First off, mateys! Today be the day t’be speak’n like a pirate!. Ye be helpin the stop of the warmin’ of th’ globe by speakin it! so speak it!
Last week, I examined one of the final straws in my Christian deconversion, the Historicity of the Martyrdom of the Apostles. Today, I will take a step up the ladder and examine the man called Jesus of Nazareth, and focus on the reliability we can have of the most important figure in Christianity: The Christ. I will not in this blog examine the old testament, but will assume for now that it was prophesied that a figure of the lineage of david would arise to give new direction to the Hebrew people when they were under duress, a figure many Jews at the wailing wall believe still has not come.
Carl Sagan, reiterating Laplace (the french mathematician that made life so much easier), held the belief that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” I believe in this respect, the idea of Jesus Christ as projected by the gospels and the Christian faith, did not exist. This is not to say that a historical, real, living person named Jesus existed and talked to people, and had stories about him did not exist, but that the stories that were projected are mythological, inaccurate, and do not meet the burden of proof to validate the extraordinary claim that the man Jesus was the son of god who espoused harmonizing teaching about the old testament, performed many miracles, and was sacrificed to save humanity (the elect) from sin.
The Gosepls
No one knows who wrote any of the gospels. The books of the bible known as the Gospel of “Matthew, Mark, Luke, John” were ascribed literally hundreds of years after their writing. The earliest mention of Mark and Matthew was from Papias at 130CE, in which he describes the first bit of legend, that Mark wrote down everything for Peter, and Matthew used “hebrew sayings” to write his gospel (which gets him into trouble for inventing details). The gospel of luke got its namesake from Irenaeus around 180 CE, as did John. The gospel accounts were understood by the early church to be from jesus’ closest disciples, but it was not until much later that these names were agreed upon. There are no records within the gospels of who actually wrote the accounts, and the gospel of luke is addressed to an unknown person, with no historical reference for the man known as Theopolis.
Early church legend supposed that matthew and luke came first, that mark followed, due to their inclusion of Geneaologies. We now know that this is not the case, but the legend stood. The three synoptic gospels began with Mark at a minimum of 70CE (around 40 years after Jesus’ supposed crucifixion). Matthew and Luke borrowed heavily (read: Plagairised) from mark, and the going theory is that they had another work known as “Q” on which to base their additional assertions, and most date these books to around 90-100CE (60+ years after the supposed resurrection).
It is clear from inconsistencies within the texts that none of the gospels present eyewitness accounts. For example, in Mark 2 (corroborated by Luke 5), Levi was called to become a disciple, while in Matthew 9, the disciple’s name was Matthew. An eyewitness, especially one attested as the author, would not get the name here wrong. Matthew 21 also has Jesus riding in on 2 donkeys, based on a mistranslation of Zechariah 9. Mistranslation, mythology, and legend in Matthew (who pushes a strong Jewish agenda as shown in his disreverence for the Romans throughout) cause several errors to be present.
One of the most notable misinterpretations centers around the town of Nazareth where Jesus grew up. Either the “Q” document or both Matthew and Luke (or all of them) mistakenly mistranslated the old testament prophecy in Isaiah that refers to the “Branch,” because the town of Nazareth didn’t exist. This is not the only thing that breaks down the historicity of the nativity.
- The Geneaologies in Matthew and Luke are incompatible. This is obviously a fill-in that each author wanted to include to fulfill prophecy, but by diverging, they prove that neither author knows the actual geneaology.
- The Virgin Birth is a mistranslation of Isaiah into the Greek, which interprets the word “Maiden” as “Virgin” (or young woman). The idea of a virgin birth is not the fulfillment of prophecy, but closely parallels mythology surrounding Horus, Dionysus, Mithras, and several other common mythological deities.
- in Matthew, Joe and Mary are from Bethlehem when they heard the annunciation, while in Luke’s account they lived in Nazareth (which again, didn’t exist).
- There is absolutely no evidence for a mass herod-induced murder. Josephus, who hated herod’s guts, records nothing of this, while details many other events that paint herod as a diabolical character.
- Because of these contradictions matthew has the travel plans of Bethlehem->Egypt->Nazareth, while Luke’s is Nazareth->Bethlehem->Jerusalem->Nazareth. These two series of events are incompatible, and attempts to unify the two result in not enough time to get back to jerusalem to observe the purification set down in leviticus 12.
- Quirinius’ census from historical documents took place in the year AD 6. Quirinius was governor of Syria for 6 years, from 6-12 CE, based on Josephus accounts as well as other roman documents. Herod the great died in 4 BCE (the herod Jesus went to was Herod Jr.). Therefore, Jesus was born both before 4 BCE and after 6CE. Which is the same as me being born when the world trade centers were destroyed when Barack Obama was President.
- John, meanwhile, says in 8:57 “You are not yet fifty years old,” putting his birthday at around 20 BCE. Luke also states that jesus was 30 when he began to preach during the 15th reign of Tiberious. Thus his birthdate was around 1 BCE.
welcome to the dark side buddy
….watch out for shandon zombies though, i learned that the hard way!
Howdy,
You might know me as Stuart Ray’s brother. I am currently working on my masters in Christian Apologetics. Stu turned me onto your site to see if we could reveiw your post(s) (we meaning you and I).
I am not interested in name calling or pithy statements and would be willing to sit down and work through sources for better understanding. It is my firm belief that we would not be competeing against each other but rather contending to the truth together.
If you are open to this kind of dialogue please let me know. If not then have a great day and I hope all goes well with you.
Absolutely. Where are you at, and i’d love to contend the truth together. I was a christian for 10 years and studied the historicity of the scriptures, jesus, etc for years. In the meantime do you see any factual errors on the blog post above? I know that sometimes when people hit seminary they learn the unsettling truth about the origins of the bible, as well as its contradictions.
(Not sure what you want me to call you),
You can call me Joe. Or, if there are too many Joes in your life then “Joe Ray” is fine too. I’m currently in North Carolina, round-abouts Wake Forest/ Raleigh. I’d be comfortable either on phone, email, or your blog site (and when I am in town again I would (will?) be for a meeting of the minds in person). I don’t have any class tomorrow so let me respond to your question about factual errors tomorrow when I can reference my sources accurately. I have found that seminary both sheds light on common misunderstandings and the nuances of the feilds of philosophy, historical criticism and the like. I look forward to up coming dialogues and hope it will be enlightening for the both of us.
Shalom
P.S. – I’m also going to take time to read all of your posts tomorrow so that I get a fair read of your various positions. I figure that would be fair so I probably won’t be posting until late tomorrow night. If I see something I think is blatantly wrong/illogical/factually in error I’ll probably just quote you then show what I think was wrong and where possible post a reference. I’m used to a lot of philosophy so don’t take any of the cold math or observations as personal. Just a heads up.
Shalom again. (BOOM! Double SHALOM!) =D
Howdy,
I have read your posts (2008-present). In which way would you prefer to communicate? (I always enjoy the phone)
Well…the title of this little post was taken from a book written by Josh McDowell who set out to prove in his doctoral thesis that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God. In his research he changed his mind. You can find numerous proof in his books: Evidence That Demands A Verdict. I have found that those books are rather laborious to get through so let me recommend a short one: THE RESURRECTION FACTOR.
One who cares…
Anonymous,
I read “New Evidence that Demands a verdict” in 2005 during my first soul-search, and it omits key details that i find disengenuous. I still own the book, but i will surely take a look at it again. I will check out The Resurrection Factor, but i plan to address the resurrection in my next blog post.
Here is my first response/critique,
“No one knows who wrote any of the gospels”
1) This sentence may just be the header of this paragraph to introduce the your main idea but technically it is wrong.
a) the people who wrote them know (even if they may not be the Apostles)
b) it is more accurate to say “I do not believe that the gospels were written by the Apostles they are normally attributed too.”
The importance in how you word this has to do with posture. It is too concrete to say this because it precludes the possibility (given that the statement is true) that we may one day discover who wrote the gospels. Maybe I’m just being nit-picky though.
“The books of the bible… were ascribed literally hundreds of years after their writing. The earliest mention of Mark and Matthew was from Papias at 130CE…” (btw I don’t see any reason to say “CE” when it is still the case that the birth of Jesus, no matter who he was, splits time.. so I will be using “AD”)
2) The earliest mention was “130 CE”?
a) Papias was quoting/mentioning something that we today call the Gospels.
b) Ignatius of Antioch was quoting the gospels before this, since he died in ~110AD. See his seven letters to the churches regarding the full humanity and deity of Christ.
c) Polycarp was quoting Matthew, Mark ,and Luke before 110AD as well (including other books of the NT)
d) Since both Polycarp and Ignatius of Antioch were quoting before Papias, your sentence skews the evidence.
e) Both Ignatius and Polycarp considered the gospels to be scripture and were not bothered by the authorship (probably because Polycarp was a disciple of John, and knew who the writers were).
3) In regards to who wrote the gospels, it does not matter. I believe a strong case can be made that the gospels were written by those whom they are usually ascribed to but let’s first consider what happens if they are not written by them. This would not mean that the books themselves are wrong; it would mean tradition about the books is wrong. Since the idea of biblical inerrancy is in no way hindered by tradition getting something wrong, it would not logically follow that wrong ascription to a book’s authorship makes that book invalid. For instance, we are not sure who wrote the book of Hebrews. Since the book of Hebrews seems to be from Paul, Luke, Appollos, or Peter (or some combination of that); and, more importantly, theologically in line with early church beliefs, the early church accepted it. Also, Paul had a copy of it with his letters and it follows the format of the books of Luke. Luke wrote in classic Greek for the first four lines of each of his books Luke, Acts, and Hebrews.
“Matthew used “hebrew sayings” to write his gospel (which gets him into trouble for inventing details).”
4) Please clarify. I do not see how this is an argument or what it is trying to assert.
5) In regards to which gospel came first; this too does not matter. Sure it may be interesting but nothing about which came first changes whether or not it is true. Once again, if tradition over what came first is wrong, then Biblical inerrancy is not bothered. Only if the books themselves claim to come one before the other would this have an impact on inerrancy. (Which I assume is the ultimate underlying problem in this entire blog post) (Also I would encourage you to look more into “Q”… you’ll find that the “Q” theory was born out of a vacuum (the first “Quest for the Historical Jesus” I believe) to which there is no evidence for believing such a document existed. The a priori assumption that the gospels had to have come from a single source is what drove those critics to postulate the “Q” document. I would argue that the single source the documents come from is the collective experience of the Apostles from Jesus.)
“It is clear from inconsistencies within the texts that none of the gospels present eyewitness accounts.”
6) Levi and Matthew are one and the same person. One is the Hebrew name and the other is the Greek name. It was common among the Jewish people to have one for each language. This is one of the reasons we see a lot of name changing in the gospels, because people had already accepted it as a cultural norm. (Simon called Peter… Saul -> Paul… Dydimus -> Thomas)
7) I don’t see the problem between Matthew and Zechariah. When I read them they said the same thing. Explain please.
8) In regards to the Mat/Luke genealogy. “Luke’s genealogy moves backward, from Jesus to Adam; Matthew’s moves forward from Abraham to Joseph. Luke’s entire section from Joseph to David differs starkly from that given in Matthew. The two genealogies are easily reconciled if Luke’s is seen as Mary’s genealogy, and Matthew’s represents Joseph’s. Thus the royal is passed through Jesus’s legal father and His physical decent from David is established by Mary’s lineage.” – taken from John MacArthur commentary
9) The virgin birth. I understand how people could think it was a mistranslation that “young woman” changed to “virgin” is misusing the text but let’s consider arguments on the other side.
a) It hardly serves as prophecy to say that a young woman will give birth since they do that all the time.
b) What does make it peculiar is that only the woman is mentioned (also see Gen 3 where God says “the seed of the woman”). These two combined are slight nuances to virginity since it was not common to call it the “woman’s seed” (usually seed is reserved for the man).
c) If the woman were married, her husband would have been talked about (in the prophecy). Since he is not, we assume that she is either not married or married and a virgin.
d) Once again, the misinterpretation of a prophecy here does not mean that therefore Jesus was not born of a virgin.
10) May I warn you adamantly that parallelisms with anything do not change the truth of the thing being discussed? What does a parallel mean?
a) Someone thought it was a cool idea and used it elsewhere
b) It could also mean that people were translating such passages in Isaiah as “virgin” long before Jesus was born and were eager to find the messiah (however misguided). In their eagerness they create other religions that try to fit the prophecy of the OT.
c) One thing it definitely does not mean is that all parallels are therefore fabrications.
11) “in Matthew, Joe and Mary are from Bethlehem when they heard the annunciation, while in Luke’s account they lived in Nazareth”. Matthew does not say where they were when the annunciation took place. They are in Bethlehem when Jesus is born, both Mat and Luke testify to this.
12) By now I have written a great deal. I could talk about your take on Nazareth and many other things but I will stop for now to make one last point. Many of the problems you seem to have lead you to odd conclusions. For instance, your stance on tradition being wrong somehow leads you to think that the gospels are wrong. Your stance against Christianity leads you to accept Atheism, when clearly you did not rule out the existence of God, but that if you did rule out any God it was only the version of Christianity. My primary obstacle with your arguments are your conclusions (and some details); they do not follow from your premises.
Hopefully future posts will not be as long, but I hope you can see that I took your post seriously and tried to thoughtfully work through what you have written. Peace.
Joseph,
Thank you so much for your reply. I was wondering if i could use my response as a blog post on its own, to publically correct and clarify some of the things you pointed out?
Howdy,
That sounds fine. I’m sure you probably won’t need to go point by point but another post is fine.
Peace