Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to re:Christian, a critical and satirical reconsideration of Christianity, the Bible, and God. This is episode 14: “Some Facts about Jesus’s Life.”
1. You’ve no doubt heard about BC and AD to indicate whether a year we quote happened before Jesus was born or after. BC is straightforward and means before Christ; AD is Latin and is an abbreviation of anno domini, which means in the year of our lord. Unfortunately, the geniuses who were making this demarcation at the time got the year of Jesus’s birth wrong. He was in fact born in the last years of the reign of Herod, which ended in 4 BC, so even at the best guess or approximation, the birth of Jesus is off by at least four years.
2. After his experimentation with homosexuality with various members of his band, The Apostles, Jesus ultimately settled down with a woman who followed them to all their performances. Many of these women were simply seeking out the bragging rights of having banged the lead singer of arguably the most popular band of the time (though most of them had to settle for a mere Apostle, and some were unlucky enough to hook up with Judas Thaddeus, whose predilections for S&M and scat were often not known to the groupie until she emerged from her tent, covered in bruises and shit).
For all his faults, Jesus was intuitive though, and he could see that that woman at all their concerts (her name was Cilicia) was a good person. Jesus and Cilicia were never married but co-habitated after he gave up touring. This was a scandal for many of Jesus’s followers and even to some of the more judgmental former Apostles. Yet from all accounts, they were happy. Jesus perfected his carpentry trade and Alicia became a well-known baker, selling her treats at the various permanent and seasonal markets. Her claim to fame is that she was the first person to introduce the scone. The Christs had two children, a boy and a girl, but the historical record contains virtually nothing about them other than that, not even their names. Some scholars speculate that they never existed at all, and that their sudden appearance and lack of additional documentation attest to that.
3. The so-called miracle of Jesus walking on water was in fact an elaborate hoax that he and the Apostles arranged as a promotional gimmick for their upcoming tour to promote their new set of songs, Hands in the Air, Feet on the Water. One of the Apostles, the little-known Simon Zelotes, nearly drowned in the carrying out of it. The trick was not the strategically placed stones as some sources have asserted, but rather nine of the apostles being underwater and supporting a ten-foot length of finished wood on their backs. They were all strong swimmers and able to hold their breaths for several minutes. Jesus waded quickly into the water after performing an acoustic solo, as the Apostles had already been underwater for at least a minute. One of them touched his foot, which was the signal to step onto the log, and then he walked slowly, and, indeed, from the angle of those still on the shore, it did look like he was walking on water. Simon was the weakest link and when his breath failed and he had to come up for air, the others all did the same, which of course tipped Jesus into the water.
But Jesus was a consummate performer and in the commotion of splashing and with eyes being focused on him, he went underwater and then stood up dramatically with his hands in the air (a nod to the song title). The Apostles were able to get another breath and swim off in various directions, and in fact the log became part of the lore of the “miracle,” as it seemed to just appear. It was a spectacular event overall and that tour ended up earning the group more money than they had ever before.
4. Jesus spent a night in jail and therefore has a criminal record. It all stems from what biblical historians euphemistically refer to as the “cleansing of the temple.” The incident is record in various gospels, but here it is in the book of Matthew:
12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”
14 The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.
16 “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him.
“Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read, “‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?”
17 And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.
The money changers were livid and insisted to the authorities that nobody, not even someone who claimed to be the son of God—or as the joke went at the time, “Especially some lunatic who claims to be the son of God”—could just run ragged over their property. Jesus might not have wanted them there, but they had permits to set up their tables and stalls. The crime was destruction of property valued at less than fifty silver shekels.
Jesus was apprehended before he could make it to Bethany (an ex-girlfriend) and taken back to Jerusalem to be locked up. He was released the next day as it was a first offence and the authorities claimed he had learned a lesson. Jesus later claimed that that night in solitary was useful for him when the hoax of him dying on the cross and then having to spend some time in a tomb was carried out.
5. Jesus harboured ongoing resentment toward his father, whom he feared both in the modern sense of the word and in the King James Version sense, where it meant “to regard with reverence and awe; to revere.” His feelings were deep-seated and complicated. The fear of being hurt was real and in fact of course manifested itself as valid and true when an innocent son was allowed to be crucified by a God and father (the allusion to the book and movies is not accidental). The reverence and awe were not strongly felt, because Jesus felt that a lot of the trouble he had in becoming any kind of success in his later life were due to the psychopathic serial killing that his father had carried out. People who were later begat had long memories of how some of their ancestors had been treated and dispatched.
“Your father is a fucking maniac.”
Jesus heard that all the time, and it was many times more than once that he had a carpentry job or a musical gig cancelled when the client found out who his father was. “Something came up,” they would say, or some other such euphemism. Jesus complained vociferously at first, but eventually saw no use in it and just politely replied, “It’s okay, I understand.”
6. Jesus was a god, or rather God, in the flesh of course, and during the course of one memorable month when everything was going wrong and he was broke and Bethany had just broken up with him, he went on a binge of carnal satisfaction. (No, not cardinal, carnal: there were no young boys involved, just super hot women.) He was a slender and attractive man, and beards and long hair on men were in during the time, so Jesus did well with the ladies when he let himself go. He got blowjobs behind the wine bar, he had women lure him to his tent, and on one drunken night that didn’t end till the next morning, he had a fourway with three of the dirtiest whores that Galilee had to offer. He sampled all nine holes, and for some reason even his own ass was sore in the morning. He never asked any questions, but quietly slipped out when the women, in various degrees of dress and disarray, slept soundly (the big one snored).
As his dependence on sex workers increased, and he was not able to turn enough water into wine to satisfy them and so often had to pay money, the whole escapade ended up costing him a small fortune. He stopped the night, 29 days later, when his scrotum became particularly itchy, and went back to his formerly chaste ways. He had enjoyed himself, but it was time to get down to the business of saving mankind.
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Check the show notes for a full transcript, sources, and for how to contact me. And please join me again on Thursday.