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Did Jesus Christ Really Live?

by Marshall J. Gauvin

Scientific inquiry into the origins of Christianity begins to-day
with the question: "Did Jesus Christ really live?" Was there a man
named Jesus, who was called the Christ, living in Palestine nineteen
centuries ago, of whose life and teachings we have a correct account
in the New Testament? The orthodox idea that Christ was the son of
God -- God himself in human form -- that he was the creator of the
countless millions of glowing suns and wheeling worlds that strew the
infinite expanse of the universe; that the forces of nature were the
servants of his will and changed their courses at his command -- such
an idea has been abandoned by every independent thinker in the world
-- by every thinker who relies on reason and experience rather than
mere faith -- by every man of science who places the integrity of
nature above the challenge of ancient religious tales.

Not only has the divinity of Christ been given up, but his existence
as a man is being more and more seriously questioned. Some of the
ablest scholars of the world deny that he ever lived at all. A
commanding literature dealing with the inquiry, intense in its
seriousness and profound and thorough in its research, is growing up
in all countries, and spreading the conviction that Christ is a myth.
The question is one of tremendous importance. For the Freethinker, as
well as for the Christian, it is of the weightiest significance. The
Christian religion has been and is a mighty fact in the world. For
good or for ill, it has absorbed for many centuries the best energies
of mankind. It has stayed the march of civilization, and made martyrs
of some of the noblest men and women of the race: and it is to-day
the greatest enemy of knowledge, of freedom, of social and industrial
improvement, and of the genuine brotherhood of mankind. The
progressive forces of the world are at war with this Asiatic
superstition, and this war will continue until the triumph of truth
and freedom is complete. The question, "Did Jesus Christ Really
Live?" goes to the very root of the conflict between reason and
faith; and upon its determination depends, to some degree, the
decision as to whether religion or humanity shall rule the world.

Whether Christ did, or did not live, has nothing at all to do with
what the churches teach, or with what we believe, It is wholly a
matter of evidence. It is a question of science. The question is --
what does history say? And that question must be settled in the court
of historical criticism. If the thinking world is to hold to the
position that Christ was a real character, there must be sufficient
evidence to warrant that belief. If no evidence for his existence can
be found; if history returns the verdict that his name is not
inscribed upon her scroll, if it be found that his story was created
by art and ingenuity, like the stories of fictitious heroes, he will
have to take his place with the host of other demigods whose fancied
lives and deeds make up the mythology of the world.

What, then, is the evidence that Jesus Christ lived in this world as
a man? The authorities relied upon to prove the reality of Christ are
the four Gospels of the New Testament -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John. These Gospels, and these alone, tell the story of his life. Now
we know absolutely nothing of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, apart
from what is said of them in the Gospels. Moreover, the Gospels
themselves do not claim to have been written by these men. They are
not called "The Gospel of Matthew," or "The Gospel of Mark," but "The
Gospel According to Matthew," "The Gospel According to Mark," "The
Gospel According to Luke," and "The Gospel According to John." No
human being knows who wrote a single line in one of these Gospels. No
human being knows when they were written, or where. Biblical
scholarship has established the fact that the Gospel of Mark is the
oldest of the four. The chief reasons for this conclusion are that
this Gospel is shorter, simpler, and more natural, than any of the
other three. It is shown that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were
enlarged from the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Mark knows nothing of
the virgin birth, of the Sermon on the Mount, of the Lord's prayer,
or of other important facts of the supposed life of Christ. These
features were added by Matthew and Luke.

But the Gospel of Mark, as we have it, is not the original Mark. In
the same way that the writers of Matthew and Luke copied and enlarged
the Gospel of Mark, Mark copied and enlarged an earlier document
which is called the "original Mark." This original source perished in
the early age of the Church. What it was, who wrote it, where it was
written, nobody knows. The Gospel of John is admitted by Christian
scholars to be an unhistorical document. They acknowledge that it is
not a life of Christ, but an interpretation of him; that it gives us
an idealized and spiritualized picture of what Christ is supposed to
have been, and that it is largely composed of the speculations of
Greek philosophy. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are
called the "Synoptic Gospels," on the one hand, and the Gospel of
John, on the other, stand at opposite extremes of thought. So
complete is the difference between the teaching of the first three
Gospels and that of the fourth, that every critic admits that if
Jesus taught as the Synoptics relate, he could not possibly have
taught as John declares. Indeed, in the first three Gospels and in
the fourth, we meet with two entirely different Christs. Did I say
two? It should be three; for, according to Mark, Christ was a man;
according to Matthew and Luke, he was a demigod; while John insists
that he was God himself.

There is not the smallest fragment of trustworthy evidence to show
that any of the Gospels were in existence, in their present form,
earlier than a hundred years after the time at which Christ is
supposed to have died. Christian scholars, having no reliable means
by which to fix the date of their composition, assign them to as
early an age as their calculations and their guesses will allow; but
the dates thus arrived at are far removed from the age of Christ or
his apostles. We are told that Mark was written some time after the
year 70, Luke about 110, Matthew about 130, and John not earlier than
140 A.D. Let me impress upon you that these dates are conjectural,
and that they are made as early as possible. The first historical
mention of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, was made by the
Christian Father, St. Irenaeus, about the year 190 A.D. The only
earlier mention of any of the Gospels was made by Theopholis of
Antioch, who mentioned the Gospel of John in 180 A.D.

There is absolutely nothing to show that these Gospels -- the only
sources of authority as to the existence of Christ -- were written
until a hundred and fifty years after the events they pretend to
describe. Walter R. Cassels, the learned author of "Supernatural
Religion," one of the greatest works ever written on the origins of
Christianity, says: "After having exhausted the literature and the
testimony bearing on the point, we have not found a single distinct
trace of any of those Gospels during the first century and a half
after the death of Christ." How can Gospels which were not written
until a hundred and fifty years after Christ is supposed to have
died, and which do not rest on any trustworthy testimony, have the
slightest value as evidence that he really lived? History must be
founded upon genuine documents or on living proof. Were a man of
to-day to attempt to write the life of a supposed character of a
hundred and fifty years ago, without any historical documents upon
which to base his narrative, his work would not be a history, it
would be a romance. Not a single statement in it could be relied
upon.

Christ is supposed to have been a Jew, and his disciples are said to
have been Jewish fishermen. His language, and the language of his
followers must, therefore, have been Aramaic -- the popular language
of Palestine in that age. But the Gospels are written in Greek --
every one of them. Nor were they translated from some other language.
Every leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, four hundred years
ago, has maintained that they were originally written in Greek. This
proves that they were not written by Christ's disciples, or by any of
the early Christians. Foreign Gospels, written by unknown men, in a
foreign tongue, several generations after the death of those who are
supposed to have known the facts -- such is the evidence relied upon
to prove that Jesus lived.

But while the Gospels were written several generations too late to be
of authority, the original documents, such as they were, were not
preserved. The Gospels that were written in the second century no
longer exist. They have been lost or destroyed. The oldest Gospels
that we have are supposed to be copies of copies of copies that were
made from those Gospels. We do not know who made these copies; we do
not know when they were made; nor do we know whether they were
honestly made. Between the earliest Gospels and the oldest existing
manuscripts of the New Testament, there is a blank gulf of three
hundred years. It is, therefore, impossible to say what the original
Gospels contained.

There were many Gospels in circulation in the early centuries, and a
large number of them were forgeries. Among these were the "Gospel of
Paul," the Gospel of Bartholomew," the "Gospel of Judas Iscariot,"
the "Gospel of the Egyptians," the "Gospel or Recollections of
Peter," the "Oracles or Sayings of Christ," and scores of other pious
productions, a collection of which may still be read in "The
Apocryphal New Testament." Obscure men wrote Gospels and attached the
names of prominent Christian characters to them, to give them the
appearance of importance. Works were forged in the names of the
apostles, and even in the name of Christ. The greatest Christian
teachers taught that it was a virtue to deceive and lie for the glory
of the faith. Dean Milman, the standard Christian historian, says:
"Pious fraud was admitted and avowed." The Rev. Dr. Giles writes:
"There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were then written
with no other view than to deceive." Professor Robertson Smith says:
"There was an enormous floating mass of spurious literature created
to suit party views." The early church was flooded with spurious
religious writings. From this mass of literature, our Gospels were
selected by priests and called the inspired word of God. Were these
Gospels also forged? There is no certainty that they were not. But
let me ask: If Christ was an historical character, why was it
necessary to forge documents to prove his existence? Did anybody ever
think of forging documents to prove the existence of any person who
was really known to have lived? The early Christian forgeries are a
tremendous testimony to the weakness of the Christian cause.

Spurious or genuine, let us see what the Gospels can tell us about
the life of Jesus. Matthew and Luke give us the story of his
genealogy. How do they agree? Matthew says there were forty-one
generations from Abraham to Jesus. Luke says there were fifty-six.
Yet both pretend to give the genealogy of Joseph, and both count the
generations! Nor is this all. The Evangelists disagree on all but two
names between David and Christ. These worthless genealogies show how
much the New Testament writers knew about the ancestors of their
hero.

If Jesus lived, he must have been born. When was he born? Matthew
says he was born when Herod was King of Judea. Luke says he was born
when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria. He could not have been born
during the administration of these tow rulers for Herod died in the
year 4 B.C., and Cyrenius, who, in Roman history is Quirinius, did
not become Governor of Syria until ten years later. Herod and
Quirinius are separated by the whole reign of Archelaus, Herod's son.
Between Matthew and Luke, there is, therefore, a contradiction of at
least ten years, as to the time of Christ's birth. The fact is that
the early Christians had absolutely no knowledge as to when Christ
was born. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says: "Christians count one
hundred and thirty-three contrary opinions of different authorities
concerning the year the Messiah appeared on earth." Think of it --
one hundred and thirty-three different years, each one of which is
held to be the year in which Christ came into the world. What
magnificent certainty!

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Antonmaria Lupi, a
learned Jesuit, wrote a work to show that the nativity of Christ has
been assigned to every month in the year, at one time or another.

Where was Christ born? According to the Gospels, he was habitually
called "Jesus of Nazareth." The New Testament writers have endeavored
to leave the impression that Nazareth of Galilee was his home town.
The Synoptic Gospels represent that thirty years of his life were
spent there. Notwithstanding this, Matthew declares that he was born
in Bethlehem in fulfillment of a prophecy in the Book of Micah. But
the prophecy of Micah has nothing whatever to do with Jesus; it
prophesies the coming of a military leader, not a divine teacher.
Matthew's application of this prophecy to Christ strengthens the
suspicion that his Gospel is not history, but romance. Luke has it
that his birth occurred at Bethlehem, whither his mother had gone
with her husband, to make the enrollment called for by Augustus
Caesar. Of the general census mentioned by Luke, nothing is known in
Roman history. But suppose such a census was taken. The Roman custom,
when an enrollment was made, was that every man was to report at his
place of residence. The head of the family alone made report. In no
case was his wife, or any dependent, required to be with him. In the
face of this established custom, Luke declares that Joseph left his
home in Nazareth and crossed two provinces to go Bethlehem for the
enrollment; and not only this, but that he had to be accompanied by
his wife, Mary, who was on the very eve of becoming a mother. This
surely is not history, but fable. The story that Christ was born at
Bethlehem was a necessary part of the program which made him the
Messiah, and the descendant of King David. The Messiah had to be born
in Bethlehem, the city of David; and by what Renan calls a roundabout
way, his birth was made to take place there. The story of his birth
in the royal city is plainly fictitious.

His home was Nazareth. He was called "Jesus of Nazareth"; and there
he is said to have lived until the closing years of his life. Now
comes the question -- Was there a city of Nazareth in that age? The
Encyclopaedia Biblica, a work written by theologians, the greatest
biblical reference work in the English language, says: "We cannot
perhaps venture to assert positively that there was a city of
Nazareth in Jesus' time." No certainty that there was a city of
Nazareth! Not only are the supposed facts of the life of Christ
imaginary, but the city of his birth and youth and manhood existed,
so far as we know, only on the map of mythology. What amazing
evidence to prove the reality of a Divine man! Absolute ignorance as
to his ancestry; nothing whatever known of the time of his birth, and
even the existence of the city where he is said to have been born, a
matter of grave question!

After his birth, Christ, as it were, vanishes out of existence, and
with the exception of a single incident recorded in Luke, we hear
absolutely nothing of him until he has reached the age of thirty
years. The account of his being found discussing with the doctors in
the Temple at Jerusalem when he was but twelve years old, is told by
Luke alone. The other Gospels are utterly ignorant of this
discussion; and, this single incident excepted, the four Gospels
maintain an unbroken silence with regard to thirty years of the life
of their hero. What is the meaning of this silence? If the writers of
the Gospels knew the facts of the life of Christ, why is it that they
tell us absolutely nothing of thirty years of that life? What
historical character can be named whose life for thirty years is an
absolute blank to the world? If Christ was the incarnation of God, if
he was the greatest teacher the world has known, if he came to cave
mankind from everlasting pain -- was there nothing worth remembering
in the first thirty years of his existence among men? The fact is
that the Evangelists knew nothing of the life of Jesus, before his
ministry; and they refrained from inventing a childhood, youth and
early manhood for him because it was not necessary to their purpose.

Luke, however, deviated from the rule of silence long enough to write
the Temple incident. The story of the discussion with the doctors in
the Temple is proved to be mythical by all the circumstances that
surround it. The statement that his mother and father left Jerusalem,
believing that he was with them; that they went a day's journey
before discovering that he was not in their company; and that after
searching for three days, they found him in the Temple asking and
answering questions of the learned Doctors, involves a series of
tremendous improbabilities. Add to this the fact that the incident
stands alone in Luke, surrounded by a period of silence covering
thirty years; add further that none of the other writers have said a
word of the child Jesus discussing with the scholars of their nation;
and add again the unlikelihood that a child would appear before
serious-minded men in the role of an intellectual champion and the
fabulous character of the story becomes perfectly clear.

The Gospels know nothing of thirty years of Christ's life. What do
they know of the last years of that life? How long did the ministry,
the public career of Christ, continue? According to Matthew, Mark and
Luke, the public life of Christ lasted about a year. If John's Gospel
is to be believed, his ministry covered about three years. The
Synoptics teach that Christ's public work was confined almost
entirely to Galilee, and that he went to Jerusalem only once, not
long before his death. John is in hopeless disagreement with the
other Evangelists as to the scene of Christ's labors. He maintains
that most of the public life of Christ was spent in Judea, and that
Christ was many times in Jerusalem. Now, between Galilee and Judea
there was the province of Samaria. If all but the last few weeks of
Christ's ministry was carried on in his native province of Galilee,
it is certain that the greater part of that ministry was not spent in
Judea, two provinces away.

John tells us that the driving of the money-changers from the Temple
occurred at the beginning of Christ's ministry; and nothing is said
of any serious consequences following it. But Matthew, Mark and Luke
declare that the purification of the Temple took place at the close
of his career, and that this act brought upon him the wrath of the
priests, who sought to destroy him. Because of these facts, the
Encyclopedia Biblica assures us that the order of events in the life
of Christ, as given by the Evangelists, is contradictory and
untrustworthy; that the chronological framework of the Gospels is
worthless; and that the facts "show only too clearly with what lack
of concern for historical precision the Evangelists write." In other
words, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote, not what they knew, but
what they imagined.

Christ is said to have been many times in Jerusalem. It is said that
he preached daily in the Temple. He was followed by his twelve
disciples, and by multitudes of enthusiastic men and women. On the
one hand, the people shouted hosannas in his honor, and on the other,
priests engaged him in discussion and sought to take his life. All
this shows that he must have been well known to the authorities.
Indeed, he must have been one of the best known men in Jerusalem.
Why, then, was it necessary for the priests to bribe one of his
disciples to betray him? Only an obscure man, whose identity was
uncertain, or a man who was in hiding, would need to be betrayed. A
man who appeared daily in the streets, who preached daily in the
Temple, a man who was continually before the public eye, could have
been arrested at any moment. The priests would not have bribed a man
to betray a teacher whom everybody knew. If the accounts of Christ's
betrayal are true, all the declarations about his public appearances
in Jerusalem must be false.

Nothing could be more improbable than the story of Christ's
crucifixion. The civilization of Rome was the highest in the world.
The Romans were the greatest lawyers the world had ever known. Their
courts were models of order and fairness. A man was not condemned
without a trial; he was not handed to the executioner before being
found guilty. And yet we are asked to believe that an innocent man
was brought before a Roman court, where Pontius Pilate was Judge;
that no charge of wrongdoing having been brought against him, the
Judge declared that he found him innocent; that the mob shouted,
"Crucify him; crucify him!" and that to please the rabble, Pilate
commanded that the man who had done no wrong and whom he had found
innocent, should be scourged, and then delivered him to the
executioners to be crucified! Is it thinkable that the master of a
Roman court in the days of Tiberius Caesar, having found a man
innocent and declared him so, and having made efforts to save his
life, tortured him of his own accord, and then handed him over to a
howling mob to be nailed to a cross? A Roman court finding a man
innocent and then crucifying him? Is that a picture of civilized
Rome? Is that the Rome to which the world owes its laws? In reading
the story of the Crucifixion, are we reading history or religious
fiction? Surely not history.

On the theory that Christ was crucified, how shall we explain the
fact that during the first eight centuries of the evolution of
Christianity, Christian art represented a lamb, and not a man, as
suffering on the cross for the salvation of the world? Neither the
paintings in the Catacombs nor the sculptures on Christian tombs
pictured a human figure on the cross. Everywhere a lamb was shown as
the Christian symbol -- a lamb carrying a cross, a lamb at the foot
of a cross, a lamb on a cross. Some figures showed the lamb with a
human head, shoulders and arms, holding a cross in his hands -- the
lamb of God in process of assuming the human form -- the crucifixion
myth becoming realistic. At the close of the eighth century, Pope
Hadrian I, confirming the decree of the sixth Synod of
Constantinople, commanded that thereafter the figure of a man should
take the place of a lamb on the cross. It took Christianity eight
hundred years to develop the symbol of its suffering Savior. For
eight hundred years, the Christ on the cross was a lamb. But if
Christ was actually crucified, why was his place on the cross so long
usurped by a lamb? In the light of history and reason, and in view of
a lamb on the cross, why should we believe in the Crucifixion?

And let us ask, if Christ performed the miracles the New Testament
describes, if he gave sight to blind men's eyes, if his magic touch
brought youthful vigor to the palsied frame, if the putrefying dead
at his command returned to life and love again -- why did the people
want him crucified? Is it not amazing that a civilized people -- for
the Jews of that age were civilized -- were so filled with murderous
hate towards a kind and loving man who went about doing good, who
preached forgiveness, cleansed the leprous, and raised the dead --
that they could not be appeased until they had crucified the noblest
benefactor of mankind? Again I ask -- is this history, or is it
fiction?

From the standpoint of the supposed facts, the account of the
Crucifixion of Christ is as impossible as is the raising of Lazarus
from the standpoint of nature. The simple truth is, that the four
Gospels are historically worthless. They abound in contradictions, in
the unreasonable, the miraculous and the monstrous. There is not a
thing in them that can be depended upon as true, while there is much
in them that we certainly know to be false.

The accounts of the virgin birth of Christ, of his feeding five
thousand people with five loaves and two fishes, of his cleansing the
leprous, of his walking on the water, of his raising the dead, and of
his own resurrection after his life had been destroyed, are as untrue
as any stories that were ever told in this world. The miraculous
element in the Gospels is proof that they were written by men, who
did not know how to write history, or who were not particular as to
the truth of what they wrote. The miracles of the Gospels were
invented by credulity or cunning, and if the miracles were invented,
how can we know that the whole history of Christ was not woven of the
warp and woof of the imagination? Dr. Paul W. Schmiedel, Professor of
New Testament Exegesis at Zurich, Switzerland, one of the foremost
theologians of Europe, tells us in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, that
there are only nine passages in the Gospels that we can depend upon
as being the sayings of Jesus; and Professor Arthur Drews, Germany's
greatest exponent of the doctrine that Christ is a myth, analyses
these passages and shows that there is nothing in them that could not
easily have been invented. That these passages are as unhistorical as
the rest is also the contention of John M. Robertson, the eminent
English scholar, who holds that Jesus never lived.

Let me make a startling disclosure. Let me tell you that the New
Testament itself contains the strongest possible proof that the
Christ of the Gospels was not a real character. The testimony of the
Epistles of Paul demonstrates that the life story of Jesus is an
invention. Of course, there is no certainty that Paul really lived.
Let me quote a passage from the Encyclopaedia Biblica, relative to
Paul: "It is true that the picture of Paul drawn by later times
differs utterly in more or fewer of its details from the original.
Legend has made itself master of his person. The simple truth has
been mixed up with invention; Paul has become the hero of an admiring
band of the more highly developed Christians." Thus Christian
authority admits that invention has done its work in manufacturing at
least in part, the life of Paul. In truth, the ablest Christian
scholars reject all but our of the Pauline Epistles as spurious. Some
maintain that Paul was not the author of any of them. The very
existence of Paul is questionable.

But for the purpose of my argument, I am going to admit that Paul
really lived; that he was a zealous apostle; and that all the
Epistles are from his pen. There are thirteen of these Epistles. Some
of them are lengthy; and they are acknowledged to be the oldest
Christian writings. They were written long before the Gospels. If
Paul really wrote them, they were written by a man who lived in
Jerusalem when Christ is supposed to have been teaching there. Now,
if the facts of the life of Christ were known in the first century of
Christianity, Paul was one of the men who should have known them
fully. Yet Paul acknowledges that he never saw Jesus; and his
Epistles prove that he knew nothing about his life, his works, or his
teachings.

In all the Epistles of Paul, there is not one word about Christ's
virgin birth. The apostle is absolutely ignorant of the marvellous
manner in which Jesus is said to have come into the world. For this
silence, there can be only one honest explanation -- the story of the
virgin birth had not yet been invented when Paul wrote. A large
portion of the Gospels is devoted to accounts of the miracles Christ
is said to have wrought. But you will look in vain through the
thirteen Epistles of Paul for the slightest hint that Christ ever
performed any miracles. Is it conceivable that Paul was acquainted
with the miracles of Christ -- that he knew that Christ had cleansed
the leprous, cast out devils that could talk, restored sight to the
blind and speech to the dumb, and even raised the dead -- is it
conceivable that Paul was aware of these wonderful things and yet
failed to write a single line about them? Again, the only solution is
that the accounts of the miracles wrought by Jesus had not yet been
invented when Paul's Epistles were written.

Not only is Paul silent about the virgin birth and the miracles of
Jesus, he is without the slightest knowledge of the teaching of
Jesus. The Christ of the Gospels preached a famous sermon on a
mountain: Paul knows nothing of it. Christ delivered a prayer now
recited by the Christian world: Paul never heard of it. Christ taught
in parables: Paul is utterly unacquainted with any of them. Is not
this astonishing? Paul, the greatest writer of early Christianity,
the man who did more than any other to establish the Christian
religion in the world -- that is, if the Epistles may be trusted --
is absolutely ignorant of the teaching of Christ. In all of his
thirteen Epistles he does not quote a single saying of Jesus.

Paul was a missionary. He was out for converts. Is it thinkable that
if the teachings of Christ had been known to him, he would not have
made use of them in his propaganda? Can you believe that a Christian
missionary would go to China and labor for many years to win converts
to the religion of Christ, and never once mention the Sermon on the
Mount, never whisper a word about the Lord's Prayer, never tell the
story of one of the parables, and remain as silent as the grave about
the precepts of his master? What have the churches been teaching
throughout the Christian centuries if not these very things? Are not
the churches of to-day continually preaching about the virgin birth,
the miracles, the parables, and the precepts of Jesus? And o not
these features constitute Christianity? Is there any life of Christ,
apart from these things? Why, then, does Paul know nothing of them?
There is but one answer. The virgin-born, miracle-working, preaching
Christ was unknown to the world in Paul's day. That is to say, he had
not yet been invented!

The Christ of Paul and the Jesus of the Gospels are two entirely
different beings. The Christ of Paul is little more than an idea. He
has no life story. He was not followed by the multitude. He performed
no miracles. He did no preaching. The Christ Paul knew was the Christ
he was in a vision while on his way to Damascus -- an apparition, a
phantom, not a living, human being, who preached and worked among
men. This vision-Christ, this ghostly word, was afterwards brought to
the earth by those who wrote the Gospels. He was given a Holy Ghost
for a father and a virgin for a mother. He was made to preach, to
perform astounding miracles, to die a violent death though innocent,
and to rise in triumph from the grave and ascend again to heaven.
Such is the Christ of the New Testament -- first a spirit, and later
a miraculously born, miracle working man, who is master of death and
whom death cannot subdue.

A large body of opinion in the early church denied the reality of
Christ's physical existence. In his "History of Christianity," Dean
Milman writes: "The Gnostic sects denied that Christ was born at all,
or that he died," and Mosheim, Germany's great ecclesiastical
historian, says: "The Christ of early Christianity was not a human
being, but an "appearance," an illusion, a character in miracle, not
in reality -- a myth.

Miracles do not happen. Stories of miracles are untrue. Therefore,
documents in which miraculous accounts are interwoven with reputed
facts, are untrustworthy, for those who invented the miraculous
element might easily have invented the part that was natural. Men are
common; Gods are rare; therefore, it is at least as easy to invent
the biography of a man as the history of a God. For this reason, the
whole story of Christ -- the human element as well as the divine --
is without valid claim to be regarded as true. If miracles are
fictions, Christ is a myth. Said Dean Farrar: "If miracles be
incredible, Christianity is false." Bishop Westcott wrote: "The
essence of Christianity lies in a miracle; and if it can be shown
that a miracle is either impossible or incredible, all further
inquiry into the details of its history is superfluous." Not only are
miracles incredible, but the uniformity of nature declares them to be
impossible. Miracles have gone: the miraculous Christ cannot remain.

If Christ lived, i