and awesome miracles and wonders the world had never seen before, including not only an
earthquake and the darkening of the sun and moon, but also dead people rising from their graves
and visiting people in town….
These ―great crowds‖ and ―multitudes,‖ along with Jesus‘s fame, are repeatedly referred to in the
gospels, including at the following: Mt 4:23-25, 5:1, 8:1, 8:18, 9:8, 9:31, 9:33, 9:36, 11:7, 12:15,
13:2, 14:1, 14:13, 14:22, 15:30, 19:2, 21:9, 26:55; Mk 1:28, 10:1; Lk 4:14, 4:37, 5:15, 14:25,
etc.335
In this regard, Jim Walker says:
If, indeed, the Gospels portray a historical look at the life of Jesus, then the one feature that
stands out prominently within the stories shows that people claimed to know Jesus far and wide,
not only by a great multitude of followers but by the great priests, the Roman governor Pilate, and
Herod who claims that he had heard ―of the fame of Jesus.‖ (Matt 14:1) One need only read Matt:
4:25 where it claims that ―there followed him [Jesus] great multitudes of people from Galilee, and
from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan.‖ The gospels
mention, countless times, the great multitude that followed Jesus and crowds of people who
congregated to hear him. So crowded had some of these gatherings grown, that Luke 12:1
alleges that an ―innumerable multitude of people... trode one upon another.‖ Luke 5:15 says that
there grew ―a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear...‖ The persecution
of Jesus in Jerusalem drew so much attention that all the chief priests and scribes, including the
high priest Caiaphas, not only knew about him but helped in his alleged crucifixion. (see Matt
21:15-23, 26:3, Luke 19:47, 23:13). The multitude of people thought of Jesus, not only as a
teacher and a miracle healer, but a prophet (see Matt:14:5). So, to say Jesus wasn‘t wel known
is obviously contradictory to the Gospel claims.336
As concerns the purported evidence of this widely famed, miraculous advent, the most disputed and
defended of the four historians listed above are Josephus and Tacitus, so it is to them that we will turn in
our analysis here. (For more information about the others, as well as Thallus, Phlegon and Mara Bar-
Serapion, see Murdock‘s Who Was Jesus?)
334 Remsburg, 24,
335 Murdock, WWJ, 84-85. See p. 85 for the list of historians and other writers as found in ―ZEITGEIST.‖
336 Walker, J., ―Did a historical Jesus exist?‖
Flavius Josephus: Concerning the famed passage in the works of Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote
around 100 AD/CE, in ―The Jesus Forgery: Josephus Untangled,‖ Murdock writes:
Despite the best wishes of sincere believers and the erroneous claims of truculent apologists, the
Testimonium Flavianum has been demonstrated continually over the centuries to be a forgery,
likely interpolated by Catholic Church historian Eusebius in the fourth century. So thorough and
universal has been this debunking that very few scholars of repute continued to cite the passage
after the turn of the 19th century. Indeed, the TF was rarely mentioned, except to note that it was
a forgery, and numerous books by a variety of authorities over a period of 200 or so years
basically took it for granted that the Testimonium Flavianum in its entirety was spurious, an
interpolation and a forgery.
In this regard, Dr. Gordon Stein relates:
...the vast majority of scholars since the early 1800s have said that this quotation is not by
Josephus, but rather is a later Christian insertion in his works. In other words, it is a forgery,
rejected by scholars.
And Earl Doherty says, in ―Josephus Unbound‖:
Now, it is a curious fact that older generations of scholars had no trouble dismissing this entire
passage as a Christian construction. Charles Guignebert, for example, in his Jesus..., calls it ―a
pure Christian forgery.‖ Before him, Lardner, Harnack and Schurer, along with others, declared it
entirely spurious. Today, most serious scholars have decided the passage is a mix: original parts
rubbing shoulders with later Christian additions.
The second Josephan passage, regarding James ( Antiquities, 20.9), reads:
Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of
judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was
James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of
the law, he delivered them to be stoned.337
Critics contend that the phrase ―who was cal ed Christ‖ is an obvious and awkward interpolation. Again,
for more on the Testimonium Flavianum and James passage, see Murdock‘s ―The Jesus Forgery:
Josephus Untangled,‖ Suns of God and Who Was Jesus?
Regarding the Josephan evidence, Jewish writer ben Yehoshua asserts:
Neither of these passages is found in the original version of the Jewish Antiquities which was
preserved by the Jews. The first passage (XVII, 3, 3) was quoted by Eusebius writing in c. 320
C.E., so we can conclude that it was added in some time between the time Christians got hold of
the Jewish Antiquities and c. 320 C.E. It is not known when the other passage (XX, 9, 1) was
added... Neither passage is based on any reliable sources. It is fraudulent to claim that these
passages were written by Josephus and that they provide evidence for Jesus. They were written
by Christian redactors and were based purely on Christian belief.338
Publius Cornelius Tacitus: In addition to the reference to ―Christus‖ (Christ), the Roman historian
Tacitus (56-117) also makes mention of ―Christians‖ and ―Pilate.‖ Found is Tacitus‘s Annals, oddly noticed
no earlier than the 15th century, the passage reads:
... he had denomination from Christus, who, in the resign of Tiberius, was put to death as a
criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate.
This seemingly supportive sentence with regard to the historical Jesus can also be suspected to be an
interpolation—a forgery—for the following reasons, as noted by Doane (566):
337 Whiston, 406.
338 ben Yehoshua, ―The Myth of the Historical Jesus.‖
56.
You would think that a guy who rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven for
all eyes to see and performed the wealth of miracles acclaimed to him would have
made it into the historical record. He didn’t, because once the evidence is weighed,
there are very high odds that the figure known as Jesus, did not even exist.
As stated by The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (VI, 83):
The only definite account of his life and teachings is contained in the four Gospels of the New
Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All other historical records of the time are silent about
him. The brief mentions of Jesus in the writings of Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius have been
generally regarded as not genuine and as Christian interpolations; in Jewish writings there is no
report about Jesus that has historical value. Some scholars have even gone so far as to hold that
the entire Jesus story is a myth…
To learn more about the historical/non-historical Christ known as ―Jesus,‖ the following books are
recommended:
D.M. Murdock, Who was Jesus? , Stellar House Publishing, 2007.
Earl Doherty, Jesus Neither God Nor Man: The Case for a Mythical Jesus, Age of Reason
Publications, 2009.
Robert M. Price, Deconstructing Jesus, Prometheus, 2000.
Freke and Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries, Three Rivers Press, 1999.
Herbert Cutner, Jesus: God, Man or Myth? , Book Tree, 2000.
John E. Remsburg, The Christ Myth, BiblioBazaar, 2009.
57.
“...the Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a
man whom they call Christ, in place of the sun, and pay him the same adoration
which was originally paid to the sun...”
This quote is from famous Anglo-American philosopher and revolutionary statesman Thomas Paine‘s
―Origin of Freemasonry‖ and can be found in The Theological Works of Thomas Paine, p. 283.
58.
The reality is, Jesus was the solar deity of the Gnostic Christian sect, and like all
other Pagan gods, he was a mythical figure.
The mythical nature of Christ is concluded from a lack of evidence for his existence and the
preponderance of his alleged characteristics and deeds clearly being part of Pagan mythology, and has
been demonstrated throughout this Sourcebook.
In this regard, in Man Made God, Barbara Walker says:
During the past century or so, scholars have shown that all these ―known‖ details of Jesus‘s life
story are mythic: That is, they were told for many centuries before his time about many previous
savior-gods and legendary heroes in pre-Christian lore. Not a single detail of Jesus‘s life story
can be considered authentic. Some investigators have tried to peel away the layers of myth in
search of a historical core, but this task is like peeling the layers of an onion. It seems that there
is no core. The layers of myth go all the way to the center.339
For additional discussion of the who‘s and where‘s of this fascinating religious mystery, see the works
cited here. As concerns the Gnostic and Essenic origins of Christianity, see also the works of John
Allegro, one of the select few who were initially allowed to analyze the famed ―Dead Sea Scrol s‖ found in
1947, which appear to be dated from between the second century BCE to the 1st century AD/CE.
In a work about these ancient texts called The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth, Allegro
describes what was learned about the ―Essene/Gnostic Christians‖ and presents the idea that the biblical
―Jesus‖ of the gospels is a fictional interpolation of a prior Gnostic or other brotherhood figure, possibly an
Essene teacher:
…What is new, thanks largely to the Dead Sea Scrolls, is our ability now to recognise in the so-
called intertestamental period (that is, in the crucial centuries between the most recent books of
the Old Testament canon, say Daniel in the second century BC, and the earliest writings of the
New Testament, the letters of St. Paul) that the Essene movement provided just the right mix of
early Canaanite folk-religion, prophetic Yahwism, Babylonian magic, and Iranian dualism to have
produced gnostic Christianity. What it could not produce, and never did, was an historical
Joshua/Jesus Messiah living in Palestine during the first century AD and bearing any real
resemblance to the...prophet that popular imagination has largely created out of the Gospels.
Behind the Jesus of western religious tradition there did exist in history an Essene Teacher of
Righteousness of a century before...340
But, of course, it is not him who is being recorded in the New Testament, and this ―Teacher of
Righteousness‖ is only one of several figures who were drawn upon in order to create the fictional
character called ―Jesus Christ.‖ For more information on who created Christianity, see Murdock‘s
―Essenes, Zealots and Zadokites,‖ ―Alexandria: Crucible of Christianity‖ and ―Enter Rome‖ in The Christ
339 Walker, B., MMG, 144.
340 Allegro, 190-191.
Conspiracy; ―The Mysterious Brotherhood‖ in Suns of God; and ―The Alexandrian Roots of Christianity‖ in
Christ in Egypt.
As part of this precedent cultus upon which Christianity was evidently founded, Jewish tribes and later
groups were likewise known to participate, like their neighbors, in sun worship, as overtly stated in the
Bible itself, as at 2 Kings 23:11:
And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to
the house of the LORD, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the chamberlain, which was in the
precincts; and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. (RSV)
Indeed, the sun worship and ―whoring after other gods‖ of the Hebrews, Israelites and Jews is notoriously
recorded in biblical texts, while other instances of Hebrew astrotheology are covertly expressed, as we
have seen here. This Jewish sun worship is examined in detail in Yahweh and the Sun: Biblical and
Archaeological Evidence for Sun Worship in Ancient Israel by Rev. Dr. J. Glen Taylor, an associate
professor of Old Testament at the University of Toronto, who demonstrates that even the tribal god
Yahweh himself possessed many solar attributes and was taken to be a sun god as well. Says Dr. Taylor:
Probably the most provocative issue related to the nature of sun worship in ancient Israel...is the
specific claim that Yahweh was identified with the sun.341
Concerning certain "prayers to the sun" reported by Josephus to have been said by the Essenes, dating
to the period right before and into that of Christianity's germination, Dr. Morton Smith states:
...there is no reason to derive the prayers to the sun from Neopythagorean influence. Sun worship
was one of the most prominent elements in the neighboring religion of Egypt, in Syria it increased
steadily during Greek and Roman times, and it was also important in Transjordan. Tacitus
remarked that the Roman soldiers who hailed the rising sun at the battle of Cremona (AD 69)
followed the Syrian custom...342
Dr. Smith also says:
In Palestine itself sun worship was well established before the Israelite invasion... One of the
heroes of early Israelite legend was Samson ( Shimshon, from Shemesh, approximately,
'Sunman')… The Israelites of course shared the common ancient belief that the sun, moon, and
stars were living beings....343
This Jewish sun worship continued into the common era, as is evidenced by the presence on the floors of
ancient synagogues mosaic zodiacs with the sun god in the center, as at Hammat Tiberias (4th cent.
AD/CE), Sepphoris (5th-6th cents. AD/CE), and Beit Alpha (6th cent. AD/CE) in Israel.
Mosaic with zodiac and Helios
4th cent. AD/CE
synagogue, Hammat Tiberias
(Kalmin, 99)
341 Taylor, 20.
342 Smith, M., 248.
343 Morton, 248.
In consideration of all the facts presented in this present work and in its sources, it is logical to conclude
that, like the solar superhuman Samson, Jesus is another rendition of the sun god turned into a Jewish
―messiah.‖
59.
It was the political establishment that sought to historicize the Jesus figure for
social control. In 325 A.D. in Rome, Emperor Constantine convened the Council of
Nicea. It was during this meeting that the politically motivated Christian doctrines
were established and thus began a long history of religious bloodshed and spiritual
fraud. And for over the next 1,000 years, the Vatican maintained a political
stranglehold on all of Europe, leading to such joyous periods as the Dark Ages, along
with enlightening events such as the Crusades, and the Inquisition.
The influence of the Roman authorities in the creation of Christianity is vast, including not only during
centuries subsequent to the composition of the canonical gospels, but also within the New Testament
texts themselves. As just a couple of examples, at Matthew 22:21, Jesus is made to say: ―Render
therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,‖ in response to a question about tribute money—a
very convenient reply for the Empire. Moreover, in the Pauline epistles, the writer continually exhorts
slaves to obey their masters in everything—again, very convenient for the wealthy slave owners, whose
possession are obviously under no threat from Christianity. Moreover, the author of the First Epistle of
Peter (2:17) exhorts his followers to ―Honor the emperor.‖ (RSV)
In the words of John Allegro referring to the transition into what we know as Christianity today:
When, in the early fourth century, the so-called Great Church attained its goal, its internal
enemies lay torn and bleeding, or scattered into the heretical wilderness. Their books were
burned, their doctrines forsworn, and often intentionally perverted. Its mythology was
misinterpreted and mocked, but a single figure was wrested from its rich store of imagery and
made paramount, even historical. The Joshua/Jesus Cycle of stories was pruned of some of the
more improbable narratives, given an unrealistic pro-Roman slant, and combined with genuine
Essene moral teachings suited more to the sheltered life of a closely knit desert commune that
the rough-and-tumble of secular living...344
Again, for more information on who actually created Christianity, see the works of Acharya S/D.M.
Murdock.
60.
Christianity, along with all other related theologies, is an historical fraud. These
religions now serve to detach the species from the natural world and likewise each
other. They support blind submission to authority. They reduce human responsibility
to the effect that “God” controls everything, and in turn awful crimes can be justified
in the name of a Divine Pursuit. And most critically, it empowers the political
establishment, who have been using the myth to manipulate and control societies.
The religious myth is the most powerful device ever created, and serves as the
psychological soil upon which other myths can flourish.
This conclusion has been demonstrated throughout this Sourcebook, as well as in various texts cited here
and in other writings showing the cost to the human and natural worlds because of religious fanaticism
and supremacism, such as Helen El erbe‘s The Dark Side of Christian History; James Haught‘s Holy
Horrors; and Barbara Walker‘s Man Made God.
While the conclusion here can be considered an opinion, it doesn‘t take much reflection to see how the
Abrahamic religions—Christianity, Islam and Judaism—and others have been used for political purposes
since the very beginning. There is a reason why we hear politicians use the phrase ―God Bless America‖
or the like in other countries even today—it is usually a ploy for manipulation. During the Iraq war of 2003,
there were numerous statements about God made by George W. Bush and even the media. We have
344 Allegro, 192.
also learned that the rifles used by American troops had notations for biblical scriptures in their scopes. 345
The ploy was, in part, the idea of a religious war, between Christians and Muslims, rallying both sides to
the conflict in the name of competing ideologies. Likewise, psychology has shown that, in certain cases,
belief in a larger ―controlling power‖ can create numerous forms of neurosis, both limiting a sense of
responsibility and promoting evangelism and prophetic delusions that breed fanaticism....
345 ―U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret 'Jesus' Bible Codes,‖ abcnews.go.com/Blotter/us-military-weapons-
inscribed-secret-jesus-bible-codes/story?id=9575794
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