Jesus, in keeping with the mythical character, is made to claim equality and identity with the Father. He says (John x. 30), “I and my Father are one;” but in the same book (John xiv. 28), he says, “The Father is greater than I”—(Cf. Matthew xxiv. 36.) Again, he claims superiority over his Father. “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son. As I hear I judge” (John v. 22, 30). And then in the same gospel he says, “I judge no man,” (John viii. 15.) “If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world,” (John xii. 47). Again, “I am one that bear witness of myself. Though I bear witness of myself, yet my record is true,” (John viii. 14, 18); which is contradicted by (John v. 31) “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.” He says (John v. 33, 34) that “John bare witness unto the truth, but I receive not testimony from man,” and then tells the disciples, who are supposed to have been men, that “they also shall bear witness” to or of him (John xv. 27). Again he says, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works,” (Matthew v. 16). But “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men to be seen of them.” (Matthew vi. 1).
“Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also,” (Matthew v. 39); for “all that take the sword, shall perish with the sword,” (Matthew xxvi. 52). Nevertheless, “He that hath no sword let him sell his garment and buy one,” (Luke xxii. 36). “I came not to send Peace but a Sword,” (Matthew x. 34). “Be not afraid of them that kill the body,” (Luke xii. 4). Nevertheless “Jesus would not walk in Jewry because the Jews sought to kill him,” (John vii. 1).
I merely ask, for the sake of information, are these statements contradictory or are they not?
I will but offer one or two specimens of the more serious and fundamental contradictions in the olla podrida of teaching assigned to Jesus. The teaching of the alleged founder of Christianity in the Gospel according to Matthew (ch. xix. 12), is that of the Saboi, the self-mutilators, who are still extant as the Russian Skoptsi[[27]] and who emasculate themselves to save their spermatic souls, as Origen is reputed to have done. Jesus is made to say, “There are Eunuchs which made themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.” And then in the opening verses of the very next chapter, the same teacher says, “Suffer little children and forbid them not, to come unto me; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” But those who became Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake could not be suffering the little children to come unto him or to them. They would be forbidding them to come at all. If the Kingdom of Heaven be such as the children of Eunuchs it must be non-extant. As Hood’s deaf shopman said of the crackers going off, there were so many reports he did not know which to believe.
And where is the sense of talking so much nonsense about the “Golden Rule” or the Divine humanity on behalf of one who carried on the blindest warfare against human nature itself? Who declared that “If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke xiv. 26). And who promised that every follower of his who “left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the Kingdom of God’s sake should receive manifold more in the present and in the world to come life everlasting.” Well may the grateful Musselman cry in his adorations, “Thank God OUR Father has no Son!”
But, I do not charge these contradictory sayings and teachings to any personal character. The collectors are but making use of the Kurios, the Lord of the pre-Christian Mythos, the mystical Christ of the Gnostics, as a puppet to represent them and their divers doctrines. They make the human image of a God of Love to be the preacher of everlasting punishment, and the bearer of a fan with which he fans the fires of hell; a false foreteller of that which never came to pass, and the forerunner of a fulfilment which did not follow. In short, they make this Marionette Messiah dance to any particular tune they play.
Jesus is posed as the original revealer of a father in Heaven, whereas the doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood was taught in three different Egyptian Cults during some four thousand years previously.
Dr. Wyld implies that I deny the existence of a personal Jesus. That is the misrepresentation of ignorance. But the sole historical Jesus acknowledged by me is the only one who was ever known to the Jews, to Celsus, to Epiphanius, as the descendant of Joseph Pandira, he, who according to Irenæus, lived to be over fifty years of age.
This, I admit, was not the kind of Jesus whom the Christians find in the Gospels and honour as a God.
The Gospel histories do not contain the biography of Ben-Pandira, the son of Joseph. Nor was it intended that they should. Their Jesus is the mythical Christ, the Horus of 12 years, and the adult Horus of 30 years; the Lord of the age, Æon or Cycle, who came and went, and was to come again for those who possessed the Gnosis.