Regarding Jesus/Mushroom Symbolism
I wrote this a while back but can't find the post. Thankfully, I had a copy I had emailed myself, so here it is:
In his book "Why I Am Not A Christian", Bertrand Russell states,
Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him.
Russell, it seems, has either turned a blind eye to the extra-biblical information (information outside of the Bible that speaks of Jesus), or he also
doesn't believe Queen Elizabeth, Alexander the Great, Ramses the Great, Cleopatra nor Agustus Caesar ever existed or, if they did, that we know
nothing about them. Kind of an audacious claim...Let's see what information is out there that talks of Christ.
Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman historian who was typically seen as the greatest historian of ancient Rome, according to Gary Habermas in The Verdict of
History. Tacitus wrote two histories, one called The Annals that talks about the time from Augustus's death, 14 AD, to the death of Nero in 68 AD.
The other book, The Histories, follow from 68 to 96 AD. In the Annals, he writes,
But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be
presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to
suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were
hated for their enormities. Christus [common pagan misspelling of Christ], the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of
Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief
originated, but through the city of Rome also.
So in a rather unflattering manner, Tacitus notes that Jesus did exist, and had been put to death by Pilate. Norman Anderson even suspects that this
passage alludes to Jesus's resurrection, when it notes that the superstition was checked for a moment before again breaking out.
Lucian of Samosata, a Greek satirist who lived in the latter half of the second century, spoke rather sarcastically of Christ and Christians in his
The Death of Peregrine, never doubting Christ's existance, but rather mocking Christians for their worship of Him.
The Christians, you know, worship a man who to this day--the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that
account... You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains the contempt of
death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all
brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they
take quite on faith, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property.
Then there's Suetonius, yet another Roman historian under Hadrian. He stated in his Life of Claudius,
As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome.
This event was described in Acts 18:2:
There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all
the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them,
I expect you've heard of Pliny the Younger, a familiar name to any who have seriously researched Christ in secular and anti-Christian accounts. He
was the governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor around 112. He was writing a letter to the emperor Trajan to find how to treat the Christians, noting he'd
been killing them left and right, male and female, adult and child, but so many were being put to death he wondered if he should stop killing them all
and instead only kill certain ones. He went on to write of their crime:
They affirmed, however, that the whole of their guilt, or their error, was, that they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before
it was light, when they sang in alternate verse a hymn to Christ as to a god, and bound themselves to a solemn oath, not to do any wicked deeds, but
never to commit any fraud, theft, adultery, never to falisfy their word, not to deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it us.
This was a mere 80 years after Christ's crucifixion. There may have still been some first hand accounts of what took place on that hill several years
ago, and many who had heard of it from first hand accounts. The fact that Christianity had spread to Asia Minor alread validates Paul's travels,
among others. Were they telling of this when people who had witnessed the crucifixion were around, such as when Paul took the gospel to Asia Minor,
people would have stepped in and denied Christ's existance, or at least said it happened a different way.
What about earlier, though? Around the time of Christ's death, during the period spoken of in the book of Acts. It would be foolish to think that a
carpenter would be spoken of in any histories during his life, or even an influential rabbi who had only been preaching for 3 years, but what about
after? Thallus is one of the first secular historians who mentions Christ, around 52 AD. His writing has been quoted by others, but, sadly, does not
still exist today. One such individual who quotes him is Julius Africanus. He quotes a passage in Thallus' work that talks about the darkness
enveloping the land in the late afternoon when Jesus died on the cross. Africanus writes in his Chronography,
Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun--unreasonably, as it seems to me (unreasonably,
of course, because a solar eclipse could not take place at the time of the full moon, and it was at the season of the Paschal full moon that Christ
died).
And already in 70 AD, philosophers were trying to call Jesus a philosopher instead of who He claimed to be during His life. Mara Bar-Serapion, a
Syrian philosopher wrote his son from prision,
What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What
advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from
executing their wise King? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: The Athenians died of
hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die
for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise King die for
good; He lived on in the teaching which He had given.
So to say there is no extra-Biblical source showing Christ ever existed is to turn a blind eye to all of history and essentially claim nothing existed
before your memory. These were the secular, pagan writers speaking of Christ. I didn't even mention Josephus, nor any of the other Jewish or
Christians who wrote about Him extra-Biblically. So to say that Christ was just a symbolic metaphor for taking mushrooms would be to ignore many who
were
outside of the whole scripture writing process.
) 
