REFUTING MISSIONARIES
Hayyim ben Yehoshua
PART 1: THE MYTH OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS
Much concern has been
expressed in the Jewish media regarding the activity of "Jews for
Jesus" and other missionary organizations who go
out of their way to convert Jews to Christianity. Unfortunately, many Jews are
ill equipped to deal with Christian missionaries and their arguments. Hopefully
this article will contribute to remedying this situation.
When countering Christian
missionaries it is important to base one's arguments on correct facts.
Arguments based on incorrect facts can easily backfire and end up strengthening
the arguments of the missionaries.
It is rather unfortunate
that many well-meaning Jewish Studies teachers have unwittingly aided
missionaries by teaching Jewish pupils incorrect information about the origins
of Christianity. I can recall being taught the following story about Jesus at
the Jewish day school I attended:
"Jesus
was a famous first century rabbi whose Hebrew name was Rabbi Yehoshua. His father
was a carpenter named Joseph and his mother's name was Mary. Mary became
pregnant before she married Joseph. Jesus was born in a stable in
A few
years after being taught this seemingly innocent story, I became interested in
the origins of Christianity and decided to do some further reading on the
"famous Rabbi Yehoshua." Much to my dismay, I discovered that there
was no historical evidence of this Rabbi Yehoshua. The claim that Jesus was a
rabbi named Yehoshua and the claim that his body was probably stolen both
turned out to be pure conjecture. The rest of the story was nothing more than a
watered down version of the story which Christians believe as part of the
Christian religion but which is not supported by any legitimate historical
source.
There was absolutely no
historical evidence that Jesus, Joseph or Mary ever existed, let alone that
Joseph was a carpenter or that Jesus was born in
Despite the lack of
evidence for Jesus's existence many Jews have made the tragic mistake of
assuming that the New Testament story is largely correct and have tried to
refute Christianity by attempting to rationalize the various miracles that
allegedly occurred during Jesus's life and after his death. Numerous books have
been written which take this approach to Christianity. This approach however is
hopelessly flawed and is in fact dangerous since it encourages belief in the
New Testament.
When the Israelites were
confronted with the worship of Baal they did not blindly accept the ancient West
Semitic myths as history. When the Maccabees were confronted with Greek
religion they did not blindly accept Greek mythology as history. Why do so many
modern Jews blindly accept Christian mythology? The answer to this question
seems to be that many Christians do not know themselves where the distinction
between established history and Christian belief lies and they have passed
their confusion on to the Jewish community. Browsing through the religion
section of a local bookstore, I recently came across a book which claimed to be
an objective biography of Jesus. It turned out to be nothing more than a
summary of the usual New Testament story. It even included claims that Jesus's
miracles had been witnessed but that rational explanations for them might exist.
Many history books written by Christians take a similar approach. Some
Christian authors will suggest that perhaps the miracles are not completely
historical but they nevertheless follow the general New Testament story. The
idea that there was a real historical Jesus has thus become entrenched in
Christian society and Jews living in the Christian world have come to blindly
accept this belief because they have never seen it seriously challenged.
Despite the widespread
belief in Jesus the fact remains that there is no historical Jesus. In order to
understand what is meant by an "historical Jesus," consider King
Midas in Greek mythology. The story that King Midas turned everything he
touched into gold is clearly nonsense, yet despite this we know that there was
a real King Midas. Archaeologists have excavated his tomb and found his
skeletal remains. The Greeks who told the story of Midas and his golden touch
clearly intended people to identify him with the real Midas. So although the
story of the golden touch is fictional, the story is about a person whose
existence is known as a fact--the "historical Midas." In the case of
Jesus, however, there is no single person whose existence is known as a fact
and who is also intended to be the subject of the Jesus stories, i.e. there is
no historical Jesus.
When confronted by a
Christian missionary, one should immediately point out that the very
existence of Jesus has not been proven. When missionaries argue they
usually appeal to emotions rather than to reason and they will attempt to make
you feel embarrassed about denying the historicity of Jesus. The usual response
is something like "Isn't denying the existence of Jesus just as silly as
denying the existence of Julius Caesar or Queen Elizabeth?" A
popular variation of this response used especially against Jews is "Isn't
denying the existence of Jesus like denying the Holocaust?" One should
then point out that there are ample historical sources confirming the existence
of Julius Caesar, Queen Elizabeth or whoever else is named, while there is no
corresponding evidence for Jesus.
To be perfectly thorough
you should take time to do some research on the historical personalities
mentioned by the missionaries and present hard evidence of their existence. At
the same time you should challenge the missionaries to provide similar evidence
of Jesus's existence. You should point out that although the existence of
Julius Caesar, or Queen Elizabeth, etc., is accepted worldwide, the same is not
true of Jesus. In the
To sum up, there is no
story of Jesus which is uniformly accepted worldwide. It is this fact which
puts Jesus on a different level to established historical personalities. If the
missionaries use the "Holocaust reply," you should point out that the
Holocaust is well-documented and that there are numerous eyewitness reports. It
should be pointed out that most of the people who deny the Holocaust have
turned out to be antisemitic hate-mongers with fraudulent credentials. On the
other hand, millions of honest people in
If Jesus was not an
historical person, where did the whole New Testament story come from in the
first place? The Hebrew name for Christians has always been Notzrim.
This name is derived from the Hebrew word neitzer, which means a shoot
or sprout--an obvious Messianic symbol. There were already people called
Notzrim at the time of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah (c. 100 B.C.E.). Although
modern Christians claim that Christianity only started in the first century
C.E., it is clear that the first century Christians in
We know very little about
Yeishu ha-Notzri. All modern works that mention him are based on information
taken from the Tosefta and the Baraitas - writings made at the same time as the
Mishna but not contained in it. Because the historical information concerning
Yeishu is so damaging to Christianity, most Christian authors (and even some
Jewish ones) have tried to discredit this information and have invented many
ingenious arguments to explain it away. Many of their arguments are based on
misunderstandings and misquotations of the Baraitas and in order to get an
accurate picture of Yeishu one should ignore Christian authors and examine the
Baraitas directly.
The skimpy information
contained in the Baraitas is as follows: Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah once
repelled Yeishu with both hands. People believed that Yeishu was a sorcerer and
they considered him to be a person who had led the Jews astray. As a result of
charges brought against him (the details of which are not known, but which
probably involved high treason) Yeishu was stoned and his body hung up on the
eve of Passover. Before this he was paraded around for forty days with a herald
going in front of him announcing that he would be stoned and calling for people
to come forward to plead for him. Nothing was brought forward in his favor
however. Yeishu had five disciples: Mattai, Naqai, Neitzer, Buni, and Todah.
In the Tosefta and the
Baraitas, Yeishu's father is named Pandeira or Panteiri. These are
Hebrew-Aramaic forms of a Greek name. In Hebrew the third consonant of the name
is written either with a dalet or a tet. Comparison
with other Greek words transliterated into Hebrew shows that the original Greek
must have had a delta as its third consonant and so the only possibility for
the father's Greek name is Panderos. Since Greek names were common among Jews
during Hashmonean times it is not necessary to assume that he was Greek, as
some authors have done.
The connection between
Yeishu and Jesus is corroborated by the the fact that Mattai and Todah, the
names of two of Yeishu's disciples, are the original Hebrew forms of Matthew
and Thaddaeus, the names of two of Jesus's disciples in Christian mythology.
The early Christians were
also aware of the name "ben Pandeira" for Jesus. The pagan
philosopher Celsus, who was famous for his arguments against Christianity,
claimed in 178 C.E. that he had heard from a Jew that Jesus's mother, Mary, had
been divorced by her husband, a carpenter, after it had been proved that she
was an adultress. She wandered about in shame and bore Jesus in secret. His
real father was a soldier named Pantheras. According to the Christian writer Epiphanius
(c. 320 - 403 C.E.), the Christian apologist Origen (c.185 - 254 C.E.) had
claimed that "Panther" was the nickname for Jacob the father of
Joseph, the stepfather of Jesus. It should be noted that Origen's claim is not
based on any historical information. It is purely a conjecture aimed at
explaining away the Pantheras story of Celsus. That story is also not
historical. The claim that the name of Jesus's mother was Mary and the claim
that her husband was a carpenter is taken directly from Christian belief. The
claim that Jesus's real father was named Pantheras is based on an incorrect
attempt at reconstructing the original form of Pandeira. This incorrect
reconstruction was probably influenced by the fact that the name Pantheras was
found among Roman soldiers.
Why did people believe
that Jesus's mother was named Mary and her husband named Joseph? Why did
non-Christians accuse Mary of being an adultress while Christians believed she
was a virgin? To answer these questions one must examine some of the legends
surrounding Yeishu. We cannot hope to obtain the absolute truth concerning the
origins of the Jesus myth but we can show that reasonable alternatives exist to
blindly accepting the New Testament.
The name Joseph for
Jesus's stepfather is easy to explain. The Notzri movement was particularly
popular with the Samaritan Jews. While the Pharisees were waiting for a Messiah
who would be a descendant of David, the Samaritans wanted a Messiah who would
restore the northern kingdom of
To understand where the
Mary story came from we have to turn to another historical character who
contributed to the Jesus myth, namely ben Stada. All the information we have on
ben Stada again comes from the Tosefta and the Baraitas. There is even less
information about him than about Yeishu. Some people believed that he had
brought spells out of
In the Tosefta, ben Stada
is called ben Sotera or ben Sitera. Sotera seems to be the Hebrew-Aramaic form
of the Greek name Soteros. The forms "Sitera" and "Stada"
seem have arisen as misreadings and spelling mistakes (yod replacing vav and
dalet replacing reish).
Since there was so little
information concerning ben Stada, many conjectures arose as to who he was. It
is known from the Gemara that he was confused with Yeishu. This probably
resulted from the fact that both were executed for treasonous teachings and
were associated with sorcery. People who confused ben Stada with Yeishu had to
explain why he was also called ben Pandeira. Since the name "Stada"
resembles the Aramaic expression "stat da," meaning "she went
astray" it was thought that "Stada" referred to the mother of
Yeishu and that she was an adultress. Consequently, people began to think that
Yeishu was the illegitimate son of Pandeira. These ideas are in fact mentioned
in the Gemara and are probably much older. Since ben Stada lived in Roman times
and the name Pandeira resembled the name Pantheras found among Roman soldiers,
it was assumed that Pandeira had been a Roman soldier stationed in
The Tosefta mentions a
famous case of a woman named Miriam bat Bilgah marrying a Roman soldier. The idea that Yeishu had been born to a Jewish woman who had had an
affair with a Roman soldier probably resulted in Yeishu's mother being confused
with this Miriam. The name "Miriam" is of course the original
form of the name "Mary." It is in fact known from the Gemara that
some of the people who confused Yeishu with ben Stada believed that Yeishu's
mother was "Miriam the women's hairdresser."
The story that Mary
(Miriam) the mother of Jesus was an adulteress was certainly not acceptable to
the early Christians. The virgin birth story was probably invented to clear
Mary's name. The early Christians did not suck this story out of their thumbs.
Virgin birth stories were fairly common in pagan myths. The following
mythological characters were all believed to have been born to divinely
impregnated virgins:
The god Tammuz, worshipped
by pagans in northern
The idea that Mary had
been an adultress never completely disappeared in Christian mythology. Instead,
the character of Mary was split into two: Mary the mother of Jesus, believed to
be a virgin, and Mary Magdalene, believed to be a woman of ill repute. The idea
that the character of Mary Magdalene is also derived from Miriam the mythical
mother of Yeishu, is corroborated by the fact that the strange name
"Magdalene" clearly resembles the Aramaic term "mgadla
nshaya," meaning "womens' hairdresser." As mentioned before, there
was a belief that Yeishu's mother was "Miriam the women's
hairdresser." Because the Christians did not know what the name
"Magdalene" meant, they later conjectured that it meant that she had
come from a place called Magdala on the west of
The Gemara contains an
interesting legend concerning Yeishu which attempts to elucidate the Beraita
which says that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah repelled Yeishu with both hands.
The legend claims that when the Hashmonean king Yannai was killing the
Pharisees, Rabbi Yehoshua and Yeishu fled to
The above story, up to the
events at the inn, closely resembles another legend in which the protagonist is
not Rabbi Yehoshua but his disciple Yehuda ben Tabbai. In this legend, Yeishu
is not named. One may thus question whether Yeishu really went to
Since the early Christians
believed that Jesus had lived in Roman times it is natural that they would have
confused the evil king who wanted to kill Jesus with Herod, since there were no
other suitable evil kings during the Roman period. Yeishu was an adult at the
time that the rabbis fled from Yannai; why did the Christians believe that
Jesus and his family had fled to
The theme of a divine or
semi-divine child who is feared by an evil king is very common in pagan
mythology. The usual story is that the evil king receives a prophecy that a
certain child will be born who will usurp the throne. In some stories the child
is born to a virgin and usually he is son of a god. The mother of the child
tries to hide him. The king usually orders the slaying of all babies who might
be the prophecied king. Examples of myths which follow this plot are the birth
stories of
The early Christians
believed that the Messiah was to be born in
The information in the
Talmud (which contains the Baraitas and the Gemara), concerning Yeishu and ben
Stada, is so damaging to Christianity that Christians have always taken drastic
measures against it. When the Christians first discovered the information they
immediately tried to wipe it out by censoring the Talmud. The
During the first few
decades of this century, fierce academic battles raged between atheist and
Christian scholars over the true origins of Christianity. The Christians were
forced to face up to the Talmudic evidence. They could no longer ignore it and
so they decided to attack it instead. They claimed that the Talmudic Yeishu was
a distortion of the "historical Jesus." They claimed that the name
"Pandeira" was simply a Hebrew attempt at pronouncing the Greek word
for virgin--"parthenos." Although there is a superficial resemblence
between the words, one should note that in order for "Pandeira" to be
derived from "parthenos," the "n" and "r" have to
be interchanged. However, the Jews did not suffer from any speech impediment
which would cause this to happen! The Christian response is that possibly the
Jews purposefully altered the word "parthenos" to either the name
"Pantheras" (found in Celsus's story) or to "pantheros"
meaning a panther, and "Pandeira" is derived from the deliberately
altered word. This argument also fails since the third consonant of both the
altered and unaltered "parthenos" is theta. This letter is always
transliterated by the Hebrew letter tav, whose pronunciation during classical
times most closely resembled that of the Greek letter. However, the name
"Pandeira" is never spelled with a tav but with either a dalet or a tet which show that the original Greek form had a delta as
its third consonant, not a theta. The Christian argument can also be turned on
its head: maybe the Christians deliberately altered "Pantheras" to
"parthenos" when they invented the virgin birth story. It should also
be noted that the resemblence between "Pantheras" (or "pantheros")
and "parthenos" is actually much less when written in Greek since in
the original Greek spelling their second vowels are completely different.
The Christians also did
not accept that Mary Magdalene was connected to Miriam the alleged mother of Yeishu
in the Talmud. They argued that the name "Magdalene" does mean a
person from Magdala and that the Jews invented "Miriam the women's
hairdresser mgadla nshaya)" either to mock the Christians, or out
of their own misunderstanding of the name "Magdalene." This argument
is also false. Firstly, it ignores Greek grammar: the correct Greek for
"of Magdala" is "Magdales" and the correct Greek for a
person from Magdala is "Magdalaios." The original Greek root of
"Magdalene" is "Magdalen-," with a conspicuous "n"
showing that the word has nothing to do with Magdala. Secondly, Magdala only
got its name after the Gospels were written. Before that it was called Magadan
or Dalmanutha. (Although "Magadan" has an "n," it lacks an "l"
and so it cannot be the derivation of "Magdalene.") In fact, the
ruins of this area were renamed Magdala by the Christian community because they
believed that Mary Magdalene had come from there.
The Christians also
claimed that the word "Notzri" means a person from
To sum up, all the
Christian arguments were based on impossible phonetic changes and grammatical
forms, and were consequently dismissed. Moreover, although the legends in the
Gemara cannot be taken as fact, the evidence in the Baraitas and Tosefta
concerning Yeishu can be traced back directly to Yehoshua ben Perachyah, Shimon
ben Shetach and Yehuda ben Tabbai and their disciples who were contemporaries
of Yeishu, while the evidence in the Baraitas and Tosefta concerning ben Stada
can be traced to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and his disciples who were ben
Stada's contempories. Consequently the evidence can be regarded as historically
accurate. Therefore modern Christians no longer attack the Talmud but instead
deny any connection between Jesus and Yeishu or ben Stada. They dismiss the
similarities as pure coincidence. However, one must still be aware of the false
attacks on the Talmud since many Christian books still mention them and they
can and do resurface from time to time.
Many parts of the Jesus
story are not based on Yeishu or ben Stada. Most Christian denominations claim
that Jesus was born on 25 December. Originally the eastern Christains believed
that he was born on 6 January. The Armenian Christians still follow this early
belief while most Christians consider it to be the date of the visit of the
Magi. As pointed out already, Jesus was probably confused with Tammuz born of
the virgin Myrrha. We know that in Roman times, the gods Tammuz, Aion and
Osiris were identified. Osiris-Aion was said to be born of the virgin
The theme of temptation by
a devil-like creature was also found in pagan mythology. In particular the
story of Jesus's temptation by Satan resembles the temptation of Osiris by the
devil-god Set in Egyptian mythology.
We have already hinted
that there was also a connection between Jesus and the pagan god Dionysus. Like
Dionysus, the infant Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a
manger; like Dionysus, Jesus could turn water into wine; like Dionysus, Jesus
rode on an ass and fed a multitude in the wilderness; like Dionysus, Jesus
suffered and was mocked. Some early Christians claimed that Jesus had in fact
been born, not in a stable, but in a cave--just like Dionysus.
Where did the story that
Jesus was crucified come from? It appears to have resulted from a number of
sources. Firstly there were three historical characters during the Roman period
who people thought were Messiahs and who were crucified by the Romans, namely
Yehuda of Galilee (6 C.E.), Theudas (44 C.E.), and Benjamin the Egyptian (60
C.E.). Since these three people were all thought to be the Messiah, they were
naturally confused with Yeishu and ben Stada. Yehuda of Galilee had preached in
Secondly, the idea arose
that Jesus had been executed on the eve of Passover. This belief is apparently
based on Yeishu's execution. Passover occurs at the time of the Vernal Equinox,
an event considered important by astrologers during the
The third factor
contributing to the crucifixion story is again pagan mythology. The theme of a
divine or semi-divine being sacrificed against a tree, pole or cross, and then
being resurrected, is very common in pagan mythology. It was found in the
mythologies of all western civilizations stretching from as far west as
At the Vernal Equinox,
pagans in northern
The occurrence of Passover
at the same time of year as the pagan "Easter" festivals is not
coincidental. Many of the Pessach customs were designed as Jewish alternatives to
pagan customs. The pagans believed that when their nature god (such as Tammuz,
Osiris or Attis) died and was resurrected, his life went into the plants used
by man as food. The matza made from the spring harvest was his new body and the
wine from the grapes was his new blood. In Judaism, matza,
was not used to represent the body of a god but the poor man's bread which the
Jews ate before leaving
The Last Supper myth is
particularly interesting. As mentioned, the basic idea of last supper occurring
at the Vernal Equinox comes from the story of the last supper of Osiris. In the
Christian story, Jesus is present with twelve apostles. Where did the story of
the twelve apostles come from? It appears that in its earliest version, the
story was understood to be an allegory. The first time that twelve apostles are
mentioned is in the document known as the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.
This document apparently originated as a sectarian Jewish document written in the
first century C.E., but it was adopted by Christians who altered it
substantially and added Christian ideas to it. In the earliest versions it is
clear that the "twelve apostles" are the twelve sons of Jacob
representing the twelve tribes of
In Egyptian mythology,
Osiris was betrayed at his last supper by the evil god Set, whom the Greeks
identified with Typhon. This seems to be the origin of the idea that Jesus's
betrayer was present at his last supper. The idea that this betrayer was named
"Judas" goes back to the time when the twelve apostles were still
understood to be the sons of Jacob. The idea of Judas (Judah, Yehuda) betraying
Jesus (the "son" of Joseph) is strongly reminiscent of the story of
the Torah Joseph being betrayed by his brothers with Yehuda as the ringleader.
This allegory would have been particulary appealing to the Samaritan Notzrim
who considered themselves to be sons of Joseph betrayed
by mainstream Jews (represented by Judas/Yehuda).
However, the story of the
twelve apostles lost its original allegorical interpretation and the Christians
began to think that the "twelve apostles" were twelve real people who
followed Jesus. The Christians attempted to find names for these twelve
apostles. Matthew and Thaddaeus were based on Mattai and Todah, two of Yeishu's
disciples. One or both of the apostles named Jacobus (James) is possibly based
on Jacob of Kfar Sekanya, an early Christian known to Rabbi Eliezer ben
Hyrcanus, but this is just a guess. As we have seen, the character of Judas is
mostly based on the
Judas is often given the
nickname "Iscariot." In some places where English New Testaments have
"Iscariot," the Greek text actually has "apo Kariotou"
which means "from Karyot." Karyot was the name of a town in
The apostle Peter appears
to be a largely fictitious character. According to Christian mythology, Jesus
chose him to be the "keeper of the keys to the kingdom of heaven."
This is clearly based on the Egyptian pagan deity,
John the Baptist is
largely based on an historical person who practiced ritual immersion in water
as a physical symbol for repentance. He did not perform Christian style
sacramental baptisms to cleanse people's souls - such an idea was totally
foreign to Judaism. He was put to death by Herod Antipas, who feared that he
was about to start a rebellion. John's name in Greek was "Ioannes"
and in Latin "Johannes." Although these names were usually used for
the Hebrew name Yochanan, it is unlikely that this was John's actual Hebrew
name. "Ioannes" closely resembles "Oannes" the Greek name
for the pagan god Ea. Oannes was the "God of the House of Water."
Sacramental baptism for magically cleansing souls was a practice which
apparently originated in the worship of Oannes. The most likely explanation of
John's name and its connection with Oannes is that John probably bore the
nickname "Oannes" since he practised baptism which he had adapted
from the worship of Oannes. The name "Oannes" was later confused with
"Ioannes." (In fact, the New Testament legend concerning John
provides a clue that his real name might have been Zacharia.) It is known from
Josephus's writings that the historical John rejected the pagan
"soul-cleansing" interpretation of baptism. The Christians, however,
returned to this original pagan interpretation.
The god Oannes was
associated with the constellation Capricorn. Both Oannes and the constellation
Capricorn were associated with water. (The constellation is supposed to depict
a mythical sea-creature with the body of a fish and the foreparts of a goat.)
We have already seen that Jesus was given the same birthday as the sun god (25
December), when the sun is in the constellation of Capricorn. The pagans
thought of this period as one where the sun god is immersed in the waters of
Oannes and emerges reborn. (The Winter Solstice, when days start getting
longer, occurs near 25 December.) This astrological myth is apparently the origin
of the story that Jesus was baptized by John. It probably started as an
allegorical astrological story, but it appears that the god Oannes later became
confused with the historical person nicknamed Oannes (John).
The belief that Jesus had
met John contributed to the belief that Jesus's ministry and crucifixion
occurred when Pontius Pilate was procurator of
The New Testament story
confuses so many historical periods that there is no way of reconciling it with
history. The traditional year of Jesus's birth is 1 C.E. Jesus was supposed to
be not more than two years old when Herod ordered the slaughter of the
innocents. However, Herod died before April 12, 4 B.C.E. This has led some
Christians to redate the birth of Jesus in 6 - 4 B.C.E. However, Jesus was also
supposed have been born during the census of Quirinius. This census took place
after Archelaus was deposed in 6 C.E., ten years after Herod's death. Jesus was
supposed to have been baptized by John soon after John had started baptizing
and preaching in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias, i.e. 28-29 C.E.,
when Pontius Pilate was governor of
The story of Jesus's trial
is also highly suspicious. It clearly tries to placate the Romans while
defaming the Jews. The historical Pontius Pilate was arrogant and despotic. He
hated the Jews and never delegated any authority to them. However, in Christian
mythology, he is portrayed as a concerned ruler who distanced himself from the
accusations against Jesus and who was coerced into obeying the demands of the
Jews. According to Christian mythology, every Passover, the Jews would ask
Pilate to free any one criminal they chose. This is of course a blatant lie.
Jews never had a custom of freeing guilty criminals at Passover or any other
time of the year. According the myth, Pilate gave the Jews the choice of
freeing Jesus the Christ or a murderer named Jesus Barabbas. The Jews are
alleged to have enthusiastically chosen Jesus Barabbas. This story is a vicious
antisemitic lie, one of many such lies found in the New Testament (largely
written by antisemites). What is particularly disgusting about this rubbish
story is that it is apparently a distortion of an earlier story which claimed
that the Jews demanded that Jesus Christ be set free. The name
"Barabbas" is simply the Greek form of the Aramaic "bar Abba"
which means "son of the Father." Thus "Jesus
Barabbas" originally meant "Jesus the son of the Father," in
other words, the usual Christian Jesus. When the earlier story claimed
that the Jews wanted Jesus Barabbas to be set free it was referring to the
usual Jesus. Somebody distorted the story by claiming that Jesus Barabbas was a
different person to Jesus Christ and this fooled the Roman and Greek Christians
who did not know the meaning of the name "Barabbas."
Lastly, the claim that the
resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples is also based on pagan
superstition. In Roman mythology, the virgin born
When confronted with
Christian missionaries one should point out as much information as possible
about the origins of Christianity and the Jesus myth. You will almost never
succeed in convincing them that Christianity is a false religion. You will not
be able to prove beyond all doubt that the story of Jesus arose in the way we
have claimed it has, since most of the evidence is circumstantial. Indeed we
cannot be certain about the precise origin of many particular points in the
story of Jesus. This does not matter. What is important is that you yourself
realize that logical alternatives exist to blind belief in Christian myths and
that reasonable doubt can be cast on the New Testament narrative.