3. Jesus, the Copycat Savior?: The Spiritual Fuse

Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?

—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

I’ve come to the conclusion that mythology is really a form of archaeological psychology. Mythology gives you a sense of what a people believes, what they fear.

—WIDELY ATTRIBUTED TO GEORGE LUCAS

“ That was interesting.” Kyle closed the church door behind us as we stepped out into the sunshine. “I’m kinda surprised he was that honest—”

“He’s a pastor ,” I interjected. Kyle had a sarcastic look on his face. He’d known me for years, and during most of that time, we shared the same view of Christians. I wondered if he could recognize a subtle change on my part.

Our continuing investigation of the fuse helped us to understand how and why Tammy disappeared. One of Steve’s old friends, Ted, told us that Steve borrowed a large, empty, plastic barrel from his garage. The barrel had a sealable lid; Ted’s previous employer used it to store cleaning solution and gave it to Ted when he closed his business in June 1999. According to Ted, Steve borrowed the barrel about a week prior to Tammy’s disappearance and never returned it, even after Ted repeatedly asked for it.

This prompted us to look for local businesses that sold acids Steve might have used in Ted’s barrel. We knew that murderers had used sulfuric, hydrofluoric, hydrochloric, and nitric acids to partially or completely dissolve their victims, and Ted’s barrel would have resisted most of these acids. Only one chemical store of this nature existed in our part of the county in 2000, and it had been in business only for about six months. The owner was cooperative and agreed to search his records. He called days later to report that there was a single sales receipt, handwritten to Steve, but the employee of the business had failed to write the name of the product Steve purchased. It was written just days before Tammy’s disappearance.

While we were waiting for the store owner to call us, we discovered Steve had an older brother, Dennis. That’s what had brought us to this church.

“I wonder if Steve was getting cold feet,” said Kyle as we entered our unmarked police car and drove away from the church parking lot. “Sounds like it, doesn’t it?”

When we learned about Dennis and decided to interview him, he asked us to meet him at the church where he was volunteering. Dennis was unlike Steve in nearly every way. He became a Christian in high school, donated his time to the youth ministry, and eventually became a deacon at the church. Steve, on the other hand, never attended church and showed no interest in God, except, according to Dennis, on one occasion.

“STATE OF MIND”

What we believe—our motives and desires—is important in determining truth and our level of culpability in criminal matters. For example, a perpetrator’s “state of mind” determines the difference between first degree murder, second degree murder, and manslaughter. Do many of us believe in God simply because we desire him to exist? Is this belief simply an errant “state of mind,” or is there good evidence to infer his existence?

A few weeks before Tammy vanished, Steve showed up unannounced at Dennis’s home. Dennis hadn’t seen or spoken to Steve in years, but now Steve wanted to talk. After a few pleasantries, he asked Dennis an unusual question about God.

“Do you think it’s possible for a murderer to go to heaven someday?”

Dennis was shocked. “Why do you ask?”

Steve paused, stammered a bit, and then told Dennis he was watching a news story about a convicted killer.

Dennis offered a response: “That would depend on whether the killer was repentant—in other words, if the murderer confessed, asked God to forgive him, and accepted Jesus as his Savior.”

“What if the murderer killed a baby ?” added Steve.

Dennis remembered feeling uncomfortable when Steve asked this second question, and he began to wonder if Steve or one of his friends had done something terrible. Dennis repeated his response, but Steve still seemed unsatisfied with his answer.

Given the distant nature of their relationship, Dennis didn’t learn about Tammy’s disappearance until nearly two years after the fact. For many years he suppressed his concern that Steve might have harmed Tammy. But on the day of our visit, he seemed relieved to tell us his story. The fuse leading up to Tammy’s disappearance was clearer with every interview and investigative discovery.

“So Steve was a Christian ? How many of these ‘believers’ have we put in jail for murder now?” asked Kyle as he parked the car in the police compound.

“Too many,” I replied. “But I’m not sure Steve was a Christian. If so, he definitely wasn’t a Christian like his brother.”

“It doesn’t matter,” snarled Kyle. “Seems like almost everyone we’ve taken to jail believes in some kind of ‘higher power.’ They’re a bunch of hypocrites. That’s why I refuse to believe that garbage.”

THE JESUS MYTH

“I wish I would have kept my mythology books,” I said as I rummaged through the crawl space above the garage, looking through my old college textbooks.

“They’re not up there,” Susie replied with a librarian-like knowledge of our book collection.

When I bought and read that first Bible, I considered it more akin to mythology than history. As I read the Gospel accounts of Jesus, I rejected the supernatural events they alleged as pure fiction. The Gospels appeared to be an ancient work of mythology, and not even original mythology at that. The miracle Jesus performed in Cana, for example, was similar to something I read in college—another miracle in which water was turned into wine. That story seemed vaguely familiar to me, but I remembered a different God performing the miracle: a Greek god known as Dionysus.

According to several ancient myths and sources, Dionysus could create wine from nothing, and water occasionally turned into wine in his presence. The more I thought about it, the more I suspected Jesus’s miracle at Cana had been borrowed from Greek mythology. It wouldn’t have been the first time a group had borrowed it; the Romans also adopted Dionysus’s miracles when they renamed him Bacchus and included him in their pantheon of gods.

OBJECTION: JESUS IS A COPYCAT SAVIOR

Scrutiny of pre-Christian mythologies reveals they are less similar to the story of Jesus Christ than skeptics claim. Cynics typically cherry-pick from the attributes of these myths and exaggerate the alleged similarities to construct a profile vaguely similar to Jesus. It is unreasonable to believe that Christian authors would create a story for Jewish readers by inserting pagan mythological elements into the narrative. More importantly, most alleged similarities are extremely general in nature and would be expected from any group of humans considering the existence of God.

“I thought you were studying Jesus ,” Susie said, holding the ladder as I stepped down into the garage.

“I am, but I just want to compare Jesus to some of the myths I read about in college. Why go any further with all this if he’s just another myth in a long line of fictions?”

I originally noticed the nearly universal human inclination to believe in “God,” a “higher power,” or a “Supreme Being” as I began conducting criminal interviews and interrogations. Kyle was right; over the history of my career, most suspects—surprisingly—shared a belief in the Divine, even if they didn’t belong to an organized religion.

Ancient history also reveals this human interest in deities, and many of these gods seem similar to Jesus. In fact, there’s an army of “Jesus mythers” (authors, speakers, and videographers) who share my initial suspicions. They’re eager to disprove the existence of Jesus by claiming that his story was simply borrowed from prior “dying and rising” savior myths. Most of these borrowed attributes are, however, overstated.

But as I investigated the Jesus “fuse,” it was clear that the civilizations that preceded Jesus worshiped gods— many gods. Why? Was it the result of their primitive understanding of the world, or something else?

Current research on the issue provides an answer.

THE GOD INSTINCT

The innate human belief in God, a higher power, or a Supreme Being is still evident in the world today, even in places where you might not expect it. A New York Times article written by Dr. Preston Greene described the work of philosopher Nick Bostrom, who “made an ingenious argument that we might be living in a computer simulation created by a more advanced civilization.”

Bostrom believes our existence is an illusion, that the universe as we know it may be nothing more than a computer simulation.

Does that sound crazy to you? Think again.

Imagine, if you will, a group of today’s best computer programmers designing a computer simulation of a historical event, like the signing of the Declaration of Independence. How accurate would their simulation be?

Given our limited computational ability to replicate the past, this simulation may not accurately re-create the setting and characters involved in the signing.

But Bostrom believes a future civilization will eventually have the computer technology necessary to create “sophisticated simulations concerning its ancestors,” reconstructing the details of history with incredible accuracy and precision.

If this is the case, why shouldn’t we believe we are one of those ancestry simulations right now ? Why isn’t it reasonable that a future civilization has re-created their past (our experience of the present ) with such accuracy that the re-creation thinks it’s real? Bostrom believes that our world—the life we experience today—is just one simulation of many being done in the distant future by a group of scientists studying the past.

And that’s not even the interesting part.

According to Dr. Preston Greene, one way to test the theory is to look for anomalies in the computer simulation. For example, a future scientist might make a mistake in the program that would result in a flaw we might experience today. If this theory is true, a single scientist’s error in programing might result in a devastating tornado or in some human misbehavior. Greene warns, however, that we shouldn’t test the simulation. In fact, he says testing the simulation might anger the future programmers who are watching us: “If our universe has been created by an advanced civilization for research purposes, then it is reasonable to assume that it is crucial to the researchers that we don’t find out that we’re in a simulation. If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation—to destroy our world.”

Greene has inadvertently revealed yet another—albeit more interesting—example of our innate, human belief in a higher power.

Greene imagines a world in which an advanced, creative power (in this case the simulation research team) has the ability to create our world from nothing. He also imagines that human fallenness (in the form of the errant programmer) resulted in the imperfection (the anomalies) we experience in our world. Finally, Greene believes that our creator(s) will ultimately judge us and that we should respect and “fear” them.

Sound familiar? Greene has imagined a new mythology that is obviously similar to many ancient forms of theism.

Green’s simply replaced classic notions of God with updated placeholders. Greene seeks what most humans pursue: an understanding of the Divine.

A 2012 Pew Research Center Study found that 84 percent of the global population claimed a religious affiliation. And there is good reason to believe that many of the other 16 percent also believe in some sort of higher power: “Many of the unaffiliated hold some religious or spiritual beliefs (such as belief in God or a universal spirit) even though they do not identify with a particular faith.” A 2017 study confirmed that only 7 percent of the world’s population openly claims a strong atheistic or agnostic identity.

Why do so many of us believe in god(s) or higher power(s)? It may be in our genes. University studies in the fields of developmental psychology and the cognitive science of religion now propose that our foundational belief in theism is ingrained in our DNA. Bruce Hood, a professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University, studied the beliefs of children in the United Kingdom and concluded that “children have a natural, intuitive way of reasoning that leads them to all kinds of supernatural beliefs about how the world works.” In fact, Hood believes it is futile to encourage people to abandon their beliefs because these come from such a “fundamental level.”

OBJECTION: YOU’RE A CHRISTIAN ONLY BECAUSE YOU WERE RAISED THAT WAY

Ancient people groups often adopted the god(s) of their parents and the cultures where they were raised, but this was not true for the young Christian movement. Instead, Christianity emerged in a largely Jewish and pagan culture that was hostile to the claims of Christianity. New believers did not become Christians because Christianity was the default religion of the time. The same can be said for many new believers today. Some of us may have adopted the religion of our parents, but this does not explain the explosive, historic growth of Christianity.

Olivera Petrovich, an Oxford University psychologist, surveyed several international studies of children aged four to seven and found that the belief in God as a “creator” is “hardwired” in children and that “atheism is definitely an acquired position.”

In an attempt to explain this early belief in God, Deborah Kelemen, a professor of psychology at Boston University (along with PhD student Josh Rottman), surveyed more than a dozen studies and concluded that “evolved components of the human mind tend to lead people towards religiosity early in life.”

Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology and director of the Mind and Development Lab at Yale University, writes, “The universal themes of religion are not learned. They emerge as accidental by-products of our mental systems. They are part of human nature. . . . Creationism—and belief in God—is bred in the bone.”

Justin Barrett, from the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at Oxford University, after studying the research of fifty-seven scientists in more than forty studies spanning twenty countries, concluded that “our basic cognitive equipment biases us toward certain kinds of thinking and leads to thinking about a pre-life, an afterlife, gods, invisible beings that are doing things—themes common to most of the world’s religions.”

God matters to billions of humans across the globe. Humans have a history of thinking about the Divine. As a result, the fuse leading up to Jesus also had a spiritual strand. The ancients worshiped a variety of deities, and many of them shared some of the attributes of Jesus. As I examined these ancient deities, I wondered why this would be the case. Was Jesus just another fictional deity in a long line of “copycat” saviors? That’s why I was looking for those old mythology textbooks.

COMMON CHARACTERISTICS

I reassembled a library of sorts and began to investigate. I wasn’t sure what I would find as I reread each mythology, but along the way I recognized similarities in the narratives. I eventually identified fifteen characteristics commonly shared by ancient deities. These similarities seemed reasonable (and even predictable) given the expectations of people who were “thinking about a pre-life, an afterlife, gods” and “invisible beings that are doing things.”

Inevitable

In some ancient mythologies, the deity under consideration was predicted in some way. His coming was “foretold” by a prophet, another god, or a human author. For example, the birth of Zoroaster, the god worshiped in Persia from 650 BCE to modern times, was allegedly foretold from the beginning of time. This similarity didn’t strike me as unexpected, given our modern and ancient interest in divine beings. If humans are predisposed to think about such deities, why would we be surprised that some of us would expect their existence and verbalize these expectations?

Imperial

In some mythologies, the deity comes from a royal heritage in which one or both parents were kings, queens, princes, or princesses. For example, the Greek god Adonis, worshiped from 700 BCE to 450 BCE, was the son of King Theias and his daughter, Myrrha. Upon considering the superior nature of god(s), it seems reasonable that the ancients would see the power and stature of their god(s) as an extension of royal authority.

Inexplicable

Some ancient deities are born of unnatural means . Indra, the Tibetan Hindu deity worshiped from 1400 BCE to the present, is said to have been born in a number of unnatural ways (depending on which version of the myth you read), including one account in which he was born from the mouth of the god Purusha. An unnatural birth seems to be another reasonable expectation of humans who think of their deities as exceptional and supernatural in every way, including the ways they emerged into the world.

Insulated

In a few ancient mythologies, the god under consideration is protected as a child . The Buddha’s parents, for example, prevented him from seeing the ugliness of the world when he was young. It seems reasonable, however, that humans might expect supernatural beings to have some experiences that are similar to ours, including the need for protection as an infant.

OBJECTION: IF GOD IS ALL-POWERFUL, WHY DOESN’T HE STOP EVIL?

The ancients believed in god(s) but also experienced suffering, sickness, and violence. If God exists and is all-powerful, why would he allow this? Two common beliefs provide an answer: (1) the reasonable expectation that God and those he saves will live beyond the grave and (2) the expectation that God will ultimately judge the living and the dead. If this is true, justice will eventually be served, and peace will eventually reign.

Inveigled

Some mythological deities faced temptation . For example, demons were said to have tempted and threatened Krishna, the Hindu deity worshiped from 500 BCE to the present, as a child. This common feature of some ancient deities most reasonably reflects a human expectation that our creator(s) would understand and empathize with the experiences of mortals, including our temptations.

Identified

Some ancient deities are associated with—or identified as—shepherds . Osiris, the Egyptian god worshiped from 3300 BCE to 30 BCE, was linked to shepherds and illustrated with a shepherd’s staff (a “crook”). This depiction also seems reasonable given the role of shepherds in ancient culture. If divine beings protect and guide humans, we might expect the ancients to associate them with shepherds.

Incredible

Unsurprisingly, all mythological deities possess supernatural power . This power is expressed in different ways. Some, like Quetzalcóatl, the Mesoamerican deity worshiped in the region of Mexico from 100 BCE to 1550 CE, were believed to have created the world and the first humans. Ancient and modern humans who think about the existence of divine beings are likely to expect them to possess divine powers. Your god’s not much of a god if he doesn’t have supernatural power. This expectation is the most common characteristic of those who think about the existence of a god.

Interactor

In some mythologies, the deities engage humans directly . Tammuz, the Mesopotamian god worshiped from 3000 BCE to 1200 CE, for example, interacts with humans, including, most prominently, a woman named Inanna, her brother Utu, and a local farmer. This kind of interaction also seems like a reasonable inference of humans who expect their divine beings to guide and care for them.

OBJECTION: WHY WOULD GOD REQUIRE A SACRIFICE?

Most ancient religions recognized the imperfect moral nature of humans by requiring a penalty to be paid before believers could appease (or be united with in some way) their god(s). Many of these religions required animal sacrifices to atone for human sin. Christianity did not. Jesus, as God incarnate, paid the price for sin in a way that was different from prior religious systems. Rather than requiring one created being (an animal or human) to die for another, God stepped into history as a human being and paid the price for human sin on his own . He replaced the need for repeated sacrifices with a single eternal sacrifice.

Instructive

Some mythological deities teach their human followers . Serapis, the Graeco-Egyptian deity worshiped from 350 BCE to 385 CE, taught his people about agriculture, music, arts, and religion. If divinely powerful beings exist, it seems reasonable that they would have supernatural wisdom and knowledge. We would, therefore, expect to find this attribute in ancient descriptions of gods.

Indemnifier

Many ancient deities recognize the need for (or require) a sacrifice of some sort . One example from antiquity, Shangdi, the Chinese deity worshiped from 2230 BCE to 1911 CE, desired animal sacrifices, especially bulls and lambs. This common characteristic of ancient deities reflects a shared (and equally ancient) understanding of human nature. Thoughtful humans understood their propensity to do wrong, and they also understood that this misbehavior deserved punishment. For this reason, they reasonably expected righteous, divine beings to require penance.

Indicted

A few ancient deities faced a judicial trial of sorts . In one example, Dionysus, a Greek and Roman god worshiped from 650 BCE to 186 BCE, appeared before King Pentheus on charges of claiming to be God. As before, it seems reasonable for humans to expect god(s) to execute justice, even when judging their own actions. For this reason, it makes sense that judicial settings would appear in some ancient mythologies.

Inviter

A few mythologies also describe a deity who shares or establishes a divine meal . According to Mithraic artwork, Mithras, a god worshiped in Persia and Rome from 400 BCE to 380 CE, shared a meal with the Roman sun god, Sol Invictus, and Mithras worshipers also engaged in ritual meals. This expectation among ancient humans also seems reasonable given that a meal provides an opportunity for intimate, interpersonal interaction. If humans desire this kind of relationship with the Divine (and with one another), meal rituals would be a logical choice.

Immortal

Many ancient deities had the power to defeat death . Heracles, the Greek god worshiped from 600 BCE to 250 CE, was allegedly killed by his wife Deianira. As the poison she gave him started to eat his flesh, he burned himself to death on a funeral pyre. When his body burned, he ascended to Olympus, where he became an immortal god. Humans who think about the supernatural power of deities would reasonably expect these deities to transcend the limitations of mortality.

OBJECTION: WASN’T THE VIRGIN CONCEPTION OF JESUS COPIED FROM PAGAN MYTHS?

The gospel authors are unlikely to have borrowed from the birth narratives of ancient foreign deities. Jewish readers would be unwilling to embrace a god who shared pagan attributes. Early Christian converts, called to live a new life in Christ and to be free of the foolish philosophies and religions of men, would also be unlikely to embrace a god who was explicitly worldly and pagan. A better explanation is that humans expect a supernatural god to enter the world in a supernatural manner, and this expectation was fulfilled in the conception of Jesus.

Intercessor

Some ancient mythological deities offered eternal life to their followers. Zalmoxis, the deity of the Getae and Dacians (present day Romania) worshiped between 500 BCE and 5 BCE, promised immortality to the souls of brave warriors. If immortal deities love the humans they protect (and in many cases created), it seems reasonable to expect these divine beings to provide eternal life for their followers.

Indicter

Finally, some ancient mythologies describe gods who will judge the living and the dead . For example, Thakur Jiu, the Santal (northern Bangladesh) deity worshiped from 1000 BCE to the present, is the judge of humans both before and after their death. This expectation also seems reasonable given the common human belief that justice will eventually be served, if not in this life, then in the next.

As I finished my investigation of the mythologies, I recognized that there were similarities between Jesus and the mythological deities. The list of the most common attributes of these ancient deities sounded a lot like the Christian description of Jesus:

Predicted by prophecy

Recognized the need for a sacrifice

Born by unnatural means

Established a divine meal

Protected as an infant

Faced a trial

Faced temptation

Had the power to defeat death

Was associated with shepherds

Offered eternal life

Possessed supernatural power

Judge the living and the dead

Engaged and taught humans directly

At first glance, these common descriptions seemed surprisingly similar to characteristics of Jesus. But a closer examination revealed something entirely different. None of the ancient mythologies possessed all the attributes described on this list. At best, a handful of deities displayed ten of the shared characteristics. Most had far fewer (from five to nine). And while these similarities existed broadly , the details among the ancient narratives differed dramatically . For example, although many ancient deities were said to enter the world unnaturally, the way they entered couldn’t have been more different. Attis, for example, was conceived when the god Agdistis was castrated and bled into the ground. From this blood, a tree grew, producing almonds that a goddess later collected and held to her bosom, causing her to conceive Attis. Dionysus’s father, Zeus, destroyed Dionysus’s mother but saved Dionysus by sewing him up in his thigh and keeping him there until Dionysus reached maturity. Krishna was conceived when the Hindu god Vishnu planted two hairs from his head in Krishna’s mother’s womb. Mithras was born out of solid rock. Quetzalcóatl was conceived when his mother swallowed an emerald.

When you examine the details related to each similarity between Jesus and ancient mythologies, the resemblances begin to vanish. Jesus isn’t much like the other gods after all.

The few broad similarities that do exist are reasonable expectations on the part of humans who are thinking diligently about their experience of the world and the existence and nature of supernatural beings. In the same way that Dr. Greene imagines a set of otherworldly minds to explain the nature of the universe and creates a set of attributes mirroring classic descriptions of deities, ancient humans arrived at a set of reasonable attributes given their common human expectations. The most common of these attributes—unsurprisingly—was simply the ability of each god to do what we expect of gods: they were able to perform supernatural acts . For larger, readable images, refer to case note.

Of these figures, Osiris, Dionysus, Zoroaster, and the Buddha have more in common with one another—and with Jesus—than any of the other ancient mythologies (even though these four deities don’t share the same ten attributes). Although you may not be familiar enough with Osiris, Dionysus, and Zoroaster to evaluate their true similarity to Jesus, you probably know enough about the Buddha to recognize that any parallels to Jesus are broad and superficial. Few people, for example, would argue that Jesus is simply a re-creation of the Buddha “myth.” In the same way, any statement about Jesus’s resemblance to other ancient deities is equally unreasonable, especially considering these lesser-known mythological characters possess far fewer shared characteristics.

Finally, I found it interesting that Jesus was the one deity who possessed all the attributes found commonly in so many prior ancient mythologies. While the gods of antiquity shared some of humankind’s expectations of God, Jesus alone personified all their expectations.

GOD’S MYTH

Why would Jesus be the only deity to possess all the common attributes? Early in my investigation, because of my distrust of the New Testament accounts, I was inclined to believe that the gospel authors simply cobbled the story of Jesus from prior mythologies. But did these authors really know enough about the pantheon of gods (across all history and every region) to shape such a tale? Would they really expect Jewish readers to accept a patchwork, pagan “copycat” as their Messiah?

C. S. Lewis, in his own investigation of Christianity, seemed to have considered the same questions. His conclusion was penned in a letter to Arthur Greeves:

MYTHS, LIES, AND DETERMINING THE TRUTH

C. S. Lewis was correct when he noted that not all “myths” are untrue. But can a claim about the past contain an untruth yet still tell us something true about the world? Yes, and this is even true in criminal trials. Judges tell jurors, “If you think the witness lied about some things but told the truth about others, you may simply accept the part that you think is true and ignore the rest.” Ancient mythological claims about deities contain many untruths, but they also contain the true, reasonable expectations all of us have about God.

Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened : and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call “real things.” (emphasis mine)

Lewis clearly distinguished between two common dictionary definitions of the word myth : (1) “a widely held but false belief(s) or idea(s)” and (2) “a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.” Lewis used the word according to the second dictionary definition, one that doesn’t equate myth with false .

Was Jesus the true myth who embodied the common expectations of all prior mythologies? Was Jesus God’s myth? If Lewis, as a Christian, recognized the difference between the myths of humanity and the myths of God, to which God was he referring when he wrote that Jesus was “God’s myth”? Lewis was referring to the God of Israel .

IT’S NOT JESUS

I was hesitant to read about the God of Israel. The Old Testament seemed voluminous and somewhat obscure. But as I focused on the prophets and leaders chronicled on the pages of Jewish scripture, I was surprised to discover descriptions of Jesus . Consider, for example, the following list of attributes:

As a baby, he escaped the decree of a king and avoided certain death

He lived in Egypt as a child but later returned to his homeland

He was known by his followers to be both humble and strong

He was tempted while in the wilderness

He was attested by God through signs and wonders

He worked a miracle at the sea

He miraculously fed thousands of people with bread

He spoke God’s word and taught God’s law from a mountain

He was the mediator between God and his people

This clear, concise description of Jesus preceded him by thousands of years. How could the ancient author have described Jesus so accurately? The answer? This isn’t a description of Jesus at all. This list describes Moses . Strikingly similar to Jesus, wouldn’t you say? There’s more. Read the next descriptions:

His name, when translated from Hebrew, means “God saves”

He descended from a man named Joseph

He had a humble, obscure beginning but rose to a place of honor

He was anointed by God

He was filled with God’s Spirit

He led and shepherded his people

He did for God’s people what Moses could not do

He delivered God’s people from the enemies of God

He promised rest and provided it

This appears to be another succinct, ancient description of Jesus, but like the first, it isn’t describing Jesus. This is the Old Testament description of Joshua . Let’s investigate another set of attributes:

He was the special object of his father’s love

He was underestimated and discounted by his own family

He had the ability to resist a temptation

He fed bread to people to relieve their hunger

He accurately foretold the future

He was sold by someone he trusted for pieces of silver

He was stripped of his robe and delivered to gentiles

He stood before rulers in the assembly

He was falsely accused

His own people did not recognize him

Once again, this ancient list of attributes sounds like Jesus, even though it describes Joseph from the Old Testament. Let’s examine another descriptive list:

He was a descendant of Abraham and of the tribe of Judah

He was born in the town of Bethlehem

He burst onto the scene from an unlikely social position

He was anointed by God to lead his people

He was both shepherd and king

He amazed the elders as a young man

He spent time in the wilderness

He had no place to lay his head

His popularity angered the leaders of the time

He was betrayed by those he served

He trusted God in the face of adversity

This is also an ancient record describing someone other than Jesus (even though it sounds a lot like him). This time, it’s an Old Testament description of King David . How about these descriptions:

His name, when translated from Hebrew, means “God is salvation”

His ministry started at the Jordan River

He received the Spirit of his Father

He was surrounded by more disciples than his predecessors

He was attested by God with miracles, signs, and wonders

He raised a woman’s adult son from the grave

He fed many people with just a few loaves and had more to spare

He healed a leper

He gave sight to the blind

He fed the hungry

He was betrayed for money

Although it sounds like Jesus, this time we’re describing the Old Testament prophet Elisha . Let’s end with this ancient description:

He preached repentance to gentiles

He knew that salvation belongs to the Lord

He slept on a boat during a storm

He acted and the power of God calmed the storm

He chose to sacrifice himself for others

He spent three days in darkness, given up for dead

After three days, he escaped death and taught for forty days

This final description also sounds like Jesus of Nazareth, but it’s actually the Old Testament prophet Jonah . For larger, readable images, refer to case note.

Unlike the pagan mythologies that share common, broad characteristics with Jesus, the ancient Jewish religious figures share attributes that are much more distinct and specific . Scholars describe these ancient Jewish figures as “types” of Jesus, foreshadowing the attributes that would later be found in the Messiah. The Israelites knew and admired these leaders and prophets who presented them with characteristics they should eventually recognize in their promised Savior and deliverer. The ancient descriptions of key Jewish leaders presage an important person of interest.

These key figures from history possessed attributes that would become part of the collective consciousness of the Jewish nation. If Jesus were to appear to Israel possessing these characteristics, they would certainly recognize the similarities between Jesus and the most important figures from Jewish history.

But here’s where it gets even more interesting.

If we were to combine the broad expectations of non-Jewish mythologies with the foreshadowed attributes of these important Jewish figures, we could create a profile of sorts. This summary, built from collective expectations and common explanations, describes a person of interest:

He was predicted by prophecy

He was a descendant of Abraham and of the tribe of Judah

He descended from a man named Joseph

He was born by unnatural means

He was born in the town of Bethlehem

He burst onto the scene from an unlikely social position

He was the special object of his father’s love

His name, when translated from Hebrew, means “God saves”

As a baby, he escaped the decree of a king and avoided certain death

He was protected as an infant

He lived in Egypt as a child but later returned to his homeland

He had a humble, obscure beginning but rose to a place of honor

He amazed the elders as a young man

He spent time in the wilderness

He was tempted while in the wilderness

He faced temptation

He had the ability to resist temptation

His ministry started at the Jordan River

He received the Spirit of his Father

He was underestimated and discounted by his own family

His own people did not recognize him

He was associated with shepherds

He led and shepherded his people

He was both shepherd and king

He was known by his followers to be both humble and strong

He was surrounded by more disciples than his predecessor

He was anointed by God

He was filled with God’s Spirit

He was anointed by God to lead his people

He was attested by God with miracles, signs, and wonders

He possessed supernatural power

He miraculously fed thousands of people with just a few loaves of bread and had more to spare

He healed a leper

He gave sight to the blind

He raised a woman’s adult son from the grave

He slept on a boat during a storm

He calmed the storm with the power of God

He worked a miracle at the sea

He accurately foretold the future

He engaged and taught humans directly

He spoke God’s word and taught God’s law from a mountain

He preached repentance to gentiles

He knew that salvation belongs to the Lord

He had no place to lay his head

He recognized the need for a sacrifice

He established a divine meal

His popularity angered the leaders of the time

He was sold by someone he trusted for pieces of silver

He was betrayed by those he served

He faced a trial

He stood before rulers in the assembly

He was falsely accused

He was stripped of his robe and delivered to gentiles

He trusted God in the face of adversity

He chose to sacrifice himself for others

He spent three days in darkness, given up for dead

He had the power to defeat death

After three days, he escaped death and taught for forty days

He offered eternal life

He promised rest and provided it

He was the mediator between God and his people

He did for God’s people what Moses could not do

He delivered God’s people from the enemies of God

He will judge the living and the dead

This description is eerily similar to the person we know today as Jesus of Nazareth, and this level of detail can be gleaned not from the New Testament record but from non-Christian sources that preceded the New Testament. If nothing else, the ancients clearly shared common expectations related to divine beings and were intimately familiar with the attributes that those who wrote about Jesus would later document.

EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED

As I pondered these ancient descriptions from Jewish and non-Jewish sources, I wrestled with an idea: If God existed, he would certainly know the hopes and history of humans. Would he enter the world in a manner intentionally similar to the expectations of the Jews and those of non-Jewish cultures?

My own limited, human experience inclined me to believe this might be the case.

As an undercover investigator, I learned to appreciate the relationship between the expected and the expecter. For nearly four years I was part of a surveillance team that allowed me to work in street clothes without any of the restrictions of life in a uniform. As a result, I didn’t cut my hair for several years. Toward the end of that assignment, I didn’t look much like a detective or police officer.

Around this time, our unit began to investigate a series of residential burglaries. Without a specific suspect in mind, we did the only thing we could do: we surveilled the neighborhoods most recently targeted by the burglars, positioned strategically in unmarked police vehicles. Given the size of the neighborhoods, this approach was far less than ideal. We couldn’t watch every street.

OBJECTION: WHY DIDN’T FIRST-CENTURY JEWS RECOGNIZE JESUS AS THE MESSIAH?

While Jesus met ancient overarching human expectations related to deity, many Jews of the time held a different, inconsistent expectation related to the Messiah. Many Jews who expected a spiritual savior and redeemer became Christ followers, but Jews who expected a temporal king and conqueror (who would save the nation of Israel and restore the Jewish kingdom) did not. Jesus met the expectations of those who sought eternal, spiritual truth.

Several hours into the second day of surveillance, while watching my assigned thoroughfare and monitoring the regular police traffic on the scanner, I heard our dispatcher detail a police unit to a crime that occurred three blocks from where I was sitting. A victim had just arrived home from work to discover his house had been burglarized. I couldn’t believe it happened so close to our fixed surveillance. In frustration I decided to “hop the call” and drive to the victim’s location to ask a few questions. I was hoping the caller might have seen a suspect vehicle or could give me some other valuable information I could then relay to the rest of our team. Maybe it wasn’t too late to catch the burglars if they were still in the area.

When I arrived at the victim’s house, he was standing at the curb, waiting for the marked police unit to arrive. I jumped out of my car, ran up to him, and identified myself as a police officer. He didn’t seem to believe me. To be fair, I had shoulder-length hair, hadn’t shaved in several days, and was wearing a pair of cargo shorts. I probably wouldn’t have cooperated either, had I been in a similar situation.

Minutes later, the police unit arrived, and a uniformed officer approached both of us. Suddenly the victim was eager to provide the information he withheld from me. In that moment I learned a simple rule about expectations: the more the “expected” meets the expectations of the “expecter,” the better the response.

Our victim was expecting a uniformed police officer to arrive at his location to take a crime report. Instead, he got a disheveled, unshaven guy in shorts. No wonder he was so uncooperative.

If there is a God and he wanted to evoke the best possible response, wouldn’t he meet the expectations of the expecters? Jesus possessed all fifteen divine expectations of non-Jewish cultures while robustly personifying attributes of ancient Jewish leaders. Jesus met the expectations of those who were familiar with the Old Testament and those who were not.

THE FUSE SO FAR

As the fuse of history burned toward what we now call the first century, civilizations rose and fell until the Roman Empire set the stage for the inauguration of the Common Era. At the same time, the spiritual expectations of humans began to sketch a thumbnail image of divinity.

You can recognize his attributes in the manuscripts of ancient mythologies and the pages of Jewish scriptures. Was this the divine person of interest who divided history and defined our common calendar? Were the years before the Common Era simply the long runway of human expectation? Perhaps antiquity turned a corner when the “expecters” finally met the “expected.” If so, the fallout of history would confirm his identity.

It would also confirm the claims of people who predicted it for centuries .

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