JESUS - TRUTHS AND MYTHS

All religions appear to be mixture of truths and myths.

Jesus said: love your enemies; love one another; whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant; feed the hungry; judge not, that you be not judged; heaven is within you.

Many people will approve of these sayings.

However, some people suggest that the story of Jesus appears to have been interfered with.

In 1890, the social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer published the The Golden Bough which showed that most religions share certain stories and myths.

Frazer believed that Jesus did exist. [61] 

In 1909, school teacher John Eleazer Remsburg wrote that there was good reason to believe that the historical Jesus existed, but that the "Christ of Christianity" was a mythological creation.[74]

In an article entitled 'How the Jesus Myth was created' we read that the New Testament appears to have borrowed ideas from other religions.

Certain gospel stories are similar to those of dying-and-rising gods, demigods (sons of gods), solar deities, saviors or other divine men such as Horus,[39] Mithra/Mithras,[40] Prometheus,[41] Dionysus,[42]Osiris,[43] Buddha,[44] and Krishna,[45] as well as Christ-like historical figures like Apollonius of Tyana.[46]

So, we have a 'good Jesus', a kindly pacifist who heals people and who tells us to tune in to the Holy Spirit.

This 'good Jesus' has had a good influence on the world.

And we have the 'Jesus of the churches' who has been used to back up Jewish myths and to back up the agendas of the Imperialists.

You might think that 'Shakespeare' is not quite what he seems, but that does not stop the Shakespeare writings from being useful.

In our view Jesus did exist.

Parts of the gospels present the picture of an actual human being.

"And he said to them, 'Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?' But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart..."

But, the story of Jesus has been heavily interfered with and it is up to us to recognise the parts of the story which are true and the parts of the story which are myth.

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