The Resurrection Hoax

Rebuttal to Jochen Katz - The Resurrection Hoax

• The Greek and Roman historians

Very few Christians know that Gentile historians NEVER mentioned the resurrection of Jesus. The Jewish philosopher Philo (50 CE) absolutely makes no reference to Jesus’ crucifixion. The Christians are embarrassed that Philo lived during Jesus’ lifetime and never mentioned his resurrection.

After the departure of Jesus, his teachings spread to North Africa and Egypt, but he was not popular or widely known.

The following writers do not mention Jesus’ resurrection:

1. Philo-Judaeus
2. Martial
3. Arrian
4. Appian
5. Theon of Smyrna
6. Lucanus
7. Aulus Gellius
8. Seneca
9. Plutarch
10. Apollonius
11. Epictetus
12. Silius Italicus
13. Ptolemy

We challenge Christians to prove his resurrection.  None of these writers mentioned Jesus’ resurrection. (Source)

In his unsatiable desire to attack the Bible, Smith overlooked yet again that this argument also destroys the Qur'an. How? Jesus is connected not only with his own resurrection but also with several people whom he resurrected from the dead back into this earthly life. For example, Jesus raised at least three people: the 12-year-old daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:21-43, Luke 8:40-56), a young man in Nain, who was the only son of a widow (Luke 7:11-17), Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha (John 11).

Although the Qur'an does not give any details about those resurrections, it claims that Jesus did indeed raise people from the dead:

And will make him ['Iesa (Jesus)] a Messenger to the Children of Israel (saying): "I have come to you with a sign from your Lord, that I design for you out of clay, as it were, the figure of a bird, and breathe into it, and it becomes a bird by Allah's Leave; and I heal him who was born blind, and the leper, and I bring the dead to life by Allah's Leave. And I inform you of what you eat, and what you store in your houses. Surely, therein is a sign for you, if you believe. S. 3:49 Al-Hilali & Khan

(Remember) when Allah will say (on the Day of Resurrection). "O 'Iesa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary)! Remember My Favour to you and to your mother when I supported you with RuhulQudus [Jibrael (Gabriel)] so that you spoke to the people in the cradle and in maturity; and when I taught you writing, Al-Hikmah (the power of understanding), the Taurat (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel); and when you made out of the clay, as it were, the figure of a bird, by My Permission, and you breathed into it, and it became a bird by My Permission, and you healed those born blind, and the lepers by My Permission, and when you brought forth the dead by My Permission; and when I restrained the Children of Israel from you (when they resolved to kill you) since you came unto them with clear proofs, and the disbelievers among them said: 'This is nothing but evident magic.' " S. 5:110 Al-Hilali & Khan

RESPONSE

Here is the complete list of Greek and Roman writers who don’t mention Jesus’ resurrection.

1. Apollonius       
2. Appian                
3. Arrian                 
4. Aulus Gellius          
5. Columella             
6. Damis                  
7. Dio Chrysostom        
8. Dion Pruseus           
9. Epictetus             
10. Favorinus              
11. Florus Lucius          
12. Hermogones             
13. Josephus               
14. Justus of Tiberius     
15. Juvenal                
16. Lucanus                
17. Lucian                 
18. Lysias                 
19. Martial                
20. Paterculus             
21. Pausanias
22. Persius
23. Petronius
24. Phaedrus
25. Philo-Judaeus
26. Phlegon
27. Pliny the Elder
28. Pliny the Younger
29. Plutarch
30. Pompon Mela
31. Ptolemy
32. Quintilian
33. Quintius Curtius
34. Seneca
35. Silius Italicus
36. Statius
37. Suetonius
38. Tacitus
39. Theon of Smyran
40. Valerius Flaccus
41. Valerius Maximus

Christians have provided the most ludicrous reasons for why these writers DO NOT mention Jesus’ death. I have laughed at some of the responses by Tektonics, a feel good Christian website. (they are pathetic).

• The following list of historians does not mention Jesus’ resurrection:

1. Appian
2. Arrian
3. Dio_Chrysostom
4. Florus
5. Paterculus (Marcus Velleius Paterculus)
6. Phlegon

The above historians lived in the decades following Jesus’ departure.

Some of the above writers were poets deeply rooted in Greek philosophy and the Ancient Wisdom. They were in the position of recording the “darkness and earthquake” at Jesus’ death.

Philo was alive when Jesus “rose from the dead”. He led an embassy of Jews to the court of Emperor Gaius Caligula (39-40 CE). Yet Philo makes no reference to Jesus’ death, and resurrection.

He was there when the crucifixion with its attendant earthquake, supernatural darkness, and resurrection of the dead took place -- when Christ himself rose from the dead, and in the presence of many witnesses ascended into heaven. These marvelous events which must have filled the world with amazement, had they really occurred, were unknown to him. (John Remsburg, The Christ)

Katz applies my argument to the Holy Quran by saying the Quran is “proven false” because these writers do not mention Jesus’ miracles. (Quran 3:49, 5:110). There is a logical explanation.

First, let us examine the crucifixion. The Holy Quran says Jesus was saved (Psalms 20:6, Quran 3:55), and someone else was crucified (4:157), but these writers do not mention theappearance crucifixion, because it was ordinary. The “darkness, earthquake, and rising saints” are legends attached to the Gospel narratives.

• The Gospel of Barnabas (accepted by Irenaeus) describes the crucifixion of Judas as ordinary

So they led him to Mount Calvary, where they used to hang malefactors, and there they crucified him naked;, for the greater ignominy. *Judas truly did nothing else but cry out: 'God, why have you forsaken me, seeing the malefactor has escaped and I die unjustly?' *Truly I say that the voice, the face, and the person of Judas were so like to Jesus, that his disciples and believers entirely believed that he was Jesus; wherefore some departed from the doctrine of Jesus, believing that Jesus had been a false prophet, and that by art magic he had done the miracles which he did: for Jesus had said that he should not die till near the end of the world; for that at that time he should be taken away from the world.

But they that stood firm in the doctrine of Jesus were so encompassed with sorrow, seeing him die who was entirely like to Jesus, that they remembered not what Jesus had said. And so in company with the mother of Jesus they went to Mount Calvary, and were not only present at the death of Judas, weeping continually, but by means of Nicodemus and Joseph of Abarimathia; they obtained from the governor the body of Judas to bury it. Whereupon, they took him down from the cross with such weeping as assuredly no one would believe, and buried him in the new sepulchre of Joseph; having wrapped him up in an hundred pounds of precious ointments. (Gospel of Barnabas)

Paul makes no reference to Jesus as historical figure, he only says “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).

The determination not to know anything but the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was narrowing down knowledge to rather a small compass. Evidently converts in Corinth were questioning, and Paul begins by establishing that questions are not allowed to Christians. Paul has to berate the wise and praise the foolish in this epistle. God chose the foolish things of the world not the wise. And so it has always remained—the most marvellous way of gulling the credulous. Anyway, already in the 50s of the first century some people were asking questions and one of the questions will have been whether Jesus was really crucified.

Irenaeus, one of the most frequently quoted Christian writers of the ancient bishops, declares upon the authority of the martyr Polycarp, who claimed to have got it from S John and all the elders of Asia, that Jesus Christ lived to be about fifty years old. There must have been a margin for distrusting the fact of the crucifixion. Yet, if Jesus was a saviour, it is likely that he must have been crucified because other saviours of the same type were. “Sacrilege!” Paul’s Christians, trained in foolishness, cry. “Jesus Christ was the only crucified saviour!” Sorry, other saviours are suspected of crucifixion, and certainly many were cruelly punished for saving humanity. Irenaeus might have felt it politic to deny crucifixion to distinguish the Christian saviour from the others! (Warning: Atheist website:

The Christian missionary can teach us nothing but “Christ crucified”. No wonder the early Christians were so dumb. The figurative Messiah (Islam) liberated the land of Palestine after so many failed Messiahs.

• Paul regarded the crucifixion as symbolic

It is evident that the early Gnostic Christians practised the ritual of symbolic death by crucifixion. It was meant to destroy one’s identification with the body and realize the true self within. Gnostics considered Christ allegoric and not as a historical person. Paul, a Gnostic later appropriated by the Church, declares, “The secret is this: Christ in you (Colossians 1:25-28.)” Paul makes it clear that Jesus was merely an allegory when he declares, “If Jesus had been on earth, he wouldn’t have been a priest.(Hebrews 8:4)” As Freke and Gandy point out, had Paul considered Jesus historical, he would have said, “When Jesus was on earth, he was not a priest.” This explains why Paul never quotes the words of Jesus which he should have had there been a historical Jesus.

Paul further confirms that he considered Jesus’ crucifixion symbolic where he declares, “I have shared Christ’s crucifixion. The person we once were has been crucified with Christ. (Colossians 1:24, Galatians 2:20, Romans 6:7)” He also tells Galatians, a community that lived hundreds of miles away from Palestine, that they too witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion (Galatians 3:1). Since Paul had never met Jesus, the crucifixion his audience in Galatia witnessed could not have been an historical event. It has to be allegorical. Ptolemy (~140 CE), disciple of Valentinus, reveals that Pilate merely made an image of Jesus and crucified it instead of crucifying Jesus himself.[vii] Basilides (116-161 CE), a Gnostic saint, writes that those who believe Jesus was physically crucified are enslaved to myths, and those who treat it as symbolic are liberated. (Kalavai Venkat, Silencing The Da Vinci Code.

I will show later that some versions of the Osiris myth did indeed teach that he remained on earth for a time after his "reanimation," but for the sake of argument, let's just assume the truth of McFall's claim that Egyptian myths about Osiris taught that he had experienced only a "spiritual" resurrection. That still would not make the Jesus myth "unique," because the earliest version of this myth indicates that the resurrection of Jesus was merely spiritual. To see this, we have only to go to the apostle Paul's defense of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. A face-value interpretation of this chapter, which doesn't assume the truth of the gospel accounts that were written much later, will show that Paul was claiming that Jesus had been not bodily but spiritually resurrected. After telling the Corinthian Christians that their faith was vain and they were of all men most miserable if Christ had not risen, Paul proceeded to develop a line of argumentation intended to prove that the resurrection had happened as he had preached it. (Warning: Atheist website)

Christians believe that Jesus died for the sins of the world. In ancient Greece there was a tradition of making a particular individual into a ‘scapegoat’, who symbolically took on the sins of the people and was expelled from the city or put to death. Such an individual was called a pharmakos, which simply means ‘magic man’. His persecution was clearly a religious event, since before his death he was fed at public expense on especially pure foods and was clad in holy garments and wreathed with sacred. Through his sacred sacrifice the sins of the city were banished. (Timothy Freke, The Jesus Mysteries, p 53)

• Paul corrupted the Gospel and elevated Jesus to divine status

On the face of it, Paul’s doctrine of Jesus is a daring departure from Judaism. Paul was advocating a doctrine that seemed to have far more in common with pagan myths than with Judaism: that Jesus was a divine-human person who had descended to Earth from the heavens and experienced death for the express purpose of saving mankind. The very fact that the Jews found this doctrine new and shocking shows that it plays no role in the Jewish scripture, at least not in any way easily discernible…There were those who accepted Paul’s doctrine, but did regard it as a radical new departure, with nothing in the Jewish scriptures foreshadowing it. (Hyam Maccoby, The Myth-Maker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity,p. 12)

• Paul is responsible for discarding the Jewish Law, deifying Jesus, and creating his own religion

Jesus was not the founder of Christianity as we know it today. Most of the New Testament doesn't even concern the historical Jesus while the main influence is the Apostle Paul and through the church he founded at Ephesus a Greek convert named John. Paul never met Jesus in the flesh, he only claimed some strange vision and proceeded to paganize the teachings of Jesus (who preached an enlightened form of Judaism), until he created Pauline Christianity. Because there are no known writings from Jesus, the actual Apostles, or anyone that actually knew Him in the flesh (other then perhaps James), most of what He taught is lost forever.

It is evident from scripture that Paul refused to come under the authority of the Church in Jerusalem. And this brought him into conflict with them. Pauline Christianity became Christianity minus the Judaism of Jesus and plus the Hellenization that ultimately led to the great historical schism within Christianity between Pauline Christianity established in Rome and Jerusalem Christianity established by Jesus and the twelve. The foreign influences which Paul introduced into the teachings of Jesus is so massive that it is said by scholars that Paul hijacked Christianity from the apostles of Jesus. However, to give Paul the credit due him, I have doubts he ever intended his letters become "God's Word" and the Christian religion to be based on him.

Paul's Hellenistic bias and influence was certainly the result of being born and raised in Tarsus - one of the major centers of Hellenistic philosophy in Asia minor. It is more than likely that Paul was taught bodily resurrection there. Paul wrote in Greek and quoted the Septuagint (the Greek form of the Scriptures) rather than communicating in Hebrew - the language of Jews in Jerusalem. Hellenistic philosophy was more fitting to Roman culture than to Jerusalem Judaism. As Rome began to exert more and more power, Paul's pagan version of Christianity fostered in Rome and became victorious over the Christianity established by Peter. The schism between Paul's paganized version of Christianity and Peter's Jewish Christianity meant that only one version could be victorious. As Rome completely destroyed Jewish culture in Israel in 70 AD, it was clear which version of Christianity was left standing. Jewish Christians in Jerusalem clearly resented the victory of Roman influence over Judaism. They believed that Rome's victory was achieved at the expense of assimilating the teachings of Jesus with the Hellenistic philosophy and culture of Rome.

The idea of a sacrificed saviour is Mithraist, so is the symbolism of bulls, rams, sheep, the blood of a transformed saviour washing away sins and granting eternal life, the 7 sacraments, the banishing of an evil host from heaven, apocalyptic end of time when God/Ormuzd sends the wicked to hell and establishes peace. Roman Emperors, Mithraist then Christian, mixed the rituals and laws of both religions into one. Emperor Constantine established 25th of Dec, the birthdate of Mithras, to be the birthdate of Jesus too. The principal day of worship of the Jews, The Sabbath, was replaced by the Mithraistic Sun Day as the Christian holy day. The Catholic Church, based in Rome and founded on top of the most venerated Mithraist temple, wiped out all competing son-of-god religions within the Roman Empire, giving us modern literalist Christianity." 

The above writers do not mention every single crucifixion. But that doesn’t mean the crucifixions never occurred! At least 2,000 Zealots were crucified by the Romans. Yet the crucifixion of Jesus is supposed to be unique. 

Matthew tells us (xxvii. 31) that when Christ was crucified, there was darkness all over the land for three hours, and "the earth did quake, and the rocks were rent, and many of the saints came out of their graves."  Here we have a series of events spoken of so strange, so unusual and so extraordinary that, had they occurred, they must have attracted the attention of the whole world -- especially the amazing scene of the sun's withdrawing his light and ceasing to shine, and thereby causing an almost total darkness near the middle of the day…Even Seneca and the elder Pliny, who minutely chronicle the events of those times, are silent about the greatest event in history. Each of these philosophers, in a detailed work, recorded all the phenomena of nature’s earthquakes, meteors and eclipses, he could collect. And, although Mark incidentally alludes to the darkness, in their gospels neither Luke nor John, know of any of these wonderful events. Christians tell us that God deliberately came to earth to die because he wanted to save wicked mankind—then he forgot to make sure everyone knew about it! (Warning: Atheist website [1])

It is shocking to find a complete absence of Jesus’ resurrection in these writers. More shocking is that Paul does not make any reference to Jesus’ trial and arrest. The pagan Katz knows that he’s trapped, so he resorts to attacking the Quran by using my argument. What a fool, I don’t know any other word to describe Jochen Katz.

There is a good explanation to solve this “problem of silence” which applies to every historical figure. The biography of every great man is always composed after his death. The Hadith were compiled after the Prophet’s death, the Gospels were composed after Jesus’ departure, and the Torah was composed after Moses’ death. Even the earliest biography of Alexander the Great was composed decades after his death!

The Gospels were contemporary documents to these writers (50-150 CE), so they should have acknowledged Jesus’ death, but sadly they didn’t. The Quran was revealed 600 years later in the Desert of Arabia, hundreds of miles away from Palestine. The burden is on the Gospels because they were contemporary to these writers. It’s completely illogical to force the Quran into this discussion. The Quran is the Word of God with scientific miracles, so the miracles of Jesus (3:49, 5:110) are undoubtedly true.

• The Holy Quran records the True Miracles and avoids the false miracles that exist in pagan myths

The True miracles of Jesus are attested in the Quran (healing the sick, raising the dead, and curing the blind) which are confirmed by the Gospels (Matt 12:22, Mk. 5:21).

• The Quran does not record the Transfiguration, walking on water, and turning water into wine because these miracles were COPIED from the pagans.

The Gospels are perverted cosmology…This is the Transfiguration, an event in the life of the Creative Principle, and therefore of Jesus only as this personified. It’s nothing new in occult cosmology: Buddha was transfigured on a mountain in Ceylon; Noah and Moses were also transfigured, at birth, their light filled the whole house—not man’s but God’s solar temple. Describing Noah, the Apocryphal Book of Enoch says, “A body white as snow, hair white as wool and eyes that are like the rays of the sun (Lloyd Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, p. 333)

The Buddha had his transfiguration when he went up a Sri Lankan mountain called Pandava, or Yellow-white. “There the heavens opened and a great light came in full flood around him and the glory of his person shone forth with ‘double power’. He shone as the brightness of the Sun and Moon”. This exactly parallels—but predates by six centuries—the Gospel story of Jesus’ transfiguration on Mt. Tabor. (Tom Harper, The Pagan Christ, p. 31)

The Buddha told this story at Jetavana Monastery about a pious lay follower. One evening, when this faithful disciple came to the bank of the Aciravati River on his way to Jetavana to hear the Buddha, there was no boat at the landing stage. The ferrymen had pulled their boats onto the far shore and had gone themselves to hear the Buddha. The disciple's mind was so full of delightful thoughts of the Buddha, however, that even though he walked into the river, his feet did not sink below the surface and he walked across the water as if he were on dry land. When, however, he noticed the waves on reaching the middle of the river, his ecstasy subsided and his feet began to sink. But as soon as he again focused his mind on the qualities of the Buddha, his feet rose and he was able to continue walking joyously over the water. When he arrived at Jetavana, he paid his respects to the Master and took a seat on one side.”

"Good layman," the Buddha said, addressing the disciple, "I hope you had no mishap on your way."

"Venerable sir," the disciple replied, "while coming here, I was so absorbed in thoughts of the Buddha that, when I came to the river, I was able to walk across it as though it were solid."

"My friend," the Blessed One said, "you're not the only one who has been protected in this way. In olden days pious laymen were shipwrecked in mid-ocean and saved themselves by remembering the virtues of the Buddha." [1] [2]

"The Johannine story of Jesus' turning water into wine (2.1-11) was modeled on a myth about Dionysus told in a Dionysiac festival celebrated at Sidon [Phoenicia]. A first- or second-century A.D. report of the festival shows striking similarities, even in wording, to the gospel material and makes its polemic purpose apparent." - Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) p. 158

It is possible that Dionysian mythology would later find its way into Christianity. There are many parallels between Dionysus and Jesus; both were said to have been born from a mortal woman but fathered by a god, to have returned from the dead, and to have transformed water into wine. 

The historians never objected to Jesus’ miracles (3:49, 5:110) because they are supported by the Gospels (Matt 12:22, Mk. 5:21). I am speaking of the historians who lived after the Quran was revealed. Also, the scientists have confirmed the miracles in the Quran.

• Allah speaks of how Christians borrowed the pagan myths

But there are, among men, those who purchase idle tales, without knowledge (or meaning), to mislead (men) from the Path of Allah and throw ridicule (on the Path): for such there will be a Humiliating Penalty. (Al-Quran 31:6)

The Jews call 'Uzair a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth! (Al-Quran 9:30)

[Source: Abdullah Smith and his war against the Crucifixion, by Abdullah Kareem]