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- If you're one of the world's

2.2 billion Christians

wow, that's a lot of people.

You probably think that
around 2,000 years ago

here in the Nazareth mountains,

in the Galilee region of modern Israel,

a man known as Jesus Christ was born.

You probably think of Him as the Messiah,

the son of Yahweh, the God of the Jews.

But, if you're one of the other

5 billion people on the planet,

you probably just think of Jesus

as some kind of wise man

who had a religious cult

built up around him after his death.

Or maybe you're one of those people

who believe he never even really existed

he's just some kind of literary myth,

like a Hercules or King Arthur.

But whichever camp you're in,

I think we can all agree

that Jesus is one of the most influential

and intriguing figures
in all of world history.

About 40 years ago,

when I was a good little Catholic boy

going to Sunday school,

I was taught the story of Jesus.

It went something like this.

- [Narrator] About 2,000 years ago,

a young married woman, still a virgin,

was made pregnant by the God of the Jews.

She gave birth to a baby in a barn.

And three wise men found
Him by following a star

so they could worship Him

and give some gold and scented oils.

When He grew up, Jesus
walked around Judea,

telling thousands of people He was God

and performing miracles,

such as magically making
fish and bread appear,

turning water into wine,

and raising people from the dead.

One night, He told his
friends to eat some bread,

which was His flesh

and drink some wine, which was His blood.

Then, the Jewish authorities
who were angry with him,

turned him over to the Romans

who actually wanted to let Him go.

But the Jews convinced
them to crucify Him.

But then a few days later,

He rose from the dead

and told His friends

that dying was secretly the plan all along

because His death wiped
out the sins of the world.

His friends wrote down what happened

in a book and started a new religion.

But then, the Romans
started persecuting them

until one day, the Romans
changed their minds

and decided to become Christians instead.

At the end of the world,

Jesus will return to judge
the living and the dead.

- To be honest when I was a little kid,

the story didn't make
a lot of sense to me.

I remember thinking,

so this dude has magical
powers, and he's invisible,

and watching me when I sleep at night?

It all seemed a little bit creepy.

But as an adult, I started learning more

about the history of early Christianity.

As I read the Bible more carefully,

and read the works of modern
New Testament scholars

and ancient historians,

I started to realize

that the Sunday school
version of the Jesus story,

was vastly different to the story

as it appears in the Bible.

The actual story is far more complicated,

and far more interesting.

So I thought I'd go out

and interview a range of
world-renowned biblical scholars,

and historians and academics.

And ask them to help me tell the story,

of how Christianity

went from being some sort of
fringe Jewish personality cult,

from the backwaters of the Roman empire,

to a point where it was the
state religion of that empire,

wielding enormous power over
the emperors themselves.

So let's get back to the Sunday
school version of the story.

What do scholars think about
how accurate that version is.

- Research that was happening

at the beginning of the 20th century.

A German scholar Walter Bauer,

came to the conclusion

that in fact, that picture
is a very manufactured one.

- And it's not like Jesus
was walking around Palestine

saying, "Hi, I'm God.

"I'm gonna die for your sins soon.

"But until then, how about I tell you

"a few good cracking
Sunday school stories,

"and then afterwards you can
get down with worshiping me."

That may be the basic view,

but that's not quite what happened.

- [Cameron] So how did it happen?

How did that version become the story

most of my Christian
friends seem to believe?

- A lot of Christians don't
actually read the Bible.

And if they do read the Bible,

they don't read it historically.

They don't read it thinking about,

what the story is telling you

about the origins of Christianity.

- They look at this uplifting passage

or that uplifting passage.

They don't compare the
Gospels to one another.

They don't look at the really weird stuff.

So they feel like they know the Bible,

but it's a very selective knowledge.

It's a sort of greatest hits

or the most uplifting,

most seemingly relevant
stuff to the 21st century.

- They're looking for a single verse

that will inspire them for
their journey that day.

And that's perfectly fine,

there's no criticism of that.

But the problem with that approach,

is that you're not
actually reading the Bible

as it's intended to be read.

- Christians read bits,

but do they read it systematically?

Well, systematically but not necessarily

for historical reasons.

Systematically to clarify their beliefs.

- And they just sort of don't get to see,

all the really strange stuff,

all the contradictions,
all the discrepancies.

- How do you go from being a religion,

that celebrates somebody who
has died on a Roman cross,

to a religion that celebrates that cross

and takes that cross forward into battle?

That's the story of
Christianity within 300 years.

Going from a superstition
to being the state religion,

that's absolutely extraordinary.

And that is what the early
Roman historians called it,

they called it a superstition.

- But before we get
into the story of Jesus,

I think we need to wind the
clock back a little bit,

and talk about the world

into which Christianity was born.

(calm ancient music)

A long time ago,

there was a man known as Lord,
Liberator, Redeemer, Savior,

simultaneously, fully
human and fully divine.

The son of God and God.

The bringer of peace and salvation,

sent into the world in the form of a man

to forgive the sins of the people.

(lively orchestral music)

♪ Hallelujah. ♪

That's Augustus Caesar.

If you ask most people
living in the Roman empire,

right about the time Jesus was born,

who the Son of God was,

most of them would have
told you it was this guy.

Augustus was the adopted son

of the original JC, Julius Caesar.

The great Roman general

who was stabbed to death in 44 BCE.

After he was assassinated,

the Roman Senate declared

that he ascended into the
heavens to become a god.

And Augustus as his adopted son

was therefore called?

- Divi Filius, the son of the deified.

It was new to Rome,

because it was Augustus himself,

who saw what he thought was the soul of,

or a part of Caesars'
going up to the heavens.

And that's why he can then claim

that he is the son, the adopted son

not the natural son, clearly,

the son of a divinity.

- [Cameron] Another title
bestowed upon Augustus was savior,

because he ended a 100 years of civil war.

- He brought peace, he
brought peace to Rome.

He brought peace to the empire.

- And then, according to tradition

somewhere around the middle
of the reign of Augustus,

Jesus was born.

(lively orchestral music)

So several decades before Jesus
even appears on the scene,

Romans are pretty familiar with the idea

that somebody can die and become a god,

or be the son of a god

and the savior of mankind.

So who exactly was Jesus?

Well, it kind of depends on who you ask.

Some scholars believe he
was an apocalyptic preacher

or a political troublemaker.

Others think he was more of a wise sage,

or a hippie pacifist who
preached love and brotherhood.

It's a little bit strange

that after 2,000 years,

scholars still can't agree
on exactly who Jesus was.

One thing they all do agree on though,

Jesus was a Jew.

(playful instrumental music)

If you look at pictures of
Jesus in most churches today,

you'll see a white guy
with long brown hair,

neatly trimmed beard, blue eyes.

But Christianity started out
as a Jewish personality cult,

Jesus was a Jew.

So he probably would
have looked more like,

I don't know, DJ Khaled than Jared Leto.

He would have been a dark-skinned,

brown-eyed Palestinian.

Let's put it this way,

if Jesus returned and
tried to board a plane

in the United States today

he'd probably get taken

into a little room and randomly
screened (siren ringing)

And when I say Jesus was a Jew,

I don't just mean ethnically a Jew,

I mean a religious Jew.

In fact, he was a very religious Jew,

and so were most of the
early members of his sect.

- Jesus is Torah observant,

Peter is Torah observant,

James is Torah observant,

and Paul is Torah observant.

- [Narrator] The Torah
is the first five books

of the Hebrew Bible.

What Christians call, the Old Testament.

- Jesus and the guys who
ran his group after he died,

Peter, the guy he left in charge,

and James, who according to tradition

was one of Jesus' brothers,

were Jews, not Christians.

And they weren't trying
to start a new religion.

They weren't trying to reject Judaism,

they were just trying to fix it.

- Jesus was not only Torah observant,

he actually made the law
stricter rather than looser.

The law says, "Don't commit adultery,"

Jesus says, "Don't think
about it," that's harder.

The laws says, "Don't murder,"

Jesus says, "Don't be angry."

- Jesus was a first century
AD Galilean Jewish prophet.

He was a prophet who believed

that God was about to intervene

decisively in human history.

- And being a religious
Jew in the first century,

must have been pretty depressing.

For hundreds of years,

Jewish prophets had promised
that their God, Yahweh,

really thought they were
pretty, pretty special.

They were his favorite tribe.

He had their back,

and he was gonna make
sure they ruled the world.

But for some reason,
Yahweh hadn't delivered.

Century after century,

the Jews had been invaded and conquered.

In fact, just a few years
after Jesus was born,

his homeland had finally become
an official Roman province.

- Jewish people could see

that things were not
going particularly well,

things were not flourishing.

They were subject to external powers,

whether they'd be the great
kings, the solicit kings,

or whether it be the Romans later on.

- Instead of coming to the conclusion,

that their prophets were wrong,

or that Yahweh had lied to them,

the Jews just decided they
must have disappointed Him

and He was ignoring them or
not answering their prayers.

So anyway, the Jews decided
they had to be better,

and make Yahweh happy
with them again, but how?

(playful instrumental music)

- The most important thing to know,

is that there was no agreed standard,

of what being a good Jew
was in the first century.

- Just like there are hundreds

of different versions
of Christianity today,

and they all think that
they are the right one.

We know that in the first century,

there were lots of different
versions of Judaism as well.

And they were all trying to figure out

the magic trick to get them back,

into Yahweh's good book.

- This is a situation

that is eventually going
to be rectified by God.

Destroy the Roman oppressors,

think end of "Raiders of
the Lost Ark" for instance,

where the fire comes down
and burns up all the Nazis.

That's probably the view

that a decent number of Jews had.

- Now, some Jews living
in the first century,

believe that God was going
to send someone to save them.

They called that person, the Messiah.

(gentle music)

- So how do you know who's a Messiah?

Different people will give
you different answers,

and there were different
messianic candidates to follow.

(pages fluttering)

- Oh, I'm just looking
for the official guide

to knowing who the chosen one is.

I'm sure it's gotta be in here
somewhere (pages fluttering)

- There's no messianic
checklist in Judaism,

as if, you make sure
your mother is a virgin

when you're conceived,

walk on water, raise the dead,

die a sacrificial death

come back after three days, and ascend.

Some Jews were expecting a shepherd,

others were expecting the Angel Michael,

still others were expecting a priest,

and still others, a warrior.

Some people thought John
the Baptist was the Messiah,

and he doesn't fit any of those
categories (book slamming)

- When you use the term Messiah,

Messiah is fine, it means anointed,

it means that God has
anointed this person with oil.

But when you're talking about Messiah,

you're really talking about somebody

who is a king, in the line of

the greatest of all the
Jewish kings, King David.

And lots of Jews believed that,

a King David-like figure,

would establish himself in Jerusalem,

and he would transform Israel.

- Restore the kingdom
politically was part of that.

Bring the people back from exile,

set up the homeland again,

restore their independence,
drive out the foreign invader.

- [Cameron] Some Jews thought the Messiah

was gonna be a great warrior

to lead them to a military victory.

Others thought he might
be a charismatic preacher,

who would convince the entire world

to believe in Yahweh.

Others, they didn't think
about the Messiah much at all.

- Not all Jews wanted a Messiah.

Because normally if someone's going around

calling themselves a Messiah,

it's gonna lead to war,

war means death, famine,
bloodshed, that type of thing.

So not everyone wanted a Messiah,

not everyone even believed in one.

- So there's a variety of expectations.

Certainly the dominant one,

is this political military figure.

- So why is this important?

Well, when Jesus is dragged

before the Roman Governor
of Judea, Pontius Pilate,

the charges laid against him,

are that he's claiming to
be the Christos, the Christ.

Which is just the Greek word for Messiah.

In other words, he's claiming
to be the King of the Jews.

- [Narrator] Mark 15:2,
"Pilate asked Jesus,

"Are you the King of the Jews?"

- Judea at the time was ruled by Rome.

They didn't have a king of their own.

They had a governor who reported

to the Roman Emperor, Tiberius Caesar.

Claiming to be the Messiah,

was an act of political
rebellion against Rome.

A modern equivalent would be,

declaring you're the rightful
King of the United States.

Now the important thing to understand

about the Jewish concept of a Messiah,

was that he wasn't supposed to be divine,

and he wasn't gonna have magical powers,

he was just gonna be a regular man.

- They did sometimes
talk about the Messiah

as the son of God,

but not in the later Christian sense.

They meant son of God,

in the sense of good Israelite,

because all Israelites are sons of God

in the adopted sense.

- Anointed by God, special to God,

but like their kings David, Solomon,

and the other good
kings, yeah, fully human.

- Somebody that God has
placed on the throne,

to rule in his stead.

But it doesn't really mean,

somebody who has,

from all time been sitting

at the right hand of God, the Father.

It's a different concept from that,

it's much more Jewish,

and it's much more grounded than that.

- The Son of God,

would only have been used,

I think in a metaphorical sense,

not in the way that we come to expect

with Christian doctrine.

- The early Christians took
that and ran with it further.

- It really does remind me

of how Augustus Caesar,

was anointed to be the adopted son

of his father, Julius Caesar,

and therefore became the son of god.

Here's an interesting
thing about Jesus' name.

In Hebrew, his name was Yeshua,

which basically translates
as God saves or savior.

And as we've already seen,
Christ means Messiah,

and the Messiah was
supposed to be the Savior.

So Jesus, the Christ,

translates as Savior, the Savior.

According to the Jewish
historian Josephus,

there were actually quite a few guys

who people thought might be the Messiah,

walking around Judea,

roughly around about
the same time as Jesus.

None of them succeeded, they all failed.

They were all killed,

and can you really be the Messiah

if you don't achieve anything?

- Which is why the vast majority of Jews

in the middle of the first
century don't follow Jesus.

- Because a Messiah was not
supposed to die on a cross,

executed by the Romans,

because this is somebody

who's supposed to lead a
successful military victory.

If you just get executed
as a revolutionary,

in the eyes of most
Jews that rules you out.

- [Cameron] Can't possibly be the Messiah.

- Can't be the Messiah in
that precise understanding.

So what they, they re-interpret,

they re-invent the meaning of the word.

(funny instrumental music)

- A crucified Messiah was
kind of like fried ice cream.

It's an oxymoron, it's a paradox,

and the Messiah doesn't get crucified.

He rises up, defeats the Romans,

and establishes a new divided kingdom.

- What is this?

So you wanna be a Messiah?

- Well, the Messiah actually.
- Okay.

Did you kick the Romans out of Judea?

- Well, no, not yet, but I tried.

- Have you converted the world to Judaism?

- No, I'm planning on
it, but you know it's a--

- Did you bring about world
peace in your lifetime?

- Well, not yet, no but--

- (laughs) Boy bye, you really don't have

the qualifications to be
the Messiah, now do you?

Maybe you should try carpentry.

I see you have some
experience in that area, next.

- So someone came up with the idea,

to pitch the concept of the
Messiah to the Gentiles.

(speaking gibberish)

- Wait, I've got an idea.

What if we market it to Gentiles?

(audience laughs)

- So what you see in
early Christian writings,

is a sort of re-definition of a Messiah.

- Which is a pretty wacky
idea when you think about it,

because the whole point of the Messiah,

was he was supposed to save
the Jews from the Gentiles,

not save the Gentiles.

- [Narrator] A Gentile is
someone who isn't Jewish.

- But of course, the
Gentiles didn't know that.

They didn't know that the Messiah

was supposed to come and defeat them.

And they had already been indoctrinated,

over the last 100 years,

with the idea that a man could die

and become a god,

so why not this Jesus guy?

The Greeks and Romans already accepted

a whole pantheon of gods.

So there was no big deal
about adding one more,

especially if this one is promising,

that the end of the world is coming soon

and that people who pray to him, as a God,

will get the reward of eternal paradise.

Something the older gods didn't promise.

And who was the number one salesman

for this new kind of Messiah?

(ominous instrumental music)

- The earliest references to Jesus

come from the letters of the Apostle Paul.

- [Cameron] The New Testament
contains 14 letters,

supposedly written by Paul.

But, many scholars only believe

seven of those are authentic.

Despite his letters being stuffed down

the back of the New Testament.

Paul is actually the first person,

who ever wrote anything about Jesus,

at least as far as we know.

But Paul was a bit like
that friend you have,

who just started watching "Breaking Bad".

He was a bit late to the party.

- Paul never met Jesus,

but he knew people who knew him.

- One of the things that
really surprised me,

when I started studying Christianity,

was that the earliest and most
prolific writer about Jesus,

never even knew him.

Never even saw him, for that matter.

Now Paul says that he knew people

who said they knew Jesus,

but did he really know them?

We've only got his word for it.

And before he joined the Jesus bus,

Paul was a hater.

- Paul actually had letters
from the High Priest,

that enabled him to go and
persecute earlier Christians.

- [Narrator] The High Priest was a member

of the Sadducee sect of Judaism.

They controlled the
sacrifices in the temple

and didn't believe in the afterlife,

or the resurrection of the dead.

"But Saul began to destroy the church.

"Going from house to house,

"he dragged off both men and women,

"and put them in prison."

- In his own words, Paul
says he was beating up

and arresting Christians because.

- Paul says, that to him as a Jew,

the idea of a crucified Messiah,

the Messiah going and getting
crucified, was nonsense.

- A few years after Jesus dies,

Paul goes from beating them up

to becoming their number one salesperson.

Why the change of heart?

Well, according to his own letters,

written in the late 40s CE,

about 15 to 20 years after Jesus died.

The ghost of Jesus appeared to Paul

and told him to go preach to the Gentiles.

But how do you convince a
bunch of Greeks and Romans

to worship a dead Jew?

Well, Paul came up with four
fantastic marketing ideas,

that continue to resonate
with billions of people

around the world to this very day.

(ominous instrumental music)

- [Narrator] "For what I received,

"I passed onto you, as a first importance.

"That Christ died for our sins
according to the scriptures."

- For Paul, the Messiah is
not really a warrior king,

or a charismatic preacher,

he's more of a human sacrifice to Yahweh.

See Paul seems to think
that Jesus had to die,

so Yahweh would forgive the human race,

for Adam having eaten the
magical piece of fruits.

Oh, merci madame.

Now most Romans and in fact,

most people on the planet,

had never even heard of Yahweh,

let alone Adam's act
of grand theft fruito.

So it seems a little bit harsh

to sentence them to an
eternity of damnation.

Now, listen, I know most Christians

don't like thinking of Jesus

as a human sacrifice to an angry God,

but, let's be honest

at least on paper,

that's exactly what it looks like.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,

human sacrifice is the offering

of the life of a human being to a deity.

Centuries before Paul,

both the Jews and the Romans,

had replaced human sacrifices
with animal sacrifices.

But he's bringing it back baby,

with the greatest sacrifice of them all.

- Not just a human, but a son of a God.

The best sacrifice you can possibly have,

is this superhuman sacrifice.

And because it was given,

that blood can save everybody.

- And Paul doesn't stop there,

he's resurrecting more old ideas.

(melancholy orchestra music)

- It comes then down

to the fundamental thing for Christianity,

is Jesus is raised from the dead.

That becomes the one thing

that makes everything else
pile into insignificance.

Okay, he hasn't driven the
Romans out of Jerusalem,

but God raised him from the dead.

No matter what else happens,

whatever failure he was in his life,

he is approved by God.

- Like human sacrifice,

the idea of a resurrected
God wasn't original

to Paul or Christianity.

Now like every great marketer,

Paul knows how to take a negative,

the fact that Jesus didn't
really kick the Romans

out of Judea before he died,

and spin it into a positive.

He says, "Wait, wait, wait,
wait you don't understand.

"He's gonna come back,

"and then he's gonna destroy
every authority and power."

He's like the Terminator,
"I will be back."

You know what's cooler than
a warrior king Messiah?

A warrior king Messiah with super powers.

But, not many Jews

bought into the whole
super powered Messiah idea.

They tended to call BS on all of that,

so Paul decides he needs
to find a new audience.

Paul's the guy that
takes it to the Gentiles.

(ominous instrumental music)

- No, the original sect

just wasn't hitting the
right market, essentially.

And Paul figured this out,
consciously or unconsciously,

and re-told it to be a
successful in that market.

And that's why it exploded.

Which I think led to the
doom of the original sect,

because Paul had a much
bigger market to tap,

so way more Gentiles than Jews.

Way more Gentiles who
are excited by this idea

than Jews would be.

And so you had,

the church has explode
in size with Gentiles.

- Now of course, in order to
market Judaism to the Gentiles,

Paul needed to make some
pretty fundamental changes.

As far as all of the other early Jesus

worshipers were concerned,

in order to join their little club,

you had to either be or become a Jew.

But of course, probably the biggest hurdle

for most Gentiles in becoming a Jew,

was that you had to get circumcised,

whether you were a child or an adult.

But Pauly Walnut says,
"Oh, forgot about it."

- Just the marketing genius it took

to get rid of that one restriction,

"Oh, we don't have to do that?

"Sure, sure, I'll become
a Jew, yeah, that's fine.

"I'll take on this new religion,

"we don't have to chop
our penis up anymore."

(man Walking) (drink pouring)

- Can I interest you in
a new form of Judaism?

- No, thanks, heard it all before.

- What if I told you

that you don't have to chop
off the end of your knob?

(glass shutters)
- Go on.

- Paul's type of preaching
was ideal for them.

Oh, we can be in that Jewish trajectory,

but without all the stuff
we don't like, sign me up.

- But what do the original disciples

think about all of this?

Well, as they were Torah-observing Jews,

we can only imagine.

- So, Paul, we've been hearing rumors

that you've been making up

some fakakta stories about Jesus.

What exactly are you telling people?

- Just the usual stuff, James.

Jesus was a real mensch
who died for our sins.

He's coming back any day
now with superpowers,

yada yada yada.

Oh, and Gentiles don't need
to become Jews anymore.

- Whoa! Are you crazy?

This is a Jews-only club, bubala.

Anyone who wants to get in,

needs to lose the end of his schwantz.

Non-negotiable, you schmuck.

- Peter, bubbee, the Gentiles
really like their foreskin.

Let them keep it.

- Oh, (speaks in foreign language)

Listen up, buds, you know bupkis.

We were his best friends.

James is his brother.

If he wanted to let the goyim in,

he would have told us.

- Listen, I'll tell you what.

You do your thing and I'll do my thing,

and we'll just see who wins, mazel tov.

- I think a lot of
Jesus' original disciples

were very suspicious of Paul.

He wasn't part of the original band,

he didn't know Jesus

and even worse than that,

the young Paul had persecuted the church.

He was trying to bring down the church,

so why should they trust this guy?

- Paul doesn't really seem to care

what Peter and James think anyway.

He says that when he did meet them,

they didn't tell him anything

that he didn't already know.

- He is very clear,

repeatedly in his letters

that he learned this,

his Gospel from no man,

no human source whatsoever.

- [Narrator] "I want you to
know, brothers and sisters,

"that the Gospel I preached
is not of human origin.

"I did not receive it from
any man nor was I taught it.

"Rather, I received it by
revelation from Jesus Christ."

- When he does mention his sources,

it's the divine, it's the Lord, it's God,

and it's the scriptures also.

- Because he feels, well,

I've got every bit as much of a right

to be called an apostle as you all have.

But they said, "Yeah, but
you didn't meet Jesus."

So, his big answer to that is to say,

"I did meet Jesus.

"I met him on the road to Damascus.

"I met the resurrected Jesus."

- Paul says that the ghost of Jesus

told him he could throw out

a thousand years of
Jewish law and tradition.

But they don't seem to believe him

anyone can claim to have a revelation,

and he doesn't really have
a great reputation either.

It was only just a few years ago

that he was having their
friends arrested and beaten up.

So they all seemed to butt heads.

- There's one story where Paul and Peter

have a stand up row.

A stand up row in Antioch
in front of everybody,

because they disagree on the implications

of the movement that they're part of.

- According to Paul's own account,

he started calling Peter
a fraud to his face,

in front of everybody.

- [Narrator] "When Peter came to Antioch,

"I opposed him to his face,

"because he was clearly in the wrong."

- Now, Peter was the first
disciple that Jesus ever had.

Can you imagine what must have
been going through his mind

when this Paul guy,

who never even knew Jesus,

started getting up in his
face in front of people?

Unfortunately we only have
Paul's side of the story.

- When Paul is in a bad mood,

and he's in a really bad mood

in the Epistle to the Galatians.

He wants to say, "They
didn't add anything to me,

"there's nothing that they told me

"that added anything to the
Gospel, which I got from God."

But we know that this isn't true.

- [Man] As you imagine him pacing

up and down a room, yelling,

while someones taking it all down,

it's the, that's the
best way to imagine Paul

creating Galatians, a
Letter to the Galatians.

And it's trying to talk about

a lot of affection,

and love, and care as well.

So maybe he was bipolar, I don't know.

(deep voice growling)

- And it's not just Peter and James

that Paul's having a
problem with at this stage.

You see, even at this early
phase of the Jesus movement,

there seem to be a number of
different factions emerging.

And just like today,

they all claim to be
the one true movement.

- So we have an example of,

in First Corinthians,

Paul is trying to respond to a letter

that the Corinthians wrote to him saying,

hey, this other Apostle, Apollos,

came by and taught us all
this other new weird stuff,

what's, it seems to contradict yours.

What's what are we
supposed to make of this?

But you'd immediately ask
me who's this Apollos guy?

He's not on any lists of disciples.

- Paul calls these other
missionaries false apostles,

even though he's the guy
that never even knew Jesus.

Oh, the cahoneys on this guy.

We know that in the first century

there were a whole range
of divergent Jewish sects.

So it seems entirely possible

that there were a range of
savior cults running around

at the same time as Paul,

using similar terminology.

Let's just keep in mind

that both Jesus and
Messiah both mean Savior.

- What's the name of your Savior?

- We just call him the Savior.

- So Jesus.
- Yeah, yeah, Jesus.

- What's the name of your Savior?

- We just call him the Savior.

- So Jesus.
- Yeah, yeah, Jesus.

(comical music)

- Each cult probably would have had

their favorite Messiah stories,

their favorite miracles and
their favorite teachings.

Each of course would have had

their own missionaries as well.

- There were manifest
signs in the New Testament,

about a big differences.

And when you look at other stuff

that didn't get into the New Testament,

it becomes real obvious.

- At one point, Paul gets so angry

about these competing missionaries,

that he writes in his letters,

he wishes they would cut
their own genitals off.

- [Narrator] "As for those agitators,

"I wish they would go the whole way

"and emasculate
themselves," Galatians 5:12.

- Emasculate means removal of the penis

and the testicles,

not just castration,
but the whole package.

So much for turning the other cheek.

And remember, this is the same guy

that was beating up and
arresting Christians

just 20 years earlier.

Forget about what the disciples

would have thought about him for a second.

What would Jesus have thought about Paul.

As a Torah observant Jew,

I suspect that he may have found

some of Paul's rhetoric
a little bit heretical.

- I think that if Jesus had said,

nobody has to follow
the Jewish law anymore,

then why would Paul have
had such a hard time

convincing Jesus' apostles of this.

- The Gospels record,

certain missionary instructions

that Jesus gave his followers.

But they're not detailed
toward going to the Gentiles.

- Which if you ask me is a little bit

of an oversight on Jesus's behalf.

- All versions of Christianity today

are basically descendants of
Paul's version of Christianity.

And that was just one sect.

- Now Paul's not going
after the well educated,

the Gentiles or the rich and the famous,

Paul's gonna take it down market.

- It becomes a religion for
the poor and the downtrodden

and the oppressed and the underprivileged,

who can all find in this, a
sense of a better tomorrow.

- The Greco-Roman religions
didn't really offer much

in the way of an afterlife,

unless you were some sort
of great hero or King,

and heaven doesn't
actually turn up in Judaism

much either, barely gets a
mention in the Old Testament.

But Paul is saying, you can get eternity

in paradise and he's
offering it to everyone.

And who doesn't wanna
spend eternity in paradise.

Hell, I'd be happy with
a weekend in paradise.

So Paul talks a lot

about what Jesus is gonna
do when he comes back.

But how much does he have
to say about the life

and teachings of Jesus

during his actual time on earth?

- Paul wrote a lot.

He wrote a massive chunk
of the New Testament

and we don't even get incidental mentions,

not even once about
miracles that Jesus did,

healings, it's absurd.

- Now one of the explanations
for this might be

that Paul's letters really
dealing with disputes

in his communities about
how to be good Christians.

But isn't that the perfect time

to be quoting the founder of the firm?

- When it comes to disputes about that,

he could have easily,

he could have easily said,

Jesus said this,

when Jesus was in Jerusalem, he said that.

No, what we get is Paul speaking

from his own authority.

He gets his information
directly from the Lord above.

From his celestial Christ

and also from the earliest scriptures.

- Paul briefly mentions
that Jesus was born,

died and resurrected in some form.

But that's pretty much it

when it comes to talking about the life

and teachings of Jesus.

There are a few passages where he says

he got something from the Lord,

but as he claims no
human told him anything,

he might just be referring
to the ghost of Jesus.

- [Narrator] "To the
married, I give this command.

"Not I, but the Lord.

"A wife must not separate
from her husband.

"First Corinthians 7:10."

- But Paul has zero to say

about the miracles that
Jesus did in his lifetime.

There's no turning water into wine,

no multiplying, loaves and fishes.

There's no walking on water,

there's no healing the sick with his spit.

There's no exorcisms,

there's no bringing
people back from the dead.

Which is kind of strange

if you think about it.

If you knew somebody who
could do all of those things,

you'd never stop talking about it.

- Whether that's really strange

or whether that's because for example,

he takes for granted

that they know that
already, is hard to be sure.

- Maybe Paul assume that they
already knew the stories.

But we have to remember

that Paul's writing his letters,

20 to thirty years before
the Gospels were written.

Maybe he'd never heard the stories.

Maybe he had heard them,

but didn't believe them.

Maybe they were invented later

or maybe Paul had heard the stories,

but just didn't think
they were very important.

Maybe he thought they were
completely irrelevant.

- Look at what Christian
preachers do today.

When they wanna say what
you should be doing,

what you should be thinking,

what you should be behaving.

What do they say?

They say, Jesus says this,

Jesus says this.

Jesus just did this, Jesus taught that.

So why doesn't Paul?

Why does Paul never say,
what would Jesus do?

- What did matter to Paul

was converting as many people as possible,

as quickly as possible,

because he's absolutely convinced

that time is running out.

(clock ticking)

(ominous instrumental music)

- Paul believes that the end of the world

is dawning any minute.

Everyday he gets up in the morning

he thinks it could be today.

- [Narrator] "Then we who
are alive, who are left,

"shall be caught up together

"with them in the clouds,

"to meet the Lord in the air."

First Thessalonians 4:17.

- But then time goes on

and the end still hasn't arrived yet.

So Paul, like every
doomsday prophet starts

to hedge his bets a little.

- Suddenly now we've got Christians dying

and that's not supposed to happen.

Jesus is meant to return.

This kingdom of God

is meant to be ushered in
and it's not happening.

So there needs to be a rethink.

- Well, he says oh jeez, right.

About the resurrection.

You see, yeah, some are gonna die,

but Christ will come back

and the dead in Christ will rise first.

We'll have the, we'll be second in line.

We'll be transformed.

- Paul was clearly wrong,
the end didn't come.

Paul eventually realizes

that he's more likely than not

going to die before Jesus returns.

- Paul claims the ghost of Jesus

told him the end of the world

would come within his lifetime.

You'd think if God told you,

the end of the world was happening soon,

you'd be pretty careful
about getting confirmation.

- Blessed are the meek,

turn the other cheek.

The world will end in your lifetime,

let him who hath not sinned.

(clearing his throat) -
Excuse me there the Lord,

could you just repeat that last bit

I'm not sure I heard you correctly.

The world's gonna end in my lifetime.

Yeah, yeah, in your lifetime.

- Are you sure?

- I find your lack of faith disturbing.

- Oh, hey, okay.

Chill, big guy.

I just hate to get
something like that wrong.

Wouldn't want that on my conscience.

- So as far as I can tell,

one of five things must have happened.

Either one, Jesus made a mistake.

Two, Jesus lied.

Three, Jesus changed his mind

and just forgot to tell Paul.

Four, Paul misunderstood Jesus,

or five, Paul just made it all up.

- This is a debate among
historical Jesus scholars

about whether Jesus believed,

that the end of the world would

happen in his lifetime or not.

The vast, vast majority of scholars

who say, "Nah looks pretty clear from,

"Jesus' teachings as
preserved in the Gospels

"that he really does
expect the end to come

in his lifetime."

So he seems to have been

like many people before him,

and pretty much everybody after him.

Everybody who's predicted

that the world was going
to end in their lifetime

thus far has been wrong.

And Jesus would seem to
have been one of those.

- Now, if you don't like to think of Jesus

as getting something that important wrong,

let's go with Paul made it all up.

And if he did.

- Maybe he's lying about

all this other stuff we're using him for.

- Did he really meet Peter and James?

We only have his word for it.

Did the ghost of Jesus

really appear to him

and tell him to preach to the Gentiles.

So if Paul is throwing out

all of this Jewish law and tradition,

telling people that the end is nigh

and having public arguments
with the original apostles,

why did they tolerate him?

Well from how it appears in the Bible

it seems that James and Paul

agreed to some kind of payment.

- There's a lot of references in letters

to him collecting money from his churches.

It's clear that some of these
churches are challenging him,

are like, what are you
doing with this money?

And he has to like, justify that,

you know, no, no, don't worry

I'm not running off with it.

I'm doing what I said
I was gonna do with it.

Which is, he says,

taking it back to the saints in Jerusalem,

you know, the Holy ones in Jerusalem.

And we're not entirely
sure what that means,

but you can be sure

it certainly meant

that the Jerusalem church,

these heads are getting a cut.

- Whether we wanna call that a bribe

in terms of, let's collect this money

so that the Jerusalem Christians

don't send missionaries,

to make our lives more difficult.

It's hard to say.

And Paul's not even sure that.

In Romans, he's not even sure

that they're going to
accept this collection.

He says, he expresses anxiety

about taking this back to Jerusalem

because he thinks, well,
maybe they'll reject it.

So that sounds a bit like a bribe.

- [Cameron] And in fact,
he probably gets arrested.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If we follow the book
of acts at that point,

what seems to be going on

when he is in Jerusalem and is arrested,

is that, that's when he was
gonna take the collection back

and put it at the feet of
the apostles in Jerusalem.

That doesn't seem to have worked out.

Paul went to Rome and was
under house arrest there.

So presumably Paul got
executed by the Romans.

- Acts of the Apostles
written many decades later,

vaguely blames Paul's arrest in Jerusalem,

on some Jews who complained

that Paul was leading people, astray.

- [Narrator] "Fellow Israelites help us.

"This is the man who teaches

"everyone everywhere against

"our people and our law and this place."

- Of course, the people
he's taking the money to

in Jerusalem also fit that description.

They are Jews, who think that
Paul is leading people astray

with his idolatrous teachings

about abandoning the law.

Really in many ways,

I think we can say that Paul's the guy

that invented Christianity
as we know it today.

If it wasn't for Paul,

I think most Christians today

would probably be Jews.

(calm instrumental music)

Somewhere between the
years of 60 and 70 CE

it's assumed that Peter,
Paul and James all died.

We don't really know much about where

or when or how it happened.

One thing we do know happened

during this period though,

is some Jewish zealots

decided to rise up
against Roman occupation.

And it led to a devastating war.

We don't know who started it,

could have been the Judean people's front,

could have been the
people's front of Judea.

- [Small Voice] No, no.
- We know

it lasted for four years

and the Jews got completely destroyed.

As it turns out,

Yahweh didn't send a Messiah to save them.

As punishment for the rebellion

the Romans completely destroyed
the temple in Jerusalem.

Something else happened

just after the destruction of the temple.

The first Christian Gospel was written.

- The earliest of the Gospels

is probably the Gospel of Mark.

Which seems to be written about 70 AD

maybe a few years before,

maybe a few years after.

- Ironically, the first thing I run into

again and again as I
traveled North America

and talked to people,

who either were Christians
or are Christians

and they often tell me, the first is like,

they were shocked to find out

that Mark was written before Matthew.

They were shocked to find out

that the letters of Paul

were written before the Gospels.

- Here's something that
might shock some Christians.

Most scholars don't think Mark was written

by an eye witness

or even somebody who knew an eye witness.

- The tradition in the second century

is that Mark was written

by a disciple of the apostle Peter.

And that he was sort of Peter's secretary

who followed him around

and took Peter's sermon notes

and arranged them into sort
of a narrative about Jesus.

Is that who Mark really was?

It's hard to say.

- If Mark had been Peter's scribe,

Mark would say, I am Peter's scribe.

That's how ancient
historiography was written.

- And despite it being called,

the Gospel, according to Mark,

the document doesn't actually
state who the author was.

- The difficulty with Mark's Gospel

is it's like the other
Gospels, it's anonymous.

We don't really know where it comes from.

Most people now think that it's unlikely

that Mark is kind of taking
down Peter's dictation

or anything like that.

- But for the sake of simplicity

let's refer to him as Mark,

otherwise, we're gonna end
up in Prince territory,

you know, the author
formerly known as Mark.

And how's Mark's Gospel connected
to the Jewish Roman war.

- Mark is kind of
obsessed with the temple,

as if something recent and
traumatic has happened.

So it makes a lot of sense

to say that Mark was written,

after the fall of the temple in AD 70.

- The Romans had just come in

and destroyed the temple

and just ended the cult,
basically braised the city.

The city of God destroyed God's temple.

So this is a big existential issue.

If you're a sect that stems from the Jews

and the Jewish God just
let heathens come in

and destroy his own house,

this is a problem.

This is a marketing problem, right.

It's a PR problem, so
how do you explain that?

- For Mark, a lot of Mark is structured

to answer that and say like,

well, here's the answer.

- They've got to reinvent themselves.

- [Cameron] According to the
Jewish historian Josephus,

who actually fought in the war

over a million Jews died.

- This is a profoundly
traumatic time for Judaism.

They've lost the land,

they've lost the temple.

They've lost the sense of God's blessing

on their everyday lives.

So this is really a very
difficult time indeed for Jews.

- And of course the original Jesus gang

the disciples, were Jews
living in Jerusalem.

So they probably got swept
up in all of the death

and destruction too.

What happened to them?

We don't really know,

there's no historical record.

In fact, we have nothing at all

written down by Peter or James

or any other eyewitness of Jesus,

nothing, zero, nada, zip, bupkis.

Oh yeah, sure there were letters

in the new Testament

that claim to be written by them.

But do scholars believe those
letters are actually legit?

- I don't think we actually
have any extent writings

from Peter or from James.

We have documents that
claim to be by them.

There probably other people
writing in their honor,

in their name pretending
to be these figures.

So we are actually a little bit weak

on knowing what Peter and
James actually thought.

We have to reconstruct what they thought.

- Like half of the letters
attributed to Paul,

that found their way
into the New Testament,

many scholars believe the letters

from Peter and James are fake.

That means we really
don't have any clear idea

of what Jesus' immediate disciples

actually thought about him,

his teachings, his miracles,

what he told them in private

or what they thought about Paul.

They must have been writing letters too,

but apparently nobody bothered
to keep copies of them.

- It's all erased.

That data had to have existed

it had to have been written down

somewhere in some form.

It's just all gone.

- Well how convenient for team Paul.

After the Jewish Roman war,

they're the only major
Christian sect that's left.

These are the Gentiles,

the Greeks and Romans who aren't Jews.

Don't understand Judaism,

and quite frankly don't like the Jews

who kind of made fun of
their version of the Messiah.

So the original disciples,

the people who actually knew Jesus

and their movement, is pretty
much completely wiped out,

within 40 years of the
death of Jesus Christ.

- And if we accept that most
of the New Testament writing

occurs post 70,

when the Jews have been removed

as an influence.

Then the kind of Paul line crusade

from 20 years earlier is gonna win.

- So Mark's Gospel is written
for a Gentile community

not Jews and probably in Rome sometime

just after the reign of the emperor Nero.

And it's a lot of strange
stuff in Mark's Gospel.

One of them, is that
Jesus is walking around

trying to tell his disciples
to keep their mouth shut

about the miracles that he's doing.

Like it's supposed to be
some kind of big secret.

- Mark starts out his Gospel,

with saying something that
it just blows my mind.

And that's in Mark 4:11,

where he has Jesus
gather all his disciples

and say, okay,

I'm teaching you all these
things in secret, in parables.

That way, you'll know
who I'm talking about,

but those outsiders, they
won't be able to tell

what I'm talking about, otherwise,

and this is the kicker,

they would turn from their
sins and repent and be saved.

- [Narrator] "And he told them

"the mystery of the kingdom of God

"has been given to you,

"but to those on the outside,

"everything is expressed in parable

"so that they may be ever seeing,

"but never perceiving,

"and ever hearing but never understanding.

"Otherwise, they might turn
and be forgiven," Mark 4:11.

- They can't handle the truth.

What kind of Messiah tells his disciples

to keep his work big secret?

What kind of Messiah

doesn't want his disciples to be forgiven?

According to Mark,

Jesus is telling secret teachings

only to his inner circle.

- And when you ask a
biblical scholar today,

well what are those secret
teachings that he was giving?

They don't know any more than we do.

- Those secret teachings are lost forever.

Like the truth about who killed JFK

and what happened to
Michael Jackson's nose.

Maybe the whole secrecy business

is Mark's way of explaining

why most people in his time
had never heard of Jesus.

- This is all made up by the Gospel,

the author of the Gospel of Mark

as sort of damage control and explanation,

for why people didn't widely
accept him as the Messiah

because he didn't want them to.

- [Cameron] So around Mark's time,

people were saying,

he did all these miracles

I never heard of any guy doing miracles.

He goes, well that's cause he
told us not to tell anyone.

- Right, exactly.
- Maybe this story

about parables is also a parable?

- You go through the Gospel
story after story, after story

and they look like parables

that has, you know, additional meanings.

They might not be meant to
be taken historically true.

And this is how mythology
is written, right.

You tell a story about something

and it's the meaning of the story

rather than the literal
truth of the story,

that's actually the
important part of the story.

- For instance, let's take a look

at the story of the trial of Jesus.

- And Mark tells this story

where a Pontius Pilate
wants to let Jesus go

but Mark says, this was the holiday,

and on the holiday, the
Romans would traditionally

let go one prisoner.

And the crowd kept calling for Barabbas.

We want to release Barabbas,

who Mark says was a notorious rebel,

a rebel and murderer, right.

And Pilates like, no,
no, let me let Jesus go.

And not this, this murderous rebel

and then it's no, release
Barabbas, released Barabbas.

And so Pilate lets him go

and then Jesus is crucified
and that's the story.

- When we look at the depiction

of Pilate in non-biblical sources.

Pilate is venal.

Pilate does not care at all
about Jewish sensibilities.

Pilate goes out of his way to offend Jews.

Pilate is awful.

But when we look at the Gospels,

going from the earlier Gospel,

like Mark up to John

Pilate looks better and better and better.

I would date Pilate from the Gospels

because he seems like
a perfectly decent guy

who's simply backed into the corner

by a bunch of evil Jewish leaders

who want him to do away with the Jesus.

- And there's no way this
is historically true.

- [Cameron] So what does
Barabbas translate as?

- Son of Rabbas.

- The word Bar in Aramaic means son of,

and Abbas comes from
Abba, which means father.

- And here's the best bit.

- And according to the Gospel of Matthew,

Barabbas' first name was Jesus.

- Jesus Barabbas, okay.
- Jesus son of the father.

- Pilate says you can have Jesus Barabbas,

a murderer, an insurrectionist

or you can have Jesus of Nazareth,

the other Jesus, Son of the father.

- The Jews are given a choice

between two Jesus, two saviors.

One is the violent kind of savior

like the one who tried to overthrow

the Romans in the rebellion of 66 CE.

The other is a pacifist kind of Savior.

Who's never hurt anything,

which one will the Jews choose to punish?

- And what happens,

the innocent Jesus pays the penalty,

pays the ransom for the
very guilty Barabbas

son of the Father.

In terms of Christian
theology it's perfect,

in terms of history, it's ridiculous.

- Two identical saviors,
one is gonna be set free.

One is gonna pay the penalty.

Now if you were a Jew
living in the first century,

this story might sound a little familiar.

- Well, we know this story,
this is in Leviticus.

This is the whole ritual of Yom Kippur,

which is the whole atonement ceremony.

- [Narrator] Yom Kippur is
usually expressed in English

as Day of Atonement.

- There are two great ceremonies
in the Jewish calendar.

One was Passover and the
other was Yom Kippur.

And this one, every year
there would be this,

you have the two goats,
the two identical goats,

they have to be, look the same.

One you would cast the sins of Israel on

and cast it into the crowd,

release it into the
wilderness, and the other,

you would sacrifice on the alter

in the temple its blood would atone

for all the sins of Israel.

- The braveous story seems to be saying

that the goat sacrifices,

which had replaced human
sacrifices in Judaism

are now being replaced once more

with the ultimate human sacrifice.

Mark is writing for one
of Paul's communities,

possibly in Rome.

Originally it was written
to symbolize the Gospel.

It wasn't written to be
taken as literally true,

at least not by informed
insiders in the sect.

- This story by the way

is where we get the term scapegoat.

- Forgive me Lord, I
have committed murder.

- That's a terrible sin,

have you pushed a goat over cliff.

- Why yes, Lord I did.

- Then no problem see you next year.

- Now most people who read
the Barabbas story today,

probably aren't Jews

probably don't know their
Leviticus very well.

So the whole story about
two identical goats

goes right over their
heads (crowd laughing)

- And I think you can
go from story to story

through Mark and see, like,
if you look at it as history,

it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

But if you look at it as allegory,

as something representing something else,

then it makes perfect sense

and it looks literarily brilliant.

- Then towards the end of Mark's Gospel,

we find Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane,

where he's literally begging Yahweh

not to let him be killed.

- [Narrator] "They went to
a place called Gethsemane.

"He began to be deeply
distressed and troubled.

"He fell to the ground and
prayed that if possible,

"the hour might pass from him.

"Father take this cup
from me," Mark 14:32-42.

- It's a very moving story

until you realize that Jesus is Yahweh,

so this was His own plan all along

and He's literally begging
Himself not to kill Himself.

Which is pretty confusing.

In Mark, Jesus appears to be very human.

He doesn't talk or act
like a God in disguise.

This might be an idea that
Christians came up with later.

Speaking of humans and parables

one of the stories that
we don't find in Mark

is the virgin birth.

- Mark starts his Gospel

and says the beginning of the Gospel

of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

And then he doesn't tell us
a story about Jesus' birth,

but instead narrates
Jesus' baptism by John.

And if you look carefully at this story

with the Holy Spirit,
descending upon Jesus

like a dove and God saying,

this is my beloved son.

It sorta sounds like Mark is saying

that this is when Jesus
becomes the son of God,

at his baptism.

- In ancient Rome, birds landing on things

was read as a positive sign from the gods.

The process of deciphering the movement

of the birds was called,

"taking the auspices,"

which literally translates
as looking at birds.

It's the basis by the way of
the English word auspicious.

Now, the person who took the auspices

was known as an Augur,

which is the basis of the name

Augustus, the original son of God.

So again, many people
living in the Roman empire

1900 years ago reading Mark,

would probably have
understood the symbolism.

- So what you see in
early Christian history

is that the status of Jesus as son of God,

keeps getting kicked
back further and further.

First, it's the resurrection

then it's at his baptism,

then it's at his birth,

then he's always been there
from the beginning of time.

- [Cameron] So it evolved the idea--

- Absolutely.
- [Cameron] Of Jesus evolved

Over a century or so.
- Yes, definitely.

- And that's just for Paul's communities.

The other factions,

including the one of
the original disciples

had different ideas all together.

In fact, as we'll see
a little bit later on

at least one major early Christian faction

didn't even believe
Jesus was divine at all.

One of the other surprising things

that's missing from Mark's Gospel,

is one of the most important
ideas in all of Christianity.

Jesus' resurrection
appearances to his followers.

- It's so odd, the oldest
Gospel is Mark's Gospel.

Most scholars believe
that, I believe that.

And there are no appearances

of the risen Jesus to his disciples.

In fact, the Gospel ends in a very dark

and quite mysterious enigmatic way,

where this young man who just
happens to be at the tomb,

says to the women, go
and tell the disciples

and Peter what's happened to these women.

And the women just run away

and don't tell anyone for
they're afraid, that's it.

So, I mean, if you believe Mark's Gospel,

no one ever found out
about the resurrection,

cause they didn't tell anybody.

- [Cameron] Including Mark who
- Right, right

couldn't have written it down
because they didn't tell him.

- Yeah, yes, it's extraordinary.

- At some point a Christian scribe

decided to write a new
ending to Mark's Gospel.

He decided to sex it up a little bit.

He (indistinct) like George
Lucas making Greedo shoot first.

Have to wonder why bother,

why not just leave the
original ending as it was?

- What's happening, I think
is that the secret doctrines

some of the secret
teachings are leaking out

into the public teachings.

- First rule about Jesus' club

is you don't talk about Jesus club.

- These particular doctrines

became less important to keep secret.

And so you see them leaking out over time.

So you gets, the nativity idea,

or you get the magical incarnation idea.

More of their secrets are being leaked out

and more attempt to try

and prove points by creating stories

that support your points.

And so you get more,
more at miracle stories,

you get more doctrinally relevant stuff.

- It really makes me
wonder about the intentions

of these early Christians.

If the truth was so important to them,

why bother rewriting the
ending of the first Gospel?

And just like Paul, Mark is counting down.

(clock ticking)

- Mark's Gospel believes
just like Paul does,

that the end is absolutely eminent.

So there is a line in Mark's Gospel,

"Some of those standing here," Jesus says

"will not taste death

"before they see the kingdom
of God come with power."

It's one of these interesting
ironies of history

that every time there's a
delay in the Eschaton coming,

the faithful don't kind
of give up on the idea.

They become all the more eager

in thinking that it's about to happen.

- [Narrator] The Eschaton
means the end times,

the end of the world, as we know it.

- [Cameron] Like a modern UFO cult.

- Yeah, modern religious cults as well

I mean, they do this all the time.

When disappointment comes,

they don't say, we must have been wrong.

Or at least they don't say
we must have been wrong

in our fundamental identity.

They just, we may have gotten
the timetable a bit wrong.

So you revise it, you change it.

And the early Christians
were no different from that.

- Those Christians who believed

that the Bible is literally true

must have a hard time explaining

why the world hasn't ended yet.

- It's one of the things
that I think many Christians

across the centuries have
really struggled with,

the fact that Jesus appears to say

that he is coming back within
the lifetime of his followers.

And that clearly didn't happen.

It clearly didn't happen.

You can spiritualize it,

you can kind of try and find
some sort of fine fancy way

of saying in a very real sense
spiritually, he did come.

But, the fact is that he didn't return

in the lifetime of his followers,

as he had said that he would.

And this is something that has always been

at the heart of some real
anxiety in Christianity.

It's almost like a kind of a trauma

trying to come to terms with,

how can it be that Jesus said this

when it didn't actually happen?

- Yeah, definitely, you
can see a trajectory

in the New Testament writings

as you move from letters like Paul's.

So the earliest writings we have

to writings composed in the first half

of the second century

where the apocalyptic expectations,

just continue to get sort of toned down

and there become sort of
an increasing recognition

that Jesus is not coming
back anytime soon.

- Each generation of Christians

was probably led to believe

that it would happen in their time,

just like still happens.

And they may not even have noticed

that there had been a delay.

It's not like most people had
copies of the Bible to read.

So they only knew what
they heard in church.

- Don't worry though,

the end of the world
is coming any day now.

(ominous music)

The next Gospel to be written was Matthew

probably 10 or 20 years after Mark,

around 80 or 90 CE.

So who was he?

- Gospel of Matthew is
attributed to Matthew,

one of the 12 disciples.

But it's improbable that
this was actually written

by an eyewitness, because Matthew's Gospel

is using as one of its
major sources, Mark.

And if Mark is not written
by a disciple even,

why would a disciple, an
eyewitness to Jesus ministry,

use somebody else's secondhand reports.

Why wouldn't they just
tell their own story?

So it does not seem

that Matthew is actually
written by an eyewitness.

- And also Matthew again
is writing in Greek.

- Matthew is written,

I think by a Jewish Christian

who he kind of likes Mark's Gospel.

He copies his whole passages verbatim.

So he clearly quite likes Mark's Gospel,

but I think he thinks Mark
got some things wrong.

- For Mark, who's firmly in Paul's world

of Christian Gentiles,

Jesus doesn't appear to be very Jewish.

Matthew on the other hand,

calls BS and all of that.

In Matthew, Jesus is quite clear

that he's only interested in the Jews.

- [Narrator] "I was sent
only to the lost sheep

"of the House of Israel.

"It is not right to take
the children's bread

"and throw it to the
dogs," Matthew 15:24-26.

"These 12 Jesus sent out with
the following instructions,

"do not go among the Gentiles

"or enter any town of the Samaritans.

"Go rather to the lost sheep
of Israel," Matthew 10:5-6.

- Which makes Paul's claims

that the ghost of Jesus

told him to go and preach to
the Gentiles, pretty suspect.

I mean, if that was
Jesus' original intention,

you think he would have told his apostles.

- So Matthew's engaged in
this fascinating project

of re-jewdianising Jesus.

And quite interestingly,

because Jesus was a Jew

and because he was probably
quite faithful to the law,

Matthew in a away is also
re-jesusizing Mark's Gospel.

He is actually bringing
it a bit back around

to what Jesus was probably more like.

The historical Jesus that is.

- [Cameron] A Jew preaching to Jews

about being a good Jew.
- Right.

- It is an irony of history

that the most popular
Gospel in Christian history,

far and away has been
the Gospel of Matthew.

And yet it presents the most Jewish,

of the four Gospels

and probably would have been quite hostile

to the kind of law free Christianity

that Paul is proposing.

These two sources, Paul
and the Gospel of Matthew

would definitely come into conflict

over whether a Gentile Christians,

should follow the law.

But Paul definitely says, no they don't.

Matthew says yes, absolutely, they do.

- And it's one of the amazing
things about Christianity

is that, most people just ignore that.

Most people just ignore it,

but it was a very important
strand in early Christianity

and emerging Christianity,

that saw the Christians duty

as being not just to be loyal to Jesus,

but also to be loyal to the Jewish law.

And they were loyal to the law

because they believe

that's what Jesus had taught them to do.

- So Matthew's position is,
if you're not going to temple,

you're not circumcised and
you're not eating kosher food,

you're doing Jesus wrong?

- That's right, they have to get,

well at the very least have
to get a copy of the Talmud

and start learning Hebrew.

- [Cameron] Wear a yamaka.
- Yeah.

- The Matthew Gospel is where
some of those most famous

and dubious Jesus stories first turn up.

Remember how in Paul's day

there seemed to be lots of factions

telling different stories about Jesus.

Matthew seems to have included stories

he had heard that Mark either hadn't heard

or just didn't like.

Stories like the sermon on the Mount,

the resurrection appearances

and the massacre of the innocence.

Where Herod the great, King of Judea,

orders the execution of all
male babies around Bethlehem.

Historians by the way,

have found no other evidence
of that ever happening.

Matthew probably just made it up

to sound like the similar story

about Moses in the Old Testament.

Matthew is also the first person

to mention the virgin birth.

- So fully half a century appears

before we ever get anyone
writing about a virgin birth.

- The story of the virgin birth

I think is is baffling.

You heard in Matthew's Gospel,

this genealogy that connects
Jesus right back to Abraham,

going through David.

- [Cameron] King David,
the possibly mythical

second King of the United
Kingdom of Israel and Judah,

who supposedly killed a
giant with a slingshot.

- All going through Joseph, Jesus' father.

Then the very next story

is about how Joseph isn't Jesus' father.

I mean, religious people are very good

at getting their head
around contradictions,

but there's a big one

right there on the very first
page of the New Testament.

It's fascinating, what did
Matthew think he was doing?

Why is he telling a story
about a virginal conception,

when he also wants to tell us

that Jesus was descended
from David via his father?

I don't know, I think it's a mystery.

- Did he just hope no one would notice.

- And so Jesus is the
descendant of King David,

because Joseph is his father?

But I thought Mary was a virgin?

- Yeah, look over there, it's the Messiah.

- Where?
- No, no, it's just Larry

they got the same beard.

- No, no, no, now I lost my place.

- Hey, don't worry about it,

let's go get a kosher kebab.

- And the fact is lots
of people don't notice.

Many Christians will happily affirm,

Jesus is the son of David.

They will also affirm

that Jesus was conceived by a virgin.

- Scholars believe that
Matthew's idea of a virgin birth

is possibly based on a bad
translation of the Old Testament.

See, in the Hebrew version
of the prophet Isaiah,

he predicts that a baby boy will be born

as a sign that God is going
to destroy his enemies.

And the Hebrew word that
Isaiah uses to describe

the mother of the boy is Almah.

Now Almah just translates
as a childless young woman,

but Matthew wasn't using the
Hebrew version of Isaiah,

he was using a Greek translation,

which mistranslated Almah into virgin.

Another unfortunate thing
about Matthew's Gospel

is despite it being fairly pro Torah,

it's also inspired 1900
years of antisemitism.

- In Matthew's Gospel,

you have this ideal of a kind of loyalty

to Torah, loyalty to the synagogue,

to all of these Jewish traditions.

And yet also, this bitter,

bitter vitriol against fellow Jews.

- Now keep in mind that
although Matthew is a Jew

and he's writing for a
community of Jewish Christians,

they're an extremely fringe, sect,

kind of like the way that
Catholics view Mormons today.

And he's writing 10 or 20 years

after this big Jewish Roman war,

so Jews are probably pretty
unpopular across the empire.

And the Jesus Jews,
wanna distance themselves

from the traditional
Jews as much as possible

for political reasons.

And Matthew just like
Mark and Paul before him,

believes that the end of the world

is gonna happen very soon.

(clock ticking)

But keep in mind by the time he's writing,

most of those original
disciples are probably dead

and yet there's still no sign of Jesus.

(amusing instrumental music)

According to most scholars,

the next Gospel to be written is Luke.

Written somewhere between 10
and 30 years after Matthew.

Luke, by the way also wrote
the Acts of the Apostles,

which is kind of a sequel to the Gospels.

- Luke's writing, I think this
really big epic narrative.

He wants to tell the story of Jesus

and the story of the early church.

Luke, according to tradition,

was a traveling companion of Paul.

He was a Gentile, a physician,

a doctor in the ancient world.

So he was definitely a,

what we would call a second
generation Christian.

- He says, this is the stuff
that was handed on to us

and written down by earlier generations.

And I'm, working with it myself.

- In reality, we know he's not using oral

or we know he's using the
previous books, Mark and Matthew.

So yeah, so the traditional attributions

are clearly late legend,

and mainstream scholarship
has long since realized that

and gotten off that wagon.

- Acts of the Apostles, Luke's account

of what happened after Jesus died,

tries to white wash all of this tension

and conflict that obviously existed

between Paul and the original Jesus gang.

- Luke undoubtedly is trying to present

an idealized account of the
early Christian community.

Certainly at the end of Acts, chapter two,

you've got everyone gathered
around the apostles teaching,

breaking bread, worshiping God,

finding favor of God and all the people.

So it's definitely an idealized account.

- All of the anger, tension and bribery

that we see in Paul's letters,

either disappears in
Luke or gets toned down.

It's kind of like he's saying,

Oh, it was no where near as
bad as you've probably heard.

- So I think he does
try to paint generally,

a rosy picture of it.

But it's certainly not
a complete white wash,

he does include some instances
of division and differences.

And I mean he does portray
Paul as quite a hothead.

- By the time Luke's writing Acts

towards the end of the first century,

the Paul line community,

had tried to strengthen their credentials.

Trying to solidify their connection

to the original founders, Peter and James

who were probably dead at this stage.

Their community is pretty much wiped out

and so they can't fight back.

Winners get to write the history.

All in all, Luke's not a very
credible historical source.

And Luke just like Matthew,
Mark, and Paul before him

believes the end of the world

is gonna happen anytime soon.

(clock ticking)

- [Narrator] "Truly, I tell you,

"this generation will not pass away

until all these things are
fulfilled." Luke 21:32.

- The last of the full
Gospels to be written

is John, probably written
around 100 or 110 CE.

Compared to the other three.

- John is different.

Think of it this way.

The synoptic Gospels.

- [Narrator] The Gospels
of Mark Matthew and Luke

are called synoptic,

which means they share a
common vision of Jesus.

- New York, LA, Chicago.

John is basically New Orleans, okay.

He's just, he's doing something
very different down there.

- With John, this whole
thing is so obviously

a literary creation.

Jesus in the Gospel of John,

does not sound like he
does in the other Gospels

and, all the characters in
John sound the same way,

like you're watching a Woody Allen movie,

everybody's talking like Woody Allen.

And its, 'cause he wrote everybody's part.

And, and it's obvious this is
not anybody's recollection.

- Instead of telling everyone

to keep the stories about
his miracles, a big secret.

- He might as well have on a t-shirt,

"I am God," written in big letters

and you have to wonder

well, didn't they have
blasphemy laws then,

why wasn't he stoned to death
five minutes out of the gate?

- [Narrator] "The woman saith unto him,

"I know that Messiah cometh

"He, that is called Christ.

"When he is come, he will
declare unto us all things.

"Jesus saith unto her,

"I that speak unto thee am He," John 4:25.

"I and my Father are one," John 10:30.

- John's Gospel contains no parables,

no last supper,

no sermon on the Mount.

But it's the only one

with Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

And it's the most
antisemitic of the Gospels.

As for the second coming,

as far as John's concerned,

it's happening right now.

(clock ticking)

(amusing instrumental music)

Why is John so different
from the other three Gospels?

No one really knows,

but if we look at Paul

and the four Gospels
in chronological order,

we can kind of see how the
Jesus story evolved over time.

In Paul, he doesn't do any miracles

and become special after he died.

In Mark, he becomes special

when a bird lands on him,

walks around being a secret miracle worker

whose body disappears from a cave.

Matthew and Luke making the
product of the divine pregnancy

who comes back from the dead

and in John he's proudly
out of the God closets.

But if you think the variation
in these stories is strange,

wait till you see the stories

that didn't even make it into the Bible?

(gentle instrumental music)

- So one of the things that
many Christians don't know,

is that in addition to
the four canonical Gospels

there's a number of other early
Christian Gospels out there.

- [Narrator] Canonical means
approved by the Vatican.

- In the early centuries,

there were some fairly
significant Christian factions.

The Ebionites, the
Marcionites and the Gnostics.

And they all had pretty different
ideas about who Jesus was.

Their Gospels were all destroyed

by Imperial decree, around 400 CE.

However.
- One suspects,

that some monk in upper Egypt

decided I can't do this to,

I've spent my entire life writing them out

for example, I can't do this to that.

So I'm gonna gather them up

and put them away safely

and say that they're destroyed, whatever.

- But the wonderful thing
that happened in 1945,

is there was the discovery of 12 codices,

12 ancient leather books

found in a jar in Nag Hammadi in Egypt.

- Some of them and the
ones that I love the most

are infancy Gospels.

So stories about Jesus'
birth and childhood.

And one of the most interesting of these,

is a text that is generally known

as the infancy Gospel of Thomas.

And what this text seeks to do

is say, what would Jesus
have been like as a child.

If he's a divine being,

which this text believes him to be,

if he's a divine being from the beginning,

he's got all this miraculous power.

What does he actually,

what does a kid like that look like?

According to the infancy Gospel of Thomas,

it's not a pretty picture.

- It's Jesus, the bot Simpson

of the kind of the early Christian world.

He's really a brat.

- One story in the
infancy Gospel of Thomas

says that when Jesus was five years old,

he was sitting by a pool of water

making clay sparrows
which were coming to life

and when another kid came

and messed with his pool of water,

Jesus cursed him and he
withered up and died.

He's basically a little super villain.

- Yeah, I'd say so,

because he essentially gets angry

at a number of his playmates

for different things and kills them.

And so he kills one playmate,

he kills another playmate.

Then the villagers start to complain

to Mary and Joseph.

- What's kid Jesus' response to all this?

He makes his accusers go blind.

(child zapping) - Oh what the?

(child zapping) (mumbling)

(child zapping) Oh I can't see

(child zapping) What's going on?

- Why, why would you do (people mumbling)

- As Ron Burgundy says, "That
escalated rather quickly."

So it's a fascinating story

and yet, if we think
that the story is saying,

Oh, Jesus had these sort of,

immature things that he had
to work out of his system.

I don't think that's what

the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is saying.

It's essentially saying
that's who Jesus is.

He's got all the power of God

and if people are jerks to him,

he can strike them dead.

This is how they viewed Jesus,

weird and upsetting to
us as it seems to be.

And I love, I love Joseph's
instructions to Mary

after all of this has happened.

He takes Jesus, puts him in their house

and tells Mary don't let him outside

because those who annoy him end up dead.

- Oh, you might think,

well, that's an unbelievable story.

No wonder if didn't end up in the Bible,

but is it any crazier

than stories about walking on water

or turning water into wine

or raising people from the dead

or zapping demons into a herd of pigs.

Why do we say these
magic stories are crazy,

but these other stories about magic,

well, they're just fine and dandy.

Back then, they were
arguing over what Jesus was,

who he was.

What was his relationship to God,

all the controversies about Christology.

And this included of course,

whether Jesus was even a human being.

- Just a really interesting human being

who somehow became possessed by God.

Others thought he was an angel,

still others thought he was part of God.

Still others thought he
was just a good teacher.

They didn't know.

- One of the really big
early Christian factions

the Ebionites, might've closely resembled

the original Christians, team Peter.

- The Ebionites again,
that means the poor,

they claim to be the descendants

of the Jerusalem
Christians, maybe they were.

- To be a true Christian,

you had to obey the Jewish law.

They seem to have denied

the idea of the virgin birth

and they had a kind of Gospel,

that sounds very much like
a Jewish Christian Gospel.

Maybe one of the earliest
forms of the Gospel.

- We have people who were
following Jewish law,

honoring the Sabbath on Saturday

and keeping it Holy.

Circumcising their kids,

and they're worshiping Jesus.

- The Ebionites declared Paul a heretic.

On the other hand,

another one of the major early factions

the Marcionites loved Paul,

but really hated Judaism.

- The Marciones said

that Jesus had come from a different God,

not the Hebrew God, not the creator God,

not the Torah giving God.

- The God of the Old Testament.

So the God of the old Testament

was a wicked God who made the world.

I mean, that's why the
world was so messed up.

- The Gnostics claimed to
have a special teaching

from Jesus that only they knew about.

- Well, the word Gnostic really means

somebody who's claiming to have knowledge.

- But it's basically,

the idea that this world is bad and wicked

and we have to get away from it.

And getting a certain secret knowledge

of the universes origins

and your own cosmic origins

is how you get away from all.

- So why didn't all of those Gospels

make it into the Bible?

Well, a common Christian view

is that the ones that made it in

were the real stories,

and the ones that didn't,

were just made up.

- Well, when it comes to
the stories of Jesus' birth

and childhood, it's all made up.

If you talk to most New Testament scholars

about the infancy narratives,

the Christmas story in Matthew's
Gospel and Luke's Gospel,

they'll say, there's not
much historical basis

behind any of that.

There's no census,

there's no slaughter of
the innocence by Herod,

there's no star of Bethlehem, no wise men.

Jesus probably was not born in Bethlehem,

he was probably born in Nazareth.

Those stories are all propaganda

that are designed on the one hand

to present Jesus as a divine being

from the moment of his birth

and also to say,

he can fit the
qualifications for a Messiah

because he's born in the city of David.

- Of course, all of these factions

believe that their version of Christianity

was the correct one.

Just like they all do today.

- There are many different
Christianity's today.

There were many different
Christianity's back then.

(gentle instrumental music)

- Eventually team Paul sold there soul

to the first Christian
emperor, Constantine,

who fought his way to
power in the year 305 CE.

According to his
contemporary Bishop Eusebius,

the so-called father of church history,

Jesus appeared to Constantine in a vision

and said he'd help him defeat his rival

for the throne in a bloody war.

Hallelujah, Jesus is finally
the warrior King Messiah

that the Jews had been waiting for.

According to Christian
sources from the time,

Jesus used his supernatural powers

to help Constantine kill
thousands of Roman citizens

and consolidate his
control over the empire.

- Winners are grinners.

And so, because the, a
version of Christianity

secures Imperial supported
early in the fourth century.

They are able to suppress their opponents

ever more effectively.

- Once Christianity and
Orthodox Christianity

became the official
religion of the empire,

they had official patronage.

You then could use Imperial power

to put the thumbscrews down

on any dissident Christian groups.

- The final selection of books

that made it into the Bible,

wasn't actually decided upon until 400 CE.

It seems like a number of
competing Christian factions

might have merged into
some sort of mega church.

- Each of these Gospels
has a faction behind it.

There's a lot of people

like they have their own favorite Gospels.

It's like everybody has their own favorite

Harry Potter novel or whatever.

And so, if you want to win this battle

for control of the church,

you want as many people on your side

to outnumber the other side.

And the best way to do
that, is to pick Gospels

that had a lot of supporters behind them

that were not too deviant.

- The other Gospels
were declared fake news.

- Constantine does not enforce
Christianity on everybody.

Constantine allowed pagan temples to stand

and pagans to worship,

and he let Jews be Jews.

- But he does favor just
one Christian faction

and tries to shut down all the rest.

And this one faction has no hesitation

at putting their head of the Roman empire,

the same Roman empire

that killed Jesus, Paul, Peter and James

at the head of their church.

- And so Constantine,

I think he treats Christianity

as any emperor has treated

any other religious kind of group,

by saying, well, I'm the head of religion.

I am the Pontifex Maximus.

So therefore, I'm the
head of this community.

The Bishop seemed to agree to that

without much hesitation.

- Overnight, the persecuted
become the persecutors

and the first group that they persecute,

are other Christians who
they now declare heretics.

- You're only a heretic if you
lose the historical battle.

And it takes the church
about three to 400 years,

to figure out who's in and who's out.

- About 50 years after Constantine,

another Roman emperor, Theodosius

drove the final nail into the cross

and made Catholic Christianity,

the state religion of the empire.

- So not only are preexisting varieties

or versions of Christianity wiped out

or put on a banned list,

new dissident groups emerge

and a dealt with this new
kind of Imperial authority.

- Temples were shut down,

pagan priests if they
wanted to keep their job

became Christian priests.

Jews had their movements restricted,

were not allowed to join certain guilds,

had their synagogues burned down.

And the empire becomes Christian

and it remains Christian,

because of the force of the state

and the force of the army.

Was this a good thing or a bad thing?

It was a thing.

And it's something we have to deal with.

- To put a modern perspective on it.

Imagine that the Scientologists,
were able to get Tom cruise

elected president of the world,

and he passed a law making
Scientology mandatory.

And that's what team Paul
did around about 400 CE.

The Roman empire became a theocracy,

not unlike the caliphate

that ISIS has been trying to set up

in the middle East in the last few years.

It's not that hard to
be a successful religion

when you're the only game in town

and everything else is
pretty much outlawed.

So that's the story

of how Christianity went
from being irrelevant

to inescapable, but in the
words of a different God,

wait, there's one more thing.

(happy instrumental music)

It wasn't that long ago,
that most historians believe,

that the characters in the old Testament

like Abraham or Moses

or figures from literary history

like King Arthur were
also based on real people.

But today, most historians think

they are completely mythical.

So what about Jesus?

- Well, when I started as a historian

and I was actually quite certain

that Jesus existed as a
historical person, and I thought,

anyone who suggested
otherwise was a crackpot.

And what happened was, the
more I looked at the evidence,

the worse it looked.

The more you pull up the threads,

the more it falls apart.

And I started to realize by the end of it,

it's like actually unbalance of evidence

it looks like it goes the other way.

- It just seems to me,
the weight of probability

is that there was no Jesus.

- One thing that struck me

is just the case for this
figure is extremely poor.

The main sources we have are the Gospels.

Over time, we found even more
reason to doubt the Gospels.

They're just really, really poor sources.

They're not what we want.

E.P. Sanders says that ,

Jesus is better attested in history

than Alexander the great.

When you actually compare the evidence

for both of those figures,

that's not even close to correct.

And actually the evidence
for Alexander the great

is way better than for Jesus.

- Obviously a lot of evidence gets lost

or destroyed over the years,

like the letters of team Peter.

So historians are trying to piece together

what happened using sketchy evidence

or evidence that's been
corrupted, like Mark's Gospel.

- And the trick to that

is that you look at that body of evidence

You got to look at it all,
you can't leave anything out,

even stuff that's weird

and say is that the
evidence that should exist,

if this hypothesis existed,
is it what we expect?

And, and that's what you look at.

And you can measure that,
in the sense of your feeling

of how expected is this evidence,

or how weird is this evidence
given that hypothesis?

- And then you look at all of the theories

and try and decide

which one does the evidence support best.

- And if you're stuck in this situation

where the evidence is equally expected

on all your hypotheses,
then you don't know.

It could be any one of those hypotheses

and we just kind of have to settle on

well, it's one of those we don't know.

- So how does the evidence stack up

with the theory that
Jesus actually existed?

- I think on balance,

he probably didn't exist.

I think the hypothesis that

he started out a revelatory being

and became historicized later,

I think fits the evidence better.

It makes the evidence more expected,

especially a lot of weird stuff.

- So in other words,

Jesus appeared as some kind of an angel

in visions to people like Paul.

And then later on, people decided that,

well, he must have been real.

But of course this kind of a view

is still a minority amongst scholars,

but will it always be that way?

- We saw the same thing
with the challenging

of the historicity of Moses, right.

In the seventies,

everybody said, that's
fringe, that's crazy.

Now it's the mainstream consensus

at least agnosticism about
the historicity of Moses.

And that took, 20, 30 years.

So I always tell people,

come back to me in 20 and 30 years,

and then we'll see if
that's still a situation

or if it's changed since then.

- This kind of talk get some
people pretty, pretty cranky.

- Well, look, my blunt response to that,

the whole Jesus mythicism thing

to be frank, I consider it
mental masturbation for atheist.

That's the best way I can describe it.

It's the ultimate get up,

telling your arch enemy that
their superhero didn't exist.

It's with the joy, of
going up to some bratty kid

you don't like and saying,
"Hey kid, guess what,

"there's no Santa Claus."

- Telling a little kid
that Santa doesn't exist

might be mean, but it's also true.

Look, the fact is that
the historical evidence

that Jesus existed

is pretty slim to say the least.

But the evidence that
the stories about him

were all over the place

and kind of evolved over
time is incredibly strong.

Make from that what you will.

(ominous music)

So let's take a look

at what our new updated Sunday
school story looks like.

Around 2000 years ago,

the Romans decided that
dead men could be gods

and living men could be sons of gods.

Meanwhile, in the backwaters
of the Roman empire,

the Jewish people were
waiting for their God,

Yahweh to send a warrior King

they called the Messiah
to kick out the Romans.

But the Messiah was a no show.

Eventually several generations later,

a small fringe Jewish sect said

this is our guy, Jesus Christ,

which means Saving the Savior

was a very Jewish Jew,

but had two problems in
his messianic resume.

He had not defeated the Romans

and he was already dead.

A few years later,

Paul who'd been busy beating
up early Jesus' worshipers

suddenly changed his mind

and invented his own
version of the Jesus sect.

He reinvented the Messiah,

to be a super powered
celestial warrior King

for non Jews, who could
keep their fore skin

and still get into heaven.

The OG Christians weren't impressed,

this is fake news, Paul
didn't even know Jesus.

This is the Jews only club bubala.

According to Paul Jesus
spoke to him in visions

and any day now, JC
would come down to earth

with supernatural powers
to defeat the Romans

and anyone else who didn't worship Him.

Unfortunately, Jesus didn't
return within Paul's lifetime.

And despite writing lots of letters

in his 30 years of missionary work,

Paul never mentioned anything

about Jesus' life teachings or miracles.

But the Jews did get their
war against the Romans

and got their butts badly kicked.

No warrior King Messiah showed up

and their temple was torn down.

The original disciples
of Jesus were all dead,

leaving not a single written record

of what they thought about Jesus

or his teachings.

After the war, one of Paul's community

did document some stories about Jesus

in which he appears as a human,

but with super powers and a big secret,

who begs Yahweh not to let him be killed,

but Yahweh ignored his prayers.

Many other versions of the Jesus story

were recorded over the next 100 years.

None by actual eye witnesses

or people who knew eye witnesses
or people who knew people

who would, you get the idea.

As time passed, these stories
grew more far fetched,

suddenly including miracles
like walking on water,

the virgin birth,

the resurrection of violent teenage Jesus

and Jesus raising people from the dead.

All these authors were still certain

that the Messiah would come
to defeat their enemies

within their lifetimes,

but he still didn't come.

For 300 years,

various Jesus' factions fought
against the Romans lines

and amongst themselves about who Jesus was

and how to worship him properly.

Until one of these groups
met with the Roman emperor

and said, give us
protection and tax breaks,

and we'll make you the
head of our religion.

- "That's an offer I can't refuse,"

said the emperor Constantine.

And within a hundred years,

this group managed to take
control of the entire empire.

They burned competing Gospels,

tore down temples, killed
pagan philosophers,

and banned other religions,

including competing
versions of the Jesus club.

And that my friends

is the slightly more accurate story

of the triumph of Christianity, Amen.

Well, isn't that a far
more interesting story.

And it's also one that's supported

by historical evidence
and biblical scholars.

So what does the next century
hold for Christianity?

Peace and love or another theocracy.

I guess only time's gonna tell

unless of course, Jesus
does come back soon,

which I've been told
with very good authority

should be happening any minute now.

(clock ticking)

(lively music)

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ Jesus is my friend. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ I have a friend in Jesus. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ Jesus is my friend. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ He taught me how to live,
my life as it should be. ♪

♪ He taught me how to turn my cheek ♪

♪ When people laugh at me. ♪

♪ I've had friends before ♪

♪ And I can tell you that, ♪

♪ He's one who will
never leave your flat. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ Jesus is my friend. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ I have a friend in Jesus. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ Jesus is my friend. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ He taught me how to pray,
and how to save my soul. ♪

♪ He taught me how to praise my God ♪

♪ And still play rock and roll. ♪

♪ The music may sound different ♪

♪ But the message is the same. ♪

♪ It's just that instrument
who praise his name. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ Jesus is my friend. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ I have a friend in Jesus ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine.. ♪

♪ Six feet two, eyes are blue, ♪

♪ Jesus Christ he was a Jew. ♪

♪ Has anybody seen my Lord? ♪

♪ Big hook nose, ♪

♪ There he goes preaching
so that everyone knows. ♪

♪ Has anybody seen my Lord? ♪

♪ Speared in the abdomen by a Roman. ♪

♪ Blood gushing out. ♪

♪ Rose from the dead, ♪

♪ So it is said. ♪

♪ People believe without a doubt. ♪

♪ Jesus died still a Jew. ♪

♪ Still a Jew so why aren't you? ♪

♪ Has anybody seen my, ♪

♪ Has anybody seen my, ♪

♪ Has anybody seen my Lord. ♪

(lively music)

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ Jesus is my friend. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ I have a friend in Jesus ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ Jesus is my friend. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ He taught me how to live,
my life as it should be. ♪

♪ He taught me how to turn my cheek, ♪

♪ When people laugh at me. ♪

♪ I've had friends before ♪

♪ And I can tell you that, ♪

♪ He's one who will
never leave you flat. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ Jesus is my friend. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ I have a friend in Jesus. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ Jesus is my friend. ♪

♪ Jesus is a friend of mine. ♪

♪ He taught me how to pray
and how to save my soul. ♪

♪ He taught me how to praise my God ♪

♪ And still play rock and roll. ♪

♪ The music may sound different ♪

♪ But the message is the same' ♪

♪ It's just the instrument
who praise his name. ♪