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The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of His Existence cover

The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of His Existence

Chapter 570: 555
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About This Book

A skeptical, systematic critique argues that the Christ of the New Testament is a constructed myth rather than a reliably attested historical person. It assesses the silence of contemporary writers, the anonymous and late character of the gospels, and the contradictions within infancy narratives, ministry accounts, crucifixion, and resurrection reports. The author evaluates the moral portrait and teachings attributed to the figure and traces parallels with older pagan religions and divinities as possible sources of the myth. The conclusion asserts that supernatural claims lack sufficient historical support and that veneration rests on literary and theological fabrication rather than firm documentary evidence.

555

Why was Dives’ request that his brothers be informed of their impending fate refused?

“They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them” (Luke xvi, 29).

Moses and the prophets do not teach the doctrine of endless punishment, nor even that of a future existence, much less that the mere possession of wealth, acquired perhaps by honest industry, is a crime which can be expiated only by the sufferings of an endless hell.

Christ’s Kingdom was a kingdom of vagrants and paupers. “A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew xix, 23). “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (24).