We all know the story, and now millennia later we choose this time of the year to celebrate the event. The story goes something like this. An ethereal being sporting wings and a gown pops into a little house somewhere in the middle east, and tells a girls she’s about to be raped by God and their isn’t a damned thing she can do about it. Her name is Mary. (in this version) She had been courting this older guy named Joseph, so she dupes him into playing daddy for a little while… Anyway the popular story goes on to say that they went to a little town named Bethlehem and in a barn gave birth to a baby boy they called Jesus..aka Baby Jeebus. So the King; Herrod, didn’t want some baby claiming his thrown, so he ordered all first born boys be killed. (a popular plot line in the Bible) (scene fades out) Camera focuses on a then 12 year old Jesus doing a scripture slam with a group of priests. He’s kickin’ ass and they are in the psalm of his hand. Mary and Joseph ask him what he was doing and he said he was about his fathers work. (Joseph was Pwn3d) Soon after this Joseph just disappears from the story altogether. Word has it that he got into smoking Myhr and ran off with a gay Rabbi. Now that I think of it Jesus disappeared from the story too. Hmm talk about crappy story telling. Well anyhow, a couple decades later he shows up again, gets baptized by John the Baptist. By the way, John the Baptist also miraculously survived the killing of the first born boys. Lucky him. So now that he’s freshly baptized and has on a clean robe Jesus goes out to the wilderness for 40 days and nights to collect his thoughts and thumb wrestle with Satan.
I’ll end the story there; I’ve already gone too far. Jesus’ life ends about 33 AD. Mark; was the first Gospel written about Christ, and it wasn’t written until after 70 AD. We know this because it mentions the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. That’s um… 40 years folks. Jesus, a guy who was doing huge ass miracles and speaking to crowds of hundreds or thousands was completely uncronicled for 40 years? CNotable writers of the time such as Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Flauvius Josephus and Justus of Tiberius make no mention of Jesus even though all of them covered topics such as current religious movements. Actually there was a guy from that in between period named Saul of Tarsus, he said Jesus came to him in a vision. Saul changed his name to Paul… The Apostle Paul. From one vision Paul then went out an evangelized Jesus Christ and he wrote over 80,000 words about Christianity. The funny thing is that Paul didn’t know about Mary and Joseph, Bethlehem, Herrod, John the Baptist, or any of the miracles that Jesus was said to have performed. He never quotes anything Jesus ever said. The only thing about Jesus that the Apostle Paul has any idea about is the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension… That’s it. This is the first guy to write about Jesus, the only one who was around when Jesus was suppose to be alive, and he knew nothing about him. Yet he started a whole religion about a guy he didn’t have a clue about. Oh, here is the other kicker…( I have to laugh) the last three events… didn’t even happen on Earth according to Paul. What you may also need to know is that at the time there were many mythic heroes and gods that had the same basic story…
• Born of a virgin on Dec 25
• Stars appeared at birth
• Visited by magi from the east
• turned water to wine
• healed the sick
• Cast out demons
• Performed miracles
• Transfigured before followers
• Rode a donkey into a city
• Betrayed for 30 pieces of silver
• celebrated a communal meal with bread and wine (which represented the saviors flesh and blood)
• Killed on a cross or a tree
• Descended into hell
• Resurrected on the third day
• Ascended into heaven
• Became a divine judge
Some of those characters were:
• Krishna
• Mithra
• Osiris
• Atos
• Adonis
• Tamuz
• odopus
• Theseus
• Romulus
• Hercules
• Perseus
• Horus
So was the character of Jesus derivative? I would say so.
When presented with these other heroic characters Christian theologians actually say that they were pre counterfeited by Satan to confuse non believers. Don’t believe me? Here is what Church Father Justin Martyr said of this, : For when they say that Dionysus arose again and ascended to heaven, is it not evident the devil has imitated the prophesy?” They say that they did not exist before Jesus, because Jesus being part of the holy trinity has always existed. Churches don’t talk much about the early days of Christianity because the story would go something like this: Jesus was here, then he was killed, he came back and was carried up to heaven. Then everyone completely forgot about him. Then they suddenly remembered again. Again allegorical literature was extremely common in those times attempts were made during the Nicean counsel to remove much of the folklore from the Bible and make it a more intellectual tome. However if you remove the folklore, what you end up with is just begat, begat, begat. Augustus Caesar who also lived in that time is intricately tied to the history. Many theologians and secular writers of the time confer his existence and timeline. Jesus however shares no such accreditation. Paul didn’t even think he was a man, and thought he arrived on earth in full grown human form. The Gospel of mark was the first written but is not read first in the Bible. Biblical scholars agree that the other Gospels are derivative of Mark. Oh, by the way, a guy named Mark did not write it. It was penned over 100 years after 33 AD. Justin Martyr, an OCF original church father said “When we say Jesus Christ was produced without sexual union, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing new or different from what you believe regarding those whom you call the sons of Jupiter. Talk about a sales pitch! Christian leader rearely have to offer explanations for these types of things because believers don’t ask these types of questions. The only Roman reference to Jesus or Christians anywhere near that time was a reference to Jesus in a letter which Pliny the Younger (62 - 113,) Proconsul of Bithynia, wrote to the emperor Trajan in the year 113. In it Pliny asked for instructions as to any action that he should take against the Christians. He informed the emperor that they sang hymns to Jesus Christ as to a god. They did not worship the emperor as was required by Roman law of that day. Although judged to be authentic, the letter, because of its relatively late date, is of no use in proving the existence of Jesus.
To make matters more confusing, the Talmud… a Jewish holy books had said that Jesus had lived 150 years before the account in the New Testament. That he had been stoned and hanged under the Roman Alaxander Jamaus. The New Testament says that Jesus was handed over from Pontius Pilate. Well if this was the case under Jewish law he would have been stoned to death, not crucified as was Roman tradition.
So, evidence that Jesus ever lived is found only in the New Testament gospels. But just how reliable is it? Consider the following:
• The dates of their writings are well after the alleged time of Jesus and contain numerous irresolvable contradictions and obvious forgeries.
• The writer of the Gospel of John presents a different Jesus from that of the synoptic gospels.
• Paul presents a Jesus unlike that of both John and the synoptics.
• Much in the gospels was borrowed from pagan sources.
• No two gospels writers could agree as to the date or circumstances of Jesus’ birth, and the birth narratives appear to have been contrived.
• The gospel writers cannot agree on the short inscription over Jesus' head at the alleged crucifixion.
• The gospel accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection are hopelessly contradictory.

Consider for your amusement this Biblical Jesus hair ball:
Romans 1:3 ~ "Jesus was made of the seed of David according to the flesh," says Paul. Although this statement agrees fully with the one made by Jesus in Revelation 22:16, it flies in the face of everything we are told in the gospels. In Matthew 1:20 and Luke 1:35 we learn that Mary was made pregnant with Jesus not by Joseph, who was of the Davidic line, but by the Holy Ghost. This creates a really big problem for Bible believers. First, although Joseph was of David's line, he was not Jesus' biological father. Second, the Holy Ghost is a spirit and spirits have neither flesh nor blood. Third, "according to the flesh" could not have been referring to Mary's flesh because she was not from David's line. According to the story, she was of the house of Aaron (Luke 1:5), a Levite. So, if the birth narratives are to be believed, Jesus did not come from the seed of David, and Paul told another big lie. If, on the other hand, Revelation 22:16 is true and Paul is right, the writers of Matthew and Luke lied.

I would like to summarize by quoting Louis W. Cable:
If Jesus did not exist, how did the story about him begin? One must remember that in the time when Jesus was supposed to have lived, there were many Jewish cults, especially in Galilee. Jewish mysticism, mixed with the Hellenistic stoic philosophy, gave birth to the legend of Jesus. Gullible minds accepted the myth, and as the centuries passed, a new religion developed out of a legend. Over time, as the gospels went through successive editions, "corrections" were made which reflect the compromises upon which the minds of Christians were exercised at the time and speeches were put in the mouth of Jesus in order to give authority to some particular dogma or view. The parable of the Good Samaritan, for example was added for the purpose of combating Jewish exclusiveness exhibited in many passages of earlier gospels. Meanwhile the Hebrew Bible was ransacked for passages which could be manipulated so as to apply to Jesus. Corresponding incidents were then written into the gospels to make it appear that Jesus had fulfilled these prophecies. This was done to such an extent that one writer observed that the Old Testament was converted to a biography of Jesus. The early Christian writers tried to prove the truth of Christian beliefs not by contemporary evidence of Jesus’ existence, which surely they would have done if they could, but out of the prophets and the Psalms by taking verses out of context and in many cases altering them so as to make them appear to be speaking about Jesus.
There are those who would protect the gospels by saying that everything in them is symbolism. But symbolism is not history. If the conclusion is accepted that the primitive gospels were essentially symbolism, with some infusion of myth, then the further conclusion must follow that the writers of these gospels were not intending to relate the actions of a real man. Thus the only evidence, such as it is, that Jesus ever lived ceases to be any evidence at all.
Thanks for your taking the time to read this. LOC