Christ's Ventriloquist - A Big Thumbs Down -And Why

In true debater's style, allow me to do the PRO side, and then I'll personally explain to you in no uncertain terms why this guy is full of it.

CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS is a work of investigative history. It documents and describes Christianity’s creation-event, which occurred in the year 49 or 50, in Antioch (present-day Antakya, Turkey), 20 years after Jesus had been crucified in Jerusalem for sedition against Roman rule. At this event, Paul broke away from the Jewish sect that Jesus had begun, and he took with him the majority of this new Jewish sect’s members; he convinced these people that Jesus had been a god, and that the way to win eternal salvation in heaven is to worship him as such. On this precise occasion, Paul explicitly introduced, for the first time anywhere, the duality of the previously unitary Jewish God, a duality consisting of the Father and the Son; and he implicitly introduced also the third element of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost.
This book also explains and documents the tortuous 14-year-long conflict Paul had had with this sect’s leader, Jesus’s brother James, a conflict which caused Paul, in about the year 50, to perpetrate his coup d’état against James, and to start his own new religion: Christianity.
Then, this historical probe documents that the four canonical Gospel accounts of the words and actions of “Jesus” were written decades after Jesus, by followers of Paul, not by followers of Jesus; and that these writings placed into the mouth of “Jesus” the agenda of Paul. Paul thus became, via his followers, Christ’s ventriloquist.
A work such as this can be documented and produced only now, after the development (during the past 70 years) of modern legal/forensic methodology. Previously, the only available methods, which scholars have used, simply assumed the honesty-of-intent of all classical documents, especially of canonical religious ones, such as Paul’s epistles, and the Four Gospels. Only now is it finally possible to penetrate deeper than that, to reach the writer’s intent, and not merely his assertions, and to identify when this intent is to deceive instead of to inform. Whereas scholars have been able to discuss only the truth or falsity of particular canonical statements, it is now possible to discuss also the honesty or deceptiveness of individual statements. This opens up an unprecedented new research tool for historians, and CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS is the first work to use these new methods to reconstruct, on this legal/forensic basis, not just how crimes took place, but how and why major historical events (criminal or not), such as the event that started Christianity, actually occurred.
The author explains: “What I am doing in this work is to reconstruct from the New Testament the crucial events that produced it, without assuming whether what the NT says in any given passage is necessarily true or even honest. Instead of treating the NT as a work that ‘reports history,’ the NT is treated as a work whose history is itself being investigated and reported. Its origin goes back to this coup d’état that Paul perpetrated in Antioch in the year 49 or 50 against Jesus’s brother James in Jerusalem, whom Jesus in Jerusalem had appointed in the year 30 as his successor to lead the Jewish sect that Jesus had started. The Gospel accounts of ‘Jesus’ reflected Paul’s coup d’état – not actually Jesus, who would be appalled at the Christian concept of ‘Christ.’ That concept was radically different from the Jewish concept of the messiah, and Paul knew this when he created it.”

And now here's the "Con" Argument

Flash "Bring Back the Ban on Goose Liver - Viva Animal Rights"

That Luigi Cosciali guy who says Jesus never existed is closer to the truth than this book.  There is little evidence - - "a little" if you're translating Greek - - - for the existance of Jesus Christ.  Jesus as we know him is a composit of five messianic figures, one of which is John the Baptist.  The Apostle Saul or Paul or whatever he is called is an entirely fictional figure, as I believe Timothy is, too.  We can't be sure who composed this "fiction" of St Paul but Marcion adopted the character and ran with it.  Marcion is best known (or should be) as a Christianizer of Gnosticism, which pre dates Christianity by forty or fifty years, beginning about AD 90 or 95.   Marcion was not a Valentinian Gnostic but rather a Pythagarian.  We in our postings have gone into the "five Jesuses" in the past ranging in time over a period of about eighty years, though most of them were first century.  I believe Marcion had a friend named Luke who composed that gospell.  "Luke" is an actual character in the book of Acts, and I see no reason why he couldn't have been a real person, a physician by trade. However if anybody hyjacked anybody - it was a Judaihzing hijacking of "The Faith" much as Galatians warned against - - there was a Syrian school of thought, which consisted of out of work Jewish Priests - - who lived in Syria, of which Justin Martyr was associated with.  For a while "The Church" as it was- - was unquestionably ruled and led by Marcion.  If you read the vast majority of the Books of Paul - - you see his theology in print.  There WAS no actual "historical Christ" in Paul's writing.  Paul seemed to find the idea of "historically researching Jesus" or as he put it 'Knowing Jesus after the flesh" as somehow repugnent.  As though "You don't want to know the real Jesus" (and since Paul never knew ANY of the five messiahs, naturally he didn't want to talk about them.  Marcion was a ship builder, and so St Paul has a background in shiping and sailing, it would seem.  He had the original draft of Luke (leaving out some interesting stuff)  There were ten letters of Paul or Saul.  Not fourteen.  First and Second Timothy are a bit questionable, but Titus is definitely not the same authorship of the ten letters because of it's reference to the Roman priesthood and such.  More decades passed.  Justin put forth a treaties of Christian theology based on the Syrian school I mentioned.  Even in it- - Jesus did not rise physically from the grave, but only rose "in spirit".  If you don't believe me word search certain terms for yourself like "the disciples saw him" or "stone" or "tomb" or "rolled away".   Only the highly clinical term "resurrection" is used.  More decades would pass before Jesus was given physical divine status as Man and God.  In AD 170 Tatian, a disciple of Justin - - wrote a treaties suggesting that four of the Gospels then out could be harmonized into one book.  Even here some key things are left out of "our text" including the omission of any reference to Agustus Ceasar and his decree in the Christmas story.  Now there was another "Luke" who perported to be the first Luke, and even added in an "introduction" too the original Luke- - and tied in Acts, as his "Second book".   So people who read Acts get the impression that Acts is a continuation of the narritive begun in Luke, which it most certainly is not.  Here we have highly fictionalized characters such as Simon Magnus (a century before he was born) and a lot of historical events that just plain "hadn't happened yet" and a fictionalized version of the apostle Peter, and distortions of Barnabus and Mark, and a reference to Sylvanius or Silus - who wouldn't be born till the next century and wrote first Peter and Hebrews - - and a new character named James who seems invented out of whole cloth head of the Christian Church which was perported to meet "In the Holy Temple in Jerusalem".  this is preposterous on its face.  Many books of the Bible are almost third century they are so late.  These include first and second Peter, James, Jude, and Hebrews.  Many people who wanted SOME extra books included on the "Cannon" aside from the few Marcion endorsed - - leave OUT others which STILL had yet to be written.  It was Irenius who throws down the guantlet in a big way against Marcion- - saying he was excommunacated by the Pope in Rome in AD 144 when there WAS no Pope anywhere near that early.  All of this material I have covered before but it never hurts to hear the facts again, and why "Christ's Ventriloquist" is FAR too Orthodox for me!

The author is right about one thing in that "The Church" began in western Turkey.  The "Seven Churches" in the book of Revelation are all in Turkey.  The farther you get from western Turkey, the vaguer the geographic knowledge.   Let me answer the question about the books of Matthew and Mark.   All three of the synoptic gospels - - have a pretty close theme but all Three combine two different people.  There is the ministry of Yeshua - - - a Nazarite, who was probably born in the Carmel area by the Medeteranian sea- - and to answer a question Yeshua was a Pescaterian - - - he ate fish but not other meats.  The Nazarites had a whole set of religious beliefs including the long hair and beards- - and not drinking wine- - - and not shedding animal's blood.   This Yeshua had five disciples- - none of the five you'd recognise.  He preached primarily over the course of one year, 35 AD, which was a jubilee year.  This is what is meant by "the favorible year of the Lord".  And he was sentensed to death by stoning for being a sorceror or magician.  In terms of the "ministry" it combines preaching or story telling, healing, and demon exorcism.  This was the three pronged ministry of Yeshua.  The other figure is the Jerusalem figure, who had no supernatural powers, and the text makes this clear.  He was the one who preached against the Temple.  He was from Egypt and escaped crucifixion - - when his identity was (beaurocratically?) mixed up with another man.  His name may have been Jesus Barrabus since all four gospels mention Barrabus "getting off Scott free" and interestingly NONE of the four gospels, or any place in the Bible refer to Barrabus as "saved" or "a Christian".  This man was the revolutionary that our author alluded to earlier.   We have two other messiah figures - - but we won't talk about them today.

Cogito Ergo Sum means "I think; therefore I Am".   This is the keystone idea, heralded by Descartes, that exestentialism is based on.  This is the idea that the Self or the "soul" or "mind" or "awareness" if you will, is more IMPORTANT than having to PROVE your own physical existence.  Cogito Ergo Sum is what Thomas Jefferson might call a "self evident" assertion.  It's not Necessary for me to prove my own existance since I am the one who is doing the thinking.  Therefore I am already the Subject of the sentense "A Priori".  But I will note that some aspects of modern Christianity will "deny the self" or their own soul, or psyche or if you will Mind.  These Christians would take us back to an era that says "What you THINK doesn't matter because basically YOU don't matter".  I reject this assertion that I don't matter, and therefore am not allowed to Think.  (Selah)