I was reading a summary of José Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. In a nutshell, Jesus is a human figure who is being used by Yahweh for His own ends. He is guilt-ridden about the Massacre of the Innocents, and about the excesses that will take place in the future in his name.

In the end, realizing that his own sacrifice will not stop Yahweh’s plans or these excesses, he laments, “Men, forgive Him, for He knows not what He has done.”

It’s similar in many ways to Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, in which the human prophet Jesus has his message manipulated by his brother Christ. Christopher Hitchens has a good review of it at the NYT. There’s also an expansion on this review on the NYT podcast:

A humanized, manipulated Jesus is also a subplot of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, considered one of the great novels of the last century. In it, Yeshua is pictured as a human philosopher and wiseman who is able to bond with Pilate, even though Pilate is forced to send him to his unjust execution.

There are other examples. I remember a bizarre science fiction story in which a human Jesus is being tortured in hell for inadvertently wrecking monotheism. Part of his torture is to watch the actions of the church founded in his name.

Why is this such a popular theme? Why all these sympathetic portrayals of a human Jesus whose message is lost or distorted? In particular, why do we see it from atheists like Saramago and Pullman?

(by the Axis of Awesome)

Do you think Jesus of Nazareth existed? Why or why not?

HEAVEN—Emerging from a grueling 90 minutes of cardiovascular exercise and light lifting for tone, Son of God Jesus Christ said Monday that He is “definitely on track” to achieve peak fitness condition for the Second Coming.

“If every eye is going to see Me, and all the tribes of earth are going to wail on account of  Me, I think I owe it to them and to Myself to be in the best shape of My life,” Christ said. “Right now I’m up to 35 minutes at seven [miles per hour] on the treadmill and benching about 165 [pounds].”

“I’m really starting to feel like I’ll have the strength and endurance to move every mountain and island from its place,” Christ added. [...]

“The thought of being unable to seize the seven-headed serpent and hurl it into the abyss really keeps Me motivated,” Christ said.

The Lamb of God said He made the decision to get in shape late last year when, after two millennia of relative inactivity, He realized that at His age there was “no way” He could return to Earth, judge the souls of the innocent and wicked alike, and reign over the Kingdom of God for 1,000 years without prior conditioning.

“The Second Coming isn’t just Me sitting on a great white throne and judging away,” Christ said. “I also have to make all of the stars fall and shake all the powers in Heaven. That’s why I’ve been working a lot with the medicine ball.”

Mark, the earliest Gospel, says that Jesus died on the day after the passover meal:

On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, his disciples said to him, “Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?” [...] As soon as it was morning, the chief priests … bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate…. It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. (Mark 14:12; 15:1, 25 NRSV)

But John, the latest Gospel, says Jesus was crucified on the day before the passover meal:

Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. [Pilate] said to the Jews, “Here is your King!” (John 19:14)

So in Mark, Jesus was nailed to a cross at 9am the day after the Preparation of the Passover. In John, Pilate is about to send Jesus to his death at 12pm on the day of the Preparation for the Passover.

Those timelines just don’t add up. At least one is false; both cannot be true.

Why would John change the day Jesus was crucified from the earlier Mark narrative? Bart Ehrman gives an interesting theory in Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium:

Possibly the author of John, our last Gospel to be written, is actually trying to say something, to make a “truth-claim” about Jesus in the way he has told his story. Readers have long noted — and this can scarcely be either an accident or unrelated to our present dilemma — that John’s is the only Gospel that explicitly identified Jesus as “the Lamb of God.”

In fact, at the very outset of the Gospel, Jesus’ forerunner, John the Baptist, sees him and says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (1:29); and seven verses later, he says it again: “Behold the Lamb of God” (1:36). John’s Gospel thus portrays Jesus as the Passover lamb, whose blood somehow brings salvation, just as the blood of the Passover lamb brought salvation to the children of Israel so many centuries before. [...]

John, or someone who told him the story, made a slight change in a historical datum in order to score a theological point. For John, Jesus really was the Lamb of God. He died at the same time (on the afternoon of the day of Preparation), in the same place (Jerusalem), and at the hands of the same people (the Jewish leaders, especially the priests) as the Passover lambs. In other words, John has told a story that is not historically accurate, but is, in his judgement, theologically true.

That’s the best explanation I’ve heard. John was either told the story slightly differently or changed it to fit his theological point (purposely or accidently).

What I find so refreshing about “liberal” biblical scholarship is its honesty. Fundamentalist scholars are usually apologists — they’re just defending what they want to be true. They are not willing to consider that this, for instance, is a real contradiction. They explain it away with theological smoke and mirrors.

The truth is we don’t know when Jesus died. We only have accounts written generations later, and what we have agree on some parts and disagree on others.

Did Jesus die at 9am the day after the Passover meal, or after 12pm on the day before the Passover meal? I don’t know. You don’t know. Scholars don’t know. And certainly the Christian knocking at your door doesn’t know.

But don’t expect Christian pastors and priests to tell you that this weekend. They’re not in that business.

[For a fuller explanation of this, you can read Ehrman's chapter on it.]

My favorite lines:

As I trust my offspring’s ability to separate fact from fantasy, I am happy for him to participate in your indoctrination process on the proviso that all references to ‘Jesus’ are replaced with the term ‘Purportedly Magic Jew.’

Your inference that I am without religion is incorrect and I am actually torn between two faiths; while your god’s promise of eternal life is very persuasive, the Papua New Guinean mud god, Pikkiwoki, is promising a pig and as many coconuts as you can carry.

If I too knew some guy that had been killed and placed inside a cave with a rock in front of it and I visited the cave to find the rock moved and his body gone, the only logical assumption would be that he had risen from the dead and is the son of God. Once, my friend Simon was rushed to hospital to have his appendix removed and I visited him the next day to find his bed empty. I immediately sacrificed a goat and burnt a witch in his name but it turned out that he had not had appendicitis, just needed a good poo, and was at home playing Playstation.

You raise a valid point and I appreciate you pointing out my failings as a parent. Practising a system of ethics based on the promise of a reward, in your case an afterlife, is certainly preferable to practising a system of ethics based on it simply being the right thing to do.

Many years ago, I lived next door to a Christian named Mr Stevens. You could tell he was a Christian because he had a fish sticker on his Datsun. He used to wave at us kids from his bathroom window on hot summer days as we played in the sprinkler. I learnt a lot from Mr Stevens. Mainly about wrestling holds.

Your job would be made much easier if, after making the school children sit through an hour of church youth group teens dancing, singing and re-enacting Jewish magic tricks, you simply told them that it was just a small taste of what hell is like and if they didn’t believe in Jesus they would have to sit through it again.

When the Bible says Jesus will return out of the clouds with a sword coming out of his mouth, perhaps it was mistranslated and actually meant he will return in a frying pan with beacon grease on his brow.

Toby Elles, 22, made the discovery after burning the food when he fell asleep while cooking.

After lifting off the scorched bacon Mr Elles, from Salford, Lancs, could not believe his eyes when the Christlike image stared back at him.

The face is complete with eyes, nose, a beard and is framed by long flowing hair.

And of course, this event is accompanied by a gen-u-ine miracle from the big J himself:

“If it wasn’t for the smoke of the bacon burning this onto the pan it could have been a very bad situation, perhaps someone’s looking over me.

“My housemates and I had a few beers earlier in the evening I thought I would snack before going to bed and as it was cooking I decided to take a rest on the couch.

“When I woke up about an hour later the room was full of smoke.

“Luckily we have an electric hob so I just turned off the heat, but then I lifted up the bacon and there was JC looking back at me.

“I’m not going to scrub it clean though, just in case I get struck by lightning, it’s going to take pride of place on a wall instead. [...]

“I’m going to keep it for the rest of my life, perhaps it can watch over me.”

Yes, Toby, the grease pan will watch over you. Good luck with that.

For once I might actually agree with the Church of England’s spokesperson who said, “Insights into aspects of the historic person of Jesus are perhaps best left to the academics.”

It sounds strange, doesn’t it? Most of us would even call an enemy to help them in that situation. Anyone who would call while it was happening would be psychotic at best and psychotically evil at worst.

But if it’s Jesus who does it, he’s praised.

Hettie Brittz, wife of gospel singer Louis Brittz, was raped by a robber. She says that Jesus told her she would be raped, but long after she could do anything about it:

Later the robbers took [her husband] away. One stayed with Hettie where she lay with her hands tied, half under the bed.

She said while she was lying like this, she heard the Lord tell her: “Hettie, you are my bride”.

She answered: “Yes, Jesus, I know.”

She said the Lord then told her that the man would rape her but not hurt her. The rapist was also not violent.

Too bad Jesus didn’t tell her that an hour earlier. Maybe he was busy making a table or something.

I’m glad she isn’t bitter and is able to move on, but I wonder if she’s just glossing over it because of her Christianity. The reality is going to hit her at some point. Then again, perhaps her faith is the only thing keeping her from a complete breakdown.