Opinions

What if Christianity is a lie?

It really all starts with Paul, whose conversion on the road to Damascus predates the composition of all of the canonical gospels and exerted more influence than anyone else in the development of early Christianity. The way I see it is that there are three possibilities:

1. Jesus appeared to him in spirit and everything Paul claimed is accurate. This seems like the least likely to me.

2. Paul made it up to create a new religion and gain money and power, a la L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. It’s even remotely possible (though exceedingly unlikely) that Paul made up the character of Jesus, as it’s true that there is no contemporary evidence or account of Jesus that predates Paul’s evangelism. While possible, Saul came from a fairly wealthy family and was on the path to becoming a leader and power broker among the Pharisees.

3. Paul suffered a very convincing hallucination. This to me is most likely. It’s not hard to imagine that Paul suffered heat stroke or even a small ischemic stroke on the road to Damascus and had a hallucination informed by a guilty conscience at his persecution of Jesus’ followers. Paul was well educated, and he literally puts phrases from Euripides’ The Bacchae into the mouth of Jesus during his supposed vision. 

Either the spirit of Jesus isn’t a very original orator, or Paul unconsciously gave Jesus words and attributes he associated with a living god, namely Dionysus. A stroke could also explain his alleged temporary loss of vision. Combining Paul’s upbringing in Tarsus and exposure to Hellenistic beliefs and practices with the teachings of Gamaliel and Hillel that he studied in Jerusalem, you’d get the syncretic beliefs of Christianity. If this is the case, the origin of Christianity as we know it wouldn’t be a lie exactly, but the result of a hallucination.

There have certainly been conmen throughout history willing to use religion to fleece their flocks, including the many televangelists and mega church “pastors” running around today in their private jets. Whether Paul was one of these hucksters or simply genuinely deluded, we’ll probably never know for sure.