I just finished this exact exploration of that exact question.
I cannot possibly even post what the heck I found and why I arrived at my conclusions perfectly as I wish that I could that I arrived at because the amount of research we are talking about spans the course of about 16 years, and came full head very recently with a massive amount of research that was based from those 16 years of personal study by applying to all forms of Christianity that I could get my hands on, and studied Judaism and Greek, and Roman Christendom, also including Russian Christianity and Britannian “Pagan” religion and the influence of Roman and Spanish Christianity on those Britannian “Pagan” religions; and relevant perspective of Chrisitianity and Spirituality dualism by the followers of the Britannian “Pagan” religion.
Also with a keen interest and long term of more than 20 years of learning about early 1 and 2nd century middle east history, as well as a teaching in Greek, Latin, and Aramaic Biblical translations; as to an understanding of Hebrew and Hebrew law and life from around the same span.
Along with a dabbling of about a year in Egyptian culture, art, and language, and by relation, Sanskrit.
Patched together with a long running interest in the Scientific exploration of the historical man, evolution, and social anthropology (specifically in expression of the society; the nature of what a human does as a result of what has occurred).
With all of this, I found that the closest concept of anything resembling what was authentically as close to what we can tangibly hold as a direct relative of what those that actually followed Jesus thought completely removes 96+% of the established New Testament canon, and does so, so strongly, that it actually cause historical ripples that arrived in forms of banishment, and ostracism.
Luckily, the group primarily existed outside of the mainstream Christendom, obviously (Egypt to Judea in 3rd Century Roman culture? Not a major thoroughfare for Christendom oddly enough), so they didn’t seem to care much or were affected…in fact, they were so little effected largely that they pretty much faded out and died because they were so passive.
It wasn’t any group we really know or have a name for even…we know of an extended group that wasn’t a follower of Jesus directly, but was, for all intents and purposes, one of the first external “Churches” (meaning, people who followed Jesus’ teachings but were not directly near him) and that they definitely would have been because they had a trade route in the belt to Judea where they would collect their instructions from going to see Jesus, transcribing such from the discussions and taking them home; after which, reteaching them would occur in form like modern sermons…everyone wanted to know what the latest update was from what Jesus had taught now.
Eventually, this was all wrapped up and written down much later on after Jesus because obviously there was interest in wrapping up everything that the man had taught…nothing was going to be said new, so now you write it all down in an agreed and more solidified manner.
Here, we have no direct copy of this, yet we do have descriptions of it.
We have many competing accounts of it actually, but there are a couple primary things about it that let us know some core concepts about it.
The book is called the Gospel of Hebrews (among a dozen other names, including even such names as, “The Gospel of the Apostles”, which bears little in name to the one I supplied, yet they refer to the same content), and it was written by the Ebionites, and counter to the common thought and myth that they were part of the Gnostic’s…the original Ebionites, were in fact, not.
A few things are known about this Gospel from this extremely early group of Christians that existed in the Egyptian and Judea belt line (as opposed much farther away and completely culturally different and much later adopter, the Greek and Italian Roman region):
- They lacked any account of an immaculate conception; some accounts claim Mary and Joseph are simply never mentioned.
- They lacked any account of Jesus being Crucified at all, let alone raising back from the dead.
- The writing closely resembles much of what Mathew resembles very early on and yet nothing close to what we understand Mathew to be (I will explain why Mathew is not really even correct as it is compared to what it originally was…whatever that was in 3rd Century Roman Culture)
These are the principle understandings of the book.
But what about dates?
Well…the dates are, in my opinion, dead wrong.
The dates would have you understand that what Paul wrote is first, and then the Gospels came later; Mark being the first.
This is actually, just dead wrong.
Here’s my case as to why:
Why would Paul…a non Jew that never even met Jesus, be the first person to ever write about Jesus, when there are earlier groups of Christians than Paul by a century?
I performed my own research following one premise:
Cultural buildings that have been around for an extremely long time cannot be dated by their external layer because what tended to happen in these cases (like the Great Wall of China and much of Egyptian architecture) was that the structures were built and then rebuilt on top of; therefore, the original under-layer is the earlier time, and not the external layer.
As such, I considered that the Gospels could very easily be earlier, and seem later because the last date that they were altered is the version we have and that is the most complete list of collected content for that text that we have; therefore, the established date.
To me…it is like imagining the Great Wall of China was completely destroyed, and then rebuilt much later out of the pieces that were destroyed and new material, and then determining that the oldest piece that we find was the real date for the original completed form of the Great Wall.
You have no idea based on that.
Instead, what you can do, is look at the entire Great Wall (if it had been completely destroyed and rebuilt, in part, with it’s older contents) and decide that the older parts would have more of the older pieces in them than the newer spots because there was more content available that was older.
Now, coming from this angle of thought, I decided that the best way to tell would be to collect a list of every book in the New Testaments textual errors and compare them against each other.
The idea was, that the oldest book that I find in the Bible, in theory, should actually be the book with the most textual errors as it would have been around longer and therefore would have been altered and reprinted more often than any other text, leaving room for the possibility that one has to factor how provocative the content was.
Lower controversial content should be expected to have very few errors while highly controversial content should be expected to have many more errors.
The end result, if the Ebionites Gospel of the Hebrews is the correct direction of the closest to the original understanding of Jesus, then their book should line up with Matthew or Mark (because Mark, btw…also completely lacks the same features that the Gospel of the Hebrews lacks, and is currently established as the oldest Gospel) for errors.
The end result was that Paul’s writings contained dominantly among the least in errors; Revelations had the second to highest amount of errors, and Matthew took the cake blowing away all other books of the Bible in terms of errors, with only Revelations coming even close to matching.
Considering Revelations controversy, no wonder.
But Matthew?
This is a book directed at the Hebrews, not the Romans, and about as boring as it gets when you remove the immaculate conception and crucifiction; actually very much like Mark in taste without those two things.
So there’s very little controversy surrounding Matthew…it was always a given.
So that means this is the book most altered than any other book in the Bible, which means it’s most likely to be the oldest, and that means before Paul, and so that means that it must be the ancestor of the much earlier Ebionite Gospel of the Hebrews.
This meant, the original (as close to as we can get) group of Christians did not believe Jesus was divine in any way at all, but instead referred to him as their Rabbi.
They, like many others, followed their specific Rabbi’s particular concentration on the interpretation of the Law.
Ergo, I concluded, Jesus was not divine.
How could he be and not be remarked on as such by those that traveled to see him and listen to what he taught?
Man simply does not work that way; we are not silent on something of this belief caliber for 1 and a half Centuries and then suddenly robust about it if it is observed directly.
There is no forensic circumstantial evidence to suggest this.
When a very large rock falls into the water, we can see that it has because of the ripples left behind. The smaller ripples in other locations are easily understood as smaller rocks that fell into the water as a result of the large rock falling.
What lacks is the ripples for such a large Rock falling the that has the properties of divinity; it has the wrong weight to that Rock for the ripples that are seen.
Instead, the ripples that we see are of a smaller Rock; a Rock that did not include the properties of divinity.
Much later we see a big landslide that comes with a large amount of weight to it that did indeed include divinity, but the original Rock that fell that led to the land slide did not have the weight to it to include the properties of divinity.
Therefore, I personally, in this question that you are asking, say that the one thing we can be certain about, is that Jesus was not divine to the original followers of Jesus that wrote about him.
Therefore, for me, Jesus is no longer capable of being divine in my mind according to all of this that I have searched over and considered.
This, however, does not remove God.
Nor does this reduce Jesus’ value, just the role.
At any rate…wow…sorry for the long post.
That’s my take on the subject; sorry for the length.
aw shucks … you do know how to embaress a man … 