What happened to the real Jesus? The itinerant Jew who trudged around Palestine with a small group of followers, preaching who knows what. How to survive the imminent end of the world perhaps. His name wasn’t really Jesus. That’s a Hellenised version of the Jewish name Yeshua: Ἰησοῦς’ pronounced ‘Yay-soos’, which means (suspiciously) ‘YHWH is salvation’. The bar Yosef part means son of Joseph, not son of God. Whatever he was about, this Yeshua was crucified by the Romans and soon after his death, one or two of his friends convinced themselves they’d seen him alive again. Or so the story goes.
The earliest information we have about Yeshua includes very little of what we now think we know of him. The crucifixion/resurrection are the only parts of the story that interest Paul, and then only because he thinks he too has seen the risen Yeshua inside his own head. But this Yeshua, whom Paul does indeed call Jesus, is no itinerant preacher. Paul seems unaware of any of his story, his parables, aphorisms or miracles. Instead he consistently describes Jesus as a heavenly being who speaks to him through ‘revelation’, explaining in convoluted terms how his death leads to salvation. This Jesus, now with appended ‘Christ’, Greek for Messiah, is an amalgam of elements from mystery religions, resurrection myths and Paul’s own fanciful ideas. He is hard to reconcile with a real man who walked the Earth years earlier.
Verdict: Paul’s celestial Christ isn’t Yeshua bar Yosef. Paul’s Christ never existed.
The accounts of Jesus that appear decades later attempt to ground Paul’s imaginary being historically and geographically. In this, the gospels are superficially successful but even a cursory analysis reveals serious fault lines. The gospels rely heavily on myth, metaphor and the misapplication of ‘prophecy’, rather than historical fact. They are a form of midrash. The first, written anonymously round about 70CE and later attributed to someone called Mark, is, as today’s TV dramas often say, based on an idea by Paul. It is unlikely it reflects an historical Yeshua. Subsequent gospels, also anonymous but known later as Matthew and Luke, are themselves based on Mark’s, importing its flaws and introducing spurious material of their own. In neither is Jesus the son of Joseph; he’s the son of God, born of a virgin
Verdict: the Jesus of the synoptic gospels is not Yeshua bar Yosef. He’s a literary construct, a fantasy figure.
When the fourth gospel appears, sixty to seventy years after Yeshua is supposed to have lived, the Jesus character has evolved yet again. John’s supremely confident, egotistical creation equates himself fully with God: ‘I and the Father are one,’ as he puts it. This Jesus bears little relation to Mark’s central character who keeps his mission and identity secret (as well he might as a literary construct created primarily for cult members in the know.)
Verdict: the fourth gospel’s Jesus is not Yeshua bar Yosef. He’s constructed from the beliefs of later versions of the cult.
By the time of Revelation (95-96CE), Christ has become a Game of Thrones reject, overseeing the destruction of demons, dragons and other non-existent creatures. Any semblance of reality has been left far behind.
Verdict: Revelation’s Christ isn’t Yeshua bar Yosef. He’s as imaginary as Paul’s Christ, another fanatic’s ‘vision’.
Can Yeshua bar Yosef be rescued from all these accretions? Can a historical figure be detected beneath the layers of fantasy constructed around him (or the idea of him at least)? The attempts made in the last 150 years suggest not. He is lost for good underneath layers of myth and magic.
Does it matter? Not really. None of his followers today would be interested even if he could be unearthed and resurrected. They are content with the Jesus of imagination: Paul’s, the gospel writers’, the creators of creeds, ministers who interpret the stories about him and their own emotional need. Today’s Christ is an imaginary being, a heavenly superman as unreal as the sky gods who preceded him; a faith-created myth.
Verdict: the Jesus worshipped by today’s Christians isn’t Yeshua bar Yosef either. That character is lost to us. So early did cultists lose sight of him, he may as well have not existed.
Perhaps he didn’t.
rejectingjesus, 
Does one conclude that, ostensibly, Paul invented Christianity?
Where does Marcion fit into the picture?
If Paul is the originator, was there ever a Peter ( Cephas?), or any disciples for that matter?
It is fascinating to wonder how all these ideas came together like some overly elaborate crocheted quilt.
While I accept the possibility the tale was concocted from whole cloth – Gospels, Acts, etc being fiction, even the entire Pauline corpus could be a forgery – I simply cannot get my head around how or why.
There most surely be a straightforward answer but I’m damned if I can see it.
You’ve been on both sides of the fence, Neil, how do you see it?
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The longer I do this, the more I’m persuaded there may not have been a real Jesus. I concede in argument that there could have been, but it looks, to me, increasingly unlikely. I make the concession, however, because I don’t have conclusive evidence that the Jesus(es) of the New Testament didn’t existed (the old ‘proving a negative’ problem) and there is a slim possibility that the character is based on a real person. Also, of course, if there’s one way to have one’s argument dismissed out of hand, it’s to imply you’re a mythicist. https://rejectingjesus.com/2020/08/19/did-jesus-exist-a-rethink/
The disciples are probably invented, based in part on the Twelve Tribes of Israel (‘look how the Jews don’t understand our Saviour’) and possibly those who had the first visions of the Christ – Cephas and who knows who else. His fictional alter-ego, Peter, is portrayed as reckless, dumb and traitorous because that’s essentially how Paul saw Cephas. I definitely see Mark’s gospel as an allegory and of course Matthew and Luke adapted it, though there are elements in Luke that suggest he believed, 50 years down the line, that the story was history.
As for Paul, I’m not sure. He may also be a creation, or maybe, as is said of Shakespeare, he is a front for some other writer. For various reasons, though, I don’t see his genuine letters as being as late as Marcion. Whoever is behind them, he pretty much created Christianity as we know it. We simply don’t know what the beliefs of Christians were before he came along, 25(?) years later to straighten them out.
How and why? I suspect the guys behind it all really did think the world was about to end. They believed their visions from on high showed the way for people to beat the judgement prophesied in the OT, allowing them to survive to live on the recreated Earth. People today are only too ready to adopt the wackiest of views, more so in pre-scientific eras.
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Thanks for that.
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Ark: While I accept the possibility the tale was concocted from whole cloth – Gospels, Acts, etc being fiction, even the entire Pauline corpus could be a forgery – I simply cannot get my head around how or why.
The destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.
That destruction led to the creation of rabbinical Judaism which most remaining Jews adopted. But a very small sect of them adopted Christianity instead.
There were no newspapers. Literacy was limited. It would be a simple thing to say, “Remember that preacher named Jesus . . . ” Not only was Jesus a common name, but many of the messianic stories going around promised not only a coming messiah, but a conquering messiah after the pattern of Joshua who conquered Canaan. A new Joshua (Jesus).
To help people “remember” this character, tie him to a well known, and well liked, preacher. Somebody like John the Baptist. People remember John the Baptist as a good guy and people will start remembering his pal Jesus as well. Whether that Jesus ever existed or not.
From there it’s easy to spin a tale of one last, infinite sacrifice to replace the sacrifices of the temple. Lots and lots of Jews were being crucified all the time. It’s easy to conjure memories of just one more.
The addition of the resurrection of that sacrificial lamb certainly comes from the Greco-Roman culture. In Judaism no one resurrects until the end of the world. But in Greco-Roman culture, great leaders resurrect immediately after their death.
And why did no one hear of this resurrection before now (after the temple’s destruction)? Because the women fled the tomb and told no one. Once the story is accepted in a community, people will start “remembering” stories of other witnesses and the story will expand and evolve.
I just imagine Paul, or whoever originates the idea, as someone much like Joseph Smith. Part theologian, part mystic, all conman.
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“Or so the story goes.” — And that sums things up nice and neat.
Furthermore, as you wrote: None of his followers today would be interested even if he could be unearthed and resurrected. They are content with the Jesus of imagination … YUP!
I appreciate those of you who research the early history of Yeshua, but unfortunately, the diehards are too wrapped up in their own personal “salvation” to really care about any of it.
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Isn’t there an Elvis song, Viva Lost Jesus? Something like that.
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