Tag Archives: Jesus

Let’s Talk About Sex

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Green&Daley

Oh, go on let’s…

The average person has sex about 2,500 times in their lives and produces an average of 2 children. In other words, a mere 0.08% of the sex they have leads to procreation. This means that the remaining 99.92% is entirely recreational. People have sex together because it feels good or helps them be close to someone they love or because they enjoy it, or all three, plus a multitude of other reasons. Even if we were to increase tenfold the number of occasions when sex is intended to produce babies but doesn’t, that still leaves 99.2% of the time when sex is just sex.

So why is it, holy readers of this unholy blog, do you insist that sex is only for procreation (like you do here, here and here)? If that’s all it’s for, shouldn’t you produce more offspring every time you and your partner have sex? Yet you don’t. Even those extremists among you who have 8 or 12 children still have sex a hell of lot of times when it doesn’t result in another kid and isn’t meant to. Most of you use contraception to actively prevent procreation and have all the fun sex you want, whenever you want, without risking another pregnancy. Surely your God can’t possibly approve when he made sex exclusively for reproduction.

Catholics – you don’t get off the hook either; you have lot of sex that doesn’t lead to babies too (or you’d be clocking up kids by the dozen by now). How’d you manage that, I wonder? Same way everybody else does, I’d guess. And what about all the jerking off to porn that macho Christian men enjoy? That for procreative purposes too?

So, why is it you keep telling the rest of us that sex is only for procreation? Let me tell you – because it’s part of your anti-gay agenda. ‘Filthy gays,’ you’re saying, ‘having all that sex that can’t possibly lead to procreation, sex that’s just for fun, that might be with more partners than I’ll ever manage’ (though multiple partners and sex outside those ‘one man/one woman’ marriages you care so much about are pretty common among Christians – but you don’t want that mentioned either). While it may come as a surprise, most gay people are not infertile; they are quite capable of ‘procreating’; given the problems of overpopulation, shouldn’t you be grateful many don’t? Or maybe, like spiteful nutjob Stephen Green in his recent rant about Tom Daley, you like to make the bleedin’ obvious point that gay men need ‘a girl’ in order to reproduce… just like straight men do.

‘But,’ you say, ‘gay sex is between two men – maybe more – or two women (maybe more) and that’s so downright distasteful and disgusting. The Bible says so and I believe it.’ Of course, you’d believe it even if the Bible didn’t say so. So what if it does? Do you honestly think the rest of us care what a bunch of ancient tribesmen and other sex-obsessed fanatics thought?

For men and women who are gay, sex with each other is far from disgusting or distasteful. It’s every bit as exciting, loving and fulfilling as all the fun sex you have. Unless of course, yours isn’t.

Your ranting about recreational sex, gay or otherwise, is just so much hypocrisy. You like it yourself, or else you wouldn’t do it (and you do do it) yet you don’t want the rest of us doing it with the consenting adults we find attractive. Until you’re prepared to give up sex so Jesus will let you in his Magic Kingdom (like he says you should in Matthew 19.10-15 and Luke 20.34-35) then do us all a favour and shut the fuck up about all the great sex the rest of us are having.

 

 

Recent Encounters of the Religious Kind

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3. Prophecy Fulfilled

DB&JC

Back in January I predicted that David Bowie’s demise would lead to his apotheosis. And so it comes to pass.

First there’s this, from the Guardian‘s Suzanne Moore:

The theory that it was in fact, David Bowie’s presence in the universe that was holding everything together is one I find hard to resist, given how awful everything has been of late…

Second is Paul Morley’s new Bowie biography, the cleverly titled The Age of Bowie: How David Bowie Made a World of Difference, with its abundance of publicity including Radio 4’s broadcast ‘book of the week’. It is probably worth a look if you’re at all interested in the Thin White Duke and his various incarnations.

Two aspects of the biography stand out: first, Morley’s admission that he’s had to invent some details of Bowie’s life because either there is a lack of information – about his pre-fame period, for example – or, there are too many contradictory reports of certain events (often from Bowie himself) – or, a biography is so much more interesting when ‘facts’ are reorganised, again as Mr Bowie himself was wont to do when it suited him.

Second, the tone is uncritical to the point of sycophancy. Morley’s evident respect and admiration for Bowie translate into an adulation that elevates the late star to a priestly, semi-divine status. Within the first few pages Bowie is described as someone who manipulates time (xii); has a voice that pierces straight to the heart (p2); possesses the wisdom of the ages (p8); is capable of rearranging others’ minds (p8); can recreate the cosmic order (p8); symbolises the future (p8); dramatically splits reality wide open and penetrates time itself (p9); hunts for kindred spirits ready to surrender to his ways (p11); is obsessed with the deeper truths of existence (p14) and is a kind of teacher (p15) who proclaimed, ‘look how amazing this is. I am never, ever going to die’ (p20). Bowie would surely have been amused by most of these claims.

Written only a matter of months, perhaps weeks, after the singer’s death, in a time when, after his initial success in the 1970s, his every word, note, movement, metamorphosis, transformation, declaration and pronouncement was seized upon, broadcast and preserved for posterity, it is remarkable how much of the biography has to be constructed. Remarkable too how much it reflects Morley’s own experience of Bowie, how he writes about his Bowie, or series of Bowies.

Imagine if he were writing this same biography 40 or more years from now, with no personal or direct experience of the Bowie phenomenon, when no-one who had first-hand experience of it was alive, or if they were, had to rely on shaky memories of events that had happened – or maybe not – in their youth. How much more would the author have had to invent, even if he had access to archive material, about the impact the subject had, the effect of his music, his presence, his vision(s), his theatricality, his changes, his highs, his lows, his philosophy, his influence, the contribution he made to popular music and to art, the difference he made to ordinary individuals’ lives…

Now: imagine there are no reliable archives; no recordings, no film, no contemporaneous newspaper reports. Imagine too the author is not a twenty-first century journalist and musician, but has, like all those around him, including his audience, little or no scientific understanding of the world. Rather, he has a mind-set dominated by God, angels and devils, and is prone to superstition and the possibility people can and do rise from the dead. How much more readily would the half-forgotten charismatic of this ‘biography’ be elevated to god-like status. How much more miraculous the behaviour attributed to him. How much more a priest and saviour than any modern day icon.

And so the gospels came to be.

Recent Encounters of the Religious Kind

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2. Maria and the Evil One

devil

Maria comes to the door again. She’s very personable but wasting away her life as a Jehovah’s Witness. She wonders if I’ve read the leaflet she left last time. I have, and have filled in the answers to its questions, including, ‘does the Bible have the answers to life’s big questions?’ Maria doesn’t seem very happy about my answer.

She insists on showing me a video on her iPad. It is slick and includes some clever CGI. She tells me afterwards that the ‘Evil One’ is in control of this world which is why it is in such a mess. I tell her that any mess is our own doing, we humans. She asks if I know the Bible; I say I do. She tells me that Jehovah’s Witnesses are the only ones who interpret it correctly. It doesn’t, she says, tell us that believers will go to heaven when they die (she’s right about this; it doesn’t). It promises rather that Jesus will be coming back to set up God’s Kingdom on Earth (right again). Except, I remind her, it has him promise that he will return within the lifetime of those listening to him, the Kingdom scheduled to appear within his own generation (Matthew 16:27-28; Matthew 24:27, 30-31, 34; Luke 21:27-28, 33-34). Maria concedes the point and then tries to say a generation is longer than we think. Maybe so, I say, but not 2,000 years.

Maria says she learnt something about this problem in a class recently. She appeals to her confederate for help, but he can’t remember what the elders said either. She decides now retreat is the better part of proselytising but promises to return once she has the answer.

But there is no answer; at least not one that sees Jesus’ megalomanic fantasies realised two millennia in his future.

I feel certain that, unlike Jesus, Maria will be back soon.

 

 

 

Silence of Mind

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ThinkerThe anonymous blogger over on Silence of Mind, (we’ll call him ‘SoM’) is arguing that Christianity is responsible for Western civilisation. He does so even though others have pointed out to him that the essential elements of a civilised society – democracy, the rule of law, moral codes, mathematics, scientific enquiry, medicine, education, art, literature and architecture – were all evident in human societies millennia before Christianity emerged.

SoM goes further, however, insisting that Western culture owes its existence solely to Christianity. He doesn’t demonstrate how this is so; he is content to assert that it is. He is, of course, confusing correlation with causation, failing to recognise that Christianity’s involvement in the development of Western society does not mean it was the cause.

Having reach this insupportable conclusion, SoM makes an even greater leap of faith by declaring that because the Christian faith created civilisation as we know it – we’ll ignore, as he does, the church’s suppression of so much that is integral to a civilised society during the ‘dark ages’ – then Jesus must therefore be God. Here’s how he puts it:

1. Jesus established the Christian religion.

2. Christianity became the religion that spawned Western Civilization.

3. Western Civilization is the only civilization in human history to have developed modern science.

4. Modern science proved the existence of God

5. Since only God can reveal God, Jesus of Nazareth must be God.

So wrong in every respect:

1. Jesus did not establish the Christian religion. Paul did.

2. Christianity did not spawn Western civilisation (see above).

3. Western civilisation is not the only one to have developed science, and where it has emerged has often been in spite of religion, not because of it.

4. Science certainly has not ‘proved’ the existence of God. It has no interest in the so-called ‘supernatural’ nor, indeed, in ‘proving’ anything. It is significant that none of the explanations science has arrived at require the involvement of a god.

5. ‘Since only God can reveal God, Jesus of Nazareth must be God’ is a non-sequitur; it doesn’t follow from anything that has gone before, as flawed as all of the previous assertions are. What SoM is claiming here is that because “1, 2, 3 and 4 are the case (though I have failed to demonstrate they are and in fact they are not), then A must equal B”.

In the end, SoM’s ‘argument’ is the same as saying that because there is a place called Greece, Zeus must really exist. Or because there are tea-shops, we can be certain Bertrand Russell’s teapot is orbiting the sun, forever just out of sight.

As proof of the divinity of Jesus, the argument from the scientific and cultural achievements of the West has to be one of the worst. All arguments (and SoM’s assertions can hardly lay claim to the term) that attempt to demonstrate how an abrasive, inconsistent zealot from a Palestinian backwater was secretly the God of the Universe are equally worthless while God himself remains unproven, as he always must.

This is why believing anything about him and about Jesus’ supposed divinity is called ‘faith’. If it were possible to prove the things held on faith, then faith wouldn’t be necessary. But it is, because believing the impossible and the unprovable can only be managed by by-passing and, yes, silencing the mind’s critical faculties.

It was all just a dream…

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Stone2Perry Stone, self-styled prophet, evangelist and teacher is of the view that God provides dreams and visions to his followers. He does this, apparently, when he can’t think of a better way of communicating them. Perry recommends that those on the receiving end of God’s special messages should immediately wake up and quickly write down what their dream was about. If they don’t, they’ll forget it! Who knew we can’t always recall dreams once we wake up? Who knows how to wake up as soon as a dream is over? Perry has big drawings made of his own God-delivered dreams. Here’s one. See if you can guess what it was about:

Stone1

Yes, it was a warning about 9/11. The Lord gave it to Perry, in a dream, long before the 2001 attack.

You can’t see it? You think five tornadoes and the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey look nothing like 9/11? Shame on you! You need to take this more seriously. You’re thinking, aren’t you, that Perry’s dream, if he had it at all, was down to the cheese he’d eaten before going to bed. That and a deranged mind.

But you’d be wrong; Perry knows for certain his dream was from God and that his interpretation is right on the mark. And who are we to doubt it? Curious, though, that even though the Lord had warned him about the attack in advance, Perry neglected to tell anyone about it. I wonder why that was? God must have wondered too – why he’d entrusted such an important message to a dimwit who did nothing with it. (Then again, if the Lord is capable of inducing dreams why didn’t he speak directly to the terrorists to prevent them from doing what they did?)

Still, good ol’ Perry’s made up for lost time since and is now more than happy to tell the rubes everyone about his dreams. And so what if it makes him a few million dollars? Frenetic Perry has a significant following on TBN and on his own web-site, which is where you can buy his dream-world DVDs for as little as $45 a set.

Nut-jobs’ dreams and visions have been at the centre of religious belief since forever. Dreams are significant, or so it’d have us believe, in the Old Testament where there are at least two dozen ‘important’ ones, together with advice about their interpretation (Job 33.15-18, for example). They’re quite a presence in the Qur’an too.

In fact, dreams and their waking equivalent, visions, are ultimately what religion is made of. They’re certainly what Christianity is made of; Joseph, the Magi, Pilate’s wife, Peter and Paul all have deeply meaningful dreams while Peter, Paul, John and others have visions which, they persuade themselves, can only be the monolith from 2001 Jesus returned from the dead, and other fantastic nonsense. The authors of the New Testament attached such importance to converts’ dreamy/visionary experiences that they had them written back into the Jesus narrative itself. That way it sounded like Jesus knew when he was alive that later fanatics would think they could sense his presence (especially when they whipped themselves up together) and could experience him in dreams and visions. Still today there are those who convince themselves they have a ‘relationship’ with him and can see him in their dreams, near-death experiences and other hallucinations. Just ask Perry Stone. It’s all real!

Well, as real as things entirely in the mind can be.

Same as it ever was…

Paul2

(Edited for clarity 2nd Aug)

Are You A Good Person?

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Bleach

My old mate Dale McAlpine has been missing from the streets of my home town recently. Perhaps he’s saving himself for Pride when he can ‘coincidentally’ turn up with his fellow street-preachers and try to ruin the celebration. He hasn’t updated his blog for two years either. I’m really quite worried about him. Perhaps he’s realised the error of his ways and has abandoned all that Salvation clap-trap has taken up a more rational approach to life. I do hope so. Or perhaps he’s just given up trying to reach people for Jesus; maybe the folk where I live are so reprobate even the mighty Dale Jesus can’t reach them. I’d like to think so.

Dale, like other joyless evangelists, is fond of asking those he’s haranguing, ‘are you a good person?‘ It’s a loaded question, of course, because no matter how you answer it, the street preacher is able to use it to direct the ‘conversation’ (in which he has a megaphone and you don’t) around to Jesus. If you say ‘yes, I am a pretty good person’, the evangelist will then ask you if you’ve ever told lie or stolen something; if the answer is ‘yes’, he will then pronounce you ‘Not A Good Person’ and point out how, as a result, you are in need of Jesus. Easier to answer ‘No,’ in the first place, ‘I’m not a good person’ and get it over with quickly, leading, as this does, more directly to the saving power of Jesus. He alone, apparently can save you from not being good, stop you stealing the paper clips and save you from sin. Because, as everyone knows, accepting Jesus into your life automatically makes you a good person. (It doesn’t? Okay, but we’ll leave that for another time.)

Of course it might be the case that you really are a mass-murderer, child-molester or fraudster, and this may indeed disqualify you from being ‘a good person.’ But most of us are not; we’re just ordinary folk living ordinary lives with the characteristics, flaws and foibles that result from being raised by other ordinary folks with flaws and foibles of their own. If, on the other hand, you really are a bad person, it’s hardly likely you’re going to tell Dale and his pals about it in the middle of a public street.

However you regard yourself, it’s far better not to answer the likes of Dale at all; what right have they to know whether you regard yourself as a good person or not? What right have they to expect you to declare it publicly? Why should you respond to an agenda set entirely by them? None at all. Just shake the dirt from your Nikes and walk away.

If, however, you do feel inclined to engage with the religiously disturbed, you could try telling them you are neither a good person nor a bad one, because that is what most of us are; complex individuals who really can’t be delineated in such a nonsensically simplistic way. Only the religious seek to define human psychology with the false dichotomies of good and evil, right and wrong, righteous and unrighteous. Responding that you are neither good nor bad, while quite possibly both at the same time, is much too complicated for them. They will judge you a smart arse unworthy of God’s Grace and pretty quickly move on to a fresh victim.

Sweet and sour, nasty and nice

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or, whatever happened to Luke 18.11-14?

prayer2Why is it when people are emotionally blackmailed into becoming followers of Jesus, does their conversion make them sweet and sour, nasty and nice at the same time? The sweet and nice parts are what their new experience does for them. They get a new start of sorts, are introduced to like-minded friends in the church and become compelled to share their new joy with everyone else, whether they want to hear it or not, about how much they’ve changed because of Jesus. It’s nice for them. Deluded too, but if it makes them happy then why not?

This is why not. What they don’t tell you, not at first anyway, is how sour and nasty they have also become; how they must now defend God’s standards, because, as everyone knows, the omnipotent God of all creation is incapable of defending them himself. Being born again and morphing into ‘a new creation’ involves, without exception, becoming judgemental of others, condemnatory, inflammatory, bigoted and spiteful.

You think not? Then you haven’t heard what these same Christians think about abortion and women who have them. Homosexuality and those who are gay. Transgenderism and those born in the wrong body. Science and those who value evidence. Atheism and those of us who see through believers’ sad delusion.

Christians don’t, as some of them profess, hate the sin but love the sinner. They despise those who have philosophies different from them, those who live differently from them, those who are different from them.

A recent BBC poll asked if the world wouldn’t be more peaceful without religion. Here’s the results as of 14th July 2016:

Poll

I don’t know how many people this represents nor where they’re from – the site doesn’t say – but it would seem that most of us would think we would be better off without religion. It’s long past time we were able to be; religion has nothing to offer. It’s time we stopped giving it special treatment because some of it is sweet and nice. Its sour, nasty aspects are just as much a part of it, inseparable from whatever positives its adherents say it has. I’ll be looking soon at how we might push back against religion’s pervasive and poisonous influence in society.

Effective Preachin’ (Part Two)

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Sheep

Reverend M. T. Vessal of the Church of The Raised Up here again, with the second part of my guide to Effective Preachin’. In case you missed it, repent! (The first part’s here.)

Now we’re really gonna get going, praise the Lord! The tools you’re gonna need for your talk proper are:

Lots of anecdotes (make up ’em up if you don’t know any true ones), specially ones about life- and-death situations. Stories about encounters with people on planes always go down well, as there’s always the chance the plane will too, and accounts of foolish follk who hear the gospel and ignore it, only to die in a terrible accident soon after.

Cod-psychology. That’s the stuff about God-shaped holes, how only Christ can forgive sin and meet all our needs, even though he doesn’t and never said he would. You can add something in here slagging off atheists and anyone else you disagree with.

Conviction. This is crucial. Sound as if you mean whatever it is you’re spouting. Sound as if you really know what the Bible says. Make it sound like it’s relevant and meaningful, even though it isn’t.

Modulation, otherwise known as shouting and dropping your voice. Shout when the argument is weak (and they’re all weak – you’re making this stuff up, remember)) and drop your voice almost to a whisper so that people know you’re being really, really sincere.

Drama. Pace up and down, like ‘Bishop’ T. D. Jakes, and mop your brow a lot. Wave your arms about, like Joseph Prince and show you really mean it. Maybe you could use props, like Beth Moore does, though you run the risk then of diverting the attention away from yourself. Better is to demonstrate what a cool guy you are, even if you’re not a guy, by sitting on the edge of the altar steps or, if you’re in a really cool church like Steve Furtrick’s, the Stage. This shows the congregation/audience just how cool you are.

Whipped up emotion. This is optional but if you lay it on thick about what Jesus has done for the spiritually inferior, how their sin caused those nails to be driven in, then you’re on to a winner. Aim for some arm waving from ’em, babbling in jibberish speaking in tongues and maybe even some crying. Don’t forget to tell ’em that whatever they’re feeling is the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Definitely nothing to do with your manipulating their already fragile emotions. No sir. This here frenzy is divinely inspired.

Finally, get to the challenge bit of your sermon/talk/self-promotion. This can involve an appeal for money. Correction: this will involve an appeal for money. The God who supplies everything doesn’t supply money so you’ll need to lay a guilt trip on your fans/congregation to provide you with the cash to maintain your lavish lifestyle continue the Lord’s work. But it’s not only about money; remember to pressurise/inspire the congregation/audience/fans to go out and harrass their neighbours so maybe they and their wallets will come to church next week. As the Lord Jesus himself said, ‘the harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few’!

Above all, though, let everyone leave feeling that they’ve had a good time. Like kettles, they should have had a real great Outpouring and feel well and truly Blessed. Leave ’em feeling ready for more, same time, same place next Sunday.

 

 

Effective Preachin’ (Part One)

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church3Reverend M. T. Vessal of the Church of The Raised Up here, with the first of my special guest posts for all you wannabe preachers out there. I’m gonna be telling you on how to preach the Good News of Salvation and win souls for Christ.

Right. First off, remember to use the words ‘Blessings’, ‘Sanctify’ and ‘Outpouring’ in your preamble or opening prayer. ‘Course no-one will know what these mean as you haven’t provided any context and they’re pretty meaningless anyway – apart from ‘Outpourings’ which is something kettles do. But it’ll get the folks worked up to expect something real good. Folks in church go for things like Blessings, Sanctifying and Outpourings, believe me.

Next, repeat the title of your sermon – or, if you’re part of a cool modern church like Steve Furtick’s, your talk, or, if you’re really honest (and let’s face it you wouldn’t be doing this if you were really honest) your spot of self-promotion – three times. This is a useful tip for any point of your sermon/talk/self-promotion; if you can’t remember what you were going to say next, say the last thing you can remember saying three times over, putting the emphasis on a different word each time. So, for example, ‘Twelve ways to receiving the Lord’s blessings’ would be: ‘Twelve ways to receive the Lord’s blessings’, then ‘Twelve ways to receive the Lord’s blessings’, and finally, ‘Twelve ways to receiving the Lord’s blessings‘, though feel free to alter this as suits. Saying it three times like this makes it sound like you’ve just come out with something real deep and profound, when you’ve done nothing of the sort. Plus, people sit up and listen to things said in threes. It’s kinda hypnotic.

I said, ‘it’s kinda hypnotic.’

‘It’s kinda hypnotic.’

See? It works.

Next make a joke. Say something like, ‘if you’ll switch on your Bibles’, just to show how with-it and up-to-date you are, knowing most folks bring their iPads to church these days. That way they can shop on Amazon or send an offensive tweet when your sermon gets really boring (and it will get really boring).

Now quote the verse you’re gonna preach about and let the folks follow along; you won’t need to quote it accurately because they’ll all be using different translations, so accuracy’s not important. Unless, of course, you’re one of those churches that only accepts the Authorised Version, the one with all the errors in it that right-royal homosexual James I… well, authorised. (One of the advantages of the KJV is you can  drop in words like ‘lieth’ and ‘unto’ which sound like you really know what you’re talking about.) So, yes, it’s okay to paraphrase the verse your talk is gonna be tenuously connected to because, let’s face it, it’s not going to have much to do with the verse in any case. It’s going to be more about you than whatever’s in the Bible. The exception is if you’re planning on having a rant about homosexuals, in which case you’ll want to stick pretty closely to Leviticus 20.13 and Romans 1.26.

A word on choosing your Bible verse: make it one of Paul’s or something from John. The other stuff, about loving your neighbour and your enemy and going the extra mile isn’t the kind of thing you want to have to talk about. You’re gonna concentrate on Blessings, Sanctification and Outpourings, remember, things that are exclusively for Christians. If you’re feeling really adventurous though you can try a story from the Old Testament. Maybe one of those blood-baths it has a lot of. You can show how all that bronze-age inter-tribal slaughter was really about how much Jesus loves Christians in the twenty-first century.

Right. You’re all set. Next time, I’ll tell you how to preach so that you can make a name for yourself truly reflect the glory of Jesus.

Did Jesus Exist? (part two)

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WaterIf Matthew, Mark and Luke were creating a Messiah from scratch, or, more probably, recording the invention of believers who went before them, then it is unlikely they would have arrived at the loser preserved in their accounts. The Jesus we find there is nothing like the Messiah anticipated in Jewish scripture nor by Jews at the time.

He is a false prophet, his good news about the imminent arrival of the Son of Man and the Kingdom of God being patently unfulfilled. His ministry is a failure, ending as it does in ignoble execution. This is not the Messiah anyone would create if they were inventing one to satisfy the longings of a thwarted people. In particular, God’s emissary would not lose control of the situation in the way the Jesus of the synoptic gospels does. He would not allow himself to be executed by the occupying forces in the manner the gospels record. (All the surviving sources attest to his death by crucifixion; we can be fairly certain he died in this way.)

A created Messiah, on the other hand, would surely have announced the arrival of the Son of Man/Kingdom of God before leaving the stage of his own volition – ascending to heaven perhaps as some of the gospel writers eventually have him do – to await the unfolding of the events he had proclaimed. Of course, the death of a godman is a recurrent theme in the mythologies of the ancient world, so it is possible that an unpleasant death would be invented for an imaginary Jesus so that he complied with the trope. But, as I’ve already suggested, the central figure of the synoptic gospels is noticeably ungodmanlike. We only see him as such through the distorting prism of Paul’s theology; without this, we can see that the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke really don’t portray him like this at all.

It seems much more likely, therefore, that what the synoptic writers are conveying are distorted memories of an individual who actually lived. A man who promised much but whose mission went drastically wrong but which would, his earliest followers believed, be completed by God himself in the near future. This latter part is, as we now know, pure invention, the gospels conveying only an imaginative interpretation of this man. It would seem, nonetheless, to be an interpretation of someone – a charismatic Jewish preacher and failed heir-presumptive – who had actually lived some years before.

As I said at the beginning of this two-part post, I don’t really care whether Jesus existed or not. The end result is the same; millions of people seduced by a significance he did not have, either as a real person or as an imaginary construct. On balance, for the reasons I’ve touched on in these posts, it seems to me Jesus – Yeshua bar Yosef – did once exist. Like we all must, he died and others set about interpreting his life in their various, incompatible ways. These interpetations are all ultimately meaningless; we can be absolutely certain that, whatever the Bible and Christians today tell us, Jesus, whether he lived two thousand years ago or not, does not exist now in any shape or ethereal form.