Christianity: The Great Jewish Hoax

Let’s start by thinking about what we know, and what we don’t know, about the origins of the Christian story. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the latter is much larger than the former.

We are told that Jesus was born around the year 3 BC. The star of Bethlehem—so central to the Christmas story—was the first Christian miracle. It appeared “in the East,” moved through the sky, and hovered over the manger so that the three Magi could find it. Various attempts have been made to explain this “star,” including a rare planetary alignment, an unusually bright Jupiter, a comet, or a supernova. This is almost certainly nonsense. We have no independent confirmation of any unusual celestial events around that time, and even if we did, it doesn’t help the story. In no case could anyone use a light in the sky to “find” a particular village like Bethlehem, let alone a specific manger.

Jesus allegedly began his ministry when he was “about 30” (Luke 3:23), and it continued for three years, until he was crucified around the year 30 AD. During these three years, he preached to “great throngs” of people. He allegedly performed some 36 miracles, depending on the details, which included exorcisms (around 7), resurrections of the dead (3), manipulations of nature (9), and healings (18). Two of these miracles—the two separate ‘fishes and loaves’ episodes (Mark 6:30 and 8:1)—were performed in front of at least 4,000 and 5,000 people, respectively: hence a total of more than 9,000 witnesses. And he had 12 apostles following his every move.

But the main problem with all these miracles is this: We have no independent confirmation. How could it be that 9,000 people witnessed the fishes-and-loaves miracle, for example, and yet not one of them wrote anything? (Or at least, nothing that survived.) Nor reported it to someone who could write? Why did the 12 apostles—who were more convinced of Jesus’ divinity than anyone else—never write anything? Why, in fact, do they disappear from history as soon as Jesus dies? It does no good to cite Paul; he was not one of the 12 apostles, and never knew Jesus personally. And it does no good to cite Acts, which allegedly provides facts on a few of the apostles; this document was written by the same anonymous author of the Gospel of Luke, and thus provides no independent confirmation.

What about the Romans? They were the ruling power in Palestine, arriving six decades before the alleged birth of Christ. They were acknowledged experts at documentation. We have records of military battles, taxes, foreign trade, political events, and other such things, all from the early first century. We have coins; we have papyrus fragments; we have stone engravings. We have the “Pilate Stone” that confirms the existence of Roman governor Pontius Pilate, during the years 26 to 36 AD. And yet we have not one piece of Roman documentation mentioning Jesus, his miracles, or his following, from the time in which Jesus lived. This is clearly absurd. As governor, Pilate would surely have heard many of the Jesus stories, and would surely have written many times to Rome, asking for advice, more troops, etc. Yet we have nothing at all from Pilate nor any Roman authorities.

What about the Roman writers? There were many who lived at that time, or shortly thereafter, and thus had an opportunity to comment on Jesus. They were major figures in the Roman world, among the brightest and most perceptive men of the age: Apion, Seneca, Petronius, Quintilian, and Plutarch, among others. But we find not one word from any of them. In fact, the earliest Roman reference to Jesus is from the historian Tacitus, in his work Annals—written in the year 115. And then, only a mere two sentences.

How could it be that the ruling authorities and experts—Pilate and the Roman writers—failed completely to document the coming of the Son of God? All of them? “Perhaps they did, and all such records are lost to history,” says the Christian apologist. But this would have been incredibly bad luck: The greatest event in history, and every shred of contemporary documentation is lost to us? Impossible.

The lack of contemporaneous evidence is so striking that we could legitimately conclude that any such “Jesus” never existed at all—that he was an outright literary construction from whole cloth. But for reasons that I explain below, I suspect that there was a kernel of truth in the Jesus story. I think it was most likely that an ordinary man, a “Jesus of Nazareth,” most likely did live at that time. He likely was a Jewish rabbi, a defender of the impoverished Jews, and likely a rebel against Roman rule. And he likely did get crucified. But beyond that, we know literally nothing reliable about his life or thinking.

If Jesus the man—not the ‘son of God’—did exist, then it is unquestionable that he was a Jew. There is much evidence for this in the New Testament, which I take to contain, as well, a kernel of truth underneath the vast fraud. (Frauds with a kernel of truth are always more convincing, after all.)

So consider what the Bible tells us about Jesus. His mother, Mary, was a Jewess: she was a woman “born under the law [of Judaism]” (Gal 4:4). And she was a blood relative of Elizabeth, of the tribe of Levi (Luke 1:5, 1:36). Jesus’ father, Joseph, was of the “House of David” (Luke 1:27). Both parents “performed everything according to the [Jewish] law of the Lord” (Luke 2:39).

Jesus himself is repeatedly called ‘Rabbi’ (Mark 9:5, 11:21, 14:45; Matt 26:25; John 1:38, 1:49; 3:2). He celebrated Passover (John 2:13). The Gospel of Matthew opens with these words: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” We read in Hebrews that “it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah” (7:14). He regularly attended the local synagogue (Luke 4:16). Jesus himself told the people that he came “to fulfill the [Jewish] law and the [Jewish] prophets” (Matt 5:17). And of course everyone thought of him as “king of the Jews” (Matt 2:2; John 19:3).

This much, then, is clear: Jesus, Joseph, Mary, along with all Jesus’ friends, acquaintances, and disciples, were Jews. This is precisely why Nietzsche, commenting on this situation, said, “The first thing to be remembered [about Christianity], if we do not wish to lose the scent here, is that we are among Jews” (Antichrist, sec. 44). Indeed.

This being the case, we would expect that, at the very least, that Jewish scholars of the time would comment extensively on this miracle-man who emerged in their own community. But no. As it happens, not a single Jewish scholar of Jesus’ time, nor for decades afterward, makes even a single documented remark on this new Christian movement. For example, Philo of Alexandria was a famous Jewish philosopher who lived from 25 BC to 50 AD. He wrote extensively, volumes of which have survived, but never mentioned a Jesus of Nazareth, son of God.

As it happens, one Jewish writer did eventually mention him: Josephus (37-100 AD). His work, Antiquities of the Jews, briefly refers twice to Jesus and the Christians; but it wasn’t written until the year 95—some 60 years after the crucifixion. His earlier work, The Jewish War, circa 75 AD, has no mention at all of the “son of God.” Something is clearly not right with the traditional story.

If we temporarily disregard the writings of Paul (circa 50 to 70 AD) and the four Gospels, we see that the few lines by Josephus, in the year 95, are the very first non-Christian references to Jesus. And we have to go all the way to Tacitus, in the year 115, to get the first Roman mention of the Christian movement. Such a thing is absolutely impossible, if Jesus, miracle-working son of God, actually existed. Either “Jesus of Nazareth” was so inconsequential that no one of his day, or even decades after his death, bothered to mention him. Or else he never existed. There is no other reasonable conclusion.

Given the utter lack of independent confirmation of all major aspects of the Christian story—the star of Bethlehem, the miracles, the crucifixion, the resurrection, the apostles—we can conclude only one thing: the story was made up. It was a deliberate and willful fabrication. In other words, somebody lied.

This raises some important questions: Who lied? When did they do it? And why? We have some clues that may provide answers. Our first main suspect is Paul (aka Saul) of Tarsus, the Jewish Pharisee, whose letters are the earliest known documentation on Christianity. Good Saint Paul—first liar of Christianity. I will return to his story shortly.

The most egregious lies, though, occur in the four Gospels. Consider this question: When, reasonably speaking, would someone have documented in writing the life and sayings of Jesus? Probably during his adult life—that is, roughly 25 to 30 AD—or at least, immediately upon his death and resurrection. Surely not more than a few years later. But this is not what happened. The earliest Christian writings, the letters of Paul, weren’t written until 50 AD. The first of the four Gospels, Mark, wasn’t written until 70 AD. Matthew and Luke, not until 85 AD. And the Gospel of John, around 95 AD. These are decades after Jesus’ death—40 years, at a minimum. Why wait so long? And how accurate could they have been, with so much time having gone by?

We have no good answers. Unfortunately, the liars who wrote the Gospels are unknown to us. Whoever they were, they were not apostles, and they certainly did not know Jesus personally. They were, however, almost certainly Jews. They had extensive knowledge of Judaism, Jewish tradition, and the Jewish Old Testament. Their label as ‘Christian’ was strictly a name; by birth, ethnicity, and blood, Paul and the Gospel writers were unquestionably Jewish. And they constructed the Christian story as we know it today.

The final question then is: Why did they lie? What was their motive?

“They never would have lied,” interrupts the Christian apologist. “Christians were persecuted by the Romans, and it would have been madness, if not fatal, to promote Christianity.” But of course, all the Jews were already persecuted. The Jews of Palestine were in constant conflict with their Roman governors. They developed a deep-seated and visceral hatred of the White Aryan Romans. The elite Jews hoped, ultimately, to drive them out and regain power over the region—a power they held prior to the Roman invasion of 63 BC. Both the (few) ‘Christian’ Jews and (many) ‘Judaic’ Jews were in constant opposition to Rome, and were thus constantly oppressed. It was neither better nor worse to be a Christian.

But this situation, in fact, gives us a clue to the possible motive. The local Jewish tribes would have been hugely overwhelmed by the invading Romans. The Jews were vicious fighters—recall the Biblical extermination of the Canaanites in the 1200s BC—but were no match for the Roman Empire. They would have bitterly resented Roman rule, and sought all possible means to undermine it. Military force was not really a viable option, but various guerilla operations could cause some damage. And there is evidence that Jewish factions fought back, at least from the first decade BC. But one can imagine that such actions would have had little lasting effect. Better options were needed.

Recall that the Jews were a minority in Palestine at that time—as, of course, were the Romans. The majority consisted of the indigenous Palestinian masses, along with any incidental Egyptians, Syrians, Phoenicians, Persians, Greeks, and so on, who lived in the region. The masses were neither Roman nor Jewish. And of course, they weren’t yet Muslim; that religion would not exist for some 600 years. They would have adhered to a grab-bag of pagan traditions: Zoroastrianism, cults of Adonis and Mithras, Sibylline cults, and various sun-worshipping religions. These sects were generally ill-defined, superstitious, and highly mythological in nature.

The Jews knew this. And they also knew that, in order to make an impact on Roman rule, they would have to get the superstitious masses on their side. But this was a big problem. The masses were not intrinsically anti-Roman. In fact, more likely the contrary. From their viewpoint, when the Romans moved in, it was more or less a change in government. And for the good: the masses generally disliked the Jews anyway, and the Romans brought with them many advancements in civilization. So the Jews had a big problem: How to win the masses over to their side, and turn them against Rome?

Clearly they could not make them ‘Jewish.’ Judaism wouldn’t permit it, the ethnic and racial exclusivity of the Jews wouldn’t allow it, and the masses would never go for it, even if they could. All of Judaic tradition, from the Torah to the Talmud, was geared towards manipulating and exploiting the inferior Gentiles. The Jews would never have dreamt of mass conversion.

Therefore, something else was required: a new way, a new outlook, a new worldview—something to subtly and perhaps subconsciously bring the masses into opposition with the Romans, and on the side of the Jews. Not Judaism, but something Jewish in essence. A new story, a new moral system, and yes, a new religion: Christianity.

This was likely the thinking of Paul and his small band of followers, which may have included Peter, Luke, and Mark. To win over the masses, they would need to construct a new mythology, one that would both entice and frighten—a carrot and a stick, as it were. To be successful, it would have to be both anti-Roman, in some sense, and yet rooted in Jewish values. Ideally it would also draw on pagan traditions and concepts, to make for easy assimilation. And finally, it must ultimately weaken, not strengthen, the masses; there certainly was no wish to create some Frankensteinian monster. All in all, a challenging task, to say the least.

Paul would start with God—not the Roman or Greek conception, not the pagan gods, but the Jewish God, Jehovah. The masses would have to worship the Jewish God. But this deity was distant and abstract; indeed, according to the Jews’ own rule, no graven image was permitted. Such a god would not work for the masses. They needed something tangible, something concrete, something they could touch, feel, and love. They needed a man: God incarnate, one who loved them as much as they should love him. This man would prove his love by giving his life—for them, for their eternal life, for their “salvation” from this world of woe. It was the ultimate sacrifice. Who could fail to revere such a man? And all the better, if he was a Jew.

This man, this son of God, this God himself, would need a name—a common name: Jesus. He would have to have lived in a small provincial town: Nazareth. (Harder to verify things this way.) He would have to be born in an even smaller and more obscure place: Bethlehem. Befitting a god, he would need a miraculous, virgin birth—to a Jewish woman, of course. He would have to play the role of “savior.” This was a clever double entendre: saving the masses from eternal damnation, and saving the Jews from the Romans. To ensure no mortal remains, the story would have to end with a vanishing of the body. To boost credibility, it would be interwoven with factual people and places—just enough truth to make it seem believable. This suggests that maybe Paul took a real Jew, Jesus, who really got himself crucified, and turned him, years later, into the Messiah and son of God.

The final step would be to place the whole story at least 20 years in the past: near enough to be current and yet far enough to be hard to verify. This would explain why the earliest of Paul’s letters—Galatians and 1 Thessalonians—date to around the year 50. And it is consistent with the fact that we have absolutely no evidence at all of Jesus or the Christian story prior to that date, from any source whatsoever.

God, Jesus, eternal life in heaven—these were the carrots. What about the stick? What is the fate of those who refuse to believe the Jesus story? We know the answer: hell. Hell—defined as a place of permanent torment for the wicked sinners and unbelievers—seems to have been a Jewish innovation. The Old Testament, surprisingly, contains nothing like this. It does have a related term, ‘Sheol,’ but this is simply the afterlife and not a dedicated place of punishment, in contrast to heaven. Greek and Roman mythology, on the other hand, had Tartarus: a hell-like place in the underworld, reserved for those deserving punishment. It seems that the New Testament writers borrowed the idea but renamed it ‘Gehenna’ or ‘Hades’—both translated as ‘hell.’ For Paul and friends, dying wasn’t frightful enough. It had to be hell-fire, eternal flames, lake of fire, and eternal torment for the non-believers (Mark 9:43; Matt 5:22; Luke 16:23). Only this could scare the superstitious and unthinking masses into their welcoming arms.

Finally, and most importantly, there was the moral component. This “Jesus” had to proclaim values that would turn the masses away from Rome and toward the Jews, all while weakening them. “Salvation is of the Jews,” after all (John 4:22). Rome would be represented as evil, sin, corrupting power, sensuality, worldliness—the devil. Jesus, the Jewish rabbi, is peace-loving, blessed, humble, holy—innocence itself. The good Christian is an innocent lamb, just as Jesus himself is “the lamb of God” (John 1:29). The Christian should “love thy neighbor”—that is, the Jew, neighbor for centuries, and not the Roman intruder. Meek, mild, and timid, he will “inherit the Earth”—someday. Eyes thus fixed on the glorious afterlife, following herd-like after their Jewish shepherd Jesus, the Christian masses turn away from Rome. The Romans become sinful heathens, non-believers, devil worshippers. At this point, the moral victory is complete. Political victory is not far behind.

And victory was indeed achieved, though it took a few centuries. Paul died sometime during the first Jewish rebellion of 66-70 AD, and so never lived to see the fruit of his efforts. The so-called 12 apostles and the anonymous Gospel writers were gone by the early 100s. By that time, however, the doctrine—“cult,” actually, as the Romans put it—had spread to the masses. Very quickly, Christianity ceased to be a Jewish movement, and became dominated by non-Jews. The most prominent early Christians—Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Quadratus, Papias, Marcion—all seem to have been Gentiles. Not understanding the origins of the story, and not relating to the Jewish penchant for revenge against Rome, the naïve Gentiles accepted it as literal truth. A new religion was born.

Being now dominated by non-Jews, Christianity quickly developed a self-conception as a religion that was ‘different’ from Judaism. A tension emerged: yes, Jesus, Mary, Paul, Peter, and so on were Jews; yes, Jehovah was God; yes, Jews were “the chosen people”; but still… Jews never did accept Jesus as their savior. They didn’t believe in hell. They never came to church. And in any case, their racial exclusivity and obnoxious customs and social mores made the Jews as detested as ever. Thus we find the classic love-hate relationship emerging early in Christian history. Already with Melito of Sardis, circa 160 AD, we find anti-Jewish comments. They appear again in Tertullian (ca. 200) and Hippolytus (ca. 220). And they become explicit and harsh in Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, and Jerome, around 375.

All the while, the Christian “cult” spread throughout the Empire. By the late 200s it reached into the upper echelons of Roman society. In 313, Emperor Constantine himself converted. And in 380, Theodosius made Christianity the official state religion. Victory was assured. Having been eaten away from the insides, the great Roman Empire was now on its last legs. And indeed, it fractured and collapsed just 15 years later, in 395. With that, the hated Romans disappeared from Palestine. The goal was achieved. Paul won in the end. And he continues to win to this day.

This, then, is the likely origin of Christianity. Obviously we can’t know for certain, but such an account does accord with the facts, and does so better than any alternative. Something happened in those early decades of the first century, but it certainly was not the coming of the Son of God and his miraculous story—all of which are completely unsubstantiated. The Christian story was a first-century construction, a fable, a hoax, that eventually gained traction as literal truth. The known origins of the fable lie in the Jewish community, and they furthermore had every motive to concoct such a thing. In the end, it served them well.

As radical and shocking as this alternate account may seem, it has been around, in various forms, for many years. Already by 1769, Baron d’Holbach’s Ecce Homo argued for the fictional nature of Christianity. Another early writer to deconstruct the traditional story was German theologian David Strauss, whose work Das Leben Jesu (‘The Life of Jesus,’ 1835) challenged the divinity of Christ. The arguments came to a head in the work of Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals and Antichrist, both circa 1888) and Albert Schweitzer (Quest of the Historical Jesus, 1906).

Nietzsche’s critique is particularly incisive. For him, the victory of Christian values over the far superior Greco-Roman values was an utter tragedy for Western civilization. In a sense, we have yet to recover. Paul and his band of “little ultra-Jews” (Antichrist, sec. 44) were ultimately able to defeat the Romans, and to bring their servile Judeo-Christian moral system to power in Rome itself. This is proven by the fact that Rome, the former center of the civilized world, became the global head of this new religion—a religion steeped in Jews. Nietzsche is brutally explicit:

In worshipping the Jew, and in accepting the Jewish lie, the Christian becomes a virtual Jew; in fact, he becomes more Jewish than the Jews themselves:

“I don’t care about all that,” says the apologist, now grasping for straws. “No one can really know what happened back then. And in any case, Jesus’ life and teachings give us a wonderful guide for an ethical life. His story just makes me feel good.” Really? Does it really not matter that we have, not ‘a little’ evidence for Jesus, not ‘conflicting’ evidence, but rather no evidence at all? Does the obvious plausibility of it being a Jewish lie not matter? Can it really lead to good outcomes and a noble life, if you live according to a lie? Is the factual truth or falsehood of the Christian story really irrelevant?

“And how could it be that millions of people were fooled into believing a lie, for so many years?” But of course, humanity has been fooled on many occasions. For centuries, we believed that the material world was composed of just four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. For centuries, we believed that the stars were attached to a gigantic celestial sphere that rotated around the Earth. For centuries, we believed in, and burned, witches. We believed in all manner of ghosts, goblins, spirits, fairies, and demons. Mythology is very powerful, especially one like Christianity with such a potent carrot and stick. But if all those other beliefs are now accepted as false, why not the Christian myth?

Finally: “If this alternate account is so plausible, how come we don’t read about it in school, or hear it discussed in the media?” This is hardly surprising. It’s no wonder that we don’t hear much about this version of events. Christians are obviously too embarrassed to examine such inconvenient facts, and in any case are, in recent years, all too anxious to appease their Jewish brethren. Jews certainly aren’t going to bring it up; as “artful liars” (Hitler) and “great masters of the lie” (Schopenhauer), it makes them look mighty bad. Academia is too Jewish and too Politically Correct to mess with such a touchy subject. And the corporate world sees no profit in it. Better to let sleeping Christians lie.

Any rational and objective person must come to just one conclusion: that Christianity is a Jewish hoax, conceived to demoralize and cripple the hated Gentile masses, as a way of getting even with Aryan Rome. It has no basis in fact, and no contemporaneous evidence; it is illogical and indeed idiotic (“God sent himself down here, and then killed himself, because he loves us”); and it keeps White and Gentile masses absorbed in a fairy-tale world until the day they die.

Christians! Wake up! Your lives are a fraud. Paul and his fellow Jews pulled a colossal hoax on you, and present-day Jews are only too happy to perpetuate this fraud. And you pay the price, every single day.

- RW