Becoming Jesus

Authors preface: This was published recently in the Fiction community but wanted to republish here as the new Chapters community would seem to be a much better fit for what is meant to be only part I of a much longer story.

Jesus of Narareth does not exist. He is not/was not a real person, neither son of God, nor son of Mary and Joseph. That is the conclusion the man had reached after spending approximately one year scouring all of the lands mentioned in the Bible and much further in search of the holy man revered, and worshiped by billions across his planet earth and well beyond. In his time, the distant future, the Christian faith, along with many other human religious traditions, had spread out far into the Milky Way galaxy. As humans had mastered the ability to travel great distances through space and encountered intelligent alien species, they had brought their religious beliefs with them. Some of the earliest and most important explorers of the galaxy, were in fact religious proselytizers or missionaries. They were hoping to convert to their faith any intelligent beings they might encounter, exactly as the early sea faring explorers of earth had done some 3500 years prior, discovering and eventually settling new lands. In the process, through war and disease, they had killed millions of indigenous peoples, but their efforts gave way to the rise of human civilization and the spread of Christianity to all corners of the world.

The early missionary space explorers had learned from the mistakes of their forebearers, and actively sought to avoid the disastrous consequences caused by the spread of their religions in the past. Humans had evolved physically, mentally, spiritually, and ethically over the millennia and no longer warred with each other, or killed for sport, or any of a hundred other barbarous practices from the past. They would not be responsible for yet another genocide. In the history the man had studied these early religiously motivated space explorers eventually banded together forming a loose knit group known as the extraterra religious order. Representatives of any religion hoping to join their ranks were required to adopt a strict code of conduct. Access to the order was a prerequisite to obtaining the necessary equipment and supplies to make the long interstellar voyages into deep space, as members controlled all the key materials and ran the Mars orbital space docks from which the ships were launched. The code consisted of a set of seven solemn vows, the most important of which forbid the forcible conversion of alien species to any religion by any means, and an absolute prohibition against the imposition of harm on any alien species because of their activities. When man and alien did finally meet, as many humans converted to alien religions as aliens converted to Christianity, or Islam, or any human religion. Nonetheless, Christianity had fared well and had spread far across the galaxy. At the time of the completion of the time travel apparatus it could count some 8 billion life forms from no less than 27 different alien races, including humans, as adherents to the faith.

It was against that backdrop that the man had come to the past in search of Jesus to determine for himself the truth of one of the core tenets of Christianity. It was the belief upon which all of Christianity rested. The holiness of Jesus of Nazareth. That he was in fact the “son of God” blessed by God with great powers, including the ability to perform miracles like turning water into wine, and the greatest miracle of all, rising from the dead. The man sought proof of the divinity of Jesus, and it was that desire that drove him to spend nearly the entirety of his vast fortune designing and building his time travel apparatus. He was, or had been, one of the richest men in all the galaxy, but his quest to travel back in time to find Jesus had left him nearly penniless and consumed 40 years of his 60 year old life. In the far future from which the man came 60 years for a human was not yet middle aged, and by all appearances and medical criteria he could easily pass for a man of 30 or even 20 years old from earlier generations.

The man had been raised in the Christian faith by strict Catholic parents. Unlike his brothers and sisters, from a very yong age, he questioned his family's faith relentlessly. This did not sit well with his mother and father nor his siblings and he was punished and chastised incessently for his 'lack of faith' as they called it. Though he questioned, he did still believe. In fact he very much wanted to believe in the truth of all the things he was taught by his parents, and the priests and nuns in the religious schools he attended from ages 3 to 16. At 16 he graduated top of his class with the highest honors and was immediately accepted into the graduate program in quantum physics and transdimensional science at the most prestigious public university on earth. He graduated, again with high honors in just 3 years, producing a doctoral dissertation that revealed a new approach to mathematics and physics that rivaled Einstein's relativity in terms of its importance, and would prove to be the turning point in his later discovery of the principles of time travel. Those core principles were the pedastal upon which he had built his time travel apparatus after 40 years of dedicated efforts. Always in the back of his mind the questions surrounding his faith which drove him remained. He wanted to know so badly, he needed to know. Was Jesus really worthy of the worship and reverence in which he was held by adherents of Christianity, a religion spawned by his life and death, or was he nothing more than a particularly well known historical figure? A non blessed, non micracle capable man, no different from the man who was driven to find him. A gifted orator, faithful to his God, wise, and ultimately just unlucky in his painful death. A normal man who by fate and historical accident had become so much greater then he could have ever dreamed.

This normal man was certain of his conclusion. There was no such person as Jesus of Nazareth. There could be no doubt he had come to the right time period. He had managed to meet in person almost all of the other historical figures mentioned in the Christian Bible including all of the disciples and both Mary and Joseph the biblical human mother and father of Jesus. Much of the biblical stories had proven to be basically accurate, and descriptions of the disciples and their personalities and professions and countries/regions of origin were largely correct. However, in some key ways the Bible had erred greatly. Mary and Joseph did not know each other and had never met in the past he had found. In fact they lived hundreds of miles apart and each was married to another. Joseph, to the biblical Mary Magdeline, not a prostitute, but an aspiring actress, and Mary to an unknown, unmentioned cobbler, whose business had seen better days. Both marriages were strong and their was true love between both couples, at least by the man’s estimation. In truth he had been taken aback and somewhat humbled by the kindness whith which he had been received in both households. There was a sweetness in both relationships that touched his heart and triggered a torrent of sadness over the lack of any such kindness in his own short lived, failed marriage in the far future from which he had come.

Because his principles of time travel had shown that travel to the past could only be undertaken once in any persons (present) life time, he had been prepared to spend whatever time was needed to satisfy himself of his conclusion before returning home to the future. He had come very well provisioned, bringing a host of future technologies including sophisticated biological and chemical scanners, atto, nano, and microscale mechano/biological bots and search drones. In addition, he possessed an array of cloaking and masking technologies with which to hide and disguise himself and his gear, along with medical equipment capable of healing almost any injury and curing all known diseases of the time, etc. He was prepared for any eventuality, but for the one he found himself facing, complete and total failure to find his target objective. Now he found himself at a crossroads, unsure how to proceed. If he returned to the future, knowing what he knew, all of history could be changed in unimaginable ways. Presumably that future would now be one in which there was no Christianity, no Jesus, no early Christian explorers, etc. He did not believe he could take that chance, not in good conscious at least and for weeks he puzzled over what he might do instead. He had no desire to live out the rest of his days in this past, this place that was not his own, but he could not return to the future from whence he had come without potentially disastrous consequences. Over many months and after much deep thought he became resigned to the idea of living out his remaining days in the ancient past. However, the more he considered what he had discovered the greater grew his worry. It would not actually matter if he returned to the future or not, it would now have no Jesus, presumably no Christianity, and would be changed in significant and possibly terrible ways. He was not naive, and of course also knew there may be some benefits, potentially great benefits as well. It was undoubtedly true that his religion had been responsible for almost as much evil as good over the course of earth's history. However, he could not, would not be responsible for only God knew what, but saw no way to fix the past he found himself in.

Jesus did not exist, and there was no changing that brute fact, or so it seemed. However, over time, almost imperceptably at first, an idea began to form in his mind. It grew and crystallized and eventually became so clear and so bright that he felt as if it blinded him. He had studied the history and knew the biblical stories in as much detail as anyone. Before he left the future he had spent a kings ransom on neuralbot implants programmed with every known fact regarding the Biblical time in which he now found himself. The neural bots were introduced by inhalation and made their way to the brain integrating directly with the brains existing neural architechture supplementing and reforming it in the exact ways needed to give him access to this knowledge as if he had spent his entire life studying it. With the neuralbots a lifetimes knowledge could be acquired in just under an hour with no significant side effects but for a slight headache which went away following a single nights slumber. They could also be used to alter or implant memories, and that function would be needed he thought if his idea were to succeed. It was simple yet ingeneous, if there were no Jesus, he would be Jesus, he would become Jesus, replicating and imitating his life as described in the Bible of his own time in exacting detail. Maybe not in exact detail, it would be necessary for him to make a few small changes to certain key events so that when he returned to the future he might confirm that his plan had actually succeeded. The text of the Bible in the future he would return to, should be changed in ways that reflected those modifications he would implant as clues, the meaning of which only he would understand. He had already met most of the principle players, Mary, Joseph, the disciples and knew everything there was to know about how history, as told in the Bible at least, was "suppossed" to unfold. The miracles Jesus had performed would be simple to reproduce with the technology he had brought from the future and none would be the wiser. He would need to use the neural bots to "adjust" the memories of some of the disciples to align them with how they had first met and become disciples of Jesus. Intentionally altering another human beings mind without their knowledge was an ethically suspect move to be sure, but the alternative was potentially so dire that he felt it justified in this instsance. One large problem remained however, Mary and Joseph and the story of his birth and early life.

As a child and young adult the strange gap in the Bible with respect to Jesus' own life as a child and adolescent always bothered him. This contrasted greatly to the plethora of stories featuring Jesus as an adult. Once he had asked a Priest at his Catholic gradeschool why that was the case. He recalled the exasperated look the Priest had given him and remembered his somewhat lame answer. Essentially he had suggested it was intentional and meant to highlight the fact that Jesus had a normal childhood just like any other. One not worthy of remembrence or documentation since as a child Jesus was no different than any other normal boy his age. That answer had left him greatly unsatisfied, though he dared not press the Priest any further. How could the son of God's childhood not be worthy of documentation or remembrence? He may have been a "normal" boy by all outward appearances, but he certainly was far from normal if what the Bible said about him as an adult was to be believed. He was born the son of God and died on the cross the son of God. His divinity should be reflected throughout his entire life, no matter his age. Despite his own doubts and questions the lack of documentation surrounding the early life of Jesus would work greatly in his favor now and provide a convenient "excuse" for the fact that the man would have to begin his own life as Jesus at approximately 20 years of age. While it would provide some cover, the problem of the story of his birth remained and the facts of Mary and Joseph's lives would greatly complicated his efforts in this regard. But the man knew there must be a way. The neuralbots gave him great power and he should be able to use them to implant the appropriate memories in Mary and Joseph, the Biblical wise men, and likely a few others to give the story even greater legitimacy. He had found Mary and Joseph but had no clue where he might find the wise men, or if they even existed. It was to this task that he now set himself.