Faking Jesus

And thats not even a complete list. We also have Jesus the Folk Wizard (championed most famously be Morton Smith in Jesus the Magician, and most recently by Robert ConnerinMagicintheNewTestament).1
1Richard Carrier,ProvingHistory:BayessTheoremandtheQuestfortheHistorical Jesus,13.

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That Jesus Studies is rife with flawed scholarship, special pleading, fideism,rankspeculation,manufacturedrelevance,careerism,homo phobia and the misogyny that homophobia implies, sectarian alle giances, personal agendas, fraud and simple incompetence should come as no surprise to anyone conversant with the field. Indeed, whether Jesus Studies is even an academic discipline as usually understoodisdebatable,andthatJesusStudieshaspreciouslittleto dowithhistoryiscertain. Mainstream scholars have understood for quite some time that the gospels are not history by any modern definition. It is widely con ceded that the gospel authors were writing decades after the events theypurporttorelate,thatthewriterswerepseudonymous,thatthey were not eyewitnesses, that both the provenance and intended audience of each gospel is a matter of conjecture, and that the pri mary sources on which the gospels are ultimately based are un known and unknowable. It is universally conceded that no original exists for any gospel and that the gospels that have survived are copiesofcopiesthatpreservevariantwording. The gospels were not even written in Palestine where the events of Jesus life took place. In the year 66 C.E., longstanding tensions between immiserated Jews and pagan gentiles exploded in the First JewishRoman War, one of three such conflicts. From the Jewish perspective the war got off to a promising startJewish revolution aries initially inflicted heavy casualties on Roman troops. However, VespasianinvadedGalileein67C.E.,movingsteadilysouthtoward Jerusalemaftersubjugatingtownaftertown,andafterVespasianwas recalled to Rome, his son Titus laid siege to Jerusalem and utterly destroyed the city in 70 C.E. The war smoldered in the hills to the south for three additional years before the last Jewish garrison at Masadafell.Allinall,overamillionJewswerekilledinthefighting or died from disease and starvation and according to the historian Josephussome97,000werecapturedandenslaved.Infact,itappears
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many thousands of those slaves were put the work quarrying the stone for the Flavian Ampitheater, generally known today as the Colosseum. In short, the cities of Jewish Palestine were defeated, the capitol de stroyed,andthepopulationdecimatedanddispersedbeforethefirst canonical gospel was written. It is conjectured that the gospel of MarkwascomposedinRome,MatthewinSyria,andJohnperhapsin Asia Minor. Given that an average lifespan in the 1st century likely amounted to less than fifty years, that decades had passed since Jesuscrucifixion,andthatadevastatingwarhadsupervened,where weretheeyewitnessestoJesuslifeandcareer?Dead,quitelikely,or enslavedandscatteredabroad. Confabulationisacompensatorymechanismobservedinsubjectswith essentially intact mentation but with serious gaps in memory. Con fabulators fill in missing memory with invented narrative that changeswitheachretelling,therebyrevealingthelacunosenatureof their memory, and interrogation of the gospel accounts reveals that theyareconfabulationsinthistechnicalsense.Thewritersofthegos pels were basically faking it, but lacking eyewitnesses, what choice didtheyhave? The early communities of believers for whom the gospels were composed had a very imperfect memory of Jesus of Nazareth. The gospels contain no account of Jesus physical appearance, a scant, almostcertainlyapocryphal,recordofhisearlylife,andnocoherent explanationofhisthinking,assuming,ofcourse,thatJesusthinking wascoherenttobeginwith. The incompatible infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke are clear examples of confabulation; the inconsistencies large and small be tweenthegospelaccountsalsobetraydefectiveinstitutionalmemory. The fact that Mark is quoted nearly in its entirety by Matthew and
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LukeMatthewquotesorparaphrasessome600ofthe661versesin Markand that another primitive gospel, Q, appears to have sup pliedthebulkofthenarrativenotderivedfromMark,indicatesthat the authors of Matthew and Luke were not eyewitnesses, nor did theyhaveaccesstofirsthandaccounts.Infact,itisnearlycertainthat the greatest story ever told contains no direct eyewitness testimony from any contemporary of Jesus. Eusebius says of Mark, the putative authoroftheearliestgospel,hehadnotheardtheLord,norhadhe followedhim2 Although the teachings of Jesus are the supposed core of Christian belief,therearemultiple,incompatible,differencesofopinionamong the experts about what, exactly, Jesus taught. The lack of consensus among Jesus scholars about what Jesus taught, or even about what Jesusactuallysaid,isawellknownintellectualscandal.Moreonthat issueinabit. ThedatesofJesusbirthanddeathcanonlybeestimated,thelength ofhiscareerisunknownitmayhavebeenasshortasayearand the earliest gospel, Mark, ends with an empty tomb but no trace of theresurrectedJesus.Ihavesuggestedelsewherethatthepostmor temappearancesofJesusinthegospelsofLukeandJohnreadsuspi ciously like ancient ghost stories3and I am not the only person to have commented on that amazing coincidence.4Although I believe that Jesus was a real person about whom we actually know very little, the claim that Jesus and his career are pure invention persists and however unlikely we may regard it, there is no way to defini tivelyoverturnthatclaim.
2EcclesiasticalHistoryIII,39. 3Jesus the Sorcerer: Exorcist and Prophet of the Apocalypse, 6372; Magic in the New Testament:ASurveyandAppraisaloftheEvidence,106123. 4DeborahThompsonPrince,TheGhostofJesus:Luke24inLightofAncient Narratives of PostMortem Apparitions, Journal for the Study of the New Testa ment29:287301. 4

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Inanycase,wedonothaveanythingthatremotelyapproachesmore thanasketchofJesus.Thatisnotanopinion,itisafact,anditistrue atleastinpartbecauseothersourcesofpossibleevidence,othergos pels,werelostordestroyed.Itisnotcommonlyappreciatedtowhat extentthishappened,butthelistofearlylost,apocryphal,gospels is impressive. Such a list would include the lost sayings gospel Q, partially preserved in the form of quotations in Matthew and Luke, thegospelofsignsthatformsthebasisofpartsofthegospelofJohn, thefragmentarygospelofPeter,theCopticgospelofThomas,fragments of which also exist in Greek, the highly fragmentary Oxyrhynchus gospel(s), the gospel of the Egyptians, and the gospel of the Ebionites, to name but a few. There are also a number of later, clearly fanciful, gospels that are widely considered to contain nothing of actual his toricalrelevance,buttheassumptionthatnogospeloutsidetheNew Testamentcanoncontainedanythingofhistoricalvalueisonlyanas sumptionandnothingmore. Itisparticularlynoteworthy,Ibelieve,thatearlygospelspresumably writtenbyJewsforJewswhoacceptedJesus,suchasthelostgospelof the Hebrews, are conspicuously absent. I would assume that a gospel mostapttobringusclosertotheelusivehistoricalJesus,whowas, afterall,aJew,wouldbeonecomposedfortheuseofJewishChris tians.ThehistorianEusebiusmentionsthatsomeinhisday(theearly 4th century) accepted the gospel of the Hebrews as one of the Recog nizedBooksandpreferreditabovetheothergospels.5 The canonical gospels as well as the whole New Testament corpus show us not only a thoroughly theologized Jesus, but also a steadily evolvingJesustheologythepseudoPaulinelettersborrowvocabulary willynilly from gnosticism6and mystery cult alike. The exorcisms
5EcclesiasticalHistory,III,25,28. 6ElainePagelsTheGnosticPaul:GnosticExegesisofthePaulineLettersremainsthe definitiveworkonthetopic. 5

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givenprideofplaceinMarkarecompletelymissingfromJohn,asare the intensely apocalyptic vocabulary and imagery of the Synoptics. To an extent modern interpreters of Jesus career might be forgiven some level of confusion and inconsistency; the gospels themselves presentaconfusedandinconsistentpictureofJesus. IndeedJesusgateishardlyanewphenomenon.TheearlyChristians, nearlytwomillenniaclosertothesourcethanwe,hardlyknewwhat to make of Jesus. The orthodox trinitarian position was not ham mered out until the early 4th century and even then it was not uni versally accepted. Before christology finally gelled in the orthodox mold, the Jewish Ebionites claimed Jesus was merely human, the Docetists, at the other extreme, claimed Jesus was completely spirit andonlyappearedtobehuman.Arianismfellbetweentheextremes, claiming that the Son was divine but created, had a beginning, and did not share the essence of the Father. Arianism persisted for centuries after the triumph of the orthodox position. For the Adop tionists,JesuswasamanwhoonlyreceivedtheChristspiritathis baptism,anotioncommontoGnosticism,totheApollonarians,Jesus consistedofahumanbodyinhabitedbythepreexistentWordthat replaced the normal rational soul. The Nestorians, attempting to explicatethemysteryoftheincarnation,arguedaboutwhetherornot GodhadenteredMarysuterus,andpatripassionists(fathersuffer ers)arguedthatsincethedivinenaturewasindivisible,Jesuswasan aspectofGodtheFatherHimself.Severaloftheseheresiessurvived intotheMiddleAges. As mentioned above, modern interpretations of the evidence fare scarcelybetter.Jesushasbeencastinabewilderingnumberofroles, from prophet to philosopher to social reformer, to say nothing of having been coopted by social movements ranging from the white supremacygospelofChristianIdentitytothetoracialequalitygospel of abolitionists and desegregationists. The American evangelical WWJD(WhatWouldJesusDo?)crazeofthe1990squicklybecame
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WhatWould JesusBuy?andWhoWould JesusKill?Obviously Jesuscanmeannearlyanythingtoanyone,butaniconthatcanstand for anything ultimately stands for nothing. Who do men say that I am?7couldbeamendedtoWhathaventmensaidthatIam? However,Istronglysuspectthehistoricaltruthofthematterispro saic in the extreme, to say nothing of depressing. Based on the evi dence of the gospels, andpossiblymore importantlythewritingsof theera,IbelieveJesusofNazarethwasapersonofscantimportance from a village of no importance, a man of humble beginnings who achieved a brief regional reputation as an apocalyptic preacher and exorcistcumhealer. He became a disciple of John the Baptist, and like John he drew excited crowds as well as the surveillance of the Jewishauthorities.AtPassoverhewenttoJerusalem,raisedaruckus inapotentiallyexplosiveatmosphere,andbeingmarkedasatrouble maker, got himself arrested, handed over to the Romans and executed. Literally that simple, but hardly the end of story in Jesus particularcase. Pace Richard Carrier, who is quoted at the beginning of this essay, thereisasubstantialbodyofevidencemostofitpointedlyignored by hard and softcore Christian apologiststhat securely places Jesus within a welldocumented type of historical figure, multiply attested: the KingdomofGod preacher who authenticated his mes sagebydramaticcharismaticperformance.Giventhehistoryofcon flict between Jews and Romans, it comes as little surprise that such preachers were also in the main stern Jewish nationalists who ad vocated violent overthrow of gentile authority and were therefore carefullywatched. The historian Josephus reports several rabblerousers of this type, among them Theudas, described as a sorcerer or impostor as
7Mark8:27. 7

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well as a prophet,8and another man, a magician, who led a throngoffollowersintothewilderness,9andyetanother,theEgyp tianfalseprophet,alsodescribedasamagician,whogatheredan immense mob and led an unsuccessful attack on Jerusalem.10Jose phusalsorevealstheRomanresponsetosuchmagicanprophets:kill them. Regarding the Jewish rebel Bar Kokhba who led the third and final JewishrevoltagainstRomanoccupationBarKokhbameanssonof astaraprobablereferencetoNumbers24:17,Astarwillcomeout ofJacob;ascepterwillriseoutofIsraelEusebiussaysheclaimed tobealuminarywhohadcomedowntothemfromheavenandwas magically enlightening those who were in misery. 11 Perhaps the main reason Bar Kokhba is not today regarded as the martyred founderofaworldreligionisthathedidnthaveaSaulofTarsusto litigatehiscase. Following three years of war (132136 C.E.), which were marked by particularlyheavyRomancasualties,theRomansretaliated,expelled most of the Jewish population, renamed Judea Syria Palaestina, and built a new capitol, Aelia Capitolina, on the ruins of Jerusalem. The catastrophic Bar Kokhba war relegated messianism to the fringes of Jewishreligiousthought. JohntheBaptistandJesusofNazarethbothfallquiteneatlyintothe mold of the wonderworking apocalyptic prophet. 12 The gospels mentionthesurveillanceofbothmenthescribeswhocamedown
8JewishAntiquitiesXX,97.TheudasisalsomentionedinActs5:36. 9IbidXX,188. 10Jewish War II, 259. According to Acts 21:38, Paul was once mistaken for the Egyptian. 11EcclesiasticalHistoryIV,7. 12Bart Ehrmans Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium makes a clear, persuasiveargumentforthisinterpretation. 8

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from Jerusalem,13who accused Jesus of performing magic by con trollingtheprinceofdemons,likelydidnotmakethetriptoGalilee outofmerecuriosity.ThatJesusandJohndrewlargecrowdsaswell as the attention of the authorities and that those same authorities executedbothmenfitsadreary,predictablepattern.EndTimespro phetsandrevolutionariesinRomanPalestinewerelikelyasthickon thegroundasBaptistsinTexas,andifhistoriansoftheperiodareto bebelieved,theRomansmusthavenailedthemupbythehundreds withouttrialorcompunction.14 Doctor Richard Carrier, who has made a career out of debunking Christianity, cites my work, as well as the more scholarly work of Morton Smith, as one of many examples of failed textual and his torical interrogation. However, that Jesus career and the rituals of the primitive church supply many examples of magical praxis has been noted by Hull,15Kee,16Kraeling,17de Vos,18Daniel and Malto mini, 19 Arnold, 20 Klauck, 21 Meyer and Smith, 22 Neyrey, 23 Strelan, 24
13Mark3:22. 14Eusebius again on the Roman response to the Bar Kokba revolt: Rufus, the governorofJudaea,whenmilitaryaidhadbeensenthimbytheEmperor,moved outagainstthem,treatingtheirmadnesswithoutmercy.Hedestroyedinheaps thousands of men, women, and children, and, under the law, enslaved their land.EcclesiasticalHistoryIV,6. 15JohnHull,HellenisticMagicandtheSynopticTradition. 16HowardClarkKee,Medicine,MiracleandMagicinNewTestamentTimes. 17CarlKraeling,JournalofBiblicalLiterature59:147157. 18CraigdeVos,JournalfortheStudyoftheNewTestament74:5163. 19 Robert Daniel and Franco Maltomini, Supplementum Magicum (in two vol umes). 20ClintonArnold,Ephesians:PowerandMagic. 21HansJosef Klauck, Magic and Paganism in Early Christianity: The World of the ActsoftheApostles. 22MarvinMeyerandRichardSmith,AncientChristianMagic:CopticTextsofRitual Power. 23JeromeNeyrey,CatholicBiblicalQuarterly50:72100. 24RickStrelan,StrangeActs:StudiesintheCulturalWorldoftheActsoftheApostles. 9

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Twelftree,25Yarbro Collins,26and Aune27to cite a very abbreviated and necessarily incomplete list. It is not my purpose to rerehearse the evidence for magic in early Christianity, which is so extensive thatonlyapartialsurveyallowedmetoproducesome350pagesof textandnearly1700footnotes.28 Moretothepoint,however,istheevaluationofJesusbythewriters of his age, not of ours, and that evaluation should begin with the Jews.PeterSchferswork29isthebestsummaryoftheJewishopin ionthatJesuswasafalseprophetandmagician,andIhaveattempt ed to make the case that sorcery was the actual charge brought against Jesus at his trial.30Samson Eitrem noted, common Jewish people considered Jesus a (magician, my note),31an assess mentconfirmedbytheChristianapologistJustinMartyr.32 WhenMarcusAureliusspokeofmiraclemongersandsorcerers it is widely believed he had Christian exorcists in mind,33which is likelytruesinceunderMarcusthepersecutionofChristiansasinim ical to the state markedly increased. The Emperor Julian, who con verted from Christianity to a theurgic form of paganism, described bothJesusandPaulassorcerersandtricksters,34Celsuslikewisedes cribes Jesus as a worthless sorcerer, hated by God.35As Morton
25Graham Twelftree, AKindofMagic:UnderstandingMagicintheNewTestament anditsReligiousEnvironment. 26 AdelaYarbroCollins,HarvardTheologicalReview73,2:251263. 27DavidAune,Apocalypticism,Prophecy,andMagicinEarlyChristianity. 28Robert Conner, Magic in the New Testament: A Survey and Appraisal of the Evi dence. 29JesusintheTalmud. 30MagicintheNewTestament,97103. 31SomeNotesontheDemonologyintheNewTestament,41. 32DialoguewithTrypho,LXIX,6. 33Meditations,I,6. 34AgainsttheGalileansI,100. 35ContraCelsum1,71. 10

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Smithpointedout,Christianschargedeachotherwithmagicalprac tice36asthisbriefquotefromEusebiusmakesclear: Formerly[theDevil]hadusedpersecutionsfromwithout ashisweaponagainst[thechurch],butnowthathewas excludedfromthisheemployedwickedmenandsorcer ers, like baleful weapons and ministers of destruction against the soul, and conducted his campaign by other measures,plottingbyeverymeansthatsorcerersandde ceiversmightassumethesamenameasourreligion37 Theinterpenetrationofapocalypticismandmagichasbeenexplored in great detail by David Aune38and more recently by Rodney Law renceThomas.39FarfromoverturningSmithsappraisalofJesus,sub sequentstudyhassupporteditfrommultipledirections.Infact,such a wealth of evidence has accumulated that Smiths work on early Christianity seems remarkably lacking in controversial content. Currently,evidencedrawnfrommultiplesourcesinfactmanymore sources than I used for my popular workprove that 1st century Mediterraneansocietieswereimmersedincursesandmagicalspells, amuletsandwordsofpower,teemedwithwitchesandghosts,angels anddemons,sorcerersandexorcists.Idoubtthatanyworkthatdid completejusticetothetotalityofthesurvivingevidenceformagical praxis, vocabulary, and thought in the career of Jesus and the early churchcouldbefitintoanylessthanathousandpages. ThemiraclesofJesusarethemostcompletelyattestedfeatureofhis career. Powerful workswhich were understood by Jewish and pagan outsiders alike as magicwere the calling card of early Christianity. The apocryphal Acts of the 4th century are nearly nothing but ac
36ClementofAlexandriaandaSecretGospelofMark,234. 37EcclesiasticalHistoryIV,7. 38Apocalypticism,Prophecy,andMagicinEarlyChristianity. 39MagicalMotifsintheBookofRevelation. 11

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counts of wonderworking Christians; without magic there would have been no Jesus and certainly no Christianity. Morton Smiths great sin against Jesus Studies was to look behind the theologized Jesus,tosituatehiminthepopularcultureofhistime,tocontextual ize his actions, even his reported vocabulary, and reveal that the clotheshadnoEmperor,thattherewasnotherethere,thattheJesus of the gospels had embarrassingly little of substance to say to those whostruggledagainstthesurgeofthecrowdtotouchthehemofhis garment. In short, if Smiths evaluation of Jesus were true, it meant theacademywouldhavetocometogripswiththeevidenceandstop fakingJesus. AsreadersofMagicintheNewTestamentareaware,Iamcertainlyno apologist for Christianity. In my opinion any two pages chosen at randomfromMarcusAureliusMeditationscontainmoreinsightthan the entire New Testament. Be that as it may, it appears that some who formerly believed but are now disabused have reacted with Romantic intensity to their disappointment. Theyand I am not claiming that Richard Carrier is among their numberseem to be sufferingfromasortoftheologicalposttraumaticstressdisorderthat compels them to pursue Jesus of Nazareth with the singleminded focusofajiltedloverstalkinghisex.NoteventheRomanswhoexe cutedJesuspaidhimthatmuchattention. GiventhesheerordinarinessofJesusinthe1stcentury,Icanofferno morereasonforwhyChristianityshouldtodaybeatleastnominally believeduponbyabillionpeoplethantoquotethe19thcenturyfolk loristCheales:Unlookedforoftencomestopass.Infact,Icanthink of few topics under general discussion that are of less relevance in this,AnnoDomini2013,thanthelifeandcareerofJesus.Inmyview, theJesusofthegospelshasnothingmuchtosaytous,andthetheo logicalpermutationsofJesusthathavefollowed,evenless.Ofcourse no person who aspires to understand the course of history would

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claimthatJesusisunworthyofnotice,butitbearspointingoutthat ChristiantheologyisnotJesusandJesusisnotChristianity. Thetruebelieverswhostillimaginetheyaredailycelebratingthelife andsacrificeoftheirLordandtheskepticswhoridiculethemandrail againstthemareinasensetwosidesofthesamecoin,radicalbelief andradicalunbeliefscreamingpasteachother.Theskepticsmaybe truingJesus,but,itseemstome,theyarefakinghisimportance.Let me close this response in the same way, with the same plea, that I concludedMagicintheNewTestament: ThestudyoftheLifeofJesushashadacurioushistory.It setoutinquestofthehistoricalJesus,believingthatwhen it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Saviour. It loosed the bands by which He had been riveted for centuries to the stony rocksofecclesiasticaldoctrine,andrejoicedtoseelifeand movementcomingintothefigureoncemore,andthehis torical Jesus advancing, as it seemed, to meet it. But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own. What surprised and dismayed the theology of the pastfortyyearswasthat,despiteallforcedandarbitrary interpretations, it could not keep Him in our time, not owing to the application of any historical ingenuity, but by the same inevitable necessity by which the liberated pendulumreturnstoitsoriginalposition.40 ItistimeweletJesusofNazareth,liberatedfromtheology,returnto hiseraatlastandthereremain.
40AlbertSchweitzer,TheQuestoftheHistoricalJesus,399. 13