THE PREHISTORIC CHRIST
Apostles Deny Jesus Lived During their Lifetime 

 
The earliest writings about Jesus and we have those writings in the New Testament which is considered to be God’s Word by the Church give several clues that Jesus was thought to have lived in prehistoric times. This means the gospels which came after these writings are lying for they put Jesus in the first century CE. This means that the evidence for Jesus having existed is weak or non-existent.

 

PAUL
 
Paul writes nothing that hints that Jesus lived recently. Paul was the earliest Christian writer and you would expect him to know something about Jesus but instead he writes as if Jesus were a mythical figure who may have lived in the long gone past. The New Testament in other places indicates that Jesus did not live in the first century AD.   He did write that Romans 1:3 says Jesus was of the seed of David but he hasn't thought about if David lived one thousand years before or ten thousand.
 
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER

1 Peter 1 tells the Jews who had been thrown out of Palestine to whom it was addressed, that they had never seen Jesus. Some say the scattered were not real Jews but Christians but there is no need for that interpretation and Peter was an apostle to the Jews. He mentions persecution a lot so they had been persecuted and expelled and scattered for their faith. He said they were saved from idolatry but not all would have been meant and there had been many religiously corrupt Jews in the time of Jesus who did practice forbidden abominations. So the Jews who should have brushed shoulders with Jesus never met him. They knew there was no Jesus in Palestine in their day.
 
Peter tells us to suffer with patience like Jesus did. Obviously, if you can save yourself you can’t talk of being patient during suffering so the letter denies that Jesus had miracle powers. That eliminates the gospels as authentic history for they say Jesus did have such powers. It denies that Jesus Christ was God.
 
The epistle says that Roman governors must be obeyed for God uses them to punish and reward people (1 Peter 2:13,14).
 
It is thought that this denies that one of them, Pilate, killed Jesus. It seems to some that Peter would be taking it for granted that we know to obey them only when they are right. But then why does he tell us to uphold the Roman governors decisions about meting out vengeance on people when most of their punishments were unduly harsh and they had little concern for justice? They represented and maintained a system that cared only about money and convenience and expediency not people. Any justice they administered fairly was not administered out of a sense of duty or fairness but to dodge the penalty of the law to which they were bound themselves on pain of death or prison. I agree with G A Wells that this command proves that the early Church did not believe that Pilate unjustly sent Jesus to the cross.
 
Christians say that Pilate was forced by the Jews or Roman law or both. They say he was therefore innocent. But this is dubious for Pilate had the power to postpone a decision and could have decreed a discreet execution of a man who was not Jesus in Jesus’ place to save Jesus.
 
The John gospel has Pilate killing Jesus because he is afraid of the Jews and then informing Jesus that he could release him if he would only clear himself before him so somebody wasn’t able to make up his mind about Pilate. The incoherence suggests that the Pilate episode may never have happened for it should not have been hard to report accurately about it if it had.
 

1 Peter has Jesus dying to preach to those who died in the Noah flood in the afterlife.  Why them?  Did he live in their day?

 

It says "He was put to death in the body but made alive in the spirit in which he went to preach to the spirits who proved disobedient in the days of Noah." 

 

It has been noticed that as there was no spacing in those days en ho kai which is translated "in which he" is very like Enoch.  That could be a layer of meaning intended by the writer.  It reads like a possible clue.

 
Professor Ellegard is right to say that a man pretending to be Peter calling himself a witness to the suffering of Christ in 1 Peter (5:1) does not mean he claimed to have seen the suffering for never did tradition or the gospels say that Peter saw Jesus crucified (page 145, Jesus, One Hundred Years Before Christ). Peter used the word martus which means one who would testify to that suffering. All Christians claim they can do that for they sense the Holy Spirit telling them that Jesus suffered for them. He observes that witness means the kind of witness that may not necessarily be an eyewitness. 1 Peter 1:11 says the prophets who lived before the suffering of Christ witnessed it by the power of the Holy Spirit before they happened. He tells his hearers to be able to witness that Jesus saved them by his blood (1 Peter 1:18,19). This letter never speaks of Jesus as a historical person.
 
Who was the man that Peter may have believed to been his Jesus? Enoch. Enoch was praised in Genesis for habitually walking with God and it is said that he disappeared for God took him which could refer to an ascension or a resurrection. We must remember that in theology the Church says that even those faithful who are alive at the second coming of Christ will be resurrected but WITHOUT DEATH! They are raised from mortal bodies to immortal bodies without dying.
 
Enoch must have been a sinless figure when his holiness had to get a mention. Enoch was the father of Methuselah who was the father of Lamech who was the father of Noah. Given that men could live to over nine hundred years in those days, Enoch could have preached to the generation that perished in the flood.
 
It is not the similarities to the Jesus story alone that are evidence for the identification of Jesus and Enoch. Peter never mentioned Enoch by name in our version of his letter. It may be that the words in the original, en ho kai phulake, which have led some to believe that Enoch was mentioned in the text but was left out by mistake because of the three first words which sounded like his name are really just a hint that Jesus was Enoch. This would mean that Peter declared that Enoch the Messiah went to preach to the spirits in Prison in Peter’s words.

Some crafty Bibles translate the verses to say that Jesus was made alive by the Spirit by whom he went to teach them. See for instance, the New International Version. Even the fundamentalists do not like this Bible for its biased Modernist translating.

The First Epistle of Peter states that Jesus lived long ago and that Peter never met him until he started appearing centuries after his death.
  
THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER
 
Second Peter states that the apostles did not give out cleverly devised myths when they revealed to the world the power and the coming of the Lord Jesus but were eyewitnesses to a visionary event, the transfiguration, that revealed the majesty of Jesus (1:16). In other words, a vision verified the power and coming of Jesus. It doesn't hint that it means the second coming of Christ. It just says coming. The vision he recounts said nothing or indicated nothing about a second coming. Second Peter is plainly saying that Jesus' power and coming had to be revealed to the apostles in a vision. He was not heard of before. This supports the idea that there was no Jesus known of until some people claimed to be having visions of this being who claimed to have been crucified and died and rose again. This Jesus could have been crucified centuries before.

Conclusion: It is easy to believe that the gospels lied when they placed Jesus in the first century. He could have been an obscure figure who allegedly lived in the distant past.