The Real and Fairytale "Jesus" (video)

Wisdom Quarterly; Mitch Jeserich ("Letters & Politics," Dec. 24, 2013, KPFA.org, Berkeley), Dr. Reza Aslan (rezaaslan.com, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth)
Fox News' Lauren Green attacks historian Prof. Reza Aslan, Ph.D., why a former Christian and current Muslim would write about Jesus. It's reactionary, Islamophobic FOX "News" at its best.

BESTSELLER: Zealot (amazon.com)

Religious scholar Dr. Reza Aslan has discusses his fascinating, provocative, and meticulously researched biography about the historical Jesus [Yah'shua].

It calls into question everything Westerners in Judeo-Christian societies thought we knew about Jesus of Nazareth.

 

Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher (rabbi) and miracle worker [siddha] walked across the Galilee, gathering followers [as an anti-imperial rebel like many modern Palestinians] to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” 

Good St. Issa as a bodhisattva

The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was captured, tortured, and executed as a state criminal.

 

Two decades after his shameful death, his followers would call him God. 

 

Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Dr. Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor. 

• Letters and Politics, Dec. 24, 2013, 10:00 am
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• Whistleblower journalist Glenn Greenwald excerpt at Minute 48:00

Jesus became a Pagan Roman god

Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs [which always simply meant someone aiming to save Jews from Roman rule] traipsed through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God. 

 

This is the age of zealotry -- a fervent nationalism that made resistance to the Roman occupation a sacred duty incumbent on all Jews. And few figures better exemplified this principle than the charismatic Galilean who defied both the imperial authorities and their allies in the Jewish religious hierarchy.

 

Fairytale: white savior like Thor

Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Dr. Aslan explores this diverse and turbulent age and, in doing so, challenges the conventional portraits of Jesus of Nazareth. He describes a man full of conviction and passion, yet rife with contradiction:

• a man of peace who exhorted his followers to arm themselves with swords;
• an exorcist and faith healer who urged his disciples to keep his identity a secret;
• and ultimately, the seditious “King of the Jews” whose promise of liberation from Rome went unfulfilled in his brief lifetime.

Aslan explores the reasons why the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary.

• [Biblical scholar Allegro points out that the Jesus cover-story came from an entheogen-using Jewish cult, possibly the Essenes, whose sacrament and "cross" was the magic mushroom. It provided them direct mystical experiences. The BBC documents that Jesus was a Buddhist monk. He returned from 18 lost years in India with long hair to continue his rebel and messianic activities to free the Jews.]

Vishnu, I'm going back to Palestine. - Good luck.

And he grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself (as a Jew, a "messiah," a "god," and a man), the mystery that is at the heart of all subsequent claims about his divinity.

Zealot questions what we thought we knew about Jesus of Nazareth -- even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of his life and mission. The result is a thought-provoking, elegantly written biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel: a singularly brilliant portrait of a man, a time, and the birth of a religion.

 

“Riveting...Aslan synthesizes Scripture and scholarship to create an original account.”

—The  New Yorker

“A lucid, intelligent page-turner.”

—Los Angeles Times

“Fascinatingly and convincingly drawn.”

—The Seattle Times

“[Aslan’s] literary talent is as essential to the effect of Zealot as are his scholarly and journalistic chops. . . . A vivid, persuasive portrait.”

—Salon
“This tough-minded, deeply political book does full justice to the real Jesus, and honors him in the process.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

Christianity was invented as Roman psy ops

Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Travis Gettys (RawStory.com, Oct. 10, 2013); Slate.com

The Holy Roman Empire still rules but now as a religion (Observatore Romano/Reuters)

Bust of Julius Caesar found at the bottom of the River Rhone in Arles in2008 (AFP)

   

Christian scholar claims Christianity invented as part of ancient Roman psy-ops campaign

The make believe Jesus Christ

The Christian faith is the result of the most successful psy-ops program in history, according to a self-professed American Bible scholar.

 

Joseph Atwill will present his controversial theory Oct. 19 in London: the New Testament was written by first-century Roman aristocrats as part of a sophisticated government project to help pacify Jews in occupied territories.

 

Atwill, author of Caesar’s Messiah, claims he’s found ancient confessions by the scriptures’ authors that they invented Jesus Christ and his story as basically a form of propaganda.

 

Women pray at Western Wall with armed guards (Gali Tibbon/Getty Images/Huff Post/AFP)

 
“Jewish sects in Palestine at the time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior Messiah [kshtriya Maitreya], were a constant source of violent insurrection during the first century,” Atwill said.

 

“When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare ["psy ops," psychological operations]. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system. That’s when the ‘peaceful’ Messiah story was invented.
 

Priests molesting kids? Sure, why not?

[In fact, it was borrowed wholesale from ancient Eastern lore, the expectation talked about by the Buddha about the arising of the next world teacher, the Buddha Maitreya, far in the future. And most catholic or "universal" teachings are borrowed piecemeal from Buddhist, Vedic, European Pagan, Egyptian, and Sumerian sources. Since the leadership does not really believe what it teaches, why not molest children, embezzle Church funds, and live like Roman royalty?]

“Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to ‘give onto Caesar’ and pay their taxes to Rome.”

 

He says that Jesus was not based on an actual historical figure, but Atwill argues that the events of his life were overlaid on top of actual events from the First Jewish-Roman War, waged by Emperor Titus Flavius in Palestinian territories.

 

A history of suffering that will not end

“The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar,” he says.

 

Atwill said he understands that his theory is bound to upset Christians, and he’s hoping skeptics will come to challenge him after his lecture as part of a symposium, “Covert Messiah,” along with Kenneth Humphreys, author of Jesus Never Existed.
 

“Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history,” Atwill says. “To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to create support for war in the Middle East.”

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