The New Testament Deconstructed

David Fitzgerald, author of “Jesus: Mything in Action,” always assumed there was a Jesus. After all, he says, “How could a major world religion start without a real person at its core to found it?” But then his curiosity kicked in. When he tried to find the historical evidence for Jesus, he found instead contradictions, discrepancies, problem manuscripts and too many Jesuses to count. He asked, Why is there no corroborating evidence for the spectacular miracles or the dead seen rising out of their graves on Easter morning? Philo, for example, was a scholar and observer of current events, but there is nothing from him about the man who wouldn’t stay dead. Another point Fitzgerald questioned was: Why didn’t the Jews stone Jesus to death. That was their method of execution for criminals ( Mishnah Sanhedrin 6:4 h+i). Crucifixion was the Roman method of execution.

The names of authors attributed to the Gospels didn’t write them. The real writers wrote in Greek and were highly sophisticated authors. They used many literary techniques. Fitzgerald says they were theologians, familiar with both pagan classics and Jewish scriptures. They wrote a long time after the time of Jesus, and probably did not even know any eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. Fitzgerald bemoans the fact that there is a dead spot in the manuscript history. In the very early church the individual books were passed around for people to read. There was no way to mass produce them, so they must have become worn out. But between 100 AD and 325 AD they had books, because that is when Emperor Constantine called together the Council of Nicea in order to decide which books to put into the Christian Bible. Other than that the manuscripts are a can of worms. They contain errors of all kinds. When one is copied from another, mistakes are made so the original meaning is lost. The monks in the Middle Ages translated them into Latin and invitably changed the original Greek, which was not the original manuscript to begin with.

After two years of trying to find the historical Jesus, he was ‘stunned and baffled’ to realize that there had been no Jesus at all. *I must put a word in here. The Urantia Book has everything he wants to know, but it has supernatural sources. As an atheist, Fitzgerald is probably a reductionist, a person who only believes what his 5 senses tell him. He’s stuck in the matrix and there is nothing we can do for him.* I realized when I read his book that I had taken on a huge task and I can’t even call myself an amateur. However, I looked over some old notebooks and found that I had done Bible studies in the past. I have some Catholic commentary books on Kindle about the Gospels of John, Mark, Luke and Romans. But his book is free of bias, and his knowledge of the NT is cosmic. He seems to cover everything. Here is an example from the middle of the Gospel of Mark: A favorite motif of Mark is the reversal of expectations, as in “The last shall be first.” Mark earlier has Jesus rebuke Simon Peter, saying, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me”( 8:33-34). But it is a reversal to have Simon not only deny himself, but deny Jesus 3 times, and have another Simon take up Jesus’ cross on his way to Calvary instead. Mark even uses the same words in both cases: ton stauron autou.

Also from the middle of Fitzgerald’s book is a real brain twister. There are records of 2 Jesuses with identical life events. There is our Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus 1.0 and Jesus ben Ananias, Jesus 2.0. Their lives are compared thus: 1. They both come to Jerusalem at the time of a holy festival ( Jesus 1.0 come during Passover: Mark 14:2) Jesus 2.0 comes to Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles according to Flavius Josephus’ book the “Jewish Wars” ( VI 301). 2. They both enter the Temple and suddenly begin to rant against the practices in the Temple, loudly quoting Jeremiah. Well, according to the Urantia Book, Jesus 1.0 did not rant. The noise in the Temple was terrible and Jesus emptied the temple of all the noisy bulls and the others there overturned the tables of the moneychangers. And then Jesus merely said,”My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of robbers.” ( They both quote Jeremiah 7: 11) 3. They both preach daily in the Temple ( Mark 14: 49) ( JW VI 306). 4. They both declare woe on the people of Jerusalem and Judea ( 13: 17) (300, 309). 5. They both predict the Temple will be doomed. 6. They are both arrested by the Jerusalem leaders. 7. They are accused of speaking against the Temple–but wasn’t Jesus 1.0 accused of blasphemy? 8. They are both beaten and sent to the Roman procurator. (Pilate in one case and Albinus in the second case) 9. Both were interrogated but refused to answer any questions. 9. Both are scourged by the Romans. Pilate thinks he should release Jesus 1.0, but he doesn’t. Albinus thinks he should release Jesus 2.0 and does release him. 10. They both were killed and uttered a loud cry.

I must ask, What was Jesus 2.0 doing when he wasn’t acting like Jesus 1.0? Fitzgerald thinks maybe Mark copied Josephus’ account of the life of Jesus 2.0 for his Gospel. Jesus ben Ananias was going around Jerusalem as a prophet bemoaning the fate of Jerusalem and Judea around 60 to 70 AD and the Romans destroyed the Temple around 70. In fact, ben Ananias was on a high wall of the temple crying out about the disaster when a catapult was fired at him and killed him. But Mark’s Gospel contains a whole world of material in addition to those weird comparisons, so I’m not convinced.