Jesus never was and never will be the messiah. Here is why.
He failed one of the first OT prophecies which was to be descended from king David and king Solomon. Genesis 49:10 states that the messiah would descend from king David's side and king Solomon in Chronicles 22:9-10. Jesus already failed this due to a virgin birth. Mary in the NT has no genealogy except for it being hinted at in Luke 1:34-36. The angel confirmed Mary is biologically blood related to Elizabeth. And Luke 1:5 clearly states that Elizabeth is descended from king Aaron. Therefore since Mary is blood related to Elizabeth, she also follows that lineage. So we can conclude Mary is descended from king Aaron of the Levi tribe. There is no mention other than this of her genealogy.
We can also disregard her being descended from king David and Solomon at this point and also because she is not mentioned anywhere in the NT that she was descended from those two anyway. Now, even though Joseph is descended from king David and Solomon, he is disqualified from having any affiliation with Jesus since he made no biological contribution to Jesus' birth as clearly mentioned in Matthew 1:22-25. Only after his birth did Mary and Joseph biologically "consummate." This is a clear indication that Jesus failed this OT prophecy.
What can we logically conclude from this fact alone? That Jesus is NOT the messiah. And I just made the case for Judaism that much stronger ironically...
In Romans Paul says he's related in his "earthly life". God manufactured Jesus out of sperm taken directly from David’s belly exactly as prophecy declared he would. Paul’s choice of phrasing is that Paul must be echoing an early belief in some kind of virgin birth theology that was already being attributed to Jesus, that he is describing God manufacturing Jesus’s body in the womb of Mary using Davidic seed.
Dr Carrier explains this in much greater detail:
The Cosmic Seed of David • Richard Carrier
The problem posed is that in
Romans 1:3 Paul says Jesus “came from the seed of David according to the flesh,” which historicists insist proves Paul knew Jesus was an ordinary man once living on earth, because this verse proves he believed he was a descendant of David. And a cosmically incarnated Jesus could hardly be descended from David.
But there is in turn a problem with that.
Paul does not say Jesus descended from David or was a descendant of David. Paul never says anything about his even having a father. Or being born. He only ever says his flesh, upon his incarnation, “came from the seed of David,” and was therefore Jewish and messianic flesh. He does not ever explain what he means by “came from.” The word Paul uses can sometimes mean birth in some other authors, but it is not the word Paul ever uses for birth (
gennaô); instead, it’s the word he uses for God’s manufacture of Adam’s body from clay, and God’s manufacture of our future resurrection bodies in heaven (
ginomai). Neither of which are born or have parents or are descendants of anyone.
In short, what Paul says in Romans 1:3 is, for Paul, weird. It’s weird even if Jesus existed. Christians even found it so weird themselves, they tried doctoring later manuscripts to replace this word that Paul only uses of manufacture and “coming to be,” with Paul’s preferred word for birth. So saying this passage is
also weird if Jesus
didn’t exist leaves us at a wash.
What I think is most likely is that Paul means what the first Christians he is mimicking no doubt meant, that God manufactured Jesus out of sperm taken directly from David’s belly exactly as prophecy declared he would (a concept already more rational than God manufacturing Eve from
a rib taken directly from Adam’s
side). Which, if Jesus didn’t exist, would most likely have occurred in outer space (although that’s not necessarily the case—ahistoricity is also compatible with earthly events imagined in distant mythical places, like Eden:
OHJ, Ch. 11, n. 67—but the cosmic hypothesis has more evidence and precedent). More on that later. But it is this “cosmic sperm” hypothesis that Tweet thinks is implausible. He ignored, of course, all the evidence I presented in
OHJ establishing it is plausible, and indeed the most plausible hypothesis yet on offer. But for now let’s just grasp the nature of the problem before we examine the solution.
"I argued cosmic semen-banking was a plausible belief of premodern Jews, who could imagine things like it happening, without contradiction or challenge…indeed, later Jews even believed David’s sperm was cosmically stolen or banked! By demons; but no Jew would imagine God couldn’t do for good, what demons did for evil. [The previous sentences I have revised for accuracy. I’ve since found better evidence, of Talmudic Jews imagining
angelic sperm banking.] I also showed second century Christian sects advanced even stranger cosmic seed scenarios for the birth of Jesus (thus proving it can’t have been unlikely, if it was commonly being contrived). I showed Paul uses the same vocabulary for this incarnation scenario as he does for that of Adam and our future selves, which are likewise cosmic manufacturing: Eden, where Adam was first made, resides in outer space, not only according to known Jewish apocrypha of the time, as I show in
OHJ (e.g. in the
Life of Adam and Eve), but according to Paul himself, in
2 Corinthians 12:1-5; and our future resurrection bodies are likewise manufactured in outer space according to Paul, in
2 Corinthians 5:1-5.
And Christianity evolved from a sect of Judaism heavily influenced by Zoroastrian beliefs (see
Not the Impossible Faith, Chapter 3). The very concept of an eschatological messiah and an end-times resurrection of the dead are actually Zoroastrian (as are belief in a burning hell, and a Satan as God’s adversary), imported into Judaism by cultural diffusion just a few centuries before Christianity arose.
Note how absurd and implausible both beliefs are. A mass resurrection of all the world’s dead!? An immortal superhero coming from outer space to save us!? (Indeed:
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17) If Jews had no qualms about adopting those absurd beliefs, they could hardly have scrupled against adopting notions of cosmic sperm banking. As we know other Jews did, and Zoroastrians as well, even specifically in their messianic model, the
original messianic ideology the Jews developed theirs from. If other Jews and Zoroastrians could easily adopt such a belief into their system, Christians could easily have done as well. There simply isn’t any case to be made that that would be “too weird” to have happened. It’s not even too weird to be probable.
Covington adds another apt observation, pointing out that
Revelation 12:1-5 “may even be a confirmation that the early Christian community believed in a Jesus who was born (and presumably conceived) in the heavens,” since that’s essentially just what it says. The mother of Jesus is there a celestial figure giving birth to Jesus in outer space, and there hunted by a ravenous space dragon. What part of this is allegory and what part their real belief? What is the mystery, and what the veil behind which the mystery is hidden?