Now, it is common knowledge that although the
New Testament claims to tell stories of the life and the sermons of
Jesus Christ, not a word of it was actually written down by Jesus. Indeed, it is less broadly known perhaps that no word of that portion of the Bible was actually written down by anybody who was alive at the time Jesus lived, but the whole of it was put to paper over a period beginning decades after the time of Jesus. But naturally, Christians see themselves as duty-bound as
evangelists to convince others to take the Bible as
truth. To this one would be well in their rights to answer that before they will take the Bible as asked, they must first be shown the writings produced by Jesus' own hand. And where, indeed, are the writings of Jesus? Where are the words which he himself penned to paper?
Surely the objection will be raised by some that no such writings exist, even that Jesus himself
never actually wrote anything (or even, startlingly enough, that Jesus was illiterate). And yet surely even the Bible alludes to Jesus being
literate, for it would be quite odd for a person of his asserted education and intellect to be illiterate. And surely Jesus was the sort of person who would have himself sent letters to various people at various times, as was common practice in that day (perhaps even moreso than in our modern
Internet age of lightning-fast tweets and Facebook posts). So.... where are these letters? What has become of this correspondence? And just as surely, as important as he was to his followers, as venerated as his belongings were, Jesus' own writings would have been preserved. This proposition would only be strengthened many-fold by the assertion that Jesus held a theologically special place, for even a divine person falling well short of the '
god-in-
human-form' variation presented across so many ancient myths. But if writings of Jesus exist as they ought to, their conspicuous absence makes it apparent that they are hidden. And it is most likely that whatever writings came from the hand of Jesus, if kept hidden over the ages by followers of Jesus, would now be in the secretive possession of the
Vatican. But why hide them? Why hide documents which would bolster the claims made by the the Church? Ah, but if there are writings of Jesus which must be kept hidden, this must be because they contradict the 'official' version!!
So if I'm ever to consider
Christianity as a serious proposition, I'll have to start with the works written in Jesus' own hand -- once their Vatican masters at last confess their existence and let them be seen!! And if the existence of such things is to continue to be denied for this time, I'll patiently await positive proof for the preposterous proposition that nothing was written by Jesus' own hand.
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Bonus node-within-a-node:
pomegranate writes:
That day will never dawn, Fish! Even if there were secretly held letters by Jesus in the Vatican archives, whatever else they might contain, they would necessarily betray his essential humanity: having raised the poor son of a bitch to the status of God, any expression of simple humanity would itself fatally undermine their alleged tenets. I say alleged, because the church is nothing but the political creature of Constantine which culminated with the charade of the Council of Nicea... Jesus was, in my view, born as an Essene Jew, his life partner was Mary Magdalene, his decendency was probably from the House of David and the House of Saul, hence a political threat to the Romans, was never crucified, but was indeed aboard when Joseph of Arimathea and his bunch of folk embarked for the long sea journey which ended at Sainte Marie de la Mer in the south of France.
Jesus was born and certainly died a Jew, and in spite of what has been pinned on him, had never any intention or desire of creating so-called Christianity. I do believe he was an illuminated person who had travelled extensively, probably to India and Egypt during the "wilderness years". Interestingly no Roman records seem to survive about him, and the Romans were assiduous chroniclers, which is odd considering his percieved threat by Rome. The whole edifice is built on sand, then—-cherry on the cake-—the church, less than two centuries ago, declared the Immaculate Conception!
krenseby adds:
This idea of taking a mythological religion seriously enough to ask to see the writings of its mythologized main character, it seems weird to me. I mean, which Christian wants to ruin Christianity by presenting evidence of a human non-divine Jesus? That said, that's why it's much easier to have a God that has no human biography, like the original Jewish deity, Yahweh. No manuscript or biography could ever possibly endanger "his" divinity. (Well, if God does have gender. Not quite sure about the he.)
All quoted comments are quoted with permission.