A WITCH LOOKS ATJESUS.

A LECTURE GIVEN TO THE CHESTERFIELD ALISTERHARDY SOCIETY ON 2OTH NOVEMBER, 2009, BY JOE

REVILL, M.A.I think it’s fair to say that my subjecttonight is the most famous man who ever lived.He must also be the most beloved, adored as heis by people of all races and cultures, and bythinkers of widely different beliefs. There areconservative Christians and liberal Christians,fascist Christians and anarchist Christians.Both Martin Luther King and the segregationistsof South Africa saw themselves as upholders ofChristian values. In the writings of OscarWilde, Christ appears as a gentle æsthete;Woody Guthrie’s Jesus was a fiery socialistleader, standing up for the common peopleagainst corrupt government. Everyone seems tofind in him the embodiment of their own ideals. Is it possible to transcend one’spreconceptions of what Jesus must have beenlike and see him as he really was? In tonight’slecture I am going to try. To my advantage isthe fact I’m not a Christian, but a witch, and

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so under no compulsion to find that Jesus heldbeliefs to which I myself could cheerfullysubscribe. Some of you have already heard myattempt to sift truth from fiction in thebiblical account of Jezebel; if you found theattempt convincing, you will no doubt beinterested to see what happens when the sametechniques are applied to the much morecontroversial history of Jesus. So controversial, indeed, is this subjectthat there is hardly any assertion which anyscholar makes about Jesus that isn’t denied byanother scholar somewhere. Some learned menhave seriously denied that Jesus ever existedat all! So for the next hour or so, when Iassert something about the life and times ofJesus what I will mean is that there isevidence and good scholarly support for thetheory that it was like that, though there maywell be some scholars who take a differentview. When I’m speculating, it should be clearthat I am. In an hour, or even in an evening,there is not time enough to discuss all thetheories of all the scholars; so I am justgoing to tell you what seems most probable tome, on the basis of the evidence and on myunderstanding of what the world is like. This

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is, as the title suggests, one witch’s view. Ifyour idea of Jesus is very different to mine,you should ask yourself whether the evidencebetter supports my interpretation or yours; andwe can discuss that afterwards.

FROM THE DAYS OF JEZEBEL TO THOSE OF JESUS.There is general scholarly consensus about thehistorical background to this extraordinaryman’s life. Jesus was born in territory thathad been part of Jezebel’s old Kingdom ofIsrael, around eight and a half centuries aftershe died. These hadn’t been good years for theIsraelites. Fanatical, intolerant, andxenophobic religious leaders, cast from thesame mould as Elijah, had come to dominate thepolitics of both the big kingdom of Israel andthe little southern realm of Judah. At homethey attempted to regulate the lives of theircitizens in minute detail, with hideous publicpunishments for those who transgressed. Allthis was done, allegedly, to please God:religion and politics were one and the same.Obviously the best contemporary model for thissort of thing would be Afghanistan under theTaliban. The foreign policy of these fanaticalregimes was naturally far less pragmatic and

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humane than that of Ahab. His system ofalliances with neighbouring states was replacedby a policy of isolationism and a generalhostility to the outside world: the goyim, or‘nations’, as the Old Testament dismissivelycalls them. About a hundred years after Jezebel’s time,Israel’s lack of allies led to the country’sbeing conquered by the Assyrians. A great manyof the Israelites were deported, and apparentlyceased to be Israelites after that: these werethe famous Lost Tribes of Israel. Of those whoremained in the conquered country, too, manyappear to have given up their Israeliteidentity and become Assyrianized; reasonablyenough, one might think, since events hadclearly disproved the old regime’s theoriesabout the workings of the universe. Yet there were a few who stayed where theywere, kept their faith in Jehovah, and remainedobstinately Israelite: a lowly caste of poorpeasants, merchants and craftsmen, forming adisadvantaged minority in the land that hadonce been their tribe’s mighty kingdom. What made these people cling to theapparently discredited Jehovah hypothesis?Well, there was an elaborate form of it which

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was harder to falsify: it said that, althoughGod hadn’t yet intervened to help his ChosenPeople, he was going to do so very soon. On thecoming ‘Day of the Lord’ all of the Israelites’enemies were going to be defeated, and theneither annihilated, or else made utterlysubservient to Israel. The ‘Holy Land’ wasgoing to become as rich and prosperous asanyone could imagine. In the late first millenium, as conditionsin the real world grew grimmer, many peopleretreated more and more into increasinglyextravagant fantasies about the coming goldenage: the ‘Kingdom of God’, as they called it.We can read about these fantasies in theapocalyptic literature of the day: books likethose of Daniel, Enoch, and Baruch. FaithfulIsraelites were, it seems, going to have awonderful new life. Their land was going tobloom and become as fertile as the Garden ofEden. They would live for a long time: ahundred years, so it was said at first; laterpeople expected a thousand years, or even aneternity of life; and they were to be for everyoung and strong, feasting and drinking likekings, listening to music and doing nounpleasant work.

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In later accounts one even hears that thedead are going to be brought back to life toshare in the reward: one might again see one’sdear parents, grandparents, lost brothers andsisters, and share their joy in the gloriousnew world order. The downside of this was thatsinners and unbelievers were also to beresurrected, but not to share in the joy; theywere to be burnt alive in a fiery pit, oftensaid to be located in the valley of Gehenna,near Jerusalem, where their agonies might, likethe joys of the righteous, also last for anunfeasibly long time: maybe a thousand years,it was said, or maybe for ever. So there wasthe carrot and there was also the stick. If people asked their prophets why the Dayof The Lord was so continually failing to come,the answer was always that it was because ofthe Israelites’ sins. ‘Jehovah is a just god,’the argument went, ‘and therefore he’s obligedto punish us for our transgressions; but it’sprecisely because he’s so terribly just that wecan be sure that he won’t fail to keep hispromises. The Day will come: have faith in theLord, keep all his holy laws, and love him withall your heart. Never say, or even think, thathe doesn’t exist, because that’s the worst sin

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of all.’ So belief in the god of Elijah livedon, slightly mutated, in one little part ofIsrael. Most of the intellectual class of Israel,the priests and prophets, are thought to havemigrated after the conquest to the poorerlittle southern kingdom of Judah, taking withthem their sacred texts, and no doubt addingtheir diversity to the collective insanity thatconstituted the intellectual life of Judah’stheocratic regime. Judah managed to remain independent forabout three and a half centuries afterJezebel’s death. Mainly that was because it wasso small and impoverished as not to be worththe trouble of conquering; at least not whileits rulers were so eager to surrender theirprecious things to anyone who turned up ontheir borders with a large enough army. Most ofthe treasures of Solomon’s temple had beengiven away to various invaders by the time aBabylonian ruler grew angry enough to send inthe troops. All he gained was a bit ofunattractive, unproductive territory and a fairnumber of intelligent workers. Most of thepeasantry were left in situ, to work the land;most other Jews were taken to Babylon, some to

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be used as slave-labour, and others in morecongenial occupations, such as book-keeping.But unlike so many of the Israelites inAssyria, the Jews taken to Babylon did notassimilate. They too were waiting for thecoming Day of the Lord to put things right, andthey believed that the best way to hasten itscoming was to keep their god’s commandments.This helped them to retain their groupidentity; as did the fact that the Babylonianswere rather gentler and more tolerant overlordsthan the Assyrians had been. Anyway, after half a century of exile forthe Jews, the Babylonians were in turnconquered by the Persians, and a sympatheticnew ruler allowed the faithful to return toJudah, rebuild the great temple of Jerusalem,and set up a new theocratic state along thelines of the old one. Jehovah should have beenpleased to be receiving sacrifices again; butapparently he still had issues with the Jews,because their years of Persian-backed autonomywere brief: first Greek and then Romanconquerors would soon subjugate the littlecountry that was now known as Judæa. As waspractically inevitable, the new conquerorswould do things that were highly offensive to

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the religious susceptibilities of the Judeans.It should be noted that, like modern Muslims,the Jews were remarkably quick to take offence;and for similar reasons. They were supposed tobe the Chosen People, and yet the big, powerfulnations kept pushing them around! They were theCinderella of nations. In the time of Jesus,his people were feeling humiliated anddesperate, longing for the coming of theKingdom of God. Closely related to the idea of the Kingdomwas that of the Messiah, in Greek Christos, andin English ‘anointed one’, a holy man who wassupposed to lead the Israelites on the Day ofthe Lord and then to reign over them as God’sviceroy in Jerusalem for a very long time –maybe a thousand years, or maybe for ever. Bothin Galilee and in Judæa people were eagerlyexpecting his coming. Several men had actuallyclaimed to be him, while leading armedrebellions whose eventual failure disprovedtheir claim. There seems to have been awidespread idea that the Messiah would be adescendent of King David. Other factoids aboutthis imaginary paladin were painstakinglyaccrued by the ingenious interpretation ofobscure biblical texts: thus it came to be

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generally believed that Elijah would return toproclaim the coming of the Messiah; that thelatter’s birthplace would be Bethlehem, andthat just before the Day he would ridetriumphantly into Jerusalem seated on a donkeybefore proceeding to cleanse the temple of itscorruption. To a modern understanding all this seemsquite obviously to be a fantasy made up bylife’s losers to make themselves feel better;even most modern, educated Christians find suchbeliefs embarrassing, and strive to allegorizethem into something more plausible. In vain, Ithink: these are simply dumb ideas, born ofhope out of ignorance, like the cargo-cults ofthe Pacific. The Day of the Lord never came,and we can be sure that it never will: theMessiah will never sit on his throne inJerusalem. Tales of such things weren’tchannelled from any supernatural realm; peoplemade them up, for entirely human reasons. Anyway that was the world into which Jesuswas born, and such were the beliefs that shapedhim.

EXTRA-BIBLICAL SOURCES for THE LIFE OF JESUS.

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Before we look at the New Testament, it’s worthasking whether any sources outside the Biblehave preserved useful information about the manand his teaching. One might well expect the Jewish historianJosephus to have said something about Jesus;and probably he did, but we can’t be sure whatit was, since the passage occurs in differentversions in different copies of his book, andis generally agreed to have been heavilyreworked by Christian copyists – both onstylistic grounds and because it makes Josephusaffirm that Jesus was the Messiah, a view whichwe can be quite sure that he did not hold. One plausible restoration of the original,purged of its interpolations, is: At this timethere appeared Jesus, a wise man. He was a doer of startlingdeeds, a teacher of the people. When Pilate, because of anaccusation made by the leading men among us, condemnedhim to the cross, those who had loved him previously did notcease to do so; and up until this very day the tribe of Christians,named after him, has not died out. [Flavius Josephus,Jewish Antiquities, 18:63-64.] But it’s easier to remove interpolationsthan it is to restore deleted text. If thehistorian wrote anything that seemed derogatory

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to Jesus, it would probably not have come downto us. Passing references in the works of Tacitus,Suetonius and Pliny show that some Romans knewof ‘Christus’, or ‘Chrestus’, as a historicalcharacter, the founder of the Christian sect,who had been executed by Pilate in Judæa; butit’s not until 178 CE that a pagan author wroteanything substantial about Jesus – anythingthat’s come down to us, that is. The Greekphilosopher Celsus, in a remarkable anti-Christian polemic, tells us many interestingthings, which he claims to have learnt from theJews: that Jesus was a heretical teacher whowas puny, bald and ugly; that he workedapparent miracles by means of techniques learntfrom conjurers in Egypt; that after hiscrucifixion his followers believed him to haverisen from the dead, on the basis of theirdreams and visions; and that he was said to bethe illegitimate son of a loose woman and aRoman soldier with the strange, feline name ofPanthéra. That name, or a similar one, recurs in thevery scanty Jewish material relating to Jesus.From the late first and early second centuriesthere are a few brief and obscure Talmudic

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references to a heretical teacher called Yeshuson of Pandira, or Yeshu son of Pantira, whowas the son of a loose woman, worked(sorcerous) miracles, and was shamefullyexecuted. It is often thought nowadays thatthese references are to Jesus, and some Jewishintellectuals clearly thought so back in theEarly Middle Ages, when they worked these Yeshutraditions up into a fanciful and scurrilouspseudo-gospel called the Sepher Toldoth Yeshu. Herewe hear again about the Roman soldier with theunusual name of Pandera. Different versions ofthe Sepher disagree as to whether Pandera’sunion with Mary was a rape or a seduction, butall agree that it caused Mary to becomepregnant, and that she was due to marry a mancalled Joseph, whom she told, in order to saveher honour (and indeed her life) that the childin her womb had been begotten not in the usualway but by the word of an angel. Most of what’s in the Sepher is purefantasy; but I have to say that this storyabout Mary has the ring of truth to me. Itsounds like something that could happen in thereal world; whereas the birth-narratives in thegospels, with their wise men, shepherds, angeland star, read like pious fairy-tales.

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But plausible though the story is, it lacksevidence. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could findsome evidence of a man called Panthera being inthe right place at the right time? Amazingly,we have. In 1859, a tombstone of the mid-firstcentury CE was found near Bingerbrück, inGermany. It commemorates an old soldier calledTiberius Julius Abdes Pantera. The first two,Roman, names are an honour that he would haveacquired after 25 years of service to theEmpire; Abdes is thought to mean ‘servant ofIsis’ and perhaps to indicate his religion ofchoice; Pantera, meaning ‘panther’, was whatpeople would have called him. He was fromSidon, a Phœnician. His unit is known to havebeen in Palestine in the period around thesupposed date of Jesus’ birth, leaving there in9 C.E., since when they had been in Germany. Soit is just possible that this man was thebiological father of Jesus. It must be admitted that the non-Christiansources don’t tell us very much. We hear thatJesus was a heretical Jewish preacher, whoperformed apparent miracles, was shamefullyexecuted by order of Pilate, and was alleged byhis followers to have risen from the dead. So

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far it matches the gospels; all that’s new arethe allegations that he was physicallyimperfect and the illegitimate son of a Romansoldier. In my opinion it’s not at all to hisdiscredit if these assertions are true. As to his alleged physical imperfections,it is noteworthy that the belief in an uglyJesus seems to have been common among earlyChristians. For example, Origen in his riposteto Celsus admits that there are indeed somestatements respecting the body of Jesus having been ill-favoured; while in Chapter 9 of Tertullian’sAgainst Marcion, written about 200 CE, the greattheologian tells us that Jesus’ body did not reacheven to human beauty, to say nothing of heavenly glory.However, it has been suggested that this beliefcame about because of an early Christianidentification of Jesus with the SufferingServant described in the 53rd Chapter of theBook of Isaiah: Many were astonished at him, hisappearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and hisform beyond that of the sons of men....he had no form orcomeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that weshould desire him. So the idea may have more to do withfulfilling prophecy than with real memories ofwhat Jesus looked like. But we can at least

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suppose that there was no strong earlytradition that he was handsome, or this ideacould never have got going. On the other hand, the story about theextra-marital conception of Jesus seems quitelikely to be true, not least because it makessense of some otherwise puzzling passages inthe gospels: for example, Jesus’ fellow-villagers’ description of him as ‘son of Mary’[Mark 6:3.], a form of name usually given onlyto children of unknown fathers; and the wordsof a crowd hostile to him, reported in John’sgospel: ‘We were not conceived in fornication.’ [8:41.]One can easily imagine how a boy raised tothink of himself as mysteriously begotten bythe word of an angel might come to entertaingreat expectations of his future role in theworld.

THE NEW TESTAMENT ACCOUNTS.In the New Testament itself the earliestinformation about Jesus comes in the epistlesof St Paul; but there is surprisingly little ofit. Paul wasn’t nearly as interested in Jesus’earthly life as he was in mystical fantasiesabout the Heavenly Christ. We learn from Paulthat Jesus was a descendent of David, that he

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was the Messiah, and that he was crucified androse from the dead; and that’s about it. Theone anecdote that Paul does tell about himconcerns the institution of the sacrament ofthe Eucharist, on the night before hiscrucifixion; but we are told that Paul receivedthis from the Lord – which means he learnt aboutit in a vision or a meditative trance, ratherthan from the testimony of anyone who wasthere. For a fuller account of Jesus one has toturn to the gospels. Most scholars agree thatthe oldest of these is that of St Mark,probably written around 70 C.E., perhaps inRome. Early Christian tradition maintains,quite plausibly, that Mark was St Peter’sinterpreter, and based the gospel on hismemories of the stories that Peter used totell. Somewhat later Matthew and Luke wouldwrite their accounts, using as sources bothMark’s gospel and a collection of the sayingsof Jesus, which modern scholars refer to as Q.It seems likely that they both had access toother sources, apart from Mark and Q, butwhether these were oral traditions or writtendocuments we don’t know. Sometimes Matthewseems be quoting an earlier and better text of

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Mark than the one that we now have. Matthew andLuke wrote for different Christian communities,the one perhaps in Egypt and the other inGreece; they do not seem to have known eachother’s work, and their gospels contradict eachother in many ways, right from the beginning,when they both give quite different genealogiesof Jesus tracing his descent from David. Theyput the sayings from Q into differentcontexts. But on the whole the first threegospels tell pretty much the same story andgive a similar impression of Jesus, which iswhy they’re called Synoptic, meaning that theytake the same view. The fourth gospel is very different. Itsliterary quality is much higher, but the Jesusit presents is more like Paul’s Heavenly Christthan he is like anyone who ever lived on earth.He goes around saying awesome things like‘Before Abraham was, I am,’ and ‘He that hath seen me hathseen the Father’. As mystical theologies go, thisis all very nice, but it seems absolutelyunhistorical to put such words in the mouth ofa first-century Jew. The miracles in thisgospel read like literary allegories, full ofartful symbolism. On a darker note, the Jesusof the fourth gospel seems very hostile to the

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Jews, whom he calls, collectively, the childrenof the Devil; he doesn’t appear to regardhimself or his followers as Jewish at all. Thisis obviously a later, Christian attitude,projected back onto Jesus. However, the book is not a completefantasy, in the manner of the ApocryphalGospels: it shows a good knowledge of localgeography and topography, Jewish law andcustoms; and a few of its minor incidents seemcredible enough – sometimes more so than theirSynoptic counterparts. I am inclined to acceptSchonfield’s suggestion that this gospel wasthe result of a collaboration between two men,one of whom was an eyewitness, probably theaged apostle John; and the other of whom was asecond-generation Christian with a good Greekeducation. Something similar may be seen in thebiography of Rasputin which his daughter wrotein her late 70s with the journalist PatteBarham: in that work it is often easy, andsometimes hard, to distinguish Maria’sauthentic recollections from Patte’s novelisticfantasies. So, on the trail of the historical Jesus,I shall be following the Synoptics almostexclusively. Though there is some plausible

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information in John’s gospel, it must becounted as a very unreliable source. And yet somuch of what we think we know about Jesus comesfrom there: for example the stories about himraising Lazarus, turning water into wine,saying groovy stuff like ‘God is Love’, and ‘Love oneanother’, and talking about himself as if hewere God Incarnate! It takes an effort todismiss all that from one’s mind and face up tothe strange, but recognizably human, figure ofJesus that we see in the Synoptic gospels.

THE FACTS OF JESUS’ LIFE.Schonfield gives convincing arguments fordating the crucifixion of Jesus in 36 C.E. Asthe Synoptics indicate that the length of hisministry was a little less than a year, we canbe reasonably certain that it began in thespring of 35, when, like many another pious sonof Israel, he was baptized in the River Jordanby the popular preacher, John the Baptist. Luke says that Jesus was about thirty atthe time, although this is probably no morethan a guess. This gospel puts the birth of Jesus at thetime of the census of Quirinius, which happenedin 6 C.E., so indicating that Jesus may

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actually have been twenty-eight or twenty-nineat the time of his baptism. But I think thatLuke only introduces the census into his storyto provide a reason for Joseph and Mary to gofrom their home in Nazareth to the littleJudæan village of Bethlehem, where many peoplebelieved that the Messiah would be born. Thecensus wouldn’t really have served thatpurpose, as it was simply a head-count forreasons of taxation, not requiring anyone to goto the place where their ancestors had livedlong ago; and it didn’t apply to the people ofGalilee anyway, since that region was not underdirect Roman rule, but governed by the Romans’client-king, Herod. So there are a lot ofproblems with Luke’s version of the nativity-story. Matthew dates the birth of Jesus late inthe reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4B.C.E.; and if we accept this, it would makeJesus thirty-seven or thirty-eight at the timeof his baptism. This evangelist’s story abouthow Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem is morecredible: in Matthew’s account it appears thatJoseph and Mary were originally from thatJudæan village, and moved to Galilee only afterJesus’ birth. Maybe so; or maybe, as most

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modern scholars tend to believe, Jesus wasreally born in Nazareth, and the stories aboutBethlehem were contrived to make him seem amore convincing Messiah. Joseph and Marysubsequently had a number of other children[Mark 6.], but it seems that these werebegotten in the normal way. We know almost nothing about Jesus’ earlylife. It’s generally believed that he hadworked as a professional carpenter, althoughthis is by no means certain, because theAramaic word for ‘carpenter’, naggar, can alsomean ‘scholar’. The Jesus of the gospels wasliterate, and well-acquainted with scripture,so perhaps he wasn’t a carpenter after all. It’s possible that he had worked in Egypt,as Celsus heard: a lot of Jews then went tolive and work in Alexandria, rather asPortuguese people go to Paris now. But theJesus of the gospels doesn’t look like a manwho’d spent much time abroad: for him the landsand affairs of the gentiles were of littleinterest. So the rumour may just be a variationon Matthew’s story of the Flight into Egypt,itself probably invented to make a parallelbetween the life of Jesus and the history ofthe Israelites.

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One thing that we can be sure of is that theyoung Jesus had spent a great deal of timereading the holy books of his people, and hadgiven special attention to the prophecies aboutthe coming Kingdom of God. Throughout thegospel story there are allusions to hisspiritual practice, which consisted of solitaryprayer and meditation; probably he began thisin his youth. Did he have any contact with thelunatic fringe of Judaism, manifest for examplein the cult-like communities of the puritanicalEssenes? Maybe: there were plenty of sectariansabout, and it seems quite likely that a youngman of Jesus’ temperament would have wanted tolook into their beliefs; but if he did so heseems to have rejected most of what he found.The Jesus of the gospels, drinking and feastingwith publicans and harlots, is about as faraway from being an Essene as a man could be andstill stay Jewish. After Jesus’ baptism we have a pretty goodrecord of his activities. He is said to havespent forty days in the wilderness, then tohave returned to human society as a Prophetannouncing the imminent arrival of the Kingdomof God. He performed healings and preached

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eloquent but cryptic sermons on the theme ofthe coming Kingdom. It was like a mustard seed or like leavenworking in dough, he said: small and almostinvisible at the moment, but soon to developinto something great. He meant, I think, thatthe Kingdom was already beginning, in a verylow-key way: he and his followers were alreadyliving in it. [Luke 17:20-21.] He told people clearly how they should liveso as to be worthy of the Kingdom: basically hewanted them to follow the Jewish law – with theproviso that he imagined God to be moreinterested in the moral aspects of the law thanin the ceremonial. So, on the one hand, thelaws about ceremonial purity weren’t veryimportant, and could be disregarded wheninconvenient; on the other hand, abstainingfrom murder and fornication, though essential,wasn’t enough: to please God fully one had torid oneself of even the desire to do suchthings. It was as bad to look at a woman withdesire as it was to sleep with her [Matt. 5:28.]; as bad to call one’s brother a fool as itwas to murder him [Matt. 5: 21-2.]. Crowds came to listen to Jesus’ preaching.He recruited a number of disciples, including

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twelve specially favoured ones, who weresecretly promised that they would sit onthrones to rule over the twelve tribes ofIsrael when the Kingdom came. [Matt. 19:28.] Was there already a Church at this time?Were people baptized into the Jesus movement?Did they hand over part or all of theirpossessions to be used (supposedly) for thecommon good, as the early Christians wouldlater do under the leadership of St Peter? Wedon’t know, but it seems quite likely. Thesepeople would still have thought of themselvesas Jews, of course, but as a particular kind ofJews, very like the modern Lubavitcher sect intheir devotion to the teachings of a particularRabbi. Part of what distinguished the followersof Jesus, of course, would be their belief thatthey were guaranteed a comfortable life in thecoming Kingdom, while opponents of their sectwere bound for the fiery pit of Gehenna. The next significant event in Jesus’ lifeis told in full only by Matthew, though Markhas a briefer account of it. I presume thatthis must be one of those places in whichMatthew has preserved an older and moreauthentic version of Mark’s text, since what isomitted from Mark is material damaging to

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Jesus’ reputation for infallibility, whichMark’s editors would have had every incentiveto delete, and which Matthew surely wouldn’thave invented. The story is that, after a few months ofpreaching and healing, Jesus sent his twelvedisciples out on a mission to all the Jewishsettlements in Galilee and Judæa, telling themto announce the coming of the Kingdom. He toldthem explicitly that the Day of the Lord wouldcome before they had completed this mission[Matt.10:23.]; but this did not happen.However, the apostles’ preaching created agreat deal of popular interest in Jesus, whommany then regarded as a Prophet of the comingMessiah – perhaps Elijah. [Mark 8:28.] There follows the story of the decapitationof John the Baptist at the behest of thegraceful, ruthless daughter of Herodias. (I bowmy head, parenthetically, to a manifestation ofthe Goddess of the Witches.) Jesus did a little more preaching andhealing, but mostly he spent the next fewmonths trying to get away from the crowds. Itlooks to me as if, following the failure of hisprophecy and the death of his mentor, he neededsome space to get his head together, while he

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worked out a new understanding of what Godwanted him to do. When he and his apostles went down toJerusalem for the Passover celebrations of 36,Jesus staged a Messianic entry into Jerusalemand created a disturbance in the temple. As aconsequence of these activities he was arrestedsecretly, at night, by the Jewish authorities,and handed over to the stern Roman governor,Pontius Pilate, who had him flogged andcrucified the next day for plotting a rebellionagainst the Romans.

JESUS THE MESSIAH.Did Jesus think that he was the Messiah? Theevangelists are in no doubt about it. True,Mark says that although Jesus knew himself tobe the Messiah, he kept the fact secret fromeveryone else until quite late in his career,after the death of John the Baptist; so thesuggestion has been made that Jesus only cameto believe it of himself at that late date. Iused to think this myself. But on re-readingthe texts, I find myself convinced, like Markand the other evangelists, that Jesus believedthat he was the Messiah from the day of hisbaptism, if not before. Something in Jesus’understanding of his mission did change towards

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the end, but, in my opinion, it wasn’t to dowith whether he was the Messiah but about whathe, as the Messiah, was meant to do in order tobring about the Kingdom of God. As I see it, Jesus’ whole strategy in theearlier days was based on his firmly-heldbelief that God was almighty: there was no needfor the Messiah to form an army and fightbattles, because Jehovah would see toeverything. The older idea had been that Godwould send battalions of angels to fightalongside the Messiah’s human troops; Jesusthought that since the angels alone coulddefeat any foe, a Jewish army would not beneeded. All that the Israelites had to do wasrepent of their sins and await their inevitabledeliverance: God would do the rest. Jesus clearly believed that how peoplereacted to him in the present would determinewhat happened to them when the Kingdom came:those who honoured him would share in thehappiness, but those who rejected him, or spokescornfully of his work, stood in danger ofbeing cast into the fires of Gehenna. So itseems to me that his mission, as he thenconceived it, was to win over as many of hisnation as possible to his new religious

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movement before the coming of the Day of theLord. On that day he, the lowly man fromNazareth, would be taken up into Heaven likeElijah, and appear, glorified, on the clouds,in his true identity as the Messiah. It wouldhave been a striking parallel to his nation’sinstantaneous transition from poverty andweakness to riches and power: as if the Messiahwere a microcosm of the Jewish people. We don’t know what private revelation orinterpretation of prophecy convinced Jesus thathe knew the date on which God was going tointervene in human history; but the story inMatthew Chapter 10 leaves us in no doubt thathe was at one time so convinced. When he sentout his apostles on their mission to evangelizethe Jews. he declared: ‘Verily I say unto you, Ye shallnot have gone through the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man become.’ That title, ‘Son of Man’ was hisfavourite way of designating the Messiah. Itwas a genuine Messianic title, from the Book ofEnoch; but also, in Aramaic, a politesubstitute for ‘I’ – rather as one might inEnglish say ‘the present speaker’ or ‘yourstruly’. The ambiguity must have delightedJesus.

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However, as we know, on this occasion hisprophecy was not fulfilled: his apostles wentthrough all the towns of Israel and Judahpreaching and healing, and they returnedsafely. God did not bring in the Kingdom. Anormal man might well have felt at this pointthat the whole thing had been a mistake. Jesus’faith – or, to put it another way, his delusion– was not so easily destroyed. He seems to haveworked out a new understanding of the end-timescenario and the Messiah’s role in it; and Ithink that he found his main inspiration in theBook of Isaiah.

Behold, my servant shall prosper, he shall be exalted and liftedup, and shall be very high. Surely he has borne our griefs andcarried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten byGod, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions,he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was thechastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we arehealed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turnedevery one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him theiniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet heopened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he openednot his mouth.... by his knowledge shall the righteous one, myservant, make many to be accounted righteous; and he shall

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bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion withthe great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; becausehe poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with thetransgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and madeintercession for the transgressors. [52:13 – 53:12.]

No one knows quite what Isaiah meant by allthis. It has been variously suggested that theSuffering Servant stands for Isaiah himself;for a historical character who was known to theProphet, but is now forgotten; for thepersecuted righteous men of Israelcollectively; and for the coming Messiah.Christian commentators have always favoured thelast interpretation, which modern Jewishscholars deny, saying that the Messiah can onlybe a triumphant conqueror; but there are Jewishcommentaries from the Early Middle Ages whichapply this prophecy to the Messiah, and arecently-published Dead Sea Scroll from justbefore the time of Jesus speaks of Messianicsufferings in very similar terms. So thereseems to be no reason to doubt that Jesus couldhave read these words of Isaiah as a messagefrom God about his Messianic duties. I think he interpreted them as meaning thatby suffering a painful and humiliating death at

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the hands of his enemies he would somehowcompensate God for the sins of his people, thusremoving the obstacle that was currentlypreventing the coming of the Day of the Lord.But how did Jesus determine that the Lordwanted him to be crucified rather than (say)stoned to death? I don’t know, but I stronglysuspect that Psalm 22 had something to do withit. They pierced my hands and my feet, says thepsalmist, speaking as a righteous man giveninto the hands of the ungodly. They look and stareupon me... They part my garments amongst them and cast lotsupon my vesture. [16-18.] If this sounds eerilylike a crucifixion, that could be because thewriter had such a scene in mind: Assyriansoldiers had been carrying out such punishmentson the Jews for centuries before the Romanstook up the practice. I don’t suppose thepsalmist meant this as a Messianic prophecy,but I can see why Jesus might have read it asone. According to the Synoptics, he tried tocommunicate his new understanding to the twelvedisciples: From that time forth began Jesus to shew untohis disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffermany things... and be killed, and be raised again [on] the thirdday. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be

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it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be done unto thee! [Matt.16:21-2.] Many good scholars find it hard tobelieve that Jesus predicted his resurrection,as his disciples seem to have been so surprisedby it when it apparently occurred. But he couldhave got the idea from his reading of thescriptures, e.g. Psalm 16:10, thou wilt not leave mysoul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to seecorruption; or the prophet Hosea [6:1-2], Let usreturn unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us...After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise usup. Again, what these ancient authors actuallymeant had nothing to do with Jesus, but he wasreading the Bible like a modern Rastafarian,not seeing the historical context, but lookingfor quotes that could be twisted to fit in withhis obsessions. I think that Jesus probably didtry to tell the twelve disciples about hisinterpretation of these prophecies; and thatthey were as unreceptive to the idea as theSynoptics suggest. Probably Jesus soon gave upon the idea of convincing them, and stoppedtalking about it. Only in retrospect did hiswords make sense to them. Anyway this is my theory about why Jesuswent down to Jerusalem, provoked a conflictwith the authorities, and ended up dying on a

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cross: he thought that it was his Messianicduty to do so. After his suffering, Jesus stillexpected to be exalted and glorified; but evenso it can’t have been an easy thing for him todo, and one has to respect the poor deludedyoung man for going through with it.

JESUS THE RACIST.Of all the ways in which the Jesus of historydiffers from the Christ of faith, the mostsignificant may be that whereas Christ’s loveis supposed to be boundless, the historicalJesus was concerned only with the interests ofhis own race, the children of Israel. When he sent out his apostles on theirfirst mission, he told them: ‘Go not into the way ofthe gentiles, and enter ye not into any city of the Samaritans,but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ [Matt.10:5-6.] Later, when a distressed Phœnician womanasked him to heal her sick daughter, he repliedrudely: ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house ofIsrael.’  But she came and began to bow down before him,saying, ‘Lord, help me!’  And he answered and said, ‘It is not

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good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’[Matt. 15:24-26.] In this case, we are told that he dideventually relent and heal the little girl, butonly after the pagan woman had accepted hischaracterization of her people as subhuman.Clearly, as far as Jesus was concerned, peopleof his own race would be the only ones invitedto enjoy the pleasures of the Kingdom of God.We don’t know what he thought would become ofthe gentiles in the new world order: whetherthey would still exist, as servants andtributaries to his own people; whether theywere to be destroyed altogether; or whether anyor all of them would burn, alongside the wickedJews, in the fiery pit of Gehenna. Anyway, it has to be said that Jesus’vision of himself as eternal leader of aracially-pure everlasting Kingdom dominatingthe world, with a place of torment and burningfor those who opposed him, is unpleasantlyreminiscent of Hitler’s plans for Nazi Germany.

JESUS AS AN ETHICAL TEACHER.Jesus is sometimes said to be the greatestethical teacher of all time; but to me he

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doesn’t seem like one of the best, because mostof his teaching is wildly impractical. For example, his injunction: ‘To him thatsmiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and fromhim that taketh away thy cloak withhold not thy coat also.’[Luke 6:29.] What – are we not to defendourselves against bullies and muggers?Apparently not. But to Jesus that wasn’t aproblem, because the Kingdom of God was coming:even if the evil-doers killed you, you’d riseup again to enjoy it, and they would bepunished in the fiery pit of Gehenna. This isJesus’ usual idea that because God is almightyand good, he will sort everything out justperfectly, very soon; so we can leave vengeanceto him. That’s why he could also say: ‘Give to everyone that asketh thee, and of him that taketh away thy goodsask them not again.’ [Luke 6:30.] If anyone tried tolive by this rule in the real world, he’d soonend up as a tramp; as indeed would anyone whotook as his role-models the birds of the air, or thelilies of the field! [Matt. 6:26-28.] Jesus reallythought that God would provide for thefaithful, and yet experience tells us dailythat his confidence was misplaced.

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Although modern Christians are very keen onfamily values, Jesus had quite a differentattitude: ‘If any man come to me, and hate not his father,and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters,yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.’ [Luke14:26.] I remember reading that as a kid andbeing quite horrified. Jesus is saying that thebonds of affection between family members countfor absolutely nothing when weighed against thecommitment that God, and he himself as God’srepresentative, demand from their followers.Cult leaders like the Reverend Moon still makesimilar claims. That bit about the disciplehating his own life is very revealing, I think.Those who convert to modern extremist cults areoften people who hate their lives anddesperately want to start anew. I suppose thatJesus attracted a fair number of such people,just as Christian preachers like Wesley havedone in more recent times. One of Jesus’ moral precepts has beengenerally recognized to be pretty good: ‘...as yewould that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.’[Luke 6: 31.] This was, however, a fairlycommonplace idea. Similar sayings can be quotedfrom Rabbi Hillel in Jesus’ own time; fromvarious early Greek philosophers, and from asfar away as China, where Confucius hadpronounced, ‘Never impose on others what you would not

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choose for yourself’, around five hundred yearsbefore. In fact the principle is not perfect,as relationships aren’t always symmetrical. Butit is a pretty good rule of thumb, which is asmuch as can be said for most moral principles. There was another good idea expressed byJesus, which I don’t know that anyone beforehim had put into words. He expressed it in thephrase, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those whotrespass against us.’ That rings true to my meditativeexperience: I find that the only way in which Ican forgive myself for bad things that I’vedone to others is to forgive others for doingbad things to me. It feels good to be in thatstate, forgiven and forgiving. I suppose thatJesus had experienced the same state in his ownsessions of prayer and meditation; but as aworshipper of Jehovah, he imagined that his Godwas the one forgiving him. It seems to me thattheists often mistake the deeper parts ofthemselves for their imaginary God. The basic problem with the teaching ofJesus is that it’s all centred on that non-existent being. This means that his ethics arequite inapplicable in the real world, where wecan’t rely on a Celestial Super-Daddy to comein and make everything right for us. We have tothink for ourselves, and sometimes make hardchoices, knowing that our actions will haveconsequences with which we and others will haveto live. I don’t think that the otherworldly

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teaching of Jesus can be of much use to anyoneas they make such choices in the real world.Indeed, so impractical are the moral preceptsof Jesus that most Christians have generallyfailed to act in accordance with them, and havefelt needlessly guilty as a consequence.

SEX AND THE SINGLE MESSIAH.A popular modern idea is that Jesus was marriedto Mary Magdalene; the argument being that itwould have been unusual for a Jewish man toremain unmarried, and that a few apocryphalwritings of the second and third centuriesspeak of a special closeness between Jesus andthe Magdalene – although one that falls farshort of a sexual relationship. All that the Synoptic gospels tell us aboutMary is that she was a rich Galilean woman whomJesus had healed; that she followed him andsupported his movement financially. And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughoutevery city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidingsof the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, andcertain women, which had been healed of evil spirits andinfirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went sevendevils, And Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward, andSusanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of theirsubstance. [Luke 8:1-3.] There is absolutely nothing to say thatthe Magdalene was young and pretty, nothingabout her red hair or her former career as aprostitute: all of that is the fantasy of later

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writers. The chances are that she was a middle-aged widow more remarkable for her piety thanher beauty, and that her relationship withJesus was entirely chaste. In fact the Jesus of the Synoptics was aman quite devoid of sexual feeling. He saidthat to look at a woman with desire was a sin[Matt. 5:28.]; and that in the Kingdom of Godno one would have sex any more [Matt. 22:30.].He even spoke approvingly of self-castration,saying that there are some eunuchs, which were so bornfrom their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, whichwere made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which havemade themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. Hethat is able to receive it, let him receive it. [Matt. 19:12.] In Rasputin’s Russia there was a sect ofpeople, the Skoptsi, who took these words atface value, and cut off their sexual organs inorder to be worthy of salvation. It seems atleast possible that Jesus had done the same. Eunuch or no, as far as we can tell fromall the early sources, Jesus was celibate, likethe ancient Prophets Elijah and Elisha whom hegreatly admired, and like his contemporariesJohn the Baptist and the Essenes. All this DaVinci Code speculation about his marriage tellsus something about what the modern world wouldlike Christianity to be, but nothing about theway it really was. There was indeed, as I have argued atlength in previous lectures, an ancientreligion which revered the Divine Feminine and

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saw sex as a mystical sacrament; but it hadnothing to do with Christianity.

THE MIRACLES OF JESUS.Could Jesus work miracles? His followers andhis opponents agree that he could, so I thinkthat there must have been something in it. Themiracles that he performs in the gospels aremostly miracles of healing. How did he actually do these? In Mark hesometimes uses his own spittle to anointafflicted parts; in later gospels he generallyjust touches the patient, and says a few wordsaloud. In the Synoptic accounts, what he says areoften words addressed not to the patient, butto an invisible demon, commanding it to depart.Different kinds of human ailment, in thesegospels, seem to be the work of a particularkind of demon: we hear, for example, thatdeafness is cured by the expulsion of a deafspirit; dumbness by that of the dumb spirit. RecentAmerican Christians have discovered many moreof these spirits than the few mentioned in thegospels: for example a ‘spirit of acne’, a‘spirit of lesbianism’, and even a ‘spirit ofBuddhism’, all of which they attempt to castout of afflicted people in the name of Jesus.[www.demonbuster.com/demonlist.html] I wonder howwell that can work?

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More realistic, to my mind, are the storiesin which Jesus talks about his patient’s faithbeing the crucial factor in the cure. ‘Go thyway’, he told Bartimæus at Jericho, ‘thy faith hathmade thee whole.’ [Mark 10:52.] Likewise to thewoman with an issue of blood: ‘Daughter, thy faithhath made thee whole; go in peace’. [Mark 5:43.] Hemakes the same remark in Luke 17:19, andelsewhere. Obviously connected with this is theuncomfortable fact that, on a visit to hishome-town of Nazareth, where people regardedhim as an ordinary man, he could do no mighty work...because of their unbelief. [Mark 6.] I think that is the nub of it: some peoplewith hysterical illnesses were cured, at leasttemporarily, on account of their faith in him.That these cures were not always permanent isacknowledged, obliquely, in the strange talethat he span to his disciples: ‘When the uncleanspirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places,seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return to myhouse whence I came out.’ [Luke 11:24.] Around this kernel of genuine faithhealings have grown increasingly extravagantmiracle-stories, some of which may be distortedversions of real events, and some of which,like the miracles in the fourth gospel, looklike pure invention. Some of the more spectacular stories areclearly imitated from the Old Testament. Forexample the Feeding of the Multitude is veryreminiscent of a similar miracle performed by

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Elisha in the Second Book of Kings [4:42-44].Elisha fed a hundred men on twenty loaves ofbarley, so Jesus had to be credited with aneven more unlikely feat! There is also a greatlikeness between the raising of the widow’s sonby Jesus in Luke Chapter 7 and the raising ofanother widow’s son by Elijah [2 Kings 4:27-37.]. Obviously these miracle-stories wereuseful for attracting converts, and theevangelists probably thought that Jesus musthave been able to do such things as theydescribed; nevertheless, when they wrote thesestories they were, in plain words, lying.

THE TRAGIC END OF JESUS.If Jesus had been able to produce suchspectacular proof of his divine power, the besttime to do it would certainly have been duringhis final days in Jerusalem, perhaps during his‘cleansing’ of the Temple. In fact all that hecould manage was some senseless disruption ofthe Temple’s operations, no doubt causingannoyance and inconvenience to many peoplethere. But what he said, denouncing the corruptpriesthood who taxed the people excessively,clearly appealed to some elements in the crowd,so it was impossible to arrest him withoutstarting a riot; and that was the last thingthat the priests wanted in their Temple atfestival time. Jesus and his men walked outwith their heads held high.

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But he had crossed a line. Caiaphas, theHigh Priest, knew the scriptures well, andwould have recognized that Jesus was trying tofulfil the Messianic prophecies of Micah andZechariah. His logical next step would be toproclaim himself as the Messiah, and start awar against the Romans. The thought of thebloodshed that this would involve must haveappalled the High Priest. If this Galilean wereyet another false Messiah, his cause was sureto be defeated: nothing positive would beachieved, and much needless suffering would becaused. But what if he were the real Messiah?Caiaphas probably didn’t take that possibilityvery seriously, but he knew that the realMessiah was supposed to be invincible. So theobvious thing to do was to send soldiers toarrest Jesus when he didn’t have a crowd aroundhim; and if they could do it he was clearly afraud. Caiaphas soon learned where to send thesoldiers. He had an informant among the twelvedisciples, a man whom the gospels call JudasIscariot. The gospels don’t tell us why Judasmade his decision to co-operate with the Templetheocracy. It seems likely to me that he wassimply doing what Jesus had instructed him todo. In the account of Jesus’ arrest it isnoteworthy that as soon as he was taken, hisdisciples all ran away. Also noteworthy is thesurprising fact that the authorities allowed

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them to leave, and made no subsequent effortsto apprehend them. Maybe this was part of adeal that Jesus had made, through Judas, withCaiaphas; or maybe the High Priest was amerciful man who didn’t see any point inpunishing more people than he needed to. IfJesus alone could be discredited andeliminated, there would be no rebellion, andthat must have been the main thing as far asCaiaphas was concerned. The details of Jesus’ trials have been muchdiscussed but really aren’t of muchconsequence. The main point is that a (probablyirregular) gathering of Caiaphas and hisfriends determined that Jesus thought himselfto be the Messiah; and in the morning theyhanded him over to Pontius Pilate, who judgedhim guilty of claiming to be the rightful Kingof the Jews, and thus a rebel, for whom thesentence was flogging and crucifixion. Thesewere both horrible punishments. Seeing Jesushurt and humiliated like that must haveconvinced most people that he had been a falseMessiah. Perhaps some of the very people whohad so recently acclaimed him as theirliberator now laughed at his sufferings. Matthew and Mark both tell us that, whennear to death on the cross, Jesus’ last wordswere, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ [Mark15:34.] That seems typical of Jesus to me: evenin these extreme circumstances he was still

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quoting the scriptures [Psalm 22:1.]; and hewas still talking to his imaginary God.

THE ‘RESURRECTION’ OF JESUS. Many modern scholars think it unlikely that anexecuted criminal like Jesus would havereceived any formal burial: his corpse wouldhave been cast into a common pit, or eventhrown on the rubbish dump, to be quicklydevoured by dogs or other scavengers. If thiswere the case then there would be littlemystery about his so-called resurrection. However, I am inclined to accept theSynoptics’ story about Joseph of Arimathea andhis rock-cut tomb. Their testimony is early,and it’s not impossible. So in this case thereis something to explain: what happened to thebody? Alone among the evangelists, Matthew tellsa story about a guard of soldiers being sent byCaiaphas to watch over the tomb; surely thisdidn’t happen, or the other gospels would havementioned it. But embedded in this improbable lie is aclue to the probable truth, when, on Sundaymorning, Caiaphas tells the soldiers to saythat Jesus’ ‘disciples came by night, and stole him away’....And this saying was spread abroad among the Jews, andcontinueth until this day. [28:13-15.] The evangelisthimself admits that this explanation wascurrent at an early date among the people ofJerusalem, and it seems far more credible to me

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than the resurrection-narratives of thegospels, confused, contradictory, and full ofimpossibilities as they are. Does it seem hard to believe that asuccessful religion could be founded on liesand imposture? The case of Joseph Smith and TheBook of Mormon comes to mind as an obviousexample of the thing being done; and Smith ishardly a unique case among the founders of newreligious movements. From what we know of Peterand the rest of the twelve, they were nototherworldly mystics, but a bunch of poor andignorant men who followed Jesus in the hope ofbecoming rich and powerful. [Matt. 19:25-30.]After the so-called resurrection, Peter sethimself up as the new cult-leader, encouraginghis followers to surrender all their propertyinto his control. We are even told that acouple died, in mysterious circumstances,because they tried to retain a little of theirown money, and lied about it. [Acts 4:32-37;5:1-11.] So I don’t have very high expectationsof the moral probity of the world’s first Pope. It looks to me as if Peter’s faith in God,and in the coming of the Kingdom, had beenshaken by the horrifying events of Jesus’arrest and execution; and yet he had gone,perhaps with a couple of companions, to thetomb first thing on Sunday morning (that is, byold-fashioned inclusive reckoning, on the thirdday after the crucifixion) to see if Jesusmight have been revived.

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Finding his leader still a bloody, rottingcorpse, Peter lost his faith altogether, butdecided to keep the Jesus movement going, toprovide himself with an easy life. To that endhe stole Jesus’ body, and concealed it –perhaps in a shallow grave or even in anothernearby tomb, knowing that after a few days itwould be unrecognizable. What happened next? Mark, the earliest ofthe evangelists, tells us that three of Jesus’female followers came to the tomb, but found itopened. They did not see Jesus, or even anangel, as in later accounts, but only anunknown young man, who told them that Jesuswould meet his disciples again in Galilee. Andthen the early manuscripts of Mark all breakoff. Matthew, however, is clearly drawing onthe same tradition, because he tells us of onlyone post-mortem appearance of Jesus to thedisciples, on a hill in Galilee. Matthew makesthe interesting remark that when they saw him, theyworshipped him: but some doubted. [Matt. 28:17.] What could they have doubted, if it hadclearly been Jesus standing there, returnedfrom the dead? So perhaps it was just someonewho looked like him. I suggest that it was in fact his brother(or half-brother) James, a Galilean who had notfollowed Jesus in his lifetime, but afterwardsbecame a leader of the revived Jesus movementin Jerusalem. I suppose that Peter had drawn

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him into the conspiracy with promises of wealthand an easy life. The earliest report of resurrectionappearances comes from Paul, in the 15th

Chapter of the First Epistle to theCorinthians. He says that Peter was the firstto see Jesus; then the twelve did, and thenfive hundred of Jesus’ followers at once; thenJames the brother of Jesus, then all the apostles –probably the twelve again. So according to mytheory that’s just three semi-publicappearances by a Jesus lookalike, whoseauthenticity some doubted. We don’t know theconditions of these appearances but I’d guessthat they didn’t happen in broad daylight.After forty days, conveniently, no morephysical manifestations of the risen Christwere to be expected, as he had, like Elijah,‘gone to Heaven’ – apparently conceived of as aphysical location not very far above the Earth.[Acts 1:9-11.] He was soon going to return,though, and bring in the Kingdom. Soon, very soon! That’s the persistenttheme of the New Testament, right to its end:He which testifieth these things saith, Yea: I come quickly.Amen: come, Lord Jesus. [Rev. 22:20.] Even when Paulhad opened up the Church to the gentiles,Christians longed for the coming of thisimaginary time of bliss. For centuries theycontinued to expect it; and until this veryday, simple people like the Pentecostalists andthe Jehovah’s Witnesses, who take the New

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Testament seriously as the word of God, stillthink the Day of the Lord must be imminent.Surely Jesus couldn’t have been wrong aboutsomething so important? The truth is that Jesus was wrong aboutpractically everything. That wasn’t his fault:he was lied to by his parents, and deceived byhis teachers. Like the kids who are educated inextremist madrasas today, his head was filledwith ridiculous falsehoods, and he acted as ifthey were true. He had more in common with thesuicide-bombers of Palestine than modernChristians might care to believe. His careerseems like an awful warning about what nuttybelief-systems can do to even a vigorous andintelligent mind. And yet the influence of this remarkableman has been immense, in some ways for good,and in other ways not. His prohibition ofdivorce, except in cases of adultery, hascertainly caused a lot of needless suffering.His general distaste for sexuality has led manyto despise something which is not only aninnocent pleasure, but can also be a powerfulsource of mystical experiences. Jesus seems tohave been temperamentally unappreciative of thecharms of ritual, causing many modernwesterners, particularly those with aProtestant background, to unthinkingly rejectthis ancient method of changing consciousness.His impossibly high standards of morality have,as discussed above, given rise to a lot of

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unnecessary self-recrimination; and hischildish faith in a Celestial Super-Daddydiscourages people from sorting out their ownproblems. On the plus side I must admit thathis religion has done something to discourageviolence and promote gentleness; and that eventhough his final action of self-sacrificingpatriotism was completely useless, there issomething admirable about it – certainly muchmore admirable than the massacres andatrocities performed by God and his Prophets inthe pages of the Old Testament. Jesus lived for maybe forty years and then,like all men, he died; which means that he nolonger exists. When modern people claim to havemet him, and let him into their hearts, I thinkthat what they’re encountering is really afigment of the imagination – albeit one whichcan (like other imaginary god-forms) transmitreal insights from the Unconscious. Tonight myconcern has not been with that imaginary‘Christ of Faith’ but with the real Jesus ofhistory. You must decide for yourselves whatyou think of him; but in my opinion he is afigure more deserving of pity than of worship.I hope that the world will eventually forgetabout him and his crazy beliefs and go back topracticing more sensible kinds of religion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

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Conybeare, F.C. Myth, Magic, & Morals: A Study of Christian Origins. 1925.Fox, Robin Lane. The Unauthorized Version. 1991.Harris, Marvin. Cows, Pigs, Wars & Witches: The Riddles of Culture. 1975.Léon-Dufour, Xavier. The Gospels & the Jesus of History. 1970.Osborne, Harold. Christ & the Early Church. 1934.Schonfield, Hugh J. The Passover Plot. 1977.Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus. English Trans. 1910.Wilson, A.N. Jesus. 1992.

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