Some of these fringe theories about religion are extremely controversial, but at the same time, they are just too fascinating to ignore. They also offer us a brand new perspective on what would’ve been just another boring orthodox doctrine, regardless of how kooky that perspective could be.
The Roman Empire Invented Jesus
Even though there has already been considerable evidence that supports the existence of Jesus, there are still doubts as to whether or not he even lived at all. There is one of those Christ Myth theories which claim that Jesus was created by the Roman Empire during the first century to suppress Jewish insurrections. , the controversial biblical academic Joseph Atwill claims that the Roman Empire created Jesus in the first century to quell Jewish insurrections.
According to Joseph Atwill, who is a controversial bible academic, the Romans already knew the Jews were eagerly waiting on their messiah to lead a revolution against their rulers. Rather than starting up yet another physical campaign, the Romans tried using psychological warfare, and created a religious system that emphasized the total opposite of rebellion.
Black People Are Cursed Because Ham Sodomized Noah
All through history, black people have put up with different versions of oppression and discrimination. One main reason for this was due to an old belief that they directly descended from Canaan, who was the grandson of Noah, whom Noah was said to have cursed right after the great Flood.
The Bible claims that Noah’s son Ham saw him naked and drunk while in his tent. Noah was then said to curse Ham’s son Canaan by making him serve the direct descendants of his other two sons, Japheth and Shem. The Bible is very fuzzy on whether Ham did other things to bring on this curse. Some texts merely claim that Ham mocked his father’s nudity and drunkenness. Others say that he actually slept with Noah’s wife, who was his own mother. And then others believe that Ham sodomized his father.
Devil Had Sex with Eve
In a very bizarre interpretation of the biblical book Genesis, this “Serpent Seed Theory” states that the devil actually tricked Eve to do more than just eating the forbidden fruit, he convinced her to have sex with him as well.
Eve later informs God that this serpent “beguiled” her, and there are those who say that these words really meant “seduced” and not only “deceived.” The punishment that the serpent received from God (where he lost his legs and now crawls on his stomach for all of eternity) implies that he once had a human-like body.
Jesus Used Marijuana to Help Work His Miracles
There are several different religions all over the world that have utilized psychoactive plants or entheogens for their sacred rituals. Jesus himself could have used some of these plants to conduct his miracles, according to some theories.
Proponents claim that the anointing oil used by Jesus consisted of a large amount of “keneh-bosem.” This mystery substance is believed by some to be either cannabis or calamus. Jesus actually could’ve healed thousands of people by using the medicinal properties of marijuana. By anointing himself along with his disciples with this cannabis mixture could have created the religious experiences that propelled him as a miraculous man.
Buddhism actually Influenced Christianity
Similar to the way that Jesus spent “lost years” traveling about the Near East prior to studying in India and Tibet, this amazing theory claims that Buddhism and Christianity are similar enough for monks to preach their Buddhist tenets directly to natives of Palestine. And then these doctrines were adopted by Jesus along with his followers in their brand new religion.
Even though Buddhist monks contacted the Western world several centuries prior to the birth of Jesus Christ, extending into parts of the Mediterranean and as far as Greece, there are actually very few scholars who really believe Buddhism influenced Christianity, at least throughout the inception of the latter.
Today’s Jews Didn’t Directly Descend From The Tribes Of Israel
In another controversial argument that undermines the Israeli claims on Palestine, Tel Aviv University’s Shlomo Sand believes that today’s modern Jewish people are not able to claim Palestine as their own land. This is because that they did not descend from those ancient Israelites to begin with.
Sand believes in the theory—which first appeared during the 19th century—that the Jews of today came from the Khazar Khaganate. This empire from central Europe existed from the 7th to the 10th centuries, and their peoples converted to Judaism in a very big way. After the empire perished, their peoples dispersed into various areas of Europe and converted many of the locals around them, resulting in a very non-homogenous Jewish group comprised of several races. Sand also makes the claim that Palestinians are the true descendants of these ancient Israelites, and then they converted to Islam later.
Evidence opposing Sand’s claim includes DNA tests that indicate today’s Jewish people have common genes that are easily traced back to the Levantine area—which includes Israel.
All Peoples Descended From The Jews
There is one interesting fringe theory which states that the British are actually descendants of the Jews. This Two-House or Ephraimite Theory goes even further, as it claims that the non-Jewish Christians of today, along with all of mankind actually descended directly from the Israel’s ten lost tribes.
This belief comes from the very fringes of Messianic Judaism, where their followers believe that Jesus is the Messiah. It’s based on many passages from the bible where God has promised to have Jewish people’s descendants be as “numerous as the sands of the sea.” Thus, the ten tribes of Israel scattered after their defeat at the hands of the Assyrians as a fulfillment of that promise.
They believe that the Jewish descendants further scattered and settled into different regions of the globe all through the ages.
According to specific archaeological findings and a few references contained in the Hebrew Bible, there are some biblical scholars that God actually had a wife named Asherah. They believe that the ancient Israelites paid worship to both of them. A historian named Raphael Patai was the first to propose this God wife theory in 1967.
Even though it is one of the most vital scenes that is depicted in the Bible, archaeologists simply cannot agree on the location of Jesus’s trial. When the Tower of David Museum was undergoing expansion in Jerusalem at the turn of the last century, several archaeologists thought that they discovered the foundation walls and sewage system from the palace of Herod the Great. Thus, there are many who believe that the trial of Jesus had been held there prior to his crucifixion. During those times, Herod was serving as the King of Judea and was appointed by Rome. The apparent remains of his ancient palace were discovered underneath an abandoned prison adjacent to this modern museum.
A book entitled, Forged, was written by a biblical scholar named Bart Ehrman, and was published in the year 2011 to waves of controversy. Ehrman claimed that around 50% of the New Testament had been forged by those having a religious agenda and couldn’t make a mark for themselves under their own names. “There was competition among different groups of Christians about what to believe and each of these groups wanted to have authority to back up their views,” he claimed during an interview on CNN. “If you were a nobody, you wouldn’t sign your own name to your treatise. You would sign Peter or John.”
In the year 2012, a group that remained anonymous published a Queen James Bible (QJB), where they edited 8 verses from the current King James Version (KJV) in a feeble attempt to make it virtually impossible to view and interpret the Holy Bible in a homophobic manner. Steve Golden, who represents Answers in Genesis feels that these cowardly unknown editors of this QJB “have only made a mockery of a beloved Bible translation.”
In the ongoing religious debate regarding abortion, the arguments often refer to the intended meaning of Exodus 21:22–25. The Douay-Rheims version of the Bible states: “If men quarrel, and one strike a woman with child, and she miscarry indeed, but live herself: he shall be answerable for so much damage as the woman’s husband shall require, and as arbiters shall award. But if her death ensue thereupon, he shall render life for life. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
There is an oasis located in the desert near the West Bank, Jericho is thought to be the very earliest city that was inhabited continuously. At different times, there has been at least 23 different civilizations who claimed Jericho as their home. As stated within the Book of Joshua within the Bible, Joshua took the ancient Israelites to Jericho, which was considered to be the heart of the Promised Land. But when they arrived there, Joshua was forced to conquer the Canaanites in a very bloody battle.
1) Nuclear Power – Nuclear power became to the twentieth century exactly steam power was to the nineteenth – which was a game changer. All of a sudden, society had the means to create power that came from a source that was efficient, did not pollute, and was virtually endless. This creation represented an overnight change to the world.
2) Personal Home Computers – Today, it is hard to imagine life without our 
3) Airplanes – Our ancestors would roll over in their graves at the thought of travelling from New York to London in a matter of mere hours. This is what airplanes have done for our society. The airplane has made the same kind of impact on the world as the locomotive did during the nineteenth century. Not only do airplanes make our travel safe and quick, airplanes provide other services such as fighting forest fires, crop dusting, and even the overnight delivery of packages. Aircraft have also made a huge mark on the ways we fight wars too.
4) Motor Vehicles – When trying to determine which invention had the biggest impact on our daily lives, it is hard not to consider the creation of automobiles. When automobiles were refined and perfected to the point they were available to everyday people, the entire world changed. All of a sudden, everyone was closer to one another. People could seek employment in places that they couldn’t before, they could visit families more often, and so forth.
5) Antibiotics – One creation that could be easily overlooked is that development of antibiotics. No doubt that this invention has saved millions and millions of lives worldwide – all living creatures have benefited from antibiotics. Before penicillin came along during the year 1928, virtually any bug that a person got was possibly fatal. Penicillin immediately reduced mortality rates and increased life spans.
6) Television – One of the biggest challenges for anyone today would be trying to find a household in the United States that doesn’t have at least one television set. In fact, most homes have multiple television sets. TVs have often been called America’s newest drug as it is where the majority of Americans spend their idle time. When it was created, it quickly became the means of entertainment and big dollar advertising. And it still is today.
7) The Internet – While the personal computer displaced the typewriter and changed the way we write, the internet took computers to the next level. We saw the airplane shrink our planet so that people could travel across the globe within only hours; the internet lets us travel there in only a few seconds. It also allows messages to move in and out of countries that are repressive, it can foment revolutions, and these messages travel literally at the speed of light.
Many historical scholars believe that Nazi Germany would have had a much better chance of winning World War II if Hitler hadn’t declared war on the United States. And there are several compelling reasons for this theory.
Geronimo – Perhaps among one of the most popular Native American chiefs ever, Geronimo was actually a medicine man who came from the Bedonkohe band of the Chiricahua tribe. He was born in the year 1829 and became acclimated very rapidly to the Apache ways of life. As a boy, Geronimo swallowed the entire heart of the kill he made while hunting, and by age 18 led as many as four separate raids. Just like his people, he greatly suffered at the hands of “civilized” folks who invaded their lands. The Mexicans, who at the time controlled the lands around them, murdered his wife and his three young children. Even though he hated Americans with a passion, he carried a deep-seated hatred for the Mexicans as long as he lived.
Crazy Horse – A great warrior from the Oglala Sioux, Crazy Horse was believed to born in the year 1840 in South Dakota. Legend has it that his name was given him by his father to reflect as fighting skills. Tensions among the Sioux and the Americans had only increased since his birth, but tensions boiled over after he became a young teenager. In August of 1854, the Sioux chief who was named Conquering Bear was murdered by a white soldier. In an act of revenge, the Sioux tribesmen killed the commanding officer and 30 of his soldiers in hat is now called the Grattan Massacre.
Chief Seattle – Born in the year 1790, Chief Seattle came from the state of Washington and lived around the Puget Sound. He was actually the chief for two different tribes and at first he peacefully welcomed settlers began arriving during the 1850s. As a matter of fact, they created a colony on Elliot Bay and even named it after this great tribal leader. But several of the local tribes deeply resented this invasion by the Americans, and then violent conflicts started to occur periodically which resulted in a full blown an attack on colony of Seattle.
Cochise – Practically nothing at all is known about the early life and childhood of perhaps the greatest Apache chiefs in Native American history. No historian even knows the exact year he was born. He was quite tall for his day, standing about 6 foot tall, which was an imposing figure. As leader of his Chiricahua tribe, Cochise led his warriors on many different raids, sometimes against the Americans and sometimes against the Mexicans. But it was the attacks on the Americans that led to his undoing.
Sitting Bull – A chief and actually a holy man from the Hunkpapa Lakota, Sitting Bull was born in the year 1831, in South Dakota. He instantly became a great warrior, going out on his very first raid at the young age of 14. His initial encounter with US troops came in the year 1863. It was his bravery which earned for him the title of chief for all the Lakota during the year 1868. Over the next decade, numerous small conflicts ensued among the Lakota and US troops. However, in 1874 a full-scale war erupted between the two because gold had been discovered in the sacred Black Hills in South Dakota. In reality, these lands had previously been off-limits to white people because of an earlier treaty, but the US ignored the treaty after repeated attempts to buy this land were declined.
Mangas Coloradas – As Cochise’s father-in-law and perhaps even the most influential chief during the 1800s, Mangas Coloradas was an Apache. Born prior to the turn eighteenth century, he was very tall and became the tribal leader in the year 1837, immediately following the death of his predecessor and many warriors within band. All of them died since Mexico offered cash for the scalps of
1) Francisco Franco, Spain (1892-1975) – Francisco Franco began his brutal ruling of Spain from the year 1939 until he died in the year 1975. Among his questionable practices was the censoring of his political opponents, creating concentration camps for political enemies and instituting death penalties for those who spoke against him and his policies.
2) Mao Zedong, China (1893-1976) – Communist leader Chairman Mao Zedong from China also died at age 82. And like Franco, Mao struggled with poor health for a lengthy period prior to his death. The very last time that people saw him in public was in the month of May 1976. While it is not exactly clear what ailed Chairman Mao, many believed that he suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is a degenerative condition of nerve cells that make movement difficult.
3) Kim Il-sung, North Korea (1912-1994) – Kim Il-sung [JB1] became the very first leader of North Korea when he took office in 1948 and established a hereditary dynasty. His grandson, Kim Jong-un, is the current ruler of the country. However technically, Kim Il-sung is still the country’s president, since he was proclaimed to remain in that position through eternity after he died in the year 1994.
5) Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania (1918-1989) – Romania’s very last Communist leader met his final end on Christmas Day in the year 1989. The nation’s mood was quite rebellious that December, and Ceausescu had attempted to pacify his citizens with a carefully controlled public speech on December 21. The crowd responded by booing him. Ceausescu’s refusal to fully understand what this heckling really meant to his leadership only bolstered the rebellion that was rising against him.
6) Saddam Hussein, Iraq (1937-2006) – The brutal dictator Saddam Hussein from Iraq had his seat of power removed when the United States invaded Iraq in the year 2003. United States forces later discovered Hussein hiding deep in a “spider hole” that was located in the ground close to his hometown. He was promptly arrested, and later in the year 2006, he received a death sentence for the heinous murder of 148 Iraqis in the year 1982. This was a massacre against his own people that he ordered because of an attempted assassination.
7) Muammar Gadhafi, Libya (1942-2011) – Muammar Gadhafi became the leader of Libya during the year 1969 and kept a firm grip on his dictatorship until the year 2011. Then he fled the city of Tripoli as it was taken over by rebels during the Liberian Civil War. No one knew where you was for several months, but most experts claim he hid somewhere within his hometown of Sirte with a group of loyalists.
8) Joseph Stalin, Russia (1878-1953) – Joseph Stalin was responsible for more deaths than anyone during the twentieth century, but trying to determine his exact victim count is no easy task. Official records indicate that at least 3 million died from executions and in prison camps under his rule, but most experts believe that numbers are very likely inaccurate. They attribute several million more deaths that he caused from famines and the like that were brought on by his cruel policies. Most historians of today believe Stalin’s death count is more like 15 to 20 million deaths.
9) Benito Mussolini, Italy (1883-1945) – Benito Mussolini, who was an Italian Fascist leader, got ousted from his rule in the month of July 1943 when Italy’s odds of enjoying a World War II victory became bleak. This ouster marked the beginning of the end for Benito Mussolini. He was arrested immediately and was imprisoned at the Campo Imperatore Hotel which was located in the central region of Italy. In September, German paratroopers swooped in and rescued him. He went to Germany, and later went Lombardy when is in northern Italy. Mussolini he seemed to understand that his end was near. In the year 1945, he remarked to an interviewer, “Seven years ago I was an interesting person. Now I am a corpse.”
10) Adolf Hitler, Germany (1889-1945) – Adolf Hitler is perhaps the most notorious exception of dictators living into older ages. In the closing days of World War II, as the Russian Army was pursuing him at Berlin, Hitler went into a bunker that was located underneath the Reich Chancellery building.
Over the years, we have seen countless versions of the classic board game Monopoly. We have seen them sporting themes ranging from different sports,