This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Ittt’ssssss Monday! Time once again for Monday School. Yep, you guessed it – it’s STILL “The Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense They Tried To Teach You Yesterday!”

Today’s Lesson: If Jesus Had Been A College Student, Would He Have Been Expelled For Habitual Plagiarism?

Hard to say – especially since it’s doubtful that any college would have accepted him in the first place.

What we can say with some certainty is this: Virtually all the things associated with Jesus have been associated with many others, both before and since.

I’ve pointed this out before, but I was reminded of it again recently while reading Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? – a collection of essays by science writer Martin Gardner. In a section devoted to medical quackery and myths, Gardner recounts how saliva has long been considered a folk remedy for a wide variety of ailments. After retelling the stories of how Jesus allegedly restored sight to a blind man (John 9, Mark 8) and hearing to a deaf man (Mark 7) with his spit, Gardner says “Similar accounts of healing with saliva abound in the myths of Hinduism and Buddhism…. The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, has five pages in Volume 11 on worldwide superstitions about saliva. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, in his thirty-seven-volume Historia Naturalis (Natural History), A.D. 77, describes many curative powers of saliva that were widely believed in his day” (p. 92-93). An actual divinity might be expected to be a little more original, don’t you think?

The book I’ve read recently that really drove the point home about Jesus’s derivative ways and message, however, was Michael O. Wise’s The First Messiah: Investigating the Savior Before Christ (HarperSanFrancisco: 1999). Wise is a professor of ancient languages and history as well as an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many of those scrolls seem to have been written in the first century B.C.E. by a Righteous Teacher whom Wise has designated the first messiah (and rather arbitrarily calls Judah for convenience). It is very hard to read this book without coming to the conclusion that Jesus was basically an Elvis impersonator who enjoyed a few lucky breaks that eventually allowed him to become a much bigger star than the original.

Wise spends the first part of his book explaining the nature of the so-called crisis cults which give rise to figures like Judah and Jesus. A LOT of them have arisen independently over the years, all over the world, which seems to be a pretty good indication that human beings who share a common human psychology will tend to react similarly to similar pressures – no divine intervention required. Wise does an excellent job setting the stage for the main show by providing details about a long list of case studies that include the medieval followers of Konrad Schmid, the 17th century followers of Sabbatai Sevi, the apocalyptic Millerites of 1840s America, the Ghost Dance mania that reached its climax among American Indians in 1890, the so-called cargo cults that have repeatedly erupted among Pacific islanders, and David Koresh. According to Wise, “Hundreds of such movements are documented; thousands find at least some mention in the annals of history” (pp. 28-29). A clear pattern emerges – and the bulk of Wise’s book is devoted to explaining at length how that pattern seems to have first emerged among those Jews who were living in the area of Jerusalem many decades before Jesus was (allegedly) born.

Apparently there was something in the culture of the time which inspired this sort of thing the way darkness, warmth, and moisture inspire mold.

“Between 100 B.C.E. and 70 C.E. many prophets and messiahs arose among the Jews. The roster includes Judas the Galilean, the shepherd Athronges, Simon the Perean, a Samaritan messiah in the days of Pontius Pilate, Theudas, ‘the Egyptian,’ Menahem ben Hezekiah, John the Baptist, and, of course, Jesus of Nazareth. Others are mentioned in the sources as existing, but with the last of their followers likewise perished their names. Not one of these prophets wrote anything (at least, anything that has survived), Jesus included” (p. 261).

Judah was different in at least two important ways: He seems to have been the first; and he did write about himself. In fact, he wrote about himself a lot, and Wise bases much of his book on his actual words.

How similar was Judah to what Jesus allegedly said and did nearly a century later? Here is the summary Wise provides near the end of his book after having spent many chapters proving each similarity, point by point:

“As Jesus declared himself a prophet, and more than a prophet, so had Judah.

“As Jesus struck contemporaries with his authoritative teaching and rare gifts of expression, so had Judah.

“As Jesus proclaimed a completed Law of Moses, perfected by his own direct revelations from God, so had Judah.

“As Jesus spoke of charity, the poor, and love of one’s fellows, forbade divorce, and proclaimed the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God, so had Judah.

“As Jesus was hailed by followers as He Who Is to Come and worked attendant wonders, so had Judah.

“As Jesus’ message and claims were rejected by most of his fellows, so it had been for Judah.

“As Jesus came into conflict with the ruling powers, the Pharisees, and the high priestly families, so had Judah.

“As Jesus was tried before the council and sentenced to die, so had been Judah.

“As Jesus pronounced judgment upon Jerusalem and predicted that for rejecting him it would be destroyed by the Romans, so had Judah.

“As Jesus founded a vital and long-lasting movement before leaving this world, so had Judah.

“As the Christian church grew into an institution composed of ‘overseers’ (bishops), priests, and laity, so it had been with Judah’s followers.

“As Jesus’ followers argued that he was the Suffering Servant, the Messiah, the Good Shepherd, and other figures foretold by scripture, so the followers of Judah had argued.

“As Jesus’ sufferings were proclaimed a divine healing for all believers – an atonement – so it had been with Judah.

“As growing numbers came to believe that Jesus had been glorified and now sat at the right hand of God, so it had been with Judah.

“As early Christians anticipated the imminent return of Jesus to judge the quick and the dead, redeem Israel, and initiate a millennium wherein believers would rule the world, so it had been with Judah’s followers.

“And in all these things, Judah was first, anticipating the far more famous prophet from Galilee by a full century….

“These elements were connected to the myth-dream of Israel, which Judah had fed, molded, and changed and which came to Jesus in that changed form, ready for him to tap” (pp. 253-255).

And as Judah ultimately proved to be a false prophet and a failed messiah unable to do all the things he said he was going to do, so it turned out to be the case with Jesus.

For a Christian reading this book, it must be like finding all of Grandpa’s funny “true life” stories in a collection of vaudeville scripts written long before he was born.

I feel your pain.

But as someone once said, “The truth will set you free.”