John Claims He Was Jesus and Retells the Crucifixion

Did you ever meet any person from our religious history?

A biblical figure?

In a way.

Who?

We should skip this one.

No, no, no, skip, but come on.

And the next question.

No, come on!

You can't let John skip.

You can't let this go.

Come on, spit it out.

Good Lord, you were one of them.

This is going in a direction that I didn't expect.

I hoped it wouldn't.

We call it a nine.

Come on.

You were someone in religious history?

Yes.

In the Bible?

Yes.

Someone we know?

How could we not know someone in the Bible?

No, it's nobody important.

You may think you know him, but it's mostly myth.

The entire Bible is mostly myth and allegory with maybe some basis in historical events.

You were part of that history?

Yes.

Moses.

Moses was based on Mises, a Syrian myth.

And there are earlier versions.

All found floating on water.

Staff that changed to a snake.

Waters that were parted so followers could be led to freedom.

And even receive laws on stone or wooden tablets.

One of the apostles.

They weren't really apostles.

They didn't do any real teaching.

Peter the fisherman learned a little more about fishing.

How do you know that?

The mythical overlay is so enormous and not good.

The truth is so, so simple.

The New Testament in a hundred words or less.

You ready?

I don't think I want to hear this, Harry.

Will you take me home?

No, not right now.

I do want to hear this.

Sit down, Edith.

You act like you believe him.

It's sacrilege.

How can it be sacrilege?

He hasn't said anything yet.

The New New Testament is sacrilege.

There have been a dozen New New Testaments.

From Hebrew to Greek to Latin to Tyndale.

All the way to King James.

All revisionist.

And all called to reveal truth.

I mean a New New Testament in a hundred words.

I can give you the Ten Commandments in ten words.

Don't.

Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.

Don't.

The Commandments are just modern updates of more ancient laws.

Hammurabi's Code.

That's right.

And they weren't the first, right?

Edith, I was raised on the Torah.

My wife on the Koran.

My oldest son is an atheist.

My youngest is a Scientologist.

My daughter is studying Hinduism.

I imagine that there is room there for a holy war in my living room.

But we practice live and let live.

Why don't you sit down?

What is your preferred version of the Bible?

The King James, of course.

It's the most modern of the work of great scholars.

Modern is good.

All right, John, hit us with the short form.

Guy met the Buddha.

Liked what he heard.

Thought about it for a while.

Say 500 years while he returned to the Mediterranean.

Became an Etruscan.

Seeped into the Roman Empire.

He didn't like what they became.

A giant killing machine.

He went to the Near East thinking why not pass the Buddha's teachings on in a modern form.

So he tried.

One dissident against Rome.

Rome won.

The rest is history.

Sort of.

A lot of fairy tales mixed in.

I knew it.

He's saying he was Christ.

Oh, no.

That's the medal they pinned on Jesus to fulfill prophecy.

The crucifixion.

He blocked the pain.

As he had learned to do in Tibet and India.

He also learned to slow his body processes down to the point where they were undetectable.

They thought he was dead.

So his followers pulled him from the cross, placed him in a cave.

His body normalized as he had trained it to.

He attempted to go away undetected.

But some devotees were standing watch.

Tried to explain.

They were ecstatic.

Thus I was resurrected.

And I ascended to Central Europe to get away as far as possible.

You don't mean a word of this, John.

My God, why are you doing this?

Let me see your wrists.

I don't scar.

Besides, they tied me.

But nails and blood make better religious art.

All the speculations about Jesus.

He was black.

He was Asian.

He was a blue-eyed Aryan with a golden beard and hair straight out of a doll.

He was a benevolent alien.

He never existed at all.

Now he's a caveman.

The Christ figure goes all the way back to Krishna.

Hercules, of course.

Hercules?

Born of a virgin.

Alchemy.

A god for a father.

Zeus.

The only begotten.

Savior.

The Greek.

Soter.

The good shepherd.

The prince of peace.

Bringing gentle persuasion and divine wisdom.

He died.

Joined his father on Olympus.

A thousand years before Gethsemane.

How can you compare pagan mythology to the true word?

Damn closely, I'd say.

Early Christian leaders, they threw away Hebrew manuscripts and borrowed from pagan sources all over the place.

Do you realize how inconsiderately you're treating my feelings?

Yeah, about as inconsiderately as we're treating John's.

He doesn't believe what he's saying.

Do you believe literally everything in the Bible, Eden?

Yes.

Before you say it, I know it's undergone a lot of changes, but God has spoken through man to make his word clearer.

He couldn't get it right the first time?

We're imperfect.

He had to work to make us understand.

He couldn't get us right the first time, Edith?

Taken alone, the philosophical teachings of Jesus are Buddhism with a Hebrew accent.

Kindness, tolerance, brotherhood, love.

A ruthless realism, acknowledging that life is as it is here on Earth, here and now.

The kingdom of God, meaning goodness, is right here where it should be.

I am what I am becoming.

That's where the Buddha brought it.

And that's what I taught.

But a talking snake made a lady eat an apple, so we're screwed.

Heaven and hell were peddled so priests could rule through seduction and terror.

And save our souls that we never lost in the first place.

I threw a clean pass.

They ran it out of the ballpark.