Tag: Christianity

The Last Adam

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Adam is the Son of God (Luke 3:38) and Jesus the Firstborn of all Creation (Colossians 1:15). Was Jesus Adam reincarnated? And was Adam born? Firstborn means you are the family heir, so the Firstborn of All Creation means you inherited the world. That is the standard interpretation with which most scholars would likely agree. The Christian doctrine states that Jesus already existed with God before creation and thus was not Adam. That is not what the words say, nor is it what Jesus’ inner circle believed. Existence before creation is not the same as being born. And Adam was the Son of God. When Paul was busy writing Colossians, he was also working on Christian theology, and his thoughts were still in a state of flux. And so, there may be more to it than theologians can explain.

Theologians regurgitate a century-old, pre-chewed menu of previous generations of theologians. Do theologians ever come up with something new rather than yet another insight on a hair-splitting detail? Do they discuss the simulation argument? No! They occupy themselves with century-old controversies. Why would Jesus sacrifice himself for Adam’s transgression? It makes more sense if Jesus believed he was Adam, who had to redeem himself. That was an idea Paul entertained for a while, for Jesus thought he was Adam. Only that generated serious theological problems. How could the perfect sinless Jesus also be the sinner Adam? And so, his mind ground on. Eventually, Christians came to believe that Jesus existed before creation, as laid out in the Gospel of John.

Don’t blame theologians for not being sufficiently imaginative. You could easily go astray. That ireful cloud that led the Israelites out of Egypt in a 2,500-year-old Jewish fairy tale was Eve from an even older Iraqi fairy tale, who gave birth to Adam, which the surviving Jewish version of the Iraqi fairy tale doesn’t mention. And by the way, that cloud from the fairy tale was Judge Deborah, the first historical person in the Bible. She started the Jewish nation by slaying Israel’s enemies and claiming that a magical cloud named Yahweh did it. She later married Jesus as Mary Magdalene and Muhammad as Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. You can’t guess it unless God gives you the clue that unlocks the mystery.

The message of Jesus being Adam still features in Christian doctrine as a remnant of an original belief. Jesus is the New Adam, and his birth mother is the New Eve, which implies that Jesus married his mother in a previous life. And precisely that was the original message of Christianity. Paul compares Jesus to Adam. In Romans, he writes, ‘Just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.’ (Romans 5:19)

Paul didn’t blame Eve for the Fall. Later writers posing themselves as Paul cast the blame on Eve. But Paul, a god-fearing individual who still knew the truth, wasn’t that daring. In 1 Corinthians, Paul noted, ‘As in Adam all die, so in Christ, all will be made alive.’ Jesus thus became the redeemer for Adam’s Fall. Paul called Jesus the Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45). Jesus being Adam’s reincarnation was an early Christian belief until the narrative changed to Christ’s existence before creation. And so, you only find the comparison in Paul’s letters, the earliest surviving documents of Christianity.

The Quran underpins the idea that Jesus is Adam. You have to read between the lines. Jesus was like Adam in the way he was created (Quran 3:59), and the Quran supports the Christian claim that Jesus was born of a virgin (Quran 3:47, 19:16-22). Hence, they are both ‘born of a virgin.’ Not really, of course, but people believed it. And several Quran verses state that God ordered the angels to prostrate before Adam (Quran 2:34, 7:11, 15:28-29, 17:61, 18:50, 20:116, 38:71-74). The Quran mentions it seven times, making it appear significant. And seven times, Jesus says ‘I am’ in the Gospel of John, stressing his supposed divinity.

The Epistle to the Hebrews claims that God made Jesus, the firstborn, into the world, superior to the angels and made the angels worship him (Hebrews 1:1-7). And if the Quran is a message from God, the presumed guy in the sky, who possesses superpowers but is not Superman, and also not a man, then Jesus could be Adam. The Quran also claims Jesus will return (Quran 43:61). If he were Adam, God’s firstborn, who had already returned once, he could. Otherwise, it all gets even odder than it already is.

Latest revision: 16 August 2025

Mohammed receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel

Religious Experiences and Miracles

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The Jewish people still exist after 2,500 years, while they have not had a homeland for most of the time. That is a remarkable feat. Then Christianity replaced the existing religions in the Roman Empire in one of history’s strangest twists. Somehow, the message of personal salvation through Christ caught on. In the third century, Manichaeism emerged as a new religion. It taught that there was a struggle between the good spiritual world of light and the evil material world of darkness. The prophet Mani, who grew up in a Jewish-Christian Gnostic sect, claimed to have received revelations meant for the entire world, which were to replace all existing religions. It instantly became a spectacular success, spread everywhere in the known world, and could have overtaken Christianity, but it didn’t. A pivotal, and possibly decisive, moment was the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 AD. He made Christianity the favoured religion in the Roman Empire.

A few centuries later, a small band of Arab warriors established an empire that stretched from the Atlantic to India, spreading the new religion of Islam, in an even stranger and more rapid historical development. Is it a realistic scenario that the supposedly illiterate camel driver Muhammad became a crafty statesman after seeing an angel telling him he came to deliver messages from the God of the Christians and the Jews? After Muhammad’s death, his followers went on to defeat the Byzantine and Persian empires. At the same time, Manichaeism made a one-way trip into the dustbin of history, while in the third century, it appeared to be on the verge of becoming the world’s leading religion. So, why did Mani fail and why did Muhammad succeed? Historians can explain it, but it is an account of what happened rather than an explanation. The question remains, could it occur without someone pulling the strings?

So much can happen, and what happens now has once been extremely improbable. Your reading this text here and now seems highly unlikely a few decades ago. Think of all the things you could have done instead. Or you could have been dead. Yet, you wouldn’t consider your reading this text a miracle. Proselytising religions like Christianity and Islam have a built-in inclination to grow. That may not be the ultimate answer. Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same deity. Our universe could be a simulation, and someone could have planned it. But who is to say it couldn’t have happened otherwise?

When Islam arrived on the scene, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians in the area already believed in an all-powerful creator. Muhammad had met them on his travels, so he was familiar with these religions. Before that, Christianity had faced an uphill struggle. While the Roman state suppressed this religion, pagans left their gods behind and accepted the Christian God as the only true God. And they did so in large numbers.

That begs for an explanation, even though the conversion of Romans to Christianity was a gradual process that took centuries. The Romans occasionally half-heartedly persecuted Christians and executed a few thousand of them over the centuries, not for being a Christian but for not paying their respects to the Roman gods. Despite that, the number of Christians increased 2-3% per year between 30 AD and 400 AD. Each Christian may have converted just one or two persons on average. Over time, exponential growth enabled Christianity to grow from about 100 followers in 30 AD to 30 million by 400 AD.

Such a gradual and steady growth over centuries was somewhat unique for a religion, and so was the blitz conquest of Islam later on. Most people in the Roman Empire, and everywhere else for that matter, lived miserable lives. The promise of an eternal blissful afterlife may have been too tempting for those poor, wretched souls to resist. However, the most often cited reason for conversions was stories about the miracles Christians performed.2 Only in the Middle Ages did the sword become the most compelling Christian argument as Christianity spread further and became integral to European politics. That was not the case in the Roman Empire, so miracles and stories about them were crucial.

An early miracle was Jesus’ appearance to a few followers after his crucifixion. The New Testament mentions miracles that the disciples allegedly performed. These accounts may be exaggerated, but the theme of miracles remains a consistent one in Christianity to this day. The Roman Catholic Church has a rich folklore surrounding relics that are believed to possess magical properties because they are said to have been touched by Jesus. The most famous relics are the Crown of Thorns in Paris, the mysterious Holy Grail, the chalice from which Jesus is said to have drunk, and the Shroud of Turin, a piece of linen cloth with a supposed image of Jesus’ face.

Many of the miracles attributed to these relics are unverifiable or can have other causes, such as luck, but a few cannot be easily explained away. The Roman Catholic Church keeps a record of them. On message boards, people tell stories about prayers heard and miraculous healings. Many of these stories may result from chance or other causes, such as a misdiagnosis or someone seeking attention by lying, but that is not always the case.

A recurring theme is the appearance of the Virgin Mary and other miracles related to her. Thousands of people have seen her. She appeared several times in Venezuela. She revealed herself to Maria Esperanza Medrano de Bianchini in 1976, who received exceptional powers. She could tell the future, levitate, and heal the sick. In Egypt, Mary appeared at a Coptic Church between 1983 and 1986. Muslims have also seen her there. There have been many more Virgin Mary appearances. The most notable sequence occurred in Portugal at Fatima between 13 May and 13 October 1917.

The grand finale was on 13 October 1917, when the Sun reportedly spun wildly and tumbled down to Earth, radiating in indescribably beautiful colours, before stopping and returning to its normal position. Some 40,000 attendants witnessed Mary’s performance. They had gathered because three shepherd children had prophesied that the Virgin Mary would perform a miracle on that date and location. Faking this was hard to do, considering the technology available in 1917. A lack of holographic equipment would have made the effort challenging, not to mention changing the location of the Sun, which is a large ball many times larger than Earth, thus making it difficult to move around. And somehow, the Sun only moved in Fatima, which can only happen in virtual reality.

Jesus also appeared a few times, but less frequently than the Virgin Mary. An intriguing account comes from Kenneth Logie, a preacher of the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Oakland, California, in the 1950s. In April 1954, Logie was preaching at an evening service. During the sermon, the church door opened. Jesus came walking in, smiling to the left and the right. He walked right through the pulpit. Then he placed his hand on Logie’s shoulder. Jesus spoke to him in a foreign tongue. Fifty people witnessed the event. Five years later, a woman in that same church suddenly disappeared. Jesus took her place. He wore sandals and a shiny white robe. He had nail marks on his hands, which were dripping with oil. After several minutes, Jesus disappeared, and the woman reappeared. Two hundred people have seen it. It was on film as Logie had installed film equipment, because strange things were happening.3 Such events can convince people that the message of Christianity, even though it may seem highly peculiar, is correct, as Zeus and Thor failed to show up and perform some tricks.

Mary and Christ are part of a folklore where genuine experiences mix with mental cases seeking attention or con artists profiting at the public’s expense. Usually, there are no 40,000 witnesses, verifiable evidence, or camera footage of what occurred. The Vatican is troubled by the self-proclaimed seers, fortune tellers, prophets, and messengers who believe they have a special bond with the Virgin Mary or have weeping Madonna statues, which they may or may not have prepared to weep. These people could be delusional, crave attention or, like the televangelists in the United States, be after your money. That is not always the case. If you have a religious experience, don’t suffer from mental conditions impairing your judgment, and can’t think of naturalist explanations, you should believe what you see. To quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet, ‘There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

Latest revision: 5 September 2025

Feature image: Mohammad receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel. Miniature illustration on vellum from the book Jami’ al-Tawarikh, by Rashid al-Din, published in Tabriz, Persia, 1307 AD. Public Domain.

1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvil Secker.
2. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. Bart Ehrman. Simon & Schuster (2018).
3. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee. Bart Ehrman. HarperCollins Publishers (2015).

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 and more valuable than facts. Truth, in his view, is thus not, as Jesus taught, according to the facts as established by the senses, but according to the scriptures. And most people, religious or not, would not object to lying for a good cause, so it is not that strange.

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 the reason why. We shouldn’t underestimate the consequences. Likely, 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.’ If Christianity aligns with the scriptures, it can gain credibility among the Jews. That was a good cause for Paul.

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. Jesus later appeared to some of his followers, thereby giving credibility to his claims that he was the eternally living Son of God. That is possible in virtual reality, and it is hard to envision how Christianity could have survived otherwise. His post-death appearance gave his followers new hope and inspired them to carry on, leading to 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, and also 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 grandiose 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 Judaism or its 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. Yet, as a former Pharisee, Paul also took this idea from Scripture, so he made Jesus’s act align with Melchizedek’s offering of bread and wine to Abraham. 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 that wouldn’t be beyond his capabilities. 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 are anonymous, despite claiming to be from Peter, Paul, or another well-known figure. 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: 2 May 2026

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 will return and that his mother was a virgin. Remarkably, Muhammad and the Jewish prophets didn’t view themselves as the eternally living Son of God, nor do Muslims believe that Jesus is. They both consider that thought a form of idolatry. And so Islam and Judaism have more in common with each other than with Christianity. That makes Jesus 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 because of 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. In many ways, Jesus was a typical first-century Jewish end-time prophet, a product of the culture he lived in, first-century Judaism. Yet, they never ask the question that would be strange not to ask: what made Jesus think he was the Son of God? 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 one thing and meaning another, Jesus often left his audience, including his disciples, confused. Even today, the central question remains: was Jesus merely human, or 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 kind of prophet has eight disciples? That is not a powerful number. You can’t take such a prophet seriously. Paul claimed that Jesus appeared to ‘The Twelve’ (1 Corinthians 15:5) after Judas had already volunteered for meeting the Grim Reaper and had not hesitated to act. That is fishy. The Church wants us to believe that they found another disciple within three days, for that was the available timeframe. Mark, Matthew, and Luke list the names of ‘The Twelve,’ but John does not. He only calls them ‘The Twelve’ like Paul did. If that is indeed the case, Mark must already have seen significant editing, including Jesus predicting his resurrection after three days (Mark 8:31), which might explain why the sources have disappeared and why the latter part of Mark has gone missing, for it didn’t fit the three-day narrative.

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, scholars’ views have shifted, and many 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 concluded that John could be more historically accurate than previously thought.

Hence, John may reveal details that other Gospels omit. 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, telling 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 ended with Mary Magdalene and a few other women discovering that Jesus’ tomb was empty and an angel telling them that Jesus had 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 is attributing Hitchcock-like motives to an author who seemed keen to give 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 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 —that supposed guy in the sky— and Jesus, His alleged son.

Latest revision: 28 March 2026

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]

God Is Love

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The Religion of Love

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 informed us that love is more important than faith and good works. That is quite informative, as God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). The Christian 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, outrageous even, 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 was as close to the truth as the church fathers dared to venture. Jesus was married and gave himself up for his Bride. And men should do the same for their wives. This vantage also sheds new light on Jesus’ views on marriage as 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.

The Pharisees indulged themselves in some additional testing of Jesus when they caught a woman in the act of adultery (John 8:1-11). They asked Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ They were using this question as a trap, as stoning should be the verdict according to Numbers 5, perhaps because they expected Jesus to rule in favour of the woman. Jesus’ answer was, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ But according to Rabbinic literature, the man being free from sin was a precondition for the trial of the woman, as Hosea 4:14 reads,

I will not punish your daughters when they turn to prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, because the men themselves consort with harlots and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes.

Jesus’ answer was the correct interpretation of the law, as recorded in Rabbinic literature, so it wasn’t merely a clever rebuttal. By knowing the law better than they did, Jesus made the Pharisees appear foolish. The witnesses weren’t free from sin, and as for the husband, we learn nothing.

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 specific 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). After explaining that, Jesus went on to discuss eunuchs, noting that some choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:12). That may have inspired Paul’s views on celibacy.

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 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 being in the sky, Paul faced a theological problem.

Patriarchy returning

Paul resolved that issue by aligning Christianity with the Jewish scriptures. He 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, so the facts are secondary, 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. And so, Paul did God’s work by making the new religion more palatable 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 a juggling with words, as Paul is beating around the bush.

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, as traditional Jews did. Once the comment is there, 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 of this epistle with that of 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.

Sacrifice for love

As Jesus sacrificed himself for love, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a noteworthy peculiarity, as is some of the accompanying imagery. Within the Roman Catholic tradition, the Sacred Heart is a symbol of God’s boundless and passionate love for humankind. Nothing of the sort existed during the first ten centuries of Christianity. The Crusades revived religious life and inspired monks and nuns to revere Jesus’ wounds, including his heart, as sacred. The Franciscan monk Bonaventure wrote in 1274, ‘Who is there who would not love this wounded heart? Who would not love in return Him, who loves so much?’ Over time, Jesus’ heart came to the centre stage of these devotions.

Women mystics played a crucial role in that development. Among them were Lutgardis of Aywières (1182–1246), Mechtilde of Hackeborn (1241–1298), and Gertrude of Helfta (1256–1302). The devotion to the Sacred Heart in its present form began with Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690), a nun of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, who claimed to have received revelations about the Sacred Heart from Jesus Christ between 1673 and 1675 in the Burgundian French village of Paray-le-Monial. Later, Mary of the Divine Heart (1863–1899), a religious sister of the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, reported receiving locutions and visions of Jesus Christ.

So, did Jesus sacrifice himself for God’s love, and did God not care about Jesus? And if so, why would God care about us? If that thought had occurred to the Church Fathers, they would have found it disturbing. If someone else were to find himself in the 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. You must try to save humankind if there is a slight chance of success. He knows he has to play his role in the script. And he can succeed, like Chief Inspector Clouseau, if that is the plot of the story. And if the absurd has hunted you down and cornered you, 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: 12 February 2026

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.