Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Jesus was Illiterate at best







I’m a natural born skeptic.

I am open to persuasion, given the relevant facts.

Open-minded enough to say “I was wrong” and change my paradigms & personal beliefs on any given subject.

The more I read into the history of Jesus of Nazareth – the more I re-enforce my belief he simply did not exist, or at very best was an historic no-body.

One of these factors, why I have come to this conclusion - are his writings.

More to the point…the total lack of one word in writing, from Jesus own hand.

So why didn’t Jesus bother to write down his own gospels?
Even a note to the milkman, to leave an extra bottle on Saturday.

Logic would dictate a God-man would be perfectly capable of recording his own philosophies, using the full range of languages available, so it would be comprehensible to someone from Japan or for that matter Sweden.

Is it even a given, he was keen to articulate ‘his word’ to as many mortals as possible, based on the fact he choose the most unreliable method to record his time on earth?

The perfect human God-man, relied on sin-filled-humans with all their open frailties, to be his biographer.

To make things worse, he employed more than one of these imperfect scribes.

Given the illiteracy rates, at that point in history, a dangerous ploy at best.

He banked on peoples memories to write-down what they remembered, decades after his death.

It makes you wonder if there where there large tribes of ‘idiot savants’ wandering the sands at that time – able to record Jesus words verbatim, decades later.

Who reading this can remember ‘word for word’ the best-mans speech at their wedding?

The God-Man also relied totally-on everyone, with whom he encountered, understanding Aramaic fluently. There was not one universal language at that time, as there is today, so translation must be another daily obstacle, for anyone dictating his life.

If one believes The Bible, Jesus was an orator with no peer – so why did he suffer ‘writers block’ when it came to written language?

If he was a great teacher, he was one that was unable to use the blackboard.

Anyone reading this who believes The Bible, it says in Luke 4:16 and 4:20 he could read – so taking this at face value, you would have to conclude he could in-fact write as well.

It also says in John 8:3-1(best known for "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.") something about Jesus knelling and writing in the sand - but what he wrote, is not recorded?

Even if Jesus had of written something profound in the sand that day, his later-day scribes didn’t deem it significant enough to be recorded, or perhaps no one else got to see it, before it was scrubbed-out forever?

For all we know, Jesus may have been doodling a ‘happy face’ in the sand rather than a great enlightenment, proving my initial tenure – it was him who was best placed to record his own story, not mere mortals.

A conclusion one could make given what we know, is that the scriptures, the record of his teachings - were a low priority to him.

Deliberately opting to write nothing when you are perfectly capable, seems a strange choice to make, but ‘believers’ don’t appear to see this as being an issue.

The story and ‘message’ of his life was more important to his followers, that him personally.

Frankly I don’t think I’m being unreasonable here, raising these gaping anomalies, in the fictional stories of Jesus.

So I’m sticking to my belief: Jesus didn’t exist.

But I’m open to be proven wrong.





Footnote: In my previous article, I drew your attention to the fact there is no contemporary records of Jesus existing any-where in any neutral historical records of the time.

5 comments:

BathTub said...

That really is a wonderful question, why didn't Jesus write this stuff down for himself.

Goes wonderfully with nonStampCollector's most recent Youtube cartoon.

BeamStalk said...

I had never considered this myself. If Jesus was God he would be literate, yet he wrote nothing nor showed any sign of being literate. Except in the John passage you wrote about but that was added much later to the Bible than even the "original" writings.

I love it.

Brian Barker said...

I am sorry to disagree but Esperanto is not yet the Universal Language, although I would support this development.

If you have a moment you might like to look at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a translator with the United Nations in Geneva.

Papa G said...

Wonderful...this really summed things up! Thanks!!

Anonymous said...

I write, it doesn't nessesarily make me an author. Jesus, may have written stuff down, but 2000 years later those writings may be lost. I lose stuff all the time. There is a commonly held academic theory that at the time that the gospels were being written (by eyewitnesses) circa 40-100AD, that there was source material that they had access to. It's not a stretch to think that they had material at the time that Jesus may have wrote.

Another argument is the fact that Jesus was in great demand. The Gospels record large crowds following him. His time was prolly very occupied by personal ministry. He may not have had time or deferred the writing of his story to others.