone, appears to have caught on. However, it is a most peculiar tiding and not something you would believe if you had grown up in a different tradition, whether you were Jewish or worshipped other deities. And so the success of Christianity begs for a better explanation. Ancient sources indicate that stories about the miracles Christians performed made people convert.1 An example was the healing of a lame man when Paul and Barnabas visited Lystra.

We have to take Paul’s word for it, as he is a likely source. Had we not known Paul as a fantasist, it appears plausible. In other words, it might have happened. In other words, it might have happened. As the story says, Paul had healed the man. The Lycaonians then concluded Paul and Barnabas were gods in human form. The priest of Zeus brought bulls and wreaths to the city gate, as he and the crowd wished to offer sacrifices to them. Paul and Barnabas explained that they were only human and messengers of the good news that the God of the Jews, who had made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them, had decided that all nations should no longer go their own way. And the proof, they said, was that the Jewish God had shown kindness by giving us rain from heaven and crops in their seasons and filling our hearts with joy (Acts 14:8-18). The proof thus was the seasons, the crops and the rains, and, of course, joy in our hearts. The seasons and the crops had always been there, and people had been joyful before, so that didn’t prove much. Hence, it must have been the miracle of healing that made people believe Paul’s unusual message.

Paul’s activities led to a riot in the city of Ephesus. Demetrius, who made silver shrines of the goddess Artemis and brought in a lot of trade for the local businesspeople, realised the consequences of Paul’s good tidings. He called the craftsmen and workers in related occupations together and said, ‘You know, my friends, we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray many people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited and that the goddess herself will be robbed of her divine majesty.’ When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting, ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!’ Soon, the whole city was in an uproar (Acts 19:23-29). A mob seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s travelling companions from Macedonia, and brought them to an assembly in a theatre.

A city clerk managed to quiet the crowd in the theatre. He said, ‘Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? Since these facts are undeniable, you should calm down and not do anything rash. You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. If Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls. They can press charges. If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of what happened today. In that case, we would not be able to account for this commotion since there is no reason for it.’ After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly (Acts 19:35-41). Had it been untrue, then the spread of Christianity would have become a bit harder to explain, but not impossible. More upheavals were to come in the following centuries.

Contending versions of Christianity

During the first centuries, there were several versions of Christianity. It highlights contentious issues, suggesting that early Christian beliefs differ from those of Christianity today. Christianity today is not what it originally was. Likely, the alternative views are closer to the original faith in some aspects. The most well-known deviant groups were the Nazarenes, the Marcionists, the Ebionites, and the Arians:

  • The Nazarenes continued to observe the Jewish religious laws. Jesus didn’t intend to abolish them. It was Paul who came up with that idea.
  • The Marcionists taught that the God of the Gospel is the true Supreme Being as opposed to the evil Jewish God. Indeed, God is not the deity the Jews invented.
  • The Ebionites didn’t believe that Jesus was divine, nor did they think that he was born of a virgin. That is also correct.
  • Arianism emerged around 300 AD. The Arians opposed the doctrine of the Trinity, which was not an original Christian teaching.

Except for the Arians, these groups existed from an early period. Christianity was in flux. That began to change once the Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. Constantine invited all the bishops in the Roman Empire to the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. It was the first effort to create a uniform Christian doctrine. More efforts followed. The Roman state promoted the Church’s official teachings. Consequently, other strains of Christianity faded into obscurity.

The Gospels of the New Testament date from 70 to 100 AD, more than forty years after Jesus preached. Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John did not write the Gospels attributed to them. The Apostles were uneducated Aramaic-speaking Jews, while the authors were Greek-speaking, educated Christians who were not eyewitnesses. Scholars believe Mark, Luke, and Matthew are collections of stories that circulated among early Christians. The author of the Gospel of Luke even says so (Luke 1:1-4).

Whenever someone retells a story, details change, new episodes emerge, and parts get omitted. And the story may become more spectacular. And so, the Gospels likely don’t accurately tell what happened. Several letters in the New Testament have unknown authors, despite claiming to be from Peter, Paul, or another well-known person. Jesus’ brother couldn’t have been the author of the Epistle of James because it contains no inside knowledge about the relationship between God and Jesus. And we don’t have the original texts of the New Testament. The oldest preserved copies date back to the second or third centuries AD. Scholars have used these copies to reconstruct the original texts as much as possible.

Latest revision: 10 October 2025

Featured image: Head of St. Paul. Mosaic in the Archbishop’s Chapel, Ravenna, 5th century AD (public domain)

1. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. Bart D. Ehrman (2018).
2. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher. Bart D. Ehrman (2014). HarperCollins Publishers.

Jesus and Minas Coptic icon dating from 6th or 7th century

From Jesus to Christianity

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Did Jesus exist at all?

The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus believed he had eternal life and a bond with God from the beginning of Creation until the end of time. Christians and Muslims expect him to return. Even though Muslims don’t believe Jesus is the Son of God, they also think he has eternal life and that his mother was a virgin. Remarkably, Muhammad and the Jewish prophets didn’t view themselves as the eternally living Son of God. In other words, Jesus is perhaps the most enigmatic individual in the history of humankind. Some people claim that there is no evidence that Jesus was a real person and that he is a fantasy figure like Spike and Suzy. So, let’s first address the argument that Jesus is a fictional person.

Sources from his era don’t mention him. There is hardly any evidence of Jesus outside the Bible. Jesus was the leader of a small sect, so that is not particularly surprising. The problem with the idea that there never was a Jesus is that it leaves us without a compelling explanation for the existence of Christianity, so that we must seek refuge in more bizarre explanations, like Christianity being a Roman conspiracy to replace Judaism with the Roman emperor cult. The supposed proof is that Jesus Christ shares the initials JC with Julius Caesar, and that both died due to a betrayal. That can’t be a coincidence, so the Christ story is just a refurbished Caesar story, the proponents of this ‘theory’ argue.

They are right that it isn’t a coincidence. However, as an explanation for Christianity, it is pretty imaginative. And it fails to explain nearly everything we can read about Jesus in the Gospels. And so, Jesus did live. But what made him unique? Jesus started a religion that has over two billion followers today. Apart from a historical account, an explanation of his beliefs may help us understand him. That includes his relationship with God, the supposed guy in the sky who is far more powerful than Superman, can do more tricks, and is allegedly all-knowing. But Jesus changed world history more than anyone else, so did that sky dude have a hand in that? It would be strange not to ask that question.

What can we know?

Historians and biblical scholars try to reconstruct what Jesus taught and did. They use historical sources such as the Gospels, but never ask the question that would be strange not to ask. And so, they fail to clarify Jesus’ supposed close relationship with God or why God was his Father. Decades after Jesus allegedly went missing, a few anonymous authors wrote the Gospels. Mark, Matthew and John haven’t written the Gospels attributed to them. The Gospels provide no clue as to who wrote them. Mark, Matthew and John were peasants who spoke Aramaic, while the authors of the Gospels were educated and spoke Greek. Some scholars argue that Christians initially relied on oral traditions and utilised writings that are no longer extant. Oral recounting is notoriously inaccurate. Stories change when retold. Details get lost, and new details get added. They had good reason to think so. Luke begins, stating precisely that (Luke 1:1-4),

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

Luke was not one of the original Apostles, but a companion of Paul (Philemon 24), who was a physician (Colossians 4:14). And so, he could have written the Gospel attributed to him. But we don’t know. Church tradition also holds that the author of Mark wrote down a testimony of Peter. Peter died years before the author of Mark penned the text, but there are reasons to believe that a testimony of Peter was a source the author used, most notably because Peter has a prominent role in the text. Much of this Gospel is plausible given the time and place in which Jesus lived. Mark also discloses things about Jesus that Christians wouldn’t make up because it is embarrassing, such as Jesus’ family claiming he was insane (Mark 3:21). Mark seems to have had access to a reliable source.

There is also evidence of redactions in the New Testament. What to think of Jesus being the bridegroom and the Bride having gone missing? Jesus was married, but we are not supposed to know that. As a result of the confusion, scholars agree on very little about Jesus of Nazareth, except that he lived and preached shortly after 26 AD. His ministry started after John the Baptist had baptised him. Then there was a lot of action, with mystical and sensational statements, including miracles such as healing the sick and multiplying bread and fish, followed by a betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection from the dead, and finally, his disappearance. The Gospels agree on a few things:

  • Jesus performed miracles, such as walking over water, healing the sick, multiplying bread and fish, and raising the dead.
  • Jesus made controversial statements that baffled the Pharisees, so they schemed against him, which eventually led to his crucifixion.
  • Jesus did not take Jewish religious law as seriously as other religious zealots. He had a different message of forgiveness of sins.
  • Jesus did not like hypocrites, for who is without sin? He forgave sinners who repented. Still, he claimed there would be judgment.
  • Jesus was respectful of women. And he held unconventional views on marriage. Few men were up to that task. That goes unexplained.
  • Oh yes, and he called God his Father, and he was God’s son. It was a close and loving relationship. Other prophets weren’t like that.

Who was Jesus, what did he do, and what were his teachings? Scholars and historians seek to reconstruct what happened and the beliefs of the earliest Christians by examining the oldest texts and earliest controversies. They have analysed the scriptures for centuries and concluded that you can’t establish much with certainty about Jesus except that he lived and preached. Some things are more plausible than others. And some things are nearly certain. The virgin birth didn’t happen, while the crucifixion did. Some of Jesus’ disciples likely saw him after he died, perhaps in a psychosis. Otherwise, you lack a compelling explanation for the origins of Christianity. Thoughts that scholars dared not entertain were that some of the miracles did happen, or that Jesus did have the gift of prophecy. If you have witnessed paranormal events, which scientists seem to call metanormal events, or know people who have, you may have second thoughts about the scholarly consensus on miracles. The scholar Dale Allison wrote in his book Interpreting Jesus,

What if a historian of the early Jesus movement decides, on empirical, not theological grounds, that sometimes people see the future, that clairvoyance is not uncommon, that additional metanormal claims should be seriously entertained, and even that enigmatic capacities sometimes congregate in exceptional or charismatically gifted individuals, in what Max Weber termed ‘religious virtuosi’?

Allison produces a long list of examples in the Gospels and concludes that his fellow scholars who reject the historicity of Jesus’ clairvoyance suffer from dogmatic incredulity. In other words, the Gospels could be more historically accurate than most scholars claim because their assumptions about the possibility of miracles and clairvoyance are incorrect. Hence, the confidence they have in their claims is unjustified. And the original written sources are older than the Gospels, so oral recounting probably hasn’t affected them. Earlier written records have existed, scholars argue, and they give these supposed writings mysterious names, such as Q and ‘The Signs Gospel’. Mark, Matthew, and Luke are very similar and primarily draw on the same sources. The Gospel of John stands apart. The Gospel of John notes that an eyewitness, the Beloved Disciple, wrote it. And so, an eyewitness account by a disciple could be the basis for this text. Now, John 5:1-3 reads,

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here, a great number of disabled people used to lie — the blind, the lame, the paralysed.

The use of the word ‘is’ implies that the text dates from before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, thus from before the writing of the Gospel of Mark. The Sheep Gate was still there at the time of writing, the wording suggests. Now it gets more interesting. Peter was Jesus’ favourite disciple, and John may contain his testimony. There is little doubt that the Gospels contain historical evidence, but they also claim that miracles and the resurrection have happened. And so, you have some additional explaining to do, as these events defy the laws of nature, which is impossible had this world been real.

This universe is a virtual reality, so these miracles are possible. On the Holodeck, I can slay platoons of ferocious Klingon warriors alone with my bare hands and some magical powers. At the same time, in real life, elderly ladies overtake me in the swimming pool even when I am giving my best. Conjuring fish out of thin air, reviving the dead, walking on water, and turning water into wine should also be no problem. The same goes for a virgin birth. Whatever you imagine can become true. But it is not proof that it happened because Christians may have invented stories. For the virgin birth at least, that applies.

Explaining the differences

Mark and John are so different because they come from two very different traditions. Jesus had Jewish and Gentile followers. In the Jewish tradition, he was a prophet, and ‘Son of God’ meant ‘King of the Jews.’ To Gentiles, the Son of God had a literal meaning as God’s firstborn child. The Jewish Jesus was a human prophet and perhaps a resistance leader, while the Gentile Jesus was an eternal godlike being, the Firstborn of Creation. Most of the confusion stems from these differences, which reveal a controversy in the early Church that Paul successfully resolved. Mark and John are the best historical sources about Jesus’ life, but they have different perspectives. And the final version of the Gospel of John has undergone several revisions.

Writing a Gospel was an intellectual challenge for talented writers who could combine scraps of information, symbols and signs to compose high-level literature. Without social media, scribes could dedicate their entire lives to such a project. And others could dedicate lifetimes to finding out what those writers meant, so, if we wish to do so, we can read countless commentaries by experts. The Jews and the Muslims also have them. Jesus also contributed to the confusion. Well-known are the parables, stories that Jesus told to convey an underlying message. By saying something and meaning something else, Jesus often left his audience confused, including his disciples. Even today, the central question is: Was Jesus merely human or was he godlike? In either case, he is enigmatic.

Jesus’ deeds had religious significance, which is why we read that he had twelve disciples. Twelve stands for perfection or authority in government. Jacob had twelve sons who represented the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus likely didn’t have twelve disciples. And Jesus supposedly spent forty days in the desert. The number forty signifies new life, growth and transformation. The rain of the Great Flood lasted forty days and nights. If Jesus went to the desert, then it was probably not for forty days. According to the Bible, God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. The number seven also signifies completion and perfection. And Jesus said ‘I am’ seven times in the Gospel of John, supposedly implying he was godlike. If he said it, then he probably didn’t say it seven times. And the scripture tells us that Jesus rose from the dead after three days. This number represents divine wholeness, completeness and perfection. If Jesus had returned from the dead, it would probably not have been after three days.

The biblical authors tweaked and rearranged the facts to fit the religiously significant numbers. Eight disciples would have made a dud. What prophet has eight disciples? You can’t take such a prophet seriously. Paul claimed that Jesus appeared to ‘The Twelve’ (1 Corinthians 15:5) after Judas had already died. That is fishy. Mark, Matthew, and Luke list the names of ‘The Twelve,’ but John does not. He only calls them ‘The Twelve’ like Paul did. That is telling. Are they all taking Paul’s word for it? Talking about fishy, the experts are still baffled about those 153 fish Simon Peter dragged ashore without tearing his net (John 21:11). What does that number signify? Experts agree that it is not merely a fact. They have written voluminous tracts on the matter. A Wikipedia page deals with this question. There, you find links to the relevant literature. But we still await the book title ‘The Ultimate Guide on the 153 Fishes’ that explains it all. The experts don’t mention that 153 = (12 * 12) + (3 * 3). Both three and twelve have special meanings. It can’t be that simple. Or can it?

As time passed by

There are facts, early beliefs, and later beliefs. What Christians believed changed over time due to circumstances, so early beliefs are likely closer to Jesus’ teachings than later ones. Earlier sources might have fewer distortions and are thus closer to the facts than later ones. To understand Jesus, you must also become familiar with the time and place in which he lived. The Jews were a small nation crushed by major powers and could only hope for God to come to their rescue. At the time of Jesus, many believed the end was near and that God would send a Messiah to kick out the wicked Roman oppressors and restore Israel to its former glory, which it supposedly had when David was king.

Religious zealots prayed, committed terrorist acts, and revolted. Nowadays, the Palestinians follow the same recipe only to get their butts kicked time after time. And they never seem to learn. Back then, the Jews were like the Palestinians today. They were a pain for the Romans. Nowadays, the Jews run the empire in Washington, DC, and let it protect their pet project in the Holy Land. The stage was already set 2,000 years ago. The end times, the arrival of a Messiah, and a final reckoning still define Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinking. In Jesus’ time, numerous end-time preachers proclaimed that the end was near. Jesus was one of them. He said things like (Mark 13:12-13),

Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. Everyone will hate you because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

That is pretty scary already. Jesus continues (Mark 13:14-17),

When you see the abomination that causes desolation standing where it does not belong, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the housetop go down or enter the house to take anything out. Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers!

Now comes his prediction, which the faithful still await to come true (Mark 13:23-27),

So be on your guard. I have told you everything ahead of time. But in those days, following that distress, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time, people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

Jesus may have seen himself as a Jewish Messiah and didn’t plan to start a world religion. When a non-Jewish woman begged Jesus to drive a demon out of her daughter, he replied, ‘First let the children eat all they want, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.’ He was there for the Jews, and Gentiles were on par with dogs. Only after she replied, ‘Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,’ was Jesus willing to grant her request (Mark 7:24-30, Matthew 15:21-28). It is at odds with the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and the story of the Samaritan woman, in which Jesus asked this woman to give him some water she had drawn from the well, and in which everyone can get salvation (John 4:1-26). John also notes the woman’s surprise as Jews didn’t associate with Gentiles. It was also a point of contention between Peter and Paul (Galatians 2:11-21).

Scholars explain the contradiction by assuming each of the Gospels had an intended audience. Matthew wrote for the Jews and aimed to prove that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. Gentiles were Luke’s intended audience. John was the product of a community separate from mainstream Pauline Christianity with an anti-Jewish bias. And so, we can’t be sure whether Jesus really compared Gentiles to dogs or whether it merely reflected a widespread Jewish sentiment about Gentiles. Still, all the Gospels agree that Jesus accepted the faith of Gentiles, halfheartedly or not.

Jesus probably saw himself as the eternally living Son of God. Unlike John, Mark doesn’t say it plainly, but notes that he did see himself coming in clouds with great power and glory. Initially, Jesus’ followers expected him to return soon. Jesus may have believed that himself. However, Jesus also said that no one knows the day or hour, not even he, only God (Mark 13:32). It could be a later addition, but there is no evidence to suggest that it is. His disciples probably thought they would live to see it happen. Scholars think Paul believed it also. When things didn’t go according to plan, the Christians had to adapt to this new reality and become less specific about the date of Jesus’ return.

Jesus’ Jewish followers had hoped that he would throw out the Romans. After the Romans levelled the Jewish Temple around 70 AD, that hope crumbled to dust together with the Temple. In the end, with no return of Jesus in sight, Christians turned him into a heavenly ruler who gives you access to eternal life if you follow him. That is how the Gospel of John depicts Jesus. It was the last Gospel written around 95 AD. To understand what happened, it is crucial to view the development of early Christianity as a historical process with actors, where there was a development over time as these actors attempted to address various issues. One actor in particular is of interest, namely Paul. He, rather than Jesus, invented Christianity. The historical order of the New Testament is with approximate dates:

  • Paul’s Epistles (the genuine ones), 55 AD,
  • Gospel of Mark, 70 AD,
  • Gospel of Matthew, 75 AD,
  • Gospel of Luke, 85 AD,
  • Gospel of John, 95 AD.

No one knows who wrote the Gospels. Attributing them to the Apostles was a ploy by the Church to lend them authority. The New Testament also contains epistles signed by Paul and Peter. Nobody knows who wrote them. Now, that does not need to be forgery. The writing process in Paul’s time involved co-authors. 1 Thessalonians starts with (1 Thessalonians 1:1-2),

Paul, Silas and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you. We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers.

The Paul who wrote these letters was not always the individual Paul, but often a team of authors. After Paul’s death, the other team members might still have written letters in his name. They wouldn’t have thought of it as a forgery. Individualism as we know it today didn’t exist at the time, so if you were part of Team Paul, you could still write a letter and sign it in Paul’s name after his death.

The Gospel of John is the latest, so scholars have long considered it the least reliable of the four Gospels. They long held the view that Christians gradually deified Jesus, which could then explain why it is so different. However, Paul already viewed Jesus as God in nature (Philippians 2:6), and that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth (Philippians 2:10). The latter phrase originally referred to God. Paul applied it to Jesus, viewing him as godlike but not equal to God.

The mystery remains

And so, the opinion among scholars has shifted, and most now believe that the Gospel of John comes from a separate tradition. To Greeks and others, a human could more easily become godlike than to Jews. The Bible also testifies to this. After Paul healed a lame man in Lystra, the locals concluded that Paul and Barnabas were gods in human form (Acts 14:11). The first three Gospels emerged within Jewish Christianity. In contrast, the Gospel of John originated from a Gentile Christian community. And gradually, the scholars came to the conclusion that John could be more historically accurate than previously thought.

Hence, John may reveal things that other Gospels fail to mention. There were disputes about the nature of Jesus and his relationship with God. Was he human or godlike? The compromise ultimately became that he was both. Paul never wrote about what transpired during Jesus’ life. Mark is the oldest Gospel that tells the story of Jesus’ life. It is brief and presents an enigmatic Jesus. Mark 1:27-28 reads,

The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, ‘What is this? A new teaching, and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.’ News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.

The Gospel of Mark initially ends after Mary Magdalene and a few other women discover that Jesus’ tomb is empty, and an angel tells them that Jesus has risen. The remainder is a later addition. Because of that, some scholars doubt the resurrection. Other scholars have suggested that it was an intentional open ending, ‘because everyone knew what happened next.’ That is a bit of a stretch, as it attributes Hitchcock-like motives to an author who seemed keen on giving a testimony. Jesus probably appeared to at least some of his followers after his death. Otherwise, there would be no Christianity. And so, the premature ending of Mark raises questions.

That could be as reliable as it can get. Conviction, no matter how strong, is not a fact, but we have no unquestionable, accurate accounts of what had transpired. The Gospels diverge from what Paul writes, so we can’t construct a more precise picture of the events unless we can establish which accounts are the most reliable and what the falsifications are. And so, we can’t get closer to the truth unless we learn more about the relationship between God, the supposed guy in the sky, and Jesus, His alleged son.

Latest revision: 8 November 2025

Featured image: Jesus and Minas Coptic icon dating from the 6th or 7th century. Clio20 (Anonymous). Wikimedia Commons.

1. At what point were there doubts about Mark’s longer ending? r/AcademicBiblical (2025). [link]
2. Did Mark’s gospel really end on a cliffhanger, or is it unfinished? r/AcademicBiblical (2025). [link]

A cross in a heart formed with candles. Photos taken in Camp Tejas, Giddings, Texas, USA. Wingchi Poon.

God Is Love

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Christians tell us that God is love. There is something about this love that the Church Fathers found so troubling that they didn’t want us to know. Jesus’ deeds might make more sense once you know what it is. Love is a central theme in Christianity. And so this religion is known as the Religion of Love. According to the Gospel, Jesus said we should love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30-31). Paul wrote the First Epistle to the Corinthians around 54 AD. It is one of the earliest written sources of Christianity. It contains a remarkable poem (1 Corinthians 13),

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.2

Paul wrote that love is more important than faith and good works. That is quite a statement. God is love (1 John 4:8,16). The Christian cover story became that God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). The author of the Gospel of John shares his views on God’s love in the First Epistle of John (1 John 4:7-10),

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

God loving us and sending His one and only son into the world to die as a sacrifice for our sins seems peculiar unless you are a Christian. Christians claim that Adam sinned, so we are all cursed, but then came Jesus, who saved us by his crucifixion. Jews and Muslims don’t believe that God has a son, nor do they think that Adam’s transgression justifies this sacrifice. When God ordered Abraham to offer his son, and Abraham was about to comply, God called it off. So why did Jesus do it? The odds are that it has to do with love. Ephesians gives a possible clue (Ephesians 5:25),

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Christians believe Jesus married the Church. Only the Church didn’t exist when Jesus lived. The verse suggests that Jesus died out of love, as in a marriage. It asks husbands to love their wives just like Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her. That might be as close to the truth as the church fathers dared to go. Jesus was married, and he gave himself up for his Bride. And men should do the same for their wives. It sheds light on Jesus’ views on marriage. Jesus said marriage is a bond forged by God (Matthew 19:3-9),

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?‘

‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’

‘Why then,’ they asked, ‘did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?’

Jesus replied, ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.’

Here, Jesus departed from Moses’ law, referring to the beginning, thus Eden. Jesus’ disciples argued it would be hard for men to love their wives this way. Jesus replied that not all men can do this. Concerning marriage, Jesus promoted a high standard that was untenable for many men. It would be better to live in celibacy than not to live up to it. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a king who prepares a wedding banquet for his son (Matthew 22:2-14). The wedding symbolises the kingdom of God. It may seem odd to compare the kingdom of God to a wedding, unless it is one.

Surviving records of Jesus’ words and teachings suggest Jesus believed women to be equal to men. The equality of the sexes is at odds with the patriarchal society of Jesus’ time. Paul probably also saw women as equals, but his views concerning marriage are remarkable. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says (1 Corinthians 7:1-2, 3-4, 10-11),

Now for the matters you wrote about: ‘It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.’ But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.

The husband should fulfil his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.

To the married, I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.

To Paul, celibacy was preferable to marriage, but only for the strong, who can resist their urges. Marriage is to keep the weak, who can’t control their desires, on the right path, so that Satan will not tempt them (1 Corinthians 7:5). That is a rather peculiar interpretation of Jesus’ saying that only men who are capable of loving a woman should marry, and that if one cannot love a woman, it is better to remain unmarried (Matthew 19:3-11). However, after explaining that, Jesus went on to discuss eunuchs, noting that there are people who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:12). That inspired Paul’s views on celibacy. Paul believed that Jesus would return soon. Otherwise, he would have seen offspring as a way to secure Christianity’s future.

The Didache, an early Christian text dating back to the first century, implies the equality of the sexes. It helped to make Christianity monogamous, as opposed to Judaism at the time, and later Islam. As many of the early Christians were Jewish and had heard about Jesus and the miracles he did, but didn’t know about his marriage to God, and believed God was an invisible fellow in the sky, Paul had a theological problem at hand.

He resolved it by aligning Christianity with the Jewish scriptures. Paul wrote that the head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is man (1 Corinthians 11:3) and that a man is the image and glory of God, as man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man (1 Corinthians 11:7-9). Paul must have known better, but it was the biblical account from Genesis. As a religious Jew, he considered these scriptures infallible, even if they contradicted the facts, which may seem strange, but that’s how many religious people reason. Most early Christians were Jews who didn’t know the specifics about the relationship between God and Jesus, so they wouldn’t have believed the truth anyway. Worse still, it would be blasphemous to them.

Paul makes up for it by adding that the head of Christ is God. He goes on to say that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, and that woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman, and that woman came from man, but also man is born of woman (1 Corinthians 11:10-12). In his view, men and women were equal. It is also a lot of juggling with words, as if Paul is beating around the bush, which suggests there is something he can’t say.

Over time, Christianity became increasingly patriarchal. Scholarly analysis of the letters of the early church fathers underlines this. Scholars think 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is a later addition.1 It claims that the man is the head of the family. The same applies to 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. It orders women to be silent in the churches. A reason for suspecting that the latter passage is an addition is that several manuscripts have it at the end of the chapter instead of its usual location. Scholars view it as a sign that a scribe copied a note into the body of the text.2 A previous scribe likely added that note.

If you ask yourself how scribes could justify falsifying their scriptures, here lies an answer. It happened in small steps that appeared reasonable. You might not consider adding a note a falsification. As Paul wrote, the head of the woman is the man. You can interpret this as the man being the head of the family, which is how traditional Jews viewed it. Once the comment is added, it becomes part of the text’s context as a clarification. Once it is part of the context and has become an instruction to read the passage that way, it might not seem falsifying to include it in the text. In this way, a few generations can make an astounding difference. And so, the First Epistle to Timothy reads (1 Timothy 2:11-15),

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

Paul never wrote this letter, despite the letter claiming otherwise. An unidentified Christian scribe likely penned it down more than fifty years after Paul’s death. Scholars uncover falsifications by comparing the wording used in this epistle to Paul’s genuine letters. The passage above suggests women spoke publicly and felt they had authority over men. Otherwise, the author would not have written it. These modifications suggest an equality of the sexes, a prominent position for women in the early Christian movement, and the gradual re-establishment of male supremacy.

The consequences can be troubling. Did Jesus sacrifice himself for God’s love, and did God not care about Jesus? If so, why would God care about us? You can imagine that the Church Fathers found it disturbing. If someone else finds himself in the same position Jesus once was, he might not be instantly enthusiastic about the proposition. But no one can go against the will of God. And you can fall in love with someone who has taken you hostage. It is a natural reaction known as Stockholm Syndrome. Having no choice makes things easier. He can’t not try to save humankind if there is a slight chance he succeeds. He knows he has to play his role in the script, like Chief Inspector Clouseau, bumbling towards success by sheer accident. And to be taken in this manner is particularly unexpected, but if the absurd hunts you down, and you see no escape, you can better embrace it.

And is it so terrible to die for love? Everyone dies, usually for less agreeable reasons like a fatal encounter with a deadly disease, some random accident, old age or a war fought for the ego of a leader, or even worse, his stupidity. In hindsight, Jesus’ sacrifice was exceptionally functional. It created Christianity, a religion that claims we are unworthy of God’s grace and need to accept a saviour and follow him. It is an idea that can save us because we can’t fix our problems ourselves. We are religious creatures who need a fairy tale to believe in. And as Paul explained in his poem, you can speak every language, know all the secrets, and give your money to those in need, but it is pointless if you don’t have love. If it is a delusion, you can enjoy it for as long as it lasts. And if you must go down in infamy and die, you can better do it laughing. So, always look on the bright side of life,

Life’s a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true
You’ll see it’s all a show
Keep ’em laughin’ as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you
And

Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the right side of life

Monty Python, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Latest revision: 20 September 2025

Featured image: A cross in a heart formed with candles. Photos taken in Camp Tejas, Giddings, Texas, USA. Wingchi Poon. CC BY 3.0. Wikimedia Commons.

1. Forgery and Counter forgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. Bart D. Ehrman (2013).
2. The Oxford Bible Commentary. John Barton; John Muddiman, eds. (2001). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 1130. ISBN 978-0-19-875500-5.

Lucretia Garfield. Library Of Congres

The Identity of God

nivtric2 Comments

We live inside a virtual reality created by an advanced civilisation to entertain an individual we call God. Like it or not, it is why we exist. That civilisation probably is humanoid, which means that God is like us, with human imaginations and desires. What is also worth noting, and what can hurt your ego, is that all that happens goes according to a script, so that thinking of us as mere worms would be a delusion of grandeur. Think of it. Real worms decide for themselves how they grovel and when. And we don’t. Welcome to the Theatre of the Absurd. We are mere actors in a play, and no one thinks. We follow the script, and there is no exit, no life outside, like in the film The Matrix. The road to enlightenment starts with the acceptance of our complete insignificance.

So what about René Descartes, that world-famous fellow who once said, ‘I think, therefore I exist.’ Was he wrong? As the reasoning above painfully lays out, he starts with a debatable assumption: ‘I think.’ He then arrives at a logical conclusion: ‘Therefore, I exist.’ That made him stamp a realness certificate on his person. But logic in fantasy land is just basing conclusions on imagined assumptions. At least the logic is infallible. So, did Descartes think? Not really. Even then, he might still have had an existence. That is also dubious, however, because God imagined us. You can ask yourself: Do Spike and Suzy exist? They are comic characters created by Willy Vandersteen, who no longer exists, if he had ever done so, because he has stopped breathing. If you go down that road, everything you imagine exists. I just imagined a unicorn. Do unicorns now exist?

That is the question of being. Philosophers discuss such questions. Scientists agree that merely thinking of a unicorn doesn’t make it real. Saying ‘be’ doesn’t generate a bee. You can give such a command to a computer, and you get a simulation of a bee. Now you get how God could have created this world in six days. It might as well have been six seconds. So, if God exists, we don’t, and we are imaginations like unicorns. Countless non-existent minds have wasted their time and energy on the question, ‘Does God exist?’ Indeed, the gods we imagine also don’t exist because we imagine them, and that includes the God of Abraham. There is only God who exists in reality.

If we exist to entertain an individual from an advanced civilisation, God must be a person who, unlike us, might be real. Yes, God might be yet another virtual reality character in a simulation layer above us, but that is beyond our possibilities to find out. And let’s not waste our time on questions we can’t answer. So, who is this person, God? That we cannot know. Still, we might uncover something, at least. If we are here to entertain God, what is the fun of standing on the sidelines? Why not take part yourself? If God plays roles and becomes one of us, we might identify some of those individuals. The starting point for the inquiry is Jesus. No one had ever felt a closer relationship with God than he, so there is a good chance he knew God as a person.

The Gospels tell us that Jesus called God ‘Father’. They suggest a close personal relationship, so Jesus thought of himself as the Son of God. There is something off about Jesus’ Father as He can give birth (John 1:12-13). All four official Gospels imply that Jesus was the bridegroom (Mark 2:19-20, Matthew 9:15, Luke 5:34-35, John 3:27-30), but don’t mention the bride, which is also quite mysterious. The Church tells us that Jesus married the Church. Now, the Church didn’t exist when Jesus lived, so a historian would call it an anachronism. It is like saying that the Roman Emperor Caesar took an aeroplane to Egypt to spend his holidays with Cleopatra. That is impossible because there were no aeroplanes 2,000 years ago. The Gospels don’t say Jesus married the Church. The Church didn’t exist yet, and Jesus wasn’t planning to found it either. So, why would the Church lie about Jesus’ marriage? Are we not allowed to know the truth?

You can smell a rat here. And it is a huge and smelly one. Christians claim that God is love. Jews and Muslims don’t. Do they not worship the same deity? Is there something missing that Jesus’ inner circle knew about? And is it the identity of the Bride? That is indeed the case. The Bride of Christ was God in the person of Mary Magdalene. She was one of God’s avatars. She made Jesus believe he was Adam reincarnated and that She was Eve reincarnated, that Eve didn’t come from Adam’s rib but that Eve gave birth to Adam, and that they were an eternal couple living from the beginning of Creation until the End of Times. That is why Jesus believed he was the Son of God.

Simon Peter said to Jesus, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ (Matthew 16:16) This phrase appears in the Jewish Bible (Deuteronomy 5:26, Jeremiah 10:10, Psalm 42:2), but Simon Peter’s use of it is noteworthy. In Deuteronomy, the living God refers to God’s active presence on Earth, meaning that God is not some mythical figure, of which we only have tales, nor some lifeless statue, but someone present in our midst. In Moses’ time, it was a pillar of fire. With the Bride gone, these words have lost their meaning, which led some later Christians to believe that Jesus was God.

Jesus was God’s son because Adam was. Hence, Adam is the Son of God (Luke 3:38), Jesus is the Firstborn of all Creation (Colossians 1:15), and Jesus gave us the right to become children of God who are born of God (John 1:12-13). As Adam, he was the father and God the Mother of humankind. The Jewish scriptures about the fantasy character, Yahweh, also known as the God of Abraham, don’t mention that. And so, Paul, who took these scriptures as seriously as a Pharisee, perhaps because he was a former Pharisee, made God male in his theology and persuaded the early Church to do the same. He succeeded because his work made it possible to unite the early Church. Muhammad also married God in the person of Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. Unlike Jesus, he didn’t know.

Those who take offence at God in the person of Eve marrying Her son Adam, but accept that God allowed millions of people to be slaughtered in wars or die of terrible diseases, or even chose to do so, have a problem with their priorities. And by the way, you are not in a position to judge God. In any case, the story of Eve and Adam is a myth. Eve never took Her son as Her husband, as Eve and Adam never existed. It is only what Mary Magdalene made Jesus believe. So, you can rest assured that nothing of that kind ever happened, except for the millions of people that God let die due to wars and diseases. A possible excuse for doing so is that it makes the simulation more realistic. Apart from that, everything being peachy all the time doesn’t make for a good story.

Jesus and Muhammad have lived. The accounts of their lives may be inaccurate because they date from decades after they died, but the early history of the Israelites in the Jewish Bible – the Jews call it Tanakh – is a fantasy. Archaeological evidence doesn’t support it. Moses never brought the Israelites from Egypt into the Promised Land. The story still has a historical origin. Around the time Moses allegedly lived, the Egyptians who governed Canaan went home, thereby liberating Israel from Egyptian oppression. Later on, the account in the Bible often has a closer relationship to historical events.

That leaves us with a question: how did God meddle with the Jewish nation and their religion? Historians have discovered that the Canaanites gradually formed tribes and, later, petty kingdoms after the Egyptians had departed, in what the Jewish Bible refers to as the Era of the Judges. Local leaders organised warfare and settled disputes. They were the judges. The Jewish Bible says they had nationwide authority, but that is incorrect.

The oldest source of the entire Jewish Bible is the Song of Deborah. Historians believe the song dates back to shortly after the Egyptians left. It likely didn’t pop up out of nowhere. Deborah brought victory to a tribe that later became part of the Jewish nation. Deborah attributed that victory to Yahweh, who, as a son of the Canaanite supreme deity El, would otherwise have remained an obscure, inferior deity. In this way, Deborah initiated the Yahweh cult, which today has four billion followers. The historical genesis of the Bible is not Creation but Deborah. She is the Mother of Israel and likely the earliest historical figure in the Jewish Bible, the founder of the Jewish nation, and an avatar of God.

The God of Abraham, known as Yahweh, the Father, and Allah, thus is a veil behind which the owner of this universe has operated so far. She only revealed Herself to Jesus. It made Jesus a unique prophet who came to see himself as the eternally living Son of God. No evidence suggests that Jesus was Adam, but God made him think he was. God, as Mary Magdalene, convinced Jesus that someone had corrupted the story of Eve and Adam. She appealed to rational thinking, as Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib makes less sense than Adam having been Eve’s son. God could have pointed out traces of fraud, such as Eve being the Mother of All the Living. So, what about Adam, who called her like so? Apart from that, Mary Magdalene must have had a very persuasive personality because She made him die on the cross. Jesus thus placed evidence and logic over religious dogmas. He was a true religious revolutionary. Sadly, logical evidence-based religion was a tradition that soon died with him. He was 2,000 years ahead of his time.

That God is a Mother who can appear as an ordinary woman is not that far-fetched. The leader of the Church Ministry of Mother of All Creation cult claimed she was God and that God had had 534 lives, including Jesus, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, and Marilyn Monroe. The latter three guesses might be spot-on, but her claim of having been Jesus proves she made it all up. Mary Magdalene, however, may not only have claimed it, but also succeeded in convincing Jesus of it, and then let him start a world religion that now has over two billion followers. We have yet to see the leader of the Church Ministry of Mother of All Creation cult pull that off.

Jesus’ inner circle knew that God had wedded Jesus, but the Gospels don’t mention this crucial factoid that everyone would have wanted to know. Scholars didn’t ask themselves why there were no surviving eyewitness accounts. Isn’t that suspicious? Here is your answer. And why did the early leaders of the Church do it? To religious Jews, the idea of God being a woman who married Jesus was alien or even blasphemous. Most early Christians were Jewish followers who had heard of Jesus and his miracles but lacked detailed knowledge of his life and teachings.

Jewish prophets were human, and they expected a human messiah rather than a godlike being. In their view, Jesus was a mere human, so if you read Mark, Matthew or Luke, Jesus appears human, not godlike. And so, the Jews couldn’t handle that God is a woman who can take a human form and marry Jesus. Gentiles had no problem with it. They have tales about female deities and gods having sex with humans. That is why the Gospel of John is so different from the others. It was a controversy that tore the early Church apart.

A compromise, the Christian theology invented by Paul, resolved the conflict. Paul turned Jesus into a godlike Jewish messiah, the eternally living Son of God, the one promised by the Jewish scriptures. It required some imagination and twisting of the facts to reconcile these two irreconcilable viewpoints. Paul’s theology became the Christianity we know today. Try to understand it from God’s perspective. She lives eternally, or at least thousands of years, and uses us to pass Her time. Girls just want to have fun. That brings us to messages in pop music. The song ‘Gimme the Prize’ by Queen has the following lines,

Here I am, I’m the master of your destiny
I am the one, the only one, I am the God of kingdom come
…
Give me your kings, let me squeeze them in my hands
Your puny princes
Your so-called leaders of your land
I’ll eat them whole before I’m done
The battle’s fought, and the game is won

Queen, Gimme the Prize

Queen is the performing artist, so the hidden message is that the God of the coming kingdom is a Queen. The song features threats against the so-called leaders of the world. That looks like an end-of-time scenario. It is a queer pun, and Freddy Mercury was the performing artist. In the video clip of another Queen song, ‘I Want to Break Free,’ Mercury and the band members dressed in women’s clothing. In Western Europe, we found it funny. That was different elsewhere. The song had a lukewarm reception in the United States, a country that has culturally enriched us with websites like godhatesfags.com. Today, the hatred of LGBTQ people by conservative Christians is getting out of hand. The joke is on them. Early Christians have performed a sex change on God in their scriptures.

Muslims take blasphemy very seriously. Hurt Muslim feelings have made the headlines. Making cartoons of Muhammad can be your death sentence. But why only Muhammad? He isn’t God. Is he of a higher stature than Moses or Jesus? God made those mockers do what they did. The reward for killing a comedian will not be 72 desperate virgins trying to abuse you. Abrahamic religions have restricted the freedom of women, but Islam more than the others. Like Jesus, Muhammad married God, but unlike Jesus, he didn’t know. He had a loving marriage after his wife, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, proposed to him. Islam may be a funny religion, but Christianity is even more comical.

Paul’s obfuscation of the relationship between God and Jesus gave Christianity its unique and baffling theology. Drinking Christ’s blood, eating his body, and the resurrection of the dead could be good ingredients for a motion picture called Zombie Apocalypse. Indeed, these rituals and beliefs are odd and could suit a cannibalistic sect. The outlandishness of Christianity begins with the idea that we are all cursed because Eve and Adam sinned. And then came Jesus, who sacrificed himself for our sins, so you can save yourself by following him. It seems outlandish, but Paul’s intervention is the most ingenious part of God’s plan. Humans are the most destructive species that have ever roamed this planet, and we are about to destroy ourselves. Only our ability to believe in fairy tales can unite us and make us perform extraordinary deeds. Thinking we are morally depraved, unworthy of God’s grace and in dire need of a saviour can save us from our collective stupidity.

Latest revision: 29 November 2025

Featured image: Lucretia Garfield