…Or at least, an attempt at doing so? Stories where he’s accidently killed would count too, I suppose.
Because, y’know, considering the long history of published science fiction, I’d think there’d be at least one or two stories like this. Not that I know which ones they are.
'Just curious.
Ranchoth
I don’t recall any about assisinating Jesus, but I vaguely recall one where a time traveller goes back in time, and finds that Joseph’s son Jesus is crippled, mentally defective, and barely able to speak.
This Jesus could not possibly have inspired the Christian religion that sprang up. But then a series of events transpire which result in the time traveller taking Jesus’s place (in effect becoming the Christ of legend). I think it was in one of Harlan Ellison’s “Dangerous Visions” anthologies from the 70’s.
I think this is “Behold the Man” by Michael Moorcock. Even more ironic, IIRC, the time traveller was something of an atheist as well.
It amazes me that anybody can write a sci-fi story nowadays and not rip off someone else’s idea. And historical time travel is even worse!
That is “Behold the Man” and the guy had a messiah complex, Mary made no claim of holy birth, and Jesus was a mental and physical defective. It neatly explained things away like, walking on water as walking on stones in the shallows.
But I think the impetus of the story was the idea of a guy with a messiah complex went back in time to actually become the messiah.
There aren’t any new stories, just varying degrees of plagiarism.
There aren’t any new stories, just varying degrees of stealing things from other people.
There aren’t any new posts, just varying degrees of copying the previous post.
In the absence of originality, slightly altered variation makes a convenient substitution.
In the-oh fuck it.
Also there’s a bit in Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself where our time-travelling hero kills Jesus (or prevents him from being concieved or something) and the future he comes back to is completely unrecognizable–people living in huts, etc. He goes back and stops himself from doing it. But it’s only a brief chapter in the book, though very well done.
One of the cleverest time-travel stories is The Men Who Murdered Mohammed by Alfred Bester. Link is to a somewhat awkward, but entirely readable, transcription.
‘The Last Starship From Earth’ by John Boyd riffs on this…but differently. A man in a totalitarian future (not our time line) goes back in time and takes pity on Jesus and does the resurrection thing for him.
Great book.
Not sure if it counts as Sci-Fi, but there is a character in a little known collection of fictional stories who kills jesus.
I think its called the Bibble or something.
Not an assassination, but didn’t Ray Bradbury write a story about astronauts trying to find Jesus and always missing Him? I think of of them kills the other.
How bout this for a story:
One man goes back in time to find proof that Jesus did exsist. He has a strong faith and wants to find something to take back to the 21st century.
When he arrives he searches intensely for Christ and does not find a thing. Disturbed that he has failed in his search he decides to become the Christ of legend to keep Christianity alive. He fails here as well and dies in the process.
Shortly after his death the real Christ is born and we realize that he missed his mark when traveling back by 30 years.
Better yet how about when he’s back in time he has a fling with Mary and gets her pregnant and his son is Jesus.
It’s still considered an immaculate conception since the “man from the future” really never exsisted.
In Robert Silverburg’s Up the Line they talk about the problem of Time Traveller Congestion at popular sites, the Crucifiction being the all-time leader.
I believe that Larry Niven, in his essay “Theory and Practice of Time Travel” (in the collection All the Myriad Ways) notes that, if you subscribe to the theory that you can’t change the past (because your contribution is part of the past that’s already occurred, and there is only one “realuity”), then if you went back to the Crucifiction with a machine gun, your gun would definitely jam.
I couldv’e sworn I’ve read other time trave; epics about this, but the only one I can recall is the previously-mentioned Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock.
See also “The Light of Other Days” by Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter, in which practical wormhole technology makes it possible for people from the future to look back in time at any point in the past (or even, say, half a second ago … leading to the end of privacy). One side storyline in the novel is about a research group that is studying Jesus’s life (something like 12,000 people each focus on a single day of his life). But they find it very difficult to get any data from the actual day of the crucifixion, because so many billions of pinpoint wormholes originating from throughout the future litter the popular viewing area that spacetime is greatly distorted.