In search of the real Jesus
Who is searching?
- A retired vocational school religion teacher and
graduate theologian (catholic)
(www.michael-preuschoff.de)
1. The New
Testament - a work of the same circles that put Jesus on
the cross?
Our theologians, at least most of them in German-speaking countries, whether Catholic or Protestant, largely agree that the New Testament does not reflect the real Jesus, but the beliefs of the early church, because we know nothing about the real Jesus, or at least hardly anything certain.
And this belief of the early church is quite problematic, what there wasn't! Just think of the virgin birth! And yet it was nothing special at the time; the conception of a child by a god was part of the mythological repertoire of religions 2000 years ago, so to speak. See the conception of Zeus with Leda and Europa and other earthly women. And now the conception of Jesus by a divine person called the ‘Holy Spirit’!
But it is not just the story of the procreation of a son by a god. More and more evidence is spreading that the entire New Testament, and thus also the faith of the early church, is a construct of plagiarised ancient god mythologies and Buddhist texts. And that also sounds very plausible. The fact that a typical story of the gods, such as the conception of a son by a god with an earthly woman, also occurs in the biography of Jesus could be a coincidence. But the fact that so many other stories about gods, such as the resurrection and ascension, the healing of the sick and the raising of the dead and such a miracle of wine and a Last Supper with bread and wine also fit in with the stories about gods can no longer be a coincidence. There simply can't be that many coincidences in terms of probability alone - there can only be a deliberate construct behind it!
But who could have ‘hatched’ such a ‘Jesus construct’? Were they really followers of Jesus, as some theologians assume?
But let's think about it: In my opinion, well-meaning genuine followers of a revered teacher and role model would never do this, regardless of the century or millennium. Let no-one argue that people had a different mentality back then, according to which this was possible. No, real followers of Jesus would at best argue about what the true words of their Master were and then document them as well as possible so that they would be preserved for their children and grandchildren and posterity in general. This would also mean that the origin of the Gospels would not be so obscure for us today - as is the state of theological scholarship.
I would therefore like to argue exactly the opposite thesis here: The New Testament is the work of Jesus' opponents.
I will combine approaches that I have found in the Danish Sanskrit scholar Christian Lindtner (1949-2020), the English Talmud scholar Hyam Maccoby (1924-2004) and the church-critical historian Karlheinz Deschner (1924-2014): The NT is, so to speak, a ‘work of art’ by the same circles that put Jesus on the cross: After his physical death, at least any memory of his involvement, as it really was, was still to be erased (damnatio memoriae!). Hence the ‘new biography’.
2. But who could have carried out this work and, more importantly, why?
The sources point quite clearly to a circle around Saul from Tarsus, who infiltrated the followers of Jesus after the proceedings of the Chancellery spy Günter Guillaume and gave himself the title of apostle and then, with feigned modesty, called himself ‘Paul’, i.e. ‘the little one’...
I suspect that there were structures back then that would be described as organised crime today. That's right: a kind of ‘mafia’. It sounds rather strange to apply our modern term to ancient, and even Jewish (and perhaps also Roman and Greek) conditions, but when everything looks like it? And those who were behind these structures and made their money from them were of course not interested in having such a run-of-the-mill ‘travelling enlightener’ (who was later turned into a travelling preacher) spoil their nice business.
And so this clever Paul organised a writing workshop where the opponents of Jesus commissioned the alternative biography of Jesus - the New Testament. And voluntarily or forced to do so, Paul and his circle went along with what they wanted and tried to make the best of it. And so the New Testament was invented (somehow comparable to the reports that the Spiegel reporter Claas-Hendrik Relotius invented around 2000 years later), which then also became the basis for the faith of the early church - at least according to what the authors of the NT wrote about the early church. Hence the Gospels with all these stories of the gods!
In any case, most of this New Testament is not suitable for a picture of the real Jesus, because it only reflects this constructed ‘belief in the stories of the gods’ and plagiarised material, especially from Buddhism.
Of course, in the end we can't prove
anything here; what would such proof look like so that it
would be accepted by everyone? But at least the story of the
mafia is incomparably more realistic and plausible than the
story of the myths of the gods! Because - at least in terms of
common sense - they can't be true!
3. After all, there is a chance of reconstructing the real Jesus!
Three facts that could actually
relate to the real Jesus, on which most theologians agree:
1. Jesus was friends with prostitutes (and with tax
collectors).
2. he must have given extremely fascinating speeches, so that
people even followed him into the desert.
3. he was crucified.
First of all, the famous jungle doctor Albert Schweitzer: He was also an important theologian, his speciality was Jesus research, i.e. research into the real Jesus. He came to the conclusion that we could not recognise the real Jesus primarily because the academic researchers who deal with the subject of Jesus live in a completely different social class to that of Jesus of Nazareth - to which they simply have no access. So that means that we can't systematically research anything here either, but that at best a lucky but rather unlikely coincidence has to happen, which we also have to recognise in order to find something out.
And I think that's why I pricked up my ears when a neighbour in my village, a farmer who had a bit of experience in this business from renting out his converted old farmhouse in the fields to a pimp and talking to him, gave me a hot tip. According to this, the story of sin according to Joh. 8 is not primarily a story of forgiveness, but much more a story of punishment from the demimonde - just as the Susanna story in the book of Daniel is the story of the blackmail of a woman into prostitution: ‘Either you have sex with us (which meant entering into prostitution), or we report that we caught you having sex with another man, then you will be executed’ (being caught in the act with two witnesses was considered proof according to the law at the time). Jesus must have experienced something like this in his conversations with the prostitutes - and so he publicly denounced the machinations that were behind it right up to the highest circles - this was probably the subject of his fascinating, inflammatory speeches, which so magically attracted the people from among the people. Presumably, some of the listeners also had similar experiences themselves, although their background was unclear to them until then.
Therefore, in the case of the sinner, Jesus immediately recognised that it was not about punishing this woman because she had ‘sinned’, but that an unruly prostitute was to be punished because she had not behaved as her ‘protectors’ (or pimps) wanted (perhaps she wanted to leave her ‘profession’?), also as a warning to the other women. So he countered accordingly - and ingeniously. In this case, he also ‘won’. But of course the exposed men didn't put up with it - and ultimately won - because, to put it bluntly, they had the better ‘vitamin B’ in society at the time.
So could that have been the reason for his cruel death? It would certainly fit in with a mafia; in such circles, people fight hard - and especially against those who wanted to ruin their nice business with prostitution (and presumably also with protection money in the case of tax collectors).
The result is the post-Easter teaching of St Paul in particular, on which our entire Christianity today is based. And that is supposed to be a fraud? If so, then it is the greatest deception in the history of mankind.
The theologians Gerd Lüdemann and Uta
Ranke-Heinemann and many other theologians thought the same or
similar.
4. The abuse of women still exists today -
only in a different and more sophisticated way, namely
through manipulation!
The Jesus I came across was directly committed to combating the abuse of women. And such abuse also exists today - just not through blackmail as in Jesus' time, but through manipulation. Young people, especially girls, are being taught a false morality - also through religion - which prevents them from having real (sexual) morals and, in particular, from enjoying them (see p. 5). And if we were to do something effective here, then we would not only show that we are generally good people and that we keep any commandments out of love for Jesus, but that would be a direct 1-to-1 continuation of Jesus' commitment in our time against the abuse of women (and of course also girls).
So it is not just a matter of correcting the teachings of the Church with regard to the real Jesus alone, but also of introducing young people to a genuine (sexual) morality that they can live by sensibly - and I think that would really be the task of our religion. Because if something is categorised as a sin in a community, then it should really be the task of this community to develop concepts for young people on how they can live ‘without sin’ - and this is where the church fails completely. The way it approaches the subject of sex education is completely amateurish and tends to discourage sensible behaviour (I know of no studies on the moral nutritional value of shame, for example) - or the church does nothing at all and lets everything go. So my approach here is to ‘convey’ the demands of our religion in the area of sexual morality, which are not wrong, to young people in such a realistic way that they even enjoy living by them - and I think that works very well, see Foreword 2 (see p. 10).
Here I also came across an interesting train of thought by the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset: What girls dream about what type of man should be their first sexual partner (and also endeavour with intelligence to put their dream into practice) influences history more than ‘the steel of the god of war’, i.e. all military power - and I think these dreams can be influenced very well by appropriate pedagogy after all! Yes, influencing history - the church would have a real chance here! That would be something (see p. 45)!
Of course, I can't and don't want to compete with the authors mentioned in terms of scientific rigour. I don't think that's even necessary, I just see my task as combining what they have found out.
In my lessons and in many private conversations, including when travelling ‘all over the world’, I have always received good feedback, especially from young girls who would like to have a better strategy for choosing a partner from the outset.
The concept that has emerged from this is the brochure DER ROMANTISCHE MITTELWEG: BERAUSCHENDES MONDBADEN (THE ROMANTIC MIDDLE PATH: EXHIBITING MOON BATHING)! I hope I have answered all the questions that remain unanswered in this text. And if there are any further questions, I will be happy to answer them too: e-mail: hpreuschoff@gmx.de.
Note: The page numbers refer to the text: ‘Der romantische Mittelweg ...’, which is on the Internet.