Thanks be to James for sending along a link to the following weird religious legal battle in Italy:
AN Italian judge has ordered a priest to appear in court to prove that Jesus Christ existed.
The case against Father Enrico Righi has been brought in the town of Viterbo, north of Rome, by Luigi Cascioli, a retired agronomist who once studied for the priesthood but later became a militant atheist.
Mr Cascioli, author of a book called The Fable of Christ, began legal proceedings against Father Righi three years ago after the priest denounced Mr Cascioli inthe parish newsletter for questioning Christ’s historical existence.
Viterbo judge Gaetano Mautone yesterday set a preliminary hearing for the end of this month and ordered Father Righi to appear.
I can’t seem to find any links to Cascioli’s “Fable of Christ” book, but I did come across a probably apocryphal (ie, quite possibly fake) saying of Pope Leo X, who allegedly proclaimed, “What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!”
God only knows how this case will play out in Italian courts though:
Mr Cascioli’s contention is that there is no reliable evidence that Jesus lived and died in first-century Palestine apart from the Gospel accounts, which Christians took on faith.
Mr Cascioli’s one-man campaign came to a head at a court hearing last April when he lodged his accusations of “abuse of popular credulity” and “impersonation”, both offences under the Italian penal code.
He argued that all claims for the existence of Jesus from sources other than the Bible stem from authors who lived “after the time of the hypothetical Jesus” and were therefore not reliable witnesses.
This to me seems like a lot more fun of a topic than American courts deciding whether or not intelligent design can be taught in school. Oh, those wacky Europeans!
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32 Comments
That’s funny and ironic… The italians were the first ones really to try to popularize and make Christianity official throughout the world, by twisting the true Jesus into a pack of lies to be marketed and sold throughout the holy roman empire… Now those same crazy italians are trying to disprove his existence all together… Makes one wonder why in the heck Paul even thought it was necessary to get the word out to the Romans if not for their far reaching power and influence on the rest of the world. Italy is seriously one of those places that I could care less if it gets blown off the map, and you can pretty much thank them for 99 percent of all the hatred that people today have against christians… You can pretty much thank them for the Crusades, the slaughter of Muslims, the Spanish Inquisition, and the destruction of Native America for the “holy” roman empire. And you can probably thank them for most of the Atheists and Gnostics that frequently peruse this site with their twisted backwards comments.. Fortunately the truth is the only thing that really matters and that is something that no earthly court can ever decide.
Or, maybe you’re a loser.
There, that makes us even, Mr. Mephistopheles. Now take your useless knowledge and your shoeshine box, and go bother other people just like you.
Sorry, Tim– you know I can’t tolerate this shit. All apologies to anyone here who has to witness such ugliness.
(and with a pseudonym like “Hephaistion”, I bet you’re uglier than homemade soap)
Hehe.
Accoeding to this (admittedly biased) Christian apologetics site, The Pope Leo quote is a hoax.
And clearly, I didn’t actually click on your link for the quote, lol. Sorry.
Yup, the ironic part is that author goes to such great lengths to disprove the authenticity of the Pope Leo quote. Imagine he expended the same effort to actually proving with 100% accuracy all the words attributed to Jesus. Now, that would be something else!
Yeah I pretty much take it for granted, the double standard and favoritism factor for low IQ’s and pitiful low self-esteems. You low confidence people (Tim and James) have gotta stick together! lol
(Vonnegut “lite” as if Kurt Vonnegut wasn’t already “lite” enough? How watered down does knowledge have to be before it becomes acceptable to your pallid low taste bud IQ’s?)
Sorry I know, I’m an ass. I guess ya’ll will just have to petition this Mr Cascioli idiot to sue me for being too much of an outspoken christian in an occult blog/forum.
Ooh, a soldier for Christ!
How wonder full ,like cutting off a uselis appedig. Awsome new school…..wonder what an awsome human quality. Just to wonder with out biass on such a deeply rooted subject is nice.Be here be now.aw nice group hug
I don’t follow. Did Cascioli bring the priest to court for making provably false statements about Jesus, for making provably false statements about the evidence for Jesus, or for slandering Cascioli in some way? The middle charge seems most plausible.
Honestly, it sounds to me like its simply a publicity stunt for his book on the subject, but it’s hard to say for sure. The details in the article were sketchy at best.
I can prove the existence of Jesus. There’s lots of guys here in Florida named Jesus. What’s the big deal.
Oh, Hephaistion I find it particularly funny that you quote Vonnegut , a very vocal atheist. Maybe you should get back to snuggling with Alexander. That might mellow you out, hopefully.
Good point, Arjuna93. I think you’ve settled the controversy.
Arjuna, I guess you also find it funny that I wasn’t complimenting Vonnegut nor holding any of his work in high regard. If anything I was making a bitter comment against him - Vonnegut “lite†as if Kurt Vonnegut wasn’t already “lite†enough?”I’m wondering if someone needs to give you a good kick in the head to activate some of those dead brain cells, unless you are trying to give me a personal demonstration of how “ignorance” really is evil… If that’s the case then good job, it appears to be working.
Here’s a site that has lots of historical details on this rational point of view:
jesusneverexisted.com
They have a link to an old page for Luigi Cascioli. Here’s his current page in English: Luigi Cascioli - La Favola di Cristo
Almost all New Testament scholars agree that the epistles were written before the gospels. That explains why the epistle writers knew nothing of Jesus of Nazareth, no identifying details of his life or quotes from him, and were only concerned with a Christ figure who was said to have fulfilled prophecy and to have appeared to them. They believed what was scripture to them, the Septuagint, so strongly that they were sure whatever was prophesied there must have happened, including the Messiah already having come, since the time for that was past. (It was after 70 AD when the epistles were written, let alone the gospels.)
If you can’t read books like Corinthians, Hebrews, or Romans and see for yourself that this is the only explanation for the message of the epistles that makes any sense, despite all the layers of semantic drift over the millennia and attempts to graft their message into a Jesus-fable timeline, then I would feel sorry for your poor reading abilities or lack of reasoning skills.
For example, from 1 Corinthians, chapter 15:
3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:
6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.
7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.
Parts of verses 3 and 4 were revised into one of the early church creeds, by combining it with some information from the gospels. If you read the passage open-mindedly for what it says apart from any preconception of the gospels, it is plain as day what’s being said: The writer believes in the scriptures, meaning in his time the Hebrew Bible and its Greek translation, and a tradition of interpreting the scriptures as prophesying a Christ that has been going on long enough that some who have had a vision of it have already aged and passed away, “fallen asleep” in the writer’s expression.
The only reason the epistles were included in the New Testament instead of just gospels (and Acts of the Apostles, written after the gospels to tie a sequel about the apostles to the legend of Paul the epistle writer) is that they were already strongly believed in when the gospels came along. Imagine trying to tear elders of the church away from their treasured copied letters about the good news, just because you have a new version of the good news that fills in the details of the Annointed One’s life. You wouldn’t be able to do that very easily, you’d just say: Here’s the biography of the Messiah that we’ve all been talking about, which also references the scriptures to say it must have happened that way, and apparently adds some eyewitness details and sayings by word of mouth.
That process of historicizing Christianity into a must-have-happened history, instead of a may-have-happened or may-not-have-happened this way story of what Christ’s life was, based on the scriptures, was going on in the second century. About a century after someone would have lived, when everyone who would have been a contemporary of him is deceased, is a really good time to start believing novels that put him into history as a semi-realistic character. We all know that Sherlock Holmes existed, don’t we?
Sonny, that is some really interesting information and a historical analysis which I’ve never encountered before. I really appreciate how useful and constructive of an addition it is to the conversation, unlike some of the other comments in this thread.
Thanks for the compliments, Tim, but I think I was hoping for a good argument against the idea, so I don’t have to keep holding it as my pet theory.
R u refering 2 i
Good ol’ stuff, Moonie. If not an argument against a guy named Jesus who was crucified for pissing folks off circa 32 AD, certainly we have an argument against the historicity of the Gospel Jesus based upon the miraculous details, which are the same miraculous details attributed to other spiritual and religious figures before him. Such as:
Virgin Birth–attributed to Buddha, attributed to Zoroaster, attributed to Pythagoras, even, in some sources; also attributed to the three future world saviors, the Saoshants, of Zoroastrianism (having three Magi, Zoroastrian magician-priests, show up at Jesus’ birth would seem to be a clear attempt to lay claim to this figure as being one of the Saoshants).
Raising of the Dead-attributed to Appolonius of Tyana (there are a lot of similarities between this 1st century B.C. roman mage and Jesus, so much so that at one time certain Church fathers argued that Satan literally travelled back in time to Before Jesus’ birth and gave this dude the power to do the shit he did so as to mislead people and keep them from believing in Christ! That information comes from Manly P. Halls’ Secret Teachings of All Ages)
Death and Resurrection- Osiris
The Communion as represented in the Last Supper-nearly identical to the rites of Mithraism, a contemporary ancient religion with an earlier birth and roots in Persia
Birth on December 25th- Mithra
And this page on religious tolerance makes a strong case for the Jesus’ figure being cribbed from the figure of Horus: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5.htm
It’s pretty good stuff, even if it displays the debunked Pope Leo quote prominently towards the top. But the Horus case is pretty strong as outlined and maybe that’s what Gurdjieff was getting at when he said “Christianity existed thousands of years before Christ.” That wascally armenian!
take it all with a grain of salt, but still tasty parallels, if they be!
You know, I don’t understand what the fixation is with a literal Jesus. Like Arjuna93, I have breakfast with Jesus a few times a year… he’s pretty neat for a banker.
Casciolli and the folks at Jesus Never Existed are sensationalists, pandering to the likes of Falwell, Robertson, and anyone else whose definition of truth involves the word “objective.” Jesus =!Christ.
Osiris, Mithras, Dionysus, Apollo, and Horus all have similarities with “Jesus.” But, as Gnostics, we’re not quite so concerned with Jesus as we are with Christ, and that Christ existed thousands of years before Jesus (if Jesus ever existed) is a heartening prospect.
Word. Christ is a story, but a true story. He speaks to us today; the words of Jesus as presented in the Christian gospels and the Gnostic texts have a truth that liberates the spark we each bear within us. Try these on for size:
Besides, we’re all the Christ anyway (although I’m not a very good one):
I had a post on this very subject. I too think Arjuna made an excellent point.
There’s about as much evidence for jesus’ existence as there is for Socrates. That is to say, there’s not a lot of direct evidence for either.
Personally, I’m inclined to believe more in Socrates than Jesus. My theory is that the 12 disciples made him up, Keyser Soze style. The man who died on the cross was probably some leper they framed to take the fall, or a devout “13th” disciple who was ready to take one for the team.
And now, to take out the trash:
Hephaistion, you seem to be a smart guy, with something valid to say (if not an actual informed opinion).
So I have to ask: what happened in your life to make you such an asshole? You may content to be seen as an “ass”, in order to fulfill your narcissistic persona’s desire for recognition (whether positive or negative) but the fact that you are full of shit makes it impossible for me to take you seriously.
Let me guess: you’re some sort of blog crusader, trying to enlighten us? No, you’re a troll (as others have put it) and just because you poo-poo PoMo authors like Vonnegut or name-drop Gurdjieff doesn’t mean you have read it nor understand it. It is evident by the way you focus on attacks as opposed to making any sort of point at all.
At least people know where I stand. But what kind of philosophical/reliogious corner have you painted yourself into, and how long do you think it can possibly last before it collapses on itself?
Now that I’ve thought about it, you’re probably 14 years-old, have never had a girlfriend, and you thought Oliver Stone’s Alexander exploited the legend to your dissatisfaction.
Now go conquer the rest of the known world– they’re waiting for the likes of you.
That a tad bit hard dont you think james?
where did haphaistion mention gurdjeiff? that was kmee that did that, james. and why are you so interested in picking a fight with this kid (or non-kid–who can tell on der internmet), anyway? it seems just as much of a robotic reaction. even moreso when you conflate two entirely different entities with fairly dispirate points of view with each other (is it that both handles start with an “h”?) in your eagerness to put someone in their place.
to name drop ODB: “Big Baby Jesus, I can’t wait! F** that, I can’t wait!”
Huh?
Yes.
Skidoo.
Yes, it WAS a tad hard. And I did confuse the two handles, so my appy-polly-loggies to Hebrides.
But to be fair, I didn’t pick a fight with Hasenpfeffer or whatever he calls himself. It may seem like it (in this post esp.) but I’m just reacting to the first salvo fired.
Maybe if he hadn’t made the remark about black people jerking off in a previous post), I might have let it all slide. Being called a loser by a loser is nothing, but the remark about blacks is just crass.
I’m not black but I detest racism all the same, and as much as it lowers me to their level to attack them, I also don’t like how trolls take advantage of people’s decency online. Many times I read other blogs and see the comments, and people are being too nice to the trolls.
Once again– apologies to those to whom it applies.
Why don’t you guys stop arguing about something that cannot be settled by reason, it is by the Holy Spirit of God that the word of God is understood. If the lord Jesus will begged the Father so that the Father may send the Comforter so you may understand the word of God, then you may set forth the arguements, if not then your arguements are biased and trivial.
I think Jesus existed; just not in the way that the bible, or the church has twisted it. For instance was not Jesus born in an arabic country (jordan, Nazerene, etc..)
I have been studying some old testament things lately and it’s been basically about the nephilim lores. The nephilim were the offspring of mortal women and Angellic fathers. Yet and also we see Jesus as the offspring of a mortal woman and an angelic father (in the name of God’s son) Therefore God is not angellic, as we learn from reading the book of enoch (which I call my secret bible decoder ring), as he asked the watchers or grigori who were angellic too come and help him build up Eden and they took women as mates and “fornicated with them” and made children in their image, instead of god, which really pissed him off, so I am thinking God either has no penis, or No semen, or its too small, or god was limp all the time and can not procreate with comely women and has too have someone else too make his babies.
Also another interesting thing is that in witchcraft terms, a group of 12 people is called a coven. Jesus had 11 disciples and himself made 12. In Hollywood they call it an Entourage. LOL
Jesus turnt water into wine, cured lepersy, raised the dead, walked on water, loved everyone around him, stayed a virgin apparently, and did a ton of other miracles that I have never seen one catholic or Christian do. I stand by the belief he may be called God’s son, but in fact was something quite different than God, and the way the church has twisted it, even giving him the last name of “christ” (which was not it…) is not true, and the priest can not in that text proove that jesus existed.
We all know the Roman catholic Church lies, has lied, stolen, molested and killed other religious people in the name of their God. The RCC is responsible for The inquistion, and the witch trials, and the methods of torture of these said “witches”.
So They have allot too answer for in my opinion.
In short: It’s going too take more than scripture in red font too show that Jesus existed and Jesus said so and so. I would try taking a metal detector into the tomb that they believed was his and see if any thing turns up.
eye wasn’t aware of the other h person’s racist comments. that makes sense of your reaction, james.
apologies accepted and all and eye get where your at.
peace, sir.