No evidence for the existence of various prophetsDid a historical Jesus exist?Reliable evidence for a historical Jesus does not exist and all claims of Jesusderive from hearsay accounts. No one has the slightest physical evidence tosupport a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people.There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing aman named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporarywriting that mentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus got written well after thelife of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never metan earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. Hearsaymeans information derived from other people rather than on a witness' ownknowledge. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we shoulddismiss it. We know from history about witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts thathearsay provides neither reliable nor fair statements of evidence. We know thatmythology can arise out of no good information whatsoever. We live in a worldwhere many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts, or monsters, and an innumerablenumber of fantasies believed as fact taken from nothing but belief and hearsay.The same reasoning must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any otherhistorical person. The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus comefrom the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not comeinto the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, butrather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influentialof them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Manyheretical gospels got written by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some ofthem for mystical reasons. The four gospels then became Church cannon for theorthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed,or lost. Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at NagHammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote anyof them. Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospelsgot written during the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make theclaim to have met an earthly Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospelmanuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies. The consensus of many biblicalhistorians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. This would make it some 40 yearsafter the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings thatmention him. The first Christian gospel was probably written during the last yearof the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know;the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark. The traditionalChurch has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, butscholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidencethat the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospelstories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors asthe actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as"The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." Noapostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishmentof sainthood. See if one can find out from the texts who wrote them and try tofind the author’s name or names. The average life span of humans in the firstcentury came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles birthsoccured at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels intheir old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Markappears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written atleast a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that theauthor of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower.Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus withoutquestion and wrote a crude an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the

time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) willreveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gavethe main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear inMatthew, some 300 in Luke. The author of Mark, stands at least at a third removefrom Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove. Most Bibles show 678 verses forMark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses came later frominterpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark16: 9-20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transition between verse8 and 9 appears awkward. Even some of today's Bibles such as the NIV exclude thelast 12 verses. The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information fromMark's gospel and used them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative toappeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark'sGospel, corrected what he felt theologically important, and heightened themiracles and magic. The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earliermaterial and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author ofLuke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a hellenized Jew and even possiblya woman. He (or she) wrote at a time of tension in the Roman empire along with itsfever of persecution. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew andLuke got derived from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical source. John, the lastappearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesusand could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. TheGospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke.Moreover the book got written in Greek near the end of the first century, and thebook "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee(John 21:23). Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve asexamples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of theunknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describenarrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wishto portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in thethird person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only havecome from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements ofJesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? Itbecomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. Towhom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques thatfictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, ashearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories. Even inantiquity people like Origen and Eusebius raised doubts about the authenticity ofother books in the New Testament such as Hebrews, James, John 2 & 3, Peter 2,Jude, and Revelation. Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James calling itworthless and an "epistle of straw" and questioned Jude, Hebrews and theApocalypse in Revelation. Nevertheless, all New Testament writings came well afterthe alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors Paul's biblical letters(epistles) serve as the oldest surviving Christian texts, written probably around60 C.E. Most scholars have little reason to doubt that Paul wrote some of themhimself. However, there occurs not a single instance in all of Paul's writingsthat he ever meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor does he give any reference toJesus' life on earth. Therefore, all accounts about a Jesus could only have comefrom other believers or his imagination. Hearsay. Epistle of James mentions Jesusonly once as an introduction to his belief. Nowhere does the epistle reference ahistorical Jesus and this alone eliminates it from an historical account. Theepistles of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation appear so different in styleand content that they could hardly have the same author. Some suggest that thesewritings of John come from the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor whofollowed a "John" or they came from the work of church fathers who aimed tofurther the interests of the Church. Or they could have simply come from peoplealso named John (a very common name). No one knows. Also note that nowhere in thebody of the three epistles of "John" does it mention a John. In any case, theepistles of John say nothing about seeing an earthly Jesus. Not only do we not

know who wrote these epistles, they can only serve as hearsay accounts. Manyscholars question the authorship of Peter of the epistles. Even within the firstepistle, it says in 5:12 that Silvanus wrote it. Most scholars consider the secondepistle as unreliable or an outright forgery (for some examples, see theintroduction to 2 Peter in the full edition of The New Jerusalem Bible, In short,no one has any way of determining whether the epistles of Peter come from fraud,an unknown author also named Peter (a common name) or from someone trying tofurther the aims of the Church. Of the remaining books and letters in the Bible,there occurs no other stretched claims or eyewitness accounts for a historicalJesus and needs no mention of them here for this deliberation. As for theexistence of original New Testament documents, none exist.No book of the New Testament survives in the original autograph copy. What wehave then come from copies, and copies of copies, of questionalbe originals (ifthe stories came piecemeal over time, as it appears it has, then there may neverhave existed an original). The earliest copies we have got written more than acentury later than the autographs, and these exist on fragments of papyrus.[Pritchard; Graham] According to Hugh Schonfield, "It would be impossible to findany manuscript of the New Testament older than the late third century, and weactually have copies from the fourth and fifth. The editing and formation of theBible came from members of the early Christian Church. Since the fathers of theChurch possessed the texts and determined what would appear in the Bible, thereoccurred plenty of opportunity and motive to change, modify, or create texts thatmight bolster the position of the Church or the members of the Church themselves.Take, for example, Eusebius who served as an ecclesiastical church historian andbishop. He had great influence in the early Church and he openly advocated the useof fraud and deception in furthering the interests of the Church. The firstmention of Jesus by Josephus came from Eusebius (none of the earlier churchfathers mention Josephus' Jesus). It comes to no surprise why many scholars thinkthat Eusebius interpolated his writings. In his Ecclesiastical History, he writes,"We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may beuseful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity." (Vol. 8, chapter 2). Inhis Praeparatio Evangelica, he includes a chapter titled, "How it may be Lawfuland Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Wantto be Deceived" . The Church had such power over people, that to question theChurch could result in death. Regardless of what the Church claimed, people had totake it as "truth." St. Ignatius Loyola of the 16th century even wrote: "We shouldalways be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be white is reallyblack, if the hierarchy of the church so decides." The orthodox Church also foughtagainst competing Christian cults. Irenaeus, who determined the inclusion of thefour (now canonical) gospels, wrote his infamous book, "Against the Heresies."According to Romer, "Irenaeus' great book not only became the yardstick of majorheresies and their refutations, the starting-point of later inquisitions, butsimply by saying what Christianity was not it also, in a curious inverted way,became a definition of the orthodox faith." [Romer] The early Church burned manyheretics, along with their sacred texts. If a Jesus did exist, perhaps eyewitnesswritings got burnt along with them because of their heretical nature. We willnever know. With such intransigence from the Church and the admitting to lying forits cause, the burning of heretical texts, Bible errors and alterations, how couldany honest scholar take any book from the New Testament as absolute, much lessusing extraneous texts that support a Church's intolerant and biased position, asreliable evidence?GNOSTIC GOSPELSIn 1945, an Arab made an archeological discovery in Upper Egypt of several ancientpapyrus books. They have since referred to it as The Nag Hammadi texts. Theycontained fifty-two heretical books written in Coptic script which include gospelsof Thomas, Philip, James, John, Thomas, and many others. Archeologists have datedthem at around 350-400 C.E. They represent copies from previous copies. None ofthe original texts exist and scholars argue about a possible date of the