By Keith Prosser

The followers of Jesus during his lifetime were know as Nazarenes, not Christians. They were extremely devout Judaists and scrupulous in their observance of Mosaic law. They believed Jesus was a Messiah, that is a man (i.e. not a god) who was chosen by God for some great purpose, in this case to rid Palestine of Roman rule and establish an ideal Judaic state. (you can get this from Josphus and other ancient sources - I'm not making it up!).

This put the Nazarenes in direct conflict with the official Judaic establishment of Pharisees and Sadducees who had by this time become corrupt and uninterested in religion beyond the prestige and income that accrued from it. The Nazarenes threatened nothing less that revolution, and the priests attempted to destroy the cult, executing its leader (Jesus) and oppressing the Nazarene rank and file, using mercenary agents such as Saul/Paul.

Step 1 then is the historical reality of a Jesus being considered by his followers to be a human, albeit specially one chosen by God. The latter part of that is wrong, but the former is surely true enough!

The oppressor Saul became the follower Paul. There is no reason to doubt that this was the result of what Saul/Paul took to be a vision and revelation - it was a superstitious age. As a result of this 'vision' Paul got the idea that Jesus was the actual Son of God and a god in his own right, quite a very different 'Christology' from the 'human Jesus' beliefs of the existing followers of Jesus, the Nazarenes.

According to Acts, Paul contacted the Nazarenes and preached alongside them. This is unlikely - Paul's divine Jesus was incompatible with the Nazarene's ideas and would probably have been considered blasphemous by such pious Judaists. In Galatians Paul writes that after his conversion he went to the Gentiles independently - this is probably true, or at least truer that the Acts version! Presumably the writers of Acts (Luke?) wanted to conceal the radical divergence between Nazarene and Pauline Christologies.

So Step 2 is that Paul successfully promotes the notion of Jesus as the Son of God across the Mediterranean while the Nazarenes (with their 'Human Jesus' meme) are isolated in Palestine and under constant harassment from their own priests. Small wonder then that it is the Pauline version of Jesus that became dominant, so Jesus became - in effect if not in fact - the Son of God.

It may be worth pointing out that Messiah and Christ are supposed to be equivalent, both meaning 'anointed'. However the Paulines use 'Christ' to mean 'Son of God'.

Step 3 occurred when a follower of Paul decided to make Jesus more accessible to the common man.

Paul's epistles are hardly exciting, being basically theological treatises. The Gospel writers did not bother with philosophical arguments. To show Jesus was the son of god (an idea they took from Paul) Jesus was depicted as the performer of great miracles and healings. Whether the gospel writers made up most of the episodes themselves or took them from rumour and oral legend is neither here nor there. The point is that the miraculous elements of the Gospels are clearly fictitious. It is a separate step in the development of the 'Jesus legend' because Paul knows nothing about Jesus' miracles - he mentions no miracle performed by Jesus, other than the special case of the resurrection.

So Jesus became in the hands of the Gospel writers a powerful magician. Soon he was given the conventional attributes of Mediterranean gods and heroes, such a a virgin birth. Jesus - in reality a deluded Judaic zealot - had become as we know Him today.

So a Christian is someone who believes in a inflated legend that is well divorced from historical reality.

Keith Prosser March 2007