What about Jesus’s sayings?
When we mythicists state that the “Jesus Christ” of the New Testament is a fictional compilation of characters, people may ask who said all the supposedly great things Jesus is recorded as stating in the Bible?
I answer this question in my writings, including The Christ Conspiracy, Suns of God, Who Was Jesus? and Christ in Egypt. To summarize, these “sayings of the lord” or “sayings of Jesus” are pre-Christian wisdom sayings or logia that have been collected and included in the gospel story. Some of them were written down, as in book The Wisdom of Jesus or Ecclesiasticus from the second century BCE, while others were part of the mysteries and were transmitted orally.
In any event, putting sayings into a fictional character’s mouth is not new, either then or now – it happens all the time with fictional characters! Indeed, any god or goddess worth his or her salt in antiquity was known to make speeches of some sort or another. Here’s an example placed in the mouth of the goddess Isis:
I am Isis, ruler of every land
I was taught by Hermes (Thoth) and with Hermes devised
letters, both hieroglyphic and demotic, that all might not
be written with the same.
I gave laws to mankind and ordained
what no one can change
I am the eldest daughter of Kronos
I am the wife and sister of King Osiris
I am the one who discovered wheat for mankind
I am the mother of King Horus
I am the one who rises in the Dog-star
I am the one called Goddess by women
For me was built the city of Bubastis
I separated the earth from the Heaven
I showed the paths of the stars
I regulated the course of the sun and the moon
I devised the activities of seamanship
I made what is right strong
I brought together woman and man
I assigned to women to bring into
light of day their infants
in the tenth month
I ordained that parents should be loved by children
I imposed punishment upon those unkindly disposed
towards their parents
I with my brother Osiris put an end to cannibalism
I taught men the initiation into mysteries
I instructed them to revere images of the gods
I established the sacred cult places of the gods
I abolished the rules of the tyrants
I put an end to murders
I compelled women to be loved by men
I made the right stronger than gold and silver
I ordained that the true should be considered good
I devised marriage contracts
I assigned to Greeks and barbarians their languages
I made the good and the bad to be distinguished by nature
I made that nothing should be more fearful than an oath
I have delivered him who unjustly plots against others into
the hands of the one against whom he plotted
I impose retribution upon those who do injustice
I decreed that mercy be shown to suppliants
O honor those who justly defend themselves
With me the right has power
I am the mistress of rivers and winds and sea
No one is honored without my consent
I am the Mistress of War
I am the Mistress of the thunderbolt
I calm the sea and make it surge
I am in the rays of the sun
I attend the sun in its journey
What I decree, that is also accomplished
All yield to me
I set free those who are in bonds
I am the Mistress of seamanship
I make the navigable un-navigable, whenever I so decide
I founded enclosure walls of the cities
I am called the Lawgiver
I brought up islands out of the depths into the light
I am the Mistress of rain
I conquer Destiny
Destiny obeys me
Hail, O Egypt, that nourished me!
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2 thoughts on “What about Jesus’s sayings?”
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Thanks for sharing such fascinating information about religion,though am yet to read your books, have been visiting your blog regularly over the past one year, something that has completely changed my view about religion.I tried telling someone who is a devout christian that the jesus she beliefs in has through modern scholarship been shown to be a mythical character,the question i was asked is how the current dating system which we now call the common era began,since we are told that its based on the approximate birth of the man god.
The impressive works of Acharya, Kenneth Humphreys, and the other notable mythicist writers reveal the truth. Well before the first century, the sayings which would be incorporated into the Bible centuries later were already known by many cultures and sects around the Mediterranean, from Asia Minor to Eqypt and beyond. The keepers of the scrolls and traditions associated with those sayings acted out of various interests. Practicing a particular religion and worshiping a given god or gods was not always their motivation. Some of those keepers and sect members were reading, writing, and trading scrolls as a means to mentally escape the reality of their harsh times. Sometime after the fall of Jerusalem, there was applied to those centuries-old writings the layer of the Jesus Christ myth which took hold. It would be interesting to discover the precise steps as to how certain anthologies such as the writings attributed to Paul (whom I think is fictional) and which are transcribed on artifacts such as Papyrus 46 were created. Unfortunately, those answers will likely never be found.