THIRD PART

Did Jesus Really Exist?

To affirm that Jesus did not exist and, therefore, that he is just a myth, we would have to admit two quite improbable hypotheses:

1st - All the disciples, friends and relatives, who, later on, gave testimony of his existence, have suffered a long standing process of collective hallucination, seeing what did not exist and taking part in events that did not happen.

2nd - These same people got together and, making a pact of incredible complicity, decided to invent Jesus and to create a fantastic history of teachings, parables, cures, miracles and other fabulous events. A fantasy that, perhaps, not even the most inventive of today's fictionists would be capable to conceive.

Even if the evangelists had given credit to such a deception and thus contributing to transform hallucination or fantasy into pseudo facts, the testimony of two non-Christians writers strongly suggests that Jesus really existed.

Starting with Flavius Josepho, a Jewish historian of the first century, who, in two parts of his "Jewish Antiques" refers to the Christ. He says in Ant.20.9.1/200 : "Hananias summoned an assembly of judges and placed before them the brother of Jesus, who is cognominated the messiah, by the name of Thiago and a few others...". And in Ant.18.3.3/63-64 : " Under Pontius Pilate's government, it appeared, in the religious scenery of Palestine, a man called Jesus, with a reputation of wisdom that showed in his teachings and in the accomplishment of miracles. He conquered many followers but Jewish leaders accused him before Pilate, who sentenced him to be crucified. But the followers remained faithful to him, in spite of the indignity of his death"

Most historians doubt the authenticity of Ant.18, but many accept Ant.20. as authentic.

Next we have the Roman scribe Tacitus who, in the second century, in "Annals", wrote the following: "In order to silence rumors about the fire of Rome, Nero tortured and killed scape-goats among a group of people - the Christians - who were hated because of their abominable crimes. They were so named after Christ, a man who, during the reign of Tiberius, had been executed by Pilate"

And there are also the so-called Rabbi Sources, written in the second century. They speak of Jesus, but, as it was to be expected, in depreciate terms. Anyway, their writings confirm Jesus’existence.

Nevertheless, it is growing, among modern historians and scholars, the conviction that the human Jesus, the historical Jesus, never existed. That idea started at the end of the eighteenth century , raised by some philosophers of the French Revolution. A few decades later, in Germany, Ditter Strauss and Polish Bauer developed the theory that Jesus was a "mythological character" and the gospels "literary inventions". But it was at the turning of the twentieth century that the studies on this subject became more intense. Prof. G. Wells, of the University of London, thoroughly dissected the Christian literature, concluding that the historical bases behind the story of Jesus of Nazareth were quite elusive.

Among the most recent researches, stand out Earl Doherty, the author of the book: "The Jesus Puzzle". He owns a degree in Ancient History and Classic Languages and meticulously studied the Bible, as well as Christian and non-canonical documents, the writings of the apostles of the second century, the Dead Sea scrolls, Gnostic manuscripts, the mysterious Hellenic cults and the general religious thoughts of the first two centuries a.D.

Therefore, we are dealing with an erudite, who writes with style and clarity and presents impressive arguments in defense of his thesis. However, like all of us, humans, he is not perfect: some of his conclusions are susceptible to criticism and challenge.

Let us see: If Jesus did not exist, if he is just a legend, who invented it ?

The first disciples? It is difficult to imagine those simple men, many of them illiterate, conceiving such a fantastic story, with so many details. Besides, if Jesus didn't exist, then perhaps the disciples, Mary, Joseph, Magdalene, Martha and most of the people mentioned in the Gospels, did not exist too. They would had been only characters of a gigantic legendary play! However, if one can trust what Paul refers in Galatas,1,18-19, at least two disciples did exist: Peter and Thiago, since he says he met them in Jerusalem.

Paul? Impossible. When he entered the scenery of Christianity, the Christians already existed and Saul, before his conversion, had pursued them furiously.

The evangelists? Hardly. The oldest of the Gospels appeared after the second half of the first century and it was written based on information supplied to Mark, orally, or through long time lost manuscripts (like the mysterious document Q).

If everything is only a legend and if it is impossible to identify who began it, then such a legend must have been built up piece by piece, as a series of dispersed stories told across the Palestine land and that were, gradually, joined, as the parts of a jigsaw puzzle, until they formed "the great Christian mythology".

Is it possible? Yes. The gods' of Greek mythology and the feats of the heroes of Iliad and Odyssey are a proof of that possibility.

Is it probable? We don’t think so. Although the objections to the authenticity of Flavius Josepho's report in Ant.18.3.3/63-64, there are no strong reasons to doubt what he says in Ant.20.9.1/200. as well as there is no way of questioning what Tacitus wrote in the Annals. And we still have the references from the Jewish Sources. Unless all the information that were given to the evangelists and to those historians, regarding the existence of a religious pilgrim that was crucified in Palestine, are not reliable, having originated from dispersed rumors, spreaded by the several creators of the great legend. Then, yes, the improbable becomes probable.

However, we rather trust the wisdom of Voltaire who, referring to Jesus, said: "They speak so much of him that he must have existed ". And our reason and intuition also tell us that, in spite of a lot of controversies, the man from Nazareth, the historical Jesus, did exist!

But let us return to the thesis developed by Earl Doherty. Among the arguments he presents to conclude that Jesus didn't exist, the most consistent is based on Paul’s epistles. Doherty points out, rightly, that Paul exalts the divine Christ but, practically, he doesn't refer to the historical Jesus. And the apostle avoids to associate the revelations he says that come to him straight from the Christ, who is in Heaven, with the messages and deeds of the human Jesus, who lived in Earth.

And Doherty concludes that, if Paul acted that way, it is because he knew that the historical Jesus never existed. To Paul, who existed was a divine Jesus, a God under human form, that only after his death, thus, back to eternity, begins, through the revelations that he sends to him, Paul, his divine and true preaching.

But there is a flaw in that reasoning. In our opinion, Paul had another reason to ignore the historical Jesus. A reason that escaped the perspicacity of the author of "The Jesus Puzzle" and that we intend to reveal, step by step.

Let us begin:

Paul converts to Christianity and, quickly, he develops an intense activity, preaching on Christ, the Savior, wherever he goes, in his missionary action. He converts the heathens and, in a short time, thanks to his inexhaustible energy, there are more non Jewish than Jewish Christians. And, it must be said, for the sake of truth, that, were not for Paul’s frenetic activity, Christianity would had been limited to a small dissident Jewish sect - the sect of the Nazarenes, which would, almost certainly, be extinct in a short period of time.

In his preaching and epistles, Paul makes very clear his desire to be known as the great propagator of the Christian faith, the organizer of a new religion, totally dissociated from Judaism. But he wants more: he wishes to be recognized by history as the true founder of Christianity.

And Paul feels he deserves it. After all, had not the revelation in the road to Damascus been a summons? It was as if the divine Christ, that he confuses with God, had told him: "Go ahead Paul, accomplish your mission. I already did mine. Now it is up to you to expand our Faith and found a great Church, to be extended to every nations, so that my Word becomes known to all mankind".

But there was an obstacle to that ambition: the historical Jesus. Paul knew that Jesus had existed, but he writes and acts as if the Nazarene had lived centuries ago and not just some years before. With the reason distorted by ambition and fanaticism, Paul concentrated his faith on a dead Christ, while considering that Jesus, when alive, was not a man like him, but a God disguised as human. And Paul felt, deep in his own mind, that this Christ-God, while in earth, never thought about or wished to build any kind of Church in Earth, since "his Kingdom was not of this world". The foundation of a new religion - a Church -should be postponed to the time when the Christ-God was back in Heaven. And such a mission to be carried out by the chosen one - by him, Paul.

That is why Paul refuses to recognize the historical Jesus: because Jesus had been a human like him, Paul... And human competes with human! Therefore, if Christ, the divine Jesus, now in the infinitely distant heaven, was his Salvior, the historical Jesus, because of his human condition, was his rival. Therefore, Paul avoids to associate the divine Christ to the human Jesus. And, more, while he exalts the Christ, he silences in regard to Jesus. Because silence induces forgetfulness...

It is hard to understanding how Paul could conciliate this strange duality that he created. But we cannot reason in terms of his personal psychology. Paul had a highly privileged mind, capable to work with complexities besides common people understanding. However, a privileged mind doesn't mean, necessarily, a healthy one. When we, carefully, lean over everything that Paul said and did, we have the feeling to be dealing with a genius, but not with a mentally normal person. Considering, of course, our own parameters of normality.

There is some suspicion that Paul exceeded himself in his ambitious strategy to be recognized by history as the real founder of Christianity: in his preaching and epistles, he mentions, as being his own, many ideas that, admitting some truthfulness to the Gospels, had been presented by Jesus! If it is true, an improper appropriation...

However, neither God nor destiny sided with Paul and, at the end, victory hang toward the Nazarene. A victory obtained through a rude fisherman, to whom, according to the scriptures, Jesus once said: "You are Peter and on this stone (you) I will raise my Church ". A sentence that Paul certainly ignored...

And Peter, poor in culture but rich in determination, accepted the struggle for power. He assumed the leadership of the Church of Rome and becames the first Pope. And, in so doing, he consecrated, before history, Jesus as the real founder of Christianity.

Peter would, later, gain a place in the Christian mythology, as the guardian of the portal of heaven. And Paul would have to be satisfied in becoming known as the greatest diffuser of the Christian religion. But not before both of them had been executed, in Rome, by the mad and unpredictable Nero...

Who Profits from Jesus "Divinity"?

Jesus' "divinity" is sustained by two of the "untouchable" dogmas of Christianity: the impregnation of Mary by the Holy Ghost and the Nazarene’s physical resuscitation on the third day after his death. Both constituting ruptures and exceptions of natural laws.

Two ortodox theological schools diverge on the nature of that ‘divinity’.

One says that Jesus was already divine even before Mary got pregnant. Since he was God from the beginning, his divine condition was already present even before the creation of the universe.

The other affirms that he became divine in the act of his conception by the Holy Ghost.

It is believed that most of the first Christians didn't consider Jesus a divine being. It is almost certain that, at that time, the dogma of his transcendental conception was not yet part of the Christian mythology. This hypothesis appeared much later, and no one knows, for sure, who formulated it and when it happened.

According to the Bishop John Shelby Spong, to speak, nowadays, of a divine-human son who was concepted by a virgin woman is a mythology that our generation would never had created and, obviously, could not use.

As for the carnal resuscitation - a metaphysical manifestation or a legend created by the disciples - it didn't receive, from the first Christians, the credibility it acquired after the Council of Nicea.

Through the centuries, theologians and scholars did not show much interest on the nature of Jesus' conception. However, the question of his physical resuscitation constitutes a controversy that is being constantly discussed by specialists in theology. Non-orthodox researchers keep looking for a rational explanation to the fact, but don't seem to find it.

Today, it prevails, among them, the conviction that Jesus didn't return to life. An eminent theologian, the already mentioned John Shelby Spong, in his book "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism " insinuates that Jesus did not ressurrected physically; however, so he says, this does not shake his faith.

We already exposed our opinion and we shall repeat it now: " neither Jesus nor any other prophet should be considered divine. However, we admit and accept that Jesus possessed an exceptional degree of spirituality (what is quite different from divinity).

Nevertheless, in spite of the opinion of the majority of specialists in this matter, there are a lot of people who, due to blind faith or personal interest, insist on the thesis of divinity. Why?

We will leave aside the orthodox bibliophiles and the fanatic credulous persons, who, by definition, believe everything they read in the Bible or what it is told them by priests or pastors, since they are not capable of thinking reasonably; they prefer to accept everything, blindly, without discussion or reflection.

As we have said, let us leave them aside. Let us concentrate on those people who, in some way, exercise some kind of priesthood and that, although being capable to diferentiate the real from the mythical, insist on preaching Jesus' divinity. And, again, we must ask: why?

Perhaps because a divine Jesus is certainly more attractive and, at least theoretically, more powerful. Therefore he must have a greater capacity to assist those that suffer from corporal or mental ailments, as well as those who fear the horrors of hell. Thus, to exercise more power and to obtain more financial resources from the sufferers and the fearful, priests and pastors impose on them the idea of a divine Jesus. If this idea is false or true, it doesn't matter to them. What matters is that these wiseacres have, now, two precious instruments, with which to dominate and explore the legions of credulous and fanatics that fall between their claws: the divinity that they " granted " to Jesus plus the inherent and true divinity of God.

That strategy is applied by the Catholic clergy and by the ‘bishops’ and ‘pastors' of the incredibly numerous evangelical churches.

In the Roman Catholics churches the act of collecting money from the faithful is more discreet today, but the Holy Sea keeps exercising its universal religious and political power, without hiding (and how could it?) the sumptuousness of the Vatican and of many cathedrals dispersed across the earth, as well as the luxurious residences of many members of the curia.

As for the Protestants, many of them, mainly among the so-called renewed and Pentecostal, are much more indiscreet in their policy of collecting contributions from the credulous "sheep"... on behalf of Jesus, naturally.

Evidently, among the clergy of all Christian factions, there is a lot of honest, sincere and devoted people. From Pope John XXIII to the novices of the humblest convents, and from the great Protestant preachers to the deacons of the simplest evangelical chapels. They are the ones who have sustaining the dignity of Christianity! The others are either avid and fanatic lovers of power or fraudulent. And many are both things...

The Origins of the New Testament

1 - What can be considered canonical in the New Testament?

According to Will Durant, a Latin fragmentary document written in 180 a.D., showed that the texts which would constitute the New Canonical Testament had already been composed by Christian scholars. This would have happened around 130 a.D. and the chosen books were the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.

Thirteen letters written by Paul, the apostles' acts, the seven Catholic epistles and the book of revelations (apocalypse) were included later, generating serious controversies with the Oriental churches.

The ‘authorized’ New Testament, as it is known today, was codified in the fourth century a.D. Several books, existent at that time, were not included. The ones that survived constitute the so-called New Apocryphal Testament, that includes gospels, apostles' acts, epistles and apocalypses, such as: the apostles' acts of Peter, Paul, John, Andrey and Thomas, and some epistles attributed to Paul. Most of them considered totally fictitious.

2 - Disagreements and Heresies

With its message of equality among every human beings (since all are God's children), and the promise of a time (near or in the future) when virtuous people would be rewarded and the perverse would be punished, Christianity was welcomed by the suffered and oppressed population that constituted the largest part of the Roman Empire. Subjected to material privations, slavered by their own rulers and by invaders, without hope in their ancient gods, these masses received, with hope, the promises of a happier life, either while still in earth, or in heaven, after death.

The fact of being well accepted, independently of their social conditions, generated a wave of solidarity that spreaded along the roads and highways of the Roman Empire, mostly due to the work of missionaries, that diffused the good news.

The first persecutions and extermination of converted, far from dismaying these hopes, reinforced them. Death on behalf of the new faith was divulged as a distinction sign, giving the martyr a character of a chosen person. As it dispersed throughout the Roman Empire, the Christian message came across with several local faiths, that imposed modifications and adaptations. Will Durant writes: "It would be surprising that, in a crowd of Christian centers, relatively autonomous and subjected to different traditions and atmospheres, a variation of credos and habits should not have developed"

The basic conceptions of Christianity regarding the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth, after Christ’s second come, and the consequent reward or condemnation, based on the rule of conduct extolled by Jesus, received multiple interpretations.

To begin with the very condition of the Nazarene, which was considered in quite different ways:

1 - a common man sanctified by his mission; 2 - a special being created by God but not sharing His essence; 3 - a special being sharing God’s essence and co-eternal with Him.

In 451 a.D., Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, defended the thesis of Christ's duality. There is, Jesus would have two natures : human and divine. The crucifixion was also interpreted, some times as a fact that really happened and, other times, as an appearance. This last point of view was defended by the Docetistas, who considered the crucifixion an illusion, since Jesus' body was not susceptible to suffering. This conception still subsists in the Islamism. A verse of the Koran, that refers to the crucifixion of Isa ibn Maryan (Jesus son of Mary), says: "they didn't kill him, nor they crucified him, but it was made like this to appear to them ".

One of the first great heresies is that of Marcion. Influenced by the Gnose *, he preached the need of a total rupture with Judaism, the mosaic law and the Old Testament. He accentuated the difference from the God described by Jesus in the Gospel - good, fair, paternal and affectionate, to the Jove of the Old Testament - hard, cruel, implacable and tyrannical. According to Marcion, Jove was the creator of this imperfect world and Jesus was the son of a greater God, who ordered him to come down to Earth, in order to free men from ignorance. Christ would have appeared at the age of thirty, as a ghostly and unreal body.

Marcion also wrote a Gospel, based on that of Luke and on Peter's letters.

So many divergence led to the summons of several Councils - meetings of bishops, patriarchs and other representatives of Christian congregations. First, with the Roman emperor and, later, with the bishop of Rome (the Pope), to define what could be legitimately accepted as articles of faith or what should be rejected as heresy.

The first Ecumenical Council (that is, with representatives of all communities) was that of Nicea, in 325 a.D. Presided by Constantine and with the presence of about 300 religious leaders, this Council declared heretical the proposition of Arios, who sustained the difference of natures between Christ and God, denying Jesus' divinity. It happens that Nicea had to obey the impositions of the emperor, who wanted to get rid of the image of a historical Jesus, a menace to any human religious leadership. Thus, it seemed important to Constantine that Jesus should be seen as any other God. Like Jupiter, for instance. A divine Jesus Christ, in the infinitely distant Heaven, would not obscure Constantine in the terrestrial plan, because, according to the Roman tradition, the emperor embodied the will of God in Earth. On the other hand, if Jesus was seeing as a human, the competition would become inevitable. So, Nicea consolidates Paul's doctrine, who also saw a human Jesus as a serious impediment to his intension to be recognized as the founder of Christianity.

Returning to the arianism: although considered an heresy, it survived, for many centuries, as the official doctrine of barbarians christianized by the Goths, who had been converted by the aryan missionary Ulfilas.

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* - Gnose is the esoteric and perfect knowledge of divinity, transmitted by tradition and by rituals of initiation.

The Bible - To What Extent Can It Be trusted ?

The Bible has two distinct parts: the Old and the New Testaments. The Old is related to the Jewish Torah and the New, composed of four gospels, the apostle’s acts, Paul’s epistles and the apocalypses, tell us about Jesus’ life and preaching, the first times of the Church and John’s predictions about the end of the world.

In spite of all that we know or do not know on the origins of the biblical texts and about the changes they were subjected during centuries, Christianism is based upon an unshakable faith - that can not be contested - on the absolute veracity of each and every word of the Bible. But, to what extent can this conviction be trusted ? The concept of the absolute veracity of the Bible, there is, the acceptance that all its content was inspired by God and, therefore, it is "free from errors or mistakes", although being theologically debatable, it is historically and rationally unacceptable.

Recently, a "renewed" Presbyterian pastor , referring to the type of culture that impregnates us through magazines, books, TV, theater and movies, called it anti-Christian, since it diffuses demoniac philosophical principles, such as secularism, existentialism, pragmatism, hedonism, nihilism and humanism. He asked his parishioners not to accept, passively, the ideas developed by that culture and to exert a critical thinking in relation to these philosophies.

Would it not be the case to ask the pastor to apply the same criterion to the Bible, instead of proclaiming that it must be accepted, without restrictions, as expression of an absolute and uncontested truth ?

But he will never do it. Either because, under his orthodox vision, he believes the biblical texts to be perfect, since all its words have the stamp of divinity. Or because he knows, but cannot reveal, that, should the Bible be scrutinized, rivers of contradiction would flow out of its pages.

The Old Testament, there is, the Jewish mythology, with so many legends and fictions, from Adam and Eve to the passage of Israelites across the dry bed of the Red Sea, brings envy to the stories of Greek mythology.

One of the serious problems related with the truthfulness of the Bible consists on the attempt of adapting certain passages of the old testament to events described in the new. Let us see an example that J. W. Rogerson supplies us in page 32 of his book " The Golden Book of the Bible ", in relation to the psalm 22, verse 16b, that in the Hebraic original says: " my hands and my feet were as the one of a lion ". And that it was modified, in the Greek text, for:" they transfixed my hands and my feet ", in order to adjust, so admits the author, the psalm to Jesus' passion at the Golgotha. If true, a deliberate deformation, a falsehood to create a prophecy that was not uttered

And the New Testament is so full of contradictions that it is impossible to identify what Jesus said or did, during the time of his peregrination across Palestine.

Therefore, to insist that many philosophical doctrines, because they were created by man, must be submitted to the judgment of logical thinking, while the Bible deserves to be excluded from an identical procedure, can only be regarded as an absurd and fanatic contradiction. Also, because it is an undeniable fact that the New Testament was sanctioned, not by God, but by Constantine sword.

As our doctrine centers on the historical Jesus, we'll focus our attention on the New Testament, most specifically, on the scriptures of the evangelists.

In the Introduction of this book we referred to certain discrepancies among the Gospels. But there are other aspects to be considered:

They were written about thirty to seventy years after Jesus' death and, throughout these decades, they were exposed to translation mistakes and other casual or purposed alterations. When we are reading any of the four books, we can be reading something that Jesus really stated, something that the Evangelist thought he wanted to say, or even something that was attributed to him by Christian tradition, between the time of the Nazarene death and the date the Gospel was composed. Therefore, the real big enigma is to distinguish among what Jesus in fact wanted to say, what some one close to him thought he intended to say, or what subsequent Christians alleged he had said.

A pure and simple acceptance of what is written in the Gospels, as being a true record of the words and deeds of the historical Jesus, would be a mistake, since the expressions vary from Gospel to Gospel and, certainly, there is no exact agreement among them.

In the languages originated from Latin, the Gospel is called "Evangelio" or "Evangelho", a word that comes from the Greek "Evangelion", that means "good news". Before the appearance of the four classical Gospels, the ‘good news’ had been announced by the disciples, by other members of the Nazarene sect and through epistles, particularly those writen by Paul of Tarso.

Of the four Gospels, those attributed to Mark, Matthew and Luke have a same nucleus of information, although, several times, each evangelist writes his own interpretation. They are called synoptic Gospels.

In the sequence of the new testament, Mark’s Gospel comes second, but there are evidences that it was the first to be written. This Gospel is a simple, short and clear text and the one that seems to express with more exactitude the words of Jesus. Mark was a friend and interpret of Peter and may have received from this disciple the information to compose his Gospel. It is believed that it appeared about 70 a.D.

The prolix Gospel of Matthew that, in its Greek version, comes first in the sequence of the new testament, almost certainly was not written by him. It seems that the publican disciple composed a previous version, in Aramaic, which got lost in the mist of time. Probably he used Mark as his source. Matthew’s Gospel is considered the most Jewish of them all, due to its evident concern in adjusting the deeds and words of Jesus to prophecies of the old testament. From a didactic point of view, its great merit was to have concentrated the different narratives and teachings that compose the Sermon of the Mountain, which, in Luke's Gospel, are dispersed along the text. This Gospel appeared between 75 and 95 a.D.

The third is that of Luke. Its main source is also Mark's Gospel. Luke was a physician, friend of Paul and, probably, the author of the apostles' acts, an important source of information about the first years of the Christian sect. Due to some characteristics inherited from Paul’s epistles, this Gospel is called the "gentile Gospel". And because, in many moments, in the text, Jesus' preaching reveals a certain social appeal, some scholars consider this Gospel as being, also, " that of the poor and the oppressed". It appeared between 75 and 95 a.D.

The fourth Gospel (John’s), is very different from the others. The text is essentially mystic and messianic. Only John talks about Lazarus and his resuscitation. While scholars point out that the synoptic Gospels insinuate that Jesus adopted a reserved attitude in relation to what the historian Vamberto Morais denominates "messianic intensions", in John that attitude disappears entirely. He presents the Nazaren as being the Messiah, from the very beginning of his Gospel.

In opposition to the other evangelists, John concentrates Jesus' activities in Jerusalem and not in Galillee. And, referring to three passovers instead of one, he stretches the time of Jesus pastoral activity from one to three years. But the greatest difference resides in the characteristics of the Nazarene way of preaching. The parables, the colloquial style and the references to little daily events, just disappear. In their places we have long sermons of allegorical or theological content that substitute the practical teachings, which conferred to Jesus, humanism and simplicity. John insinuates to have been present at all the principal moments of the Nazarene pastoral life, but omits the episode of the transfiguration, the passage at Getsemani ! However, the author, by insisting that he was present at Jesus’ crucification, practically identifies himself as "the beloved disciple".

Certainly, the fourth Gospel was not stepped on the synoptic texts.

Either John described what he had witnessed (and then he was, probably, the beloved disciple), or he compiled his Gospel from different narratives created by tradition and from the initial Christian mythology, like the mysterious "Q" manuscripts, or still, because of its messianic character, from the epistles and preaching of Paul.

Leaving aside the allegorical aspects, the excessive messianism and some omissions, this Gospel presents certain aspects of an eyewitness testimony. However, this does not exempt it from mistakes, since an eyewitness can also alter the facts, molding or modifying them, to build a narrative that describes what he would like to have occurred, instead of what really happened. It seems that John’s Gospel appeared in the last years of the first century.

In 1985, in Saint Rose city, California, a project was initiated at the Westar Institute, under the denomination of "Jesus Seminar ", in order to study the historical Jesus, seeking, mainly, to define, through the reading of the Gospels, among what Jesus must have stated, what perhaps he has stated and what he certainly never said. One of its members wrote a book called "The Acts of Jesus", in which he concludes that some of the miracle deeds attributed to the Nazarene, like Lazzarus resuscitation, the transformation of water into wine and the multiplicity of the bread, did not happen!

Let us attempt, now, to one detail that is really intriguing for people preoccupied with the truth:

If we take, as example, the Bible of James, we will see that the evangelist Matthew registered that Jesus spoke 128 times and many of his dissertations were quite extensive. In the Sermon of the Mountain he said 107 sentences with about 2150 words! This may give us a rough idea of how many words attributed to Jesus are written in this Gospel. Considering that Jesus probably preached for three years and that, at that time, tape recorders didn't exist and, as far as one knows, the disciples didn't get anything in writing, then we must attribute them an exceptional memory. Nevertheless, it is impossible that they could have remembered, with absolute fidelity, each word said by Jesus. And, of course, those who heard their tales, when repeating them, used their own words. And that is the way it kept going until some Christian scribe composed the first text... in his own way, naturally.

Therefore, we believe it valid to ask: are the beautiful words that compose the Sermon of the Mountain, just as we read them today, the same uttered by Jesus? Certainly, they are not. But are they similar or very different? We shall never know.

However, putting a pinch of faith into reason, we admit they are similar. Because, even if Jesus didn't say them exactly like they are written, these words have his trademark. And, as " in dubio pro reu ", let us accept them as had been uttered by the Nazarene.

Another strange fact : nowhere in the Gospels there is any mention of Jesus having spoken against slavery. It is hard to accept that the Nazarene should ignore such a theme. He probably positioned himself against it. But as slavery received, if not the blessing, at least the complacence of the Christian doctrine, whatever Jesus spoke about it, was conveniently removed from the Gospels.

In conclusion: the enigma of differentiating between the words that Jesus said and the ones that were attributed to him, will always persist.

Therefore, when writing on this subject, we feel to have only one option: to trust our intuition and our own vision on that incredible wandering preacher, who deeply altered the course of history.

And that is how we shall proceed...