An Atheist's Guide to the Bible

Jesus

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Jesus of Nazareth, the focus of the New Testament, has been written and speculated about so much it is now virtually impossible to approach him without preconceptions.

Jesus was certainly a historical person. He is mentioned in passing by the Jewish historian Josephus, writing about several messianic and prophetic figures who were active in first-century Palestine. He is also mentioned briefly by the Roman historians Suetonius and Tacitus, although they were more concerned with his followers, the early Christians, who were thought to be a subversive threat to the Roman order.

The main sources for the events of his life are the gospels and other Christian writings, some of which probably go back to the first century.

What are we to make of him?

Who was Jesus? Apocalyptic prophet, social revolutionary, mystic sage? The one and only son of God, whose death is a ransom paid to the devil to buy humanity out of the slavery of sin and death? Or the agent of the hidden true God, sent into a world held captive by an evil spirit identified with the Old Testament god Yahweh, with a mission to gather together and recover the divine sparks that dwell in people's hearts?

Of these possibilities, and there are many more, the first three are popular alternatives among modern Jesus scholars, the ransom theory is what the apostle Paul taught (e.g. Galatians 4:5), and the last myth is one among the diverse beliefs of the early Christian Gnostics - until their alternative religion was crushed by the developing Catholic orthodoxy.

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