Epistles
Paul, James, Peter, John,
Jude...50-150 CE
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Acts of the Apostles
 Luke 120-150 CE
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If we put aside the contested "Brother of the Lord" in Gal. 1:19
and 2 interpolations 1 The. 2:15-16 & 1 Tim. 6:13,
in 80,000 words, the 22 Christian documents known as the Epistles,
in 80,000 words, the 22 Christian documents known as the Epistles,
- written by a dozen of different authors, Paul being the most prominent,
- many of which predate the Gospels by several decades,
- considered by experts as
- containing more than 500 references to the 'Christ', 'the Son', 'Jesus' (='Yahweh saves' in Hebrew) or 'the Lord',
| The Epistles never mention | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Anything of the life of Jesus |
 Except in 3 mythical scenes |
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No Place No Time |
No Character |
No Teachings No Parables |
No Miracles |
No Stories |
No Passion |
Sacramental Meal |
Metaphoric Crucifixion |
Visions of Resurrection |
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In all the Christian writers of the first century, in all the devotion they display about Christ
and the new faith, not one of them expresses a desire to see the birthplace of Jesus,
to visit Nazareth his home town. No one talks about having been to the sites of his preaching,
the upper room where he held his Last Supper, the hill on which he was crucified,
or the tomb where he was buried and rose from the dead. Not only is there no evidence
that anyone showed an interest in visiting such places, they go completely unmentioned.
The words Bethlehem, Nazareth and Galilee never appear in the epistles, and the word Jerusalem
is never used in connection with Jesus.
No hint of pilgrimage to Calvary itself, where humanity's salvation was presumably consummated.
Each year at Passover we would expect to find Christians observing their own celebration
on the hill outside Jerusalem, performing a rite every Easter Sunday at the site of the nearby tomb.
Christian sermonizing and theological meditation could hardly fail to be built around the places of salvation,
not just the abstract events.
Do Christians avoid frequenting such places out of fear?
Acts, possibly preserving a kernel of historical reality, portrays the apostles as preaching fearlessly in the Temple
in the earliest days, despite arrest and persecution, and the persecution has in any case been much exaggerated for the early decades.
Even such a threat, however, should not and would not have prevented clandestine visits by Christians,
and there should have been many other places of Jesus' career where visitation would have involved no danger.
In any case, there would have been no danger in mentioning them in their own correspondence.
How could Paul have been immune to the lure of such places?
This is a man whose letters reveal someone full of insecurities and self-doubts,
possessed by his own demons, highly emotional, a man driven to preach else he would go mad,
as he tells us in 1 Corinthians 9:16.
This type of consideration supplies yet another reason to regard as unacceptable the standard rationalization
that Paul was uninterested in the earthly life of Jesus.
(Even if that life was not the Gospel life, it is difficult to imagine an early Christian movement
following a human teacher and yet knowing no biographical details of his career, real or invented.)
Disconnected Jerusalem
When Paul undertook to carry his mission to the gentiles,
surely he would have wanted and needed-to go armed with the data of that life, with memories of the places Jesus had frequented,
ready to answer the inevitable questions his new audiences would ask in their eagerness to hear
all the details about the man who was the Son of God and Savior of the world.
Instead, what did he do?
By his own account in Galatians, he waited three years following his conversion
before making a short visit to Jerusalem,
"...to get to know Cephas. I stayed with him for fifteen days, without seeing any of the other apostles
except James, the brother of the Lord."
Nor did he return there for another fourteen years where he just mentioned he saw Cephas and James....
No Time
Nor do they give any possible clue to pinpoint Jesus historically.
"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son"
Galatians 4:4
"For he [God] saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted,
and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee:
behold, now [referring to his own work] is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation."
2 Corinthians 6:2
Paul's view of the present period leading up to the end of the world
seems to take no account of the recent activity of Jesus on earth.
Passages in Romans 8:18-25 and 13:11-12, and especially 2 Corinthians 6:2,
envision no impingement of Jesus' recent career on the progression from the old age to the new;
rather, it is Paul's own present activity which is an integral part of this process.
Nor does he ever address the question which would have reflected popular expectation:
In the epistles, Christ's anticipated Coming at the End-time is never spoken of as a "return" or second Coming;
the impression conveyed is that this will be his first appearance in person on earth.
No Mary & Joseph
While greeting 25 Christians by their names and trying to say something good about each one, Paul said
"Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you." Romans 16:6,
and missed a chance to connect the name with the mother of the HJ.
Non-Gospel Christian writings before Ignatius have nothing to say about Mary; besides
Romans 16:6,
her name is never mentioned. Nor does Joseph, Jesus' reputed father, ever appear.
The author of 1 Peter fails to offer Mary as a model in 3:1-6 where he is advising women
to be chaste, submissive in their behavior, and reverent like those
"who fixed their hopes on (God)".
Instead, he offers the Old Testament figure of Sarah.
No 12 Disciples
The word "disciple(s)" does not appear in the epistles,
and concept of "apostle" in early Christian writings is a broad one,
meaning simply a preacher of the message (i.e., the "gospel") about the Christ.
It never applies to a select group of Twelve who supposedly possessed special authority arising
from their apostleship to Jesus while he was on earth. (It is far from clear what "the Twelve"
in 1 Corinthians 15:5 refers to, since Paul lists
Peter and "the apostles" separately.
The term appears nowhere else in the epistles.)
"James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars"
Galatians 2:9
Although they were important figures, Cephas (=Peter in Greek), John and
James ('brother of the Lord')
have no special status or authority going back to Jesus. They are apostles like others:
Barnabas, Timothy, Titus...
"Within our community, God has appointed...apostles...prophets and teachers."
1 Corinthians 12:28
If Jesus had conducted a ministry within living memory,
there would also have been an appeal to the apostles who had been chosen by Jesus
and heard the words he spoke. If too much time had passed, that appeal would have been
to chose whom such followers had themselves appointed and given the proper doctrine.
In several letters Paul deals with accusations by certain unnamed rivals
that he is not a legitimate apostle.
Even Peter and James dispute his authority to do certain things.
Can we believe that in such situations no one would ever have used the argument
that Paul had not been an actual follower of Jesus, whereas others had?
Paul never discusses the point.
Paul has seen Jesus like the others
In fact, he claims that he has "seen" the Lord, just as Peter
and everyone else have. This is an obvious reference to visions, one of the standard modes of religious revelation in this period.
And as Paul's "seeing" of the Lord is acknowledged to have been a visionary one (2 Corinthians 12),
his comparison of himself with the other apostles suggests that their contact with Jesus was of the same nature: through visions.
"Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?
Are you yourselves not my workmanship in the Lord?" 1 Corinthians 9:1
"And last of all He appeared to me also, as to one of untimely birth"
1 Corinthians 15:8
The others have nothing to add
And how could Paul, in Galatians 2:6,
dismiss with such disdain those who had been the very followers of Jesus himself on earth?
But in granting them no special status he is not alone.
"As for those who were held in high esteem
—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism— they added nothing to my message." Galatians 2:6
No Apostolic Tradition
Nor is there any concept of apostolic tradition in the first century writers,
no idea of teachings or authority passed on in a chain going back to the original Apostles and Jesus himself.
Instead, everything is from the Spirit, meaning direct revelation from God,
with each group claiming that the Spirit they have received is the genuine one and reflects the true gospel.
This is the basis of Paul's claim against his rivals in
2 Corinthians 11:4-6.
"For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached,
or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. I do not think I am in the least inferior to those “super-apostles.” I may indeed be untrained as a speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way." The writer of 1 John, in his declaration (4:1f)
that the Son of God has come in the flesh,
draws on no apostolic tradition, on no historical record, but must claim validity for his own Spirit,
as opposed to the Satan-inspired false spirit of the dissidents.
In chapter 5, he declares that it is God's testimony through the Spirit which produces faith in the Son,
not several decades of Christian preaching going back to Jesus himself.
No John the Baptist
In Christian mythology there is hardly a more commanding figure short of Jesus himself.
Until the Gospels appear, John is truly
lost in the wilderness, for no Christian writer refers to him.
Even as late as the end of the first century, the writer of 1 Clement
is silent on John when he says (17:1):
"Let us take pattern by those who went about in sheepskins and goatskins heralding the Messiah's coming;
that is to say, Elijah, Elisha and Ezekiel among the prophets, and other famous names besides." Those other famous names he goes on to enumerate are all from the Old Testament.
The only surviving writer of the first century (outside the Gospels) who does refer to John the Baptist
is a non-Christian: the Jewish historian Josephus. However, he fails to make any link
between John and Jesus or the Christian movement.
No Herod, Sanhedrin or Jews
No Pilate, Soldiers or Romans
See tab "No Passion"
Earl Doherty The Jesus Puzzle No Wise Teachings
No Prayer, Prophecies & Sermons
No Parables
No Instruction on Judaism
The Epistles even contradict Jesus on the Jewish Law
Jesus in the Gospels
"If you would enter into life, keep the commandments"
Matthew 19:17
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets:
I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass,
one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."
Matthew 5:17-18
"But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void."
Luke 16:17
Epistles
"the very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me"
Romans 7:10
"But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held;
that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter."
Romans 7:6
"For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth."
Romans 10:4
"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written,
Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:"
Galatians 3:13
"You who are trying to be justified by the law have been severed from Christ, you have fallen from grace."
Galatians 5:4
No Words on the Cross
No one quotes any words of Jesus at the crucifixion.
Ephesians 4:32 urges that Christians
"forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you.".
The writer is apparently unaware of the moving words which Luke
gives us (23:34),
spoken by Jesus as he hung on the cross, words which would have provided a noble example to follow:
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
The writer of 1 Clement (53:4), after a long dissertation on forgiveness,
searches for words to sum up his point.
They are not the words of Jesus on the cross, but the plea of Moses to God
that he forgive the disobedient Israelites.
No Ministry
But the silence extends beyond individual pronouncements to Jesus' ministry as a whole.
If Jesus had conducted a ministry within living memory, within Paul's own lifetime,
remembrance of that ministry would surely have loomed large in Christian awareness.
In the rough and tumble world of religious proselytizing, the appeal to Jesus'
own words and actions, the urge to claim a direct link back to Jesus himself
in order to confer authority and reliability on each apostle's preaching of the
Christ, would have been an inevitable mark of the early missionary movement.
In Romans 10, Paul is anxious to show that the Jews have no excuse
for failing to believe in Christ and gaining salvation, for they have heard the good news about him from appointed messengers like
Paul himself.
And he contrasts the unresponsive Jews with the gentiles who welcomed it.
But surely Paul has left out the glaringly obvious.
For the Jews—or at least some of them—had supposedly rejected that message from the very lips of Jesus himself,
whereas the gentiles had believed second-hand. In verse 18 Paul asks dramatically:
"But can it be they never heard it (i.e., the message)?"
The agency of all recent activity seems to be God, not Jesus.
This is a recurring feature of Paul's letters: he totally ignores Jesus' recent career and places the focus
of revelation and salvation entirely upon the missionary movement of which he is the prominent member
(as he sees it). The pseudo-Pauline letters do this, too.
Read passages like Romans 16:25-27, Colossians 1:25-27, Ephesians 3:5-10 and ask yourself
Paul speaks of "the gospel of God," "God's message".
It is God appealing and calling to the Christian believer.
2 Corinthians 5:18 tells us that "from first to last this has been the work of God" (New English Bible translation).
In Romans 1:19 the void is startling.
Paul declares: "All that may be known of God by men...God himself has disclosed to them."
The occurence of miracles and wondrous events was an indispensable sign of the imminence of the Kingdom.
Anyone who claimed that the Day of the Lord was at hand had to produce signs and wonders to prove it.
All awaited the events spoken of in prophets like Isaiah:
"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
And the ears of the deaf unstopped; Then shall the lame man leap like a hart, And the tongue of the dumb sing for joy." Isaiah 35:5-6
"But thy dead live, their bodies shall rise again.
They that sleep in the earth will awake and shout for joy." Isaiah 26:19
It seems strange that Paul, in urging his readers to be confident that the advent of Jesus
and the kingdom lay just around the corner (eg Romans 8:19, 13:12), would never point to
traditions about miracles by Jesus as the very fulfilment of the wonders that were
expected at such time.
In 1 Corinthians 1:22 he scoffs at the Jews who always call for miracles
to prove Christian claims, but here he should have the perfect answer for such calls:
the signs which Jesus himself had provided.
In passages like 1 Corinthians 15:12f, Paul
addresses those in Corinth who question wether human beings can be resurrected from death:
"How can some of you say there is no resurrection from the dead ?"
Yet would Paul not have had the perfect rejoinder, proof that humans can come back from the dead?
He could point to traditions about the revival of Jairus' daughter (Mk 5:21-43), about
the astounding emergence of Lazarus from his tomb (John 11:1-44).
It is impossible to think that Paul would not have appealed to them in his argument.
To find the first indication of Jesus as a miracle worker, we must move beyond Ignatius
to the Epistle of Barnabas.
No first century epistle mentions that Jesus performed miracles.
In some cases the silence is striking.
Both Colossians and Ephesians view Jesus as the Savior
whose death has rescued mankind from the demonic powers
who were believed to pervade the world, causing sin, disease and misfortune.
But not even in these letters is there any mention of the healing miracles that the Gospels are full of,
those exorcisms which would have shown that Jesus had conquered such demons even while he was on earth.
If the voice of Jesus in the early Christian correspondence is silent on everything
from ethical teachings to apocalyptic predictions, if his calling of apostles during
an earthly ministry is nowhere in evidence in the early apostolic movement,
No Birth Story
As for the Nativity stories in Matthew and Luke, images of the birth of Jesus bombard us
at every Christmas, but nowhere in the first century are such images discernible.
Shepherds, angels, magi, mangers or overbooked inns are never mentioned; nor is the city
of Bethlehem or the great census under Augustus. No star lights up the night sky at
Jesus' birth in either Christian or pagan writings. No association with the cruel Herod
and his slaughter of innocent children, an event unrecorded by historians of the time, is ever made.
No Baptism
For Paul, baptism is the prime sacrement of Christian ritual, through which the convert
dies to his old, sinful life and rises to a new one. In Romans 6:1-11 he breaks down
the baptism ritual into its mystical component parts. Yet never do any of those
parts relate to the scene of Jesus' own baptism. The descent of the dove into Jesus
would have provided the perfect parallel to Paul's belief that at baptism the
Holy Spirit descended into the believer. The voice of God welcoming Jesus as his Beloved
Son could have served to symbolize Paul's contention (as in Roman 8:14-17) that believers
have been adopted as sons of God.
Yet from the first century writers like Paul
we would never even know that Jesus had been baptized.
No Relics
Nor do they breathe a word about relics associated with Jesus.
An Unknown Execution
The Gospel details of Jesus' trial and crucifixion are imbedded in our cultural heritage,
from Pilate to the crown of thorns, from the raising up of the cross between two thieves
to the gambling of the soldiers for Jesus' clothes, from the darkness over the land at his death
to Josephus of Arimathea laying Jesus in his own tomb.
Yet none of these details surface in the wider Christian picture before the second century.
"We preach Christ crucified," says Paul. But he does not tell us where or when, or that Roman or Jew was involved. None of the great cast of characters which passes through the various stages of the Gospel trial and crucifixion are ever mentioned in his letters. All the early writers lack the essential atmosphere of the Gospel presentation of Jesus' death:
that this was the unjust execution of an innocent man, beset by betrayal and false accusations and a pitiless establishment.
Instead, Paul in Romans 8:32 extols the magnanimity of God who
"did not spare his own Son but surrendered him for us all."
And for the writer of Ephesians (5:2) it is Christ himself who in love
"gave himself up on your behalf as an offering and a sacrifice whose fragrance is pleasing to God."
Wherever Paul and others in the first century envisioned this sacrifice as having taken place,
it seems light-years from the dread hill of Golgotha, from the scourges and the plaited thorns,
the jeering soldiers and taunting crowds, where God expresses his dark wrath in earthquake,
blackened heavens and a rending of the veil to his own holy sanctuary.
Paul does not even tell us that Jesus was tried!
The humility and suffering of Jesus?
If it be claimed that we see this kind of thing in documents like 1 Peter (2:22)
and 1 Clement (ch.16) [which is not part of the epistles] where the writers
talk of Jesus' humility and suffering by summarizing or quoting a scriptural
passage like Isaiah 53, I would argue that they are not presenting 'history' at
all. They are presenting Scripture, which is regarded as embodying or revealing
the Christ event which has taken place in the mythical realm, like the myths of all the other savior gods of the day.
No Eucharist
See Tab "Sacramental Meal"
No Betrayal and Denial
Judas is notably missing from Hebrews 12:15-17,
where the selling of the Lord himself for 30 pieces of silver by a man embittered,
jealous and deceitful, would have been a far more apt symbol of the bitter,
poisonous weed that arises unchecked within the community of the holy.
Nor would a reference to Judas have been out of place in
Paul's own presentation of his "Lord's Supper."
Here he is criticizing the Corinthians for their behavior at the communal meal.
He speaks of rivalry and "divided groups," of those who
"eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily."
If anyone had been guilty of such things, it was surely Judas at the very first Supper.
The writer of 1 Clement also deals with the theme of jealousy,
but to his list of Old Testament figures who suffered at the hands of jealous men,
he fails to add Jesus himself, betrayed by the perfidious apostle in his own company.
The great triple denial of his Master by Peter himself,
with the bitter remorse which followed as the cock crew, is nowhere referred to in the epistles.
Paul can show outbursts of anger and disdain toward
Peter and others of the Jerusalem group (as in Galatians 2),
but never does he bring up a denial of the Lord by Peter to twist the knife.
No Sanhedrin or Jews
For almost 2000 years the Jews have endured vilification, hatred and outright slaughter as "killers of Christ."
Would the Jews take any consolation in realizing that no one before the Gospels shows any conception
that they had been involved in Christ's death?
(as 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16, is judged to be a later insertion).
In Romans 11 Paul is discussing the guilt of the Jews in regard to their lack of faith.
He refers to Elijah's words in 1 Kings:
"Lord, they have killed thy prophets."
This guilt apparently does not include the killing of the Son of God himself,
for Paul makes no mention of such an event.
No Pilate, Soldiers or Romans
If Paul and his contemporaries attribute no guilt to the Jews in the death of Jesus,
how do they view the Romans?
In Mark's Gospel tale, Pilate
was the figurehead of imperial justice who carried out the execution.
Romans 13:3-4 says
"Rulers hold no terrors for them who do right...
(the ruler) is the minister of God for your own good." Can Paul have any knowledge of Jesus' historical trial
and crucifixion and still express such sentiments?
Pilate, whether he believed in Jesus' innocence or not,
delivered this righteous man to scourging and unjust execution.
If the story of such a fate suffered by Jesus of Nazareth were present in every Christian's mind,
Paul's praise of the authorities as God's agents for the good of all,
and from whom the innocent have nothing to fear, would ring hollow indeed.
No Bodily Apparition
See tab "Visions of Resurrection"
A Single reference
There is in fact no witness to the existence of a sacramental Eucharist established by Jesus in any 1st
century Christian writing outside the Gospels—in fact, it is perplexingly missing in a few places—making
it quite possible that the entire scene is the invention of Paul, inspired by "the Lord."
Receiving a Myth through Revelation
Since paralambano has elsewhere meant 'received through revelation' and
since Paul speaks generally about his doctrine as coming through this channel—
and since the words plainly say so—this passage should mean that Paul has
received this information through a direct revelation from the Lord Jesus himself.
But here too, if he means that this information came to him through
revelation, he is unlikely to be referring to an historical event. In the Corinthians'
eyes, it would be ludicrous for Paul to say he got it from the Lord if the Supper
and the words spoken there were an historical incident well-known to Christians.
See Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com
Doherty's reading of the Lord's Supper (1 Cor 11) A Sacramental Meal similar to the sacred meal established by Mithras, Demeter or Dionysus...
"Which [the Christian Eucharist] the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras,
commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn." 156 CE Justin Martyr First Apology, Ch. 67
In Book XI of Odysseus by Homer,
drinking the blood temporarily revitalizes the dead in the underworld so they can briefly communicate with Odysseus and speak only truth.
The 8 statements given by Paul on Jesus' crucifixion
In the middle of an era of salvation cults and apocalyptic literature and beliefs,
Paul's crucifixion ressembles the acts of salvation performed by the other savior gods of the time:
Osiris, Attis, Mithras, Dionysus, Persephone, Tammuz, Ishtar...
See Epistles
Most early Christian thinking seems to have envisioned Jesus as ascending to heaven immediately after his death.
The epistle writers show no concept of a bodily resurrection after three days,
or of a period during which the risen Christ made appearances to human beings on earth.
"through the resurrection of Jesus Christ who entered heaven after receiving
the submission of angelic authorities and powers, and is now at the right hand of God"
I Peter 3:20-22
". ..which (God) exerted in Christ, when he raised him from the dead,
when he enthroned him at his right hand in the heavenly realms."
Ephesians 1:20
"Christ offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, and took his seat at the right hand of God."
Hebrews 10:12
"Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve.
After that, He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once,
most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
And last of all He appeared to me also, as to one of untimely birth."
1 Corinthians 15:3-8
All these apparitions of the Lord must be visionary like the one of Paul in 2 Corinthians 12.
See the paragraph 'Paul has seen Jesus like the others' in the tab 'No Character'.
These kind of visions, including the one of an apocalyptic figure called 'Son of Man' that Paul has fused with his Christ
were common in the Jewish world preceding the Epistles:
Visions were not specific to Jewish faith but the standard modes of religious revelation in this period.
They were a central characteristic of the Ancient Mysteries.
Moreover, discovery of fragments of Ergot (fungi containing LSD-like psychedelic alkaloids) in a temple
dedicated to the two Eleusinian Goddesses excavated at the Mas Castellar site (Girona, Spain)
supports the theory that the kykeon (Ancient Greek drink) was functionning as an entheogen, or psychedelic agent.
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The main purpose of these first missionaries like Paul was to spread the words and deeds of Jesus:
"what will I profit you unless I bring you some
revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?"
1 Corinthians 14:6
"what will I profit you unless I bring you some
revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?"
1 Corinthians 14:6
But as we can see here,
the revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching preached by
these first Apostles were NOT in any way the ones of Jesus of Nazareth in the later Gospels.
these first Apostles were NOT in any way the ones of Jesus of Nazareth in the later Gospels.
So the Six undisputable historical facts are ridiculously absent of the Epistles
- Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.
- He was a Galilean who preached and worked miracles.
- He limited his activity to Israel.
- He called up those who would become his disciples.
- He raised controversy over the role of the temple.
- He was crucified outside Jerusalem by the Roman authorities.
See in home page, A Theologian Reserved Domain
and Wikipedia sounds terribly wrong.
"Christianity was based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth".