Among religious liberals, the tactic has been to tout a historical Jesus but to strip him of his divinity. The reason is that because stories of the miraculous birth, the miracles, the necromancy and the resurrection raise serious questions as to their veracity. The religious liberals have no other reason for needing to strip Jesus of his divinity than because they simply cannot accept it without feeling gullible and foolish.

Having accomplished this, the religious liberal then proceeds to pronounce Jesus a great, compassionate, peaceful and wise teacher who walked in Palestine, gained a loyal following and upset authorities with his revolutionary message that threatened to shake Jewish society to its foundations (as if this were necessarily a good thing) and so was arrested, tried and crucified. Afterwards, his followers kept his memory alive and eventually he was adapted as a figurehead for a church.

This scenario is riddled with flaws. The most obvious flaw is that we have nothing but the bible and other Church literature to go on for our information of what this great, wise teacher supposedly taught. Strip Jesus of his divinity, most of what he teaches is pure nonsense and pure status quo. There was nothing revolutionary in what he taught. For example, he exhorts his followers to resist not evil (Mt 5:39). If we don't resist evil then we must, by necessity, succumb to it. He stated that if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off (Mt 5:30). Who in their right mind would steal something and then blame their hand for the theft and cut it off? Jesus stated that the slave who does not do his master's bidding "shall be beaten with many stripes" (Lk 12:47). Where is the revolutionary message that slavery is wrong and must be abolished? Nowhere. I would place Lincoln as superior to this Jesus. Jesus also stated that he did not come to bring peace "but a sword" (Mt 10:34). He claimed to he came to turn family against one another (Mt 10:35). Jesus also claimed that he who does not hate his family and himself cannot be his follower (Lk 14:26). And who can possibly explain Jesus' bizarre statement in Mark 4:11-12?

Even the Golden Rule of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is neither original nor particularly moral. The Old Testament already has the Golden Rule in it and Confucius was preaching it centuries before Jesus allegedly did. And if someone is a masochist who wants to be beaten and yelled at in the foulest of language, does that mean he should do it to you since that is how he would like you to treat him? In another example, one of the Jesus' followers begs off a journey because his father had died and he needed to attend to the funeral. Jesus basically says no (Mt 8:21-22). Where's the compassion and understanding? When told his mother, brothers and sisters wanted to see him, he blows them off and basically states that he no longer considers them family (Mk 3:31-35). Conclusion: Jesus was neither a revolutionary nor moral teacher.

Some might counter that Jesus was not a teacher but a prophet. He wasn't there to teach, he was there to warn. The problem here is that Jesus' prophecies are generally lousy. The glaring flaw of his prophesying is that he told his listeners that there were those among them that "would not taste death before the son of man come again." That is, he was predicting the Second Coming to happen within the lifetimes of those he preached to. This is the same as saying that he predicted the end of the world to happen in their lifetimes (Mk 13:23-31, Lk 21:32). Did it? No. Was Jesus then a prophet? No.

What Jesus taught presented no danger whatsoever to the establishment. He was just another doomsayer of which Palestine had plenty and the authorities cared not a wit about any of them. There is no reason he would have attracted the slightest bit of attention by his words other than perhaps to be called a lunatic—of which Palestine already had plenty.

The next problem that arises then is how he managed to attract any followers at all considering he taught nothing of any particular value. Who were these people? According to Church literature, they were fishermen, common laborers and poor people. How did a church then manage to get established? Churches require funds and literacy. Where was one to find either among fisherman and poor people in Galilee some 2000 years ago? Who then founded this church and who appointed a common fisherman to be its pontiff? Obviously, such a thing would never happen.

We are already hard pressed to explain how a church was founded for a Jesus that taught nothing in particular that anyone would have found interesting. This is further compounded by the fact that this church was not founded to honor this humble man. It would have been founded because he wanted it to be: "Upon this rock I will build my church"(Matthew 16:18).

Now how did this humble teacher manage this with a handful of impoverished followers? Did he use his magical powers to influence the minds of the wealthy? Since we've already stripped Jesus of his divinity, no. If Jesus had such a power, he never would have been arrested, tried and executed (this was only to fulfill god's plan which doesn't apply with a non-divine Jesus). So, who built the church on Jesus' orders and how did they manage it?

Perhaps we have a way out. This way out concerns a surprisingly little discussed feature of the gospel story: the men in white. At points in the narrative, mysterious men in white appear out of nowhere to assist Jesus in some manner (Mk 16:5, Lk 25:4). Who were these men? They appear to be assistants but who are they and what is their connection to Jesus? We would have to conclude from this that Jesus had the help of an unknown agency who appear to be well connected. Could they have built the church on Jesus' orders? Once again, we run into problems with this idea: Whoever the men in white were, they were not disciples. In the narrative, whenever these mysterious men appear, the other disciples do not recognize them. We get not so much as an impression from the narrative that Jesus' church was built or founded by these men or that they installed Peter as the pope. In fact, after their appearance in Acts 1:10-11, they are not mentioned again, their true purpose and identity never explained. Matthew and John call them angels but Mark, Luke and Acts are adamant that these were men. They represent the most mysterious aspect of the narrative but are all but ignored.

This raises another problem and that is the narrative itself. From gospel to gospel, Jesus varies so widely in character that we can only marvel at how the man could possibly be historical. In Matthew, for example, Jesus is strictly a Jew while in Mark he is barely one. In John (8:44), Jesus seems to dislike the Jews on the whole. A different Jesus for each community. That might explain the two entirely different genealogies given for Jesus in Matthew and Luke.

Further problems in the narrative involve the describing of incidents during which there were no eyewitnesses such as Jesus praying the garden. John 19:8 and other such examples tell us what Pilate was thinking or feeling at a certain moment when no eyewitness could possibly know this.

Once we strip away the divinity from Jesus, we are left with a man who was not a wise, compassionate teacher but a cult-like egomaniac who was wrong on just about everything he said. Much of what is pointed out as valuable was not original but found in earlier sources than the NT.

Some ask what my motives are for asserting this. If someone tells you 2+2 is 5 and you correct him and say 4, would it make sense for him to say, "You must have some kind of agenda." No agenda, he's just wrong. When he's wrong, you correct him. That's about as far as my agenda goes. Moreover, I do not expect this post to have any effect on their belief systems but perhaps others are more open-minded and are interested in this debate and would like some detailed background on this in order to make an informed choice. Now, decide as you wish. You're the decider.