The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[IATIA]

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Evidently, hitting the "backspace" button can cause your whole browser to go back to a previous page, causing you to lose your entire post even if you try to hit the "forward" button.



I WAS posting my cross-examination of the New Testament. 

Looks like I'll have to do it again when I have regained the patience. 

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I use Chrome on my Mac and have the same thing happen sometimes. Once it gets in that mood, it is a done deal. Takes a restart to make the back button work properly again. When I am doing one of the rare 'thesis' responds, I try to remember to do it on a notepad then cut and paste.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The Bible as a complete comprehensive book didn't exist until the English wrote it. There might have been bits and pieces of various scrolls as reference material for them to work with but the committee writers are the ones who wrote the current narrative. They could have used oral stories to fill in the blanks. But one thing is for sure and that is no complete scrolls written by Paul exist today. So the conclusion must be that Paul didn't write a damn thing. Someone else did.

And be realistic about the whole thing. The character supposedly wrote a lot of letters to various places around the Mediterranean Sea between 40-60 AD. OK, it could have happened. But is it likely that the recipients would have been able to have safe-guarded those scrolls through all of the wars and disruptions in the following centuries? Some guys probably used them for toilet paper.

It's time to start thinking like educated 21st Century adults instead of First Century illiterates.

[The Grand Nudger]

"it could have happened" is a faaaaaaar cry from "it did", or even "it is likely".    There seems to be this notion that the parts of the narrative not directly claiming magic are somehow reliable as fact, when there is no requirement of magic in fiction, and we can demonstrate easily that much fiction is decidedly mundane with regards to the claims it makes.  That "Paul" even wrote letters to churches is far from certain or reliable. We certainly don't need this to be true, or even for those churches to have existed, to end up with the story as is.

Dracula could have chartered a schooner to london, chartering a schooner to london is possible. He didn't. I think that people ought to pay more attention to craft, when discussing their stories.....

Just chiming in, lol.

[DeistPaladin]

OK, trying this again and may the internet gods be kinder to me this time. 

Having failed to teach Randy in some basic lessons in how logic works, I'm now going to cross-examine the witnesses. Everyone get out your Bibles, Occam's Razors and a full Haz-mat suit because this is going to be bloody. 

You are about to enter the courtroom of Judge History.
The places are real.
The people are...
The people are...
Oh, just get into the court already!





Mark: First of the Witnesses, Sort of
We'll start with Mark since his was the first Gospel that was penned. His chapter 13 mentions the destruction of the temple so most Bible scholars date it to around 70 CE. He's not exactly what you'd call an eye-witness, since he was a companion of Paul, who in turn saw Jesus in a vision. However, the New Oxford Annotated Bible says he "drew from a rich variety of oral traditions" which is a nice, flowery way of saying he heard a bunch of stuff from a bunch of places. 

Mostly, his Gospel is based on the preaching of Peter. However, since Peter was not present during parts of the Gospel, by the very admission of the Gospel itself (for example, when Peter was with the servants while Jesus was being questioned by the high priests), he must have gotten his information elsewhere. Actually, we don't even know for certain who wrote the Gospel of Mark in the first place but it is attributed to him "by tradition" though even the New Oxford Bible admits there is "little evidence to support this claim". 

Holy scriptures of the era were prone to "interpolation" and "pseudo-epigraphy" and we do know of at least one significant and uncontested alteration to the Gospel of Mark. The original version of chapter 16 was ended at verse 8, where some guy in white told the visiting ladies "he is risen" and the women all run away afraid. A later edition added 12 verses to the Gospel to make a more satisfying ending. Considering this is the story of the resurrection of Jesus, a rather important point in the tale, one wonders why the author didn't get that account right the first time.

So, to review, Mark is:

• Of dubious authorship
  
• based on a hearsay account
  
• mixed with unknown sources of hearsay
  
• written down 4 decades after the events
  
• with at least one significant alteration
  

And he's the first witness on the scene, your honor. Next witness...

Matthew: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
Seriously, you'd think the original editors of the Bible would have had more sense than to put the testimony of such an transparently sleazy liar into the official version. I'm not saying that theologians are typically people of integrity but, as professional con artists, one would expect them to favor bringing those with more guile into their team. Give Christianity it's due, it's mostly a slick package constructed with minimal material that one must dig into before exposing all the faux history and fraud. This Gospel sticks out a bit. 





Based on the nature of the Gospel, the target audience were Jews. The book is filled with references to the Old Testament and alleged prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. Small wonder that so many Jews remained unconvinced since anyone familiar at all with the OT can immediately spot where the so-called "prophecies" were either fabricated or blatantly distorted. We're only two chapters into Matthew before we encounter three whoppers.

1. "Virgin Shall Conceive": This is a reference to Isaiah chapter 7. Now toss out the whole Bethula/Almah debate as a concession to the Christians, the entire chapter is clearly neither a prophecy concerning the messiah nor a reference to anything but the time of Isaiah. Specifically, Isaiah chapter 7 is about the coming war with Syria and Isaiah's assurances that the invaders would not prevail for a young maiden (presented at that time) has conceived and will bear a son, and this shall be a sign that "God (is) with us". By the way, the great prophet Isaiah turned out to be wrong and the Syrians totally prevailed. 
   
2. "Out of Egypt": This was a reference to Exodus, not the future messiah. 
   
3. "Rachael Weeping": The slaughter of the innocents, an atrocity not found in history but is found in the story of Moses, which in turn was lifted from the story of Sargon, was supposedly a fulfillment of a prophecy of Jeremiah. However, the verse in question were about the Babylonian captivity. 
   

It goes on and on like this, culminating in the cursory, two verse description of the "Attack of the Zombie Saints", where Matthew glibly asserts that the saints of old rose from the graves and were seen by many. 

As Thomas Paine quipped, had the saints such as Moses or Abraham actually risen from the dead to testify to the living, not a single unconverted soul should have been left in all of Jerusalem. 

I believe this "witness" has been thoroughly discredited and should be held on charges of perjury. Next witness, your honor...

Luke: Fan Fic Writer Pretends to be a Historian
Like Matthew, Luke tries to elaborate on Mark, fleshing out a story of Jesus' birth and a bit of his childhood. He also gives us a number of milestones to offer more of a historical setting. Many Christian apologists such as Josh McDowell, praise the "incredible accuracy" of Luke as a historian. 

Evidently, McDowell read a different Gospel then the rest of us did.

Like Mark, Luke is a companion of Paul and not an "eye witness". He admits in his opening of his Gospel that he has stitched together the different accounts he has heard, acting as if he were a historian. The problem is his history doesn't exactly fit with the history we know.

He places the conception of Jesus during the time of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE. 

Luke 1:5 There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. ...
1:24 And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid herself five months, saying, ...

1:26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,
1:27 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary....

1:41 And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:

1:42 And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

And Mary carries Jesus in her womb until she must travel to Bethlehem due to a highly contrived plot device featuring an unlikely Roman requirement that everyone return to their home town for a census. Rome didn't gain control of Judea and perform this census (which in reality would have been a simple property owner count) until 6 CE, when Quirinius (Cyrenius) came to be governor of Syria.

Luke 2:1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.
2:2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
2:3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
2:4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David
2:5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

So either the "great historian" Luke goofed up his knowledge of dates or perhaps a 10 year pregnancy is the norm for sons of gods? Well, maybe demigods take longer to bake in the oven. 

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as historical problems go but that's a good start for now. I don't want to go on too long for fear of losing this post like I did the last one. 

Too bad Luke didn't consult with Matthew when both were writing their fan fics of Mark's story, else they might have gotten their elaborations straight. But you know how it is with a story that has multiple authors. Continuity gaffes creep in, don't they? Such was the case with Jesus' genealogy. Matthew features 28 generations, Luke 43, neither have many shared names, both contradict the genealogy found in First Chronicles. 

Both of them also have a different solution for how to make Jesus from Nazareth and yet be born in the City of David. Matthew has Jesus born to a family that lived in Bethlehem, had to flee to Egypt, was unable to return home because of Herod Archelaus and so moved north to settle in Nazareth. Luke has a family that lived in Nazareth, had to go to Bethlehem for an unlikely census where Mary gave birth and then they returned to Nazareth. But hey, the Devil's in the details. 

John: The Non-Synoptic Gospel
Christians call the first three Gospels "Synoptic", meaning "similar", in a tacit admission that John's Gospel sits oddly alongside of them. 





Really, where do I begin in the daunting task of detailing just how badly this Gospel is a complete rewrite of the entire story, featuring a completely new character? Is it really even necessary?

For now, let's just say that John's Gospel is clearly written at a much later date. "The Jews", not the pharisees, not the high priests, not the scribes but THE JEWS are a separate and hostile sect. Jesus, instead of being a separate being with a subordinate will to his father, inferior knowledge to his father and spoke of and to his father in 2nd and 3rd person while the booming voice from on high did likewise, John's Jesus was one with his father. Jesus didn't need to be baptized by John the Baptist nor did he require John the Baptist to get out of the way. Jesus opened up a rival baptism franchise and beat John the Baptist as his own game while JtB cheered him on. What a guy! Jesus didn't start his ministry in a backwater town and made his way to Jerusalem but rather kicked it off in the temple of Jerusalem! 

Non synoptic indeed.

Reliable eye-witness accounts my ass. 

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Only insane entities think that such beings as "gods" exist and humans as a species is totally insane. It doesn't matter which religion is being discussed. Humans will believe in even the most silly and stupid beliefs because we have the ability to imagine alternate realities.

Our ability to imagine is one of our greatest strenghts and it's also our greatest weakness. It makes us gullible and easily fooled because we want and need organization and structure in our lives. That's where religion and gods come in. When con men came up with the idea of gods they were able to control their groups of dummies who needed something that they could attach all of their insecurities and hopes that they had been imagining onto. If they imagined going hungry they created gods that would feed them with game and plants. When they saw their loved ones get sick and die they imagined gods that would make it all better. People still pray to their favorite imaginary gods for help in time of need. It's something that's hard-wired into our being.

If everyone was actually able to see into the past for the events described in their favorite ethnocentric religious fairy tales and see that the stories are frauds they would still cling to them, at least until they made up some new ones. The basic value in any religion is that it provides a system of order that allows the group to become civilized. Some people are capable of functioning perfectly fine without being actively religious but that's most likely because they were exposed to it at an early age. When people don't have that exposure they tend to become outlaws. Even the North Koreans are religious in that they worship their leader.

So even though most of the Bible characters are imaginary and there are no gods in this solar system, it doesn't matter to billions of people. Their imagination demands that such things exist.

[DeistPaladin]

So having discussed how the apologetic case pre-fails...


And having discussed how the Gospels were not written by credible eye-witnesses...


We now move to cross-examination of the stories they each tell to show how they can't be reconciled with each other.

The Genealogy and Birth of Jesus
The birth and childhood of Jesus weren't documented by Mark. This would be a later add-on by future Gospel authors. It appears there was no collaboration in the fan fics written by Luke and Matthew, since both went in different directions that would make future Christian apologists have to perform mental gymnastics that would have made Mary Lou Retton proud. 

First, the genealogies presented by both authors are irreconcilable both in names and numbers. Luke has 43 generations from David to Jesus, Matthew 28, and neither agree with 1st Chronicles chapter 3, which presents part of the geneaology Matthew's contains minus four names: Joash, Amaziah, Azariah, and Jehoiakim. Matthew shaved off a bit from David to the Babylonian Captivity to make it a nice even 14, but then again we have established that Matthew was a liar. 

Apologists try to square this circle by claiming one genealogy is Mary and the other is Joseph. Both accounts say "Joseph" but letting that go, considering how Luke's contains nearly double the number of generations, this seems deeply implausible. All this to say nothing of how both are wrong since Joseph isn't the biological father of Jesus, or so we're led to believe. 

Then the two authors both seemed to wrestle with how to reconcile "Jesus of Nazareth" with a messiah that was supposed to have been born in the City of David and each came up with a different solution. You can decide who had the more convoluted plot device to square that circle. 

Matthew has Jesus' family come from Jerusalem. They originally lived there but had to flee to Egypt to escape Herod the Great's infanticidal rampage. Curiously, this atrocity is nowhere to be found even as Herod had his harsh critics. This event is found in the story of Moses (which, as I've said, was ripped off from Sargon). It seems likely that Matthew, trying to evangelize to the Jews, found it useful to put Jesus on par with Moses. After they returned from Egypt, they couldn't return home because Herod's son ruled that region of Judea, so they headed north to settle in the town of Nazareth and this, Matthew explains, is why Jesus became known as "Jesus of Nazareth". 

Luke's version is a tad different, and by that I mean completely aside from his mother being Mary and his step-father being Joseph. Luke's holy family is from Nazareth but they needed to make the journey to Jerusalem because of a highly unlikely census that required everyone to report back to their home town. Mary gave birth while in Jerusalem, thus allowing Jesus to have been born in the City of David even though his family lived in Nazareth. There is no need to flee from Herod the Great, since he'd been dead 10 years by the time Luke's Jesus was born. There was no flight to Egypt, either. The new parents of the Son of God performed some rituals at the temple and then went home. 

Luke 2:39 And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth

Things get really tricky when you ask "in what decade did all this happen"? 

Matt's nativity (the one with the wise men) clearly happened during the reign of Herod the Great who died in 4 BCE. There would have been no census since Judea was a kingdom run by Herod. They paid tribute to Rome but Rome had no interest in how that money was raised. Any census would have been done internally by the king. 

Luke's nativity (the one with the shepherds) clearly happened in the following decade when Rome took control of Judea. There was a census done as Rome was evaluating its newly acquired province but there's neither evidence nor rational reason to suggest that Rome would have required everyone to report back to their home town. Luke tells us this was done when Quirinius was governor of Syria, a post he took in 6 CE. 

There's a 10 year gap between the two events. Apologists, stuck with Herod's dates of his life, try to square this circle by dragging Luke's Jesus back a decade. A festival of ad hoc hypothises rain down on the skeptic who must play "wack-a-mole" to hunt down reasons why none of them are valid. Fortunately for the reader, I have danced this dance enough times that I'm pretty familiar with the usual attempts.

• There were two governorships of Quirinius: This would violate Roman tradition. They didn't want anyone to serve twice as governor of a province for fear that he would gather too much local power. Additionally, we know where Quirinius was at the time around 5 BCE and it was governor of a province in the middle of modern Turkey. 
  
• Luke says the census "before" Quirinius was governor: No translation supports this apology but even so, there was no previous Roman census of Judea because Rome didn't own Judea. 
  
• Maybe Rome wanted Herod to perform a census anyway: What? Why would they...? Oh, never mind, the last imperial census was in 9 BCE. Luke tells us Jesus was "about 30" when he started his ministry and John the Baptist started his in 27-28 CE. Jesus would have been too old to be "about 30" when JtB started his ministry, never mind when Jesus did.
  
• Maybe Luke meant "administrator" instead of Governor: So the Romans wanted Herod to perform a census for no reason and dragged Quirinius away from his post as governor of a distant province to micro-manage Herod's census for him because clearly a governor of a province has nothing better to do than administrate a census of a distant kingdom that isn't even a Roman province? Sorry, but Jesus is still too old by the time 28 CE rolls around. 
  

Occam's Razor says the reason these two stories appear to contradict each other is because the DO contradict each other. 

John the Baptist
All four Gospels make a point to say that JtB was just a warm-up act, trying to assimilate the followers of JtB much the same way as Muhammad would later try to do with Jesus. Strangely enough, the followers of JtB remained rivals with the early Christians for centuries to come. Evidently, they didn't get the memo. Neither did Josephus who reported on JtB and his ministry. Odd that there was no mention "by the way, John the Baptist told everyone that his ministry was all about setting the stage for another to come." From non-Christian accounts, it seems like John the Baptist's ministry was about his ministry. 

The Synoptic Gospels all tell us that Jesus waited until John the Baptist had been put into prison before his ministry began. John's version of Jesus had no need to wait. He started a rival ministry, took his disciples and outdid JtB in the number baptized, beating him at his own game (what a guy). John's Jesus' ministry was going strong before JtB's imprisonment, saying in 3:24, "for John had not yet been put into prison". 

Reading the Gospels in order shows us a picture of how JtB sank lower and lower on his knees before Jesus with each telling of the tale. Mark's JtB puts himself down and tells everyone Jesus is coming. Matthew's JtB is uncomfortable baptizing Jesus, as he is the lesser before Jesus, but Jesus orders him to do it anyway. John's JtB never baptizes Jesus at all.

In The Wilderness... Or a Wedding
The Synoptics have Jesus immediately going into the wilderness for 40 days after the baptism. John's Jesus spends two days after the baptism gathering disciples and attends a wedding on the third day. 

Both Mark and John are explicit about the days, offering a distinct timeline for the post-baptism itinerary of Jesus. Oops. 

End of Part I. 
To be Continued. 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Ah...the graveyard of the gods.

Just because some conceptions of god are fictional, does it necessarily follow that all of them are? Even Plato and Aristotle rejected the anthropomorphic deities like Zeus and Hercules in favor of a supreme being or god that created all of reality.

The theist believes that a god exists. Then, through reason or revelation or both, he narrows the scope of his investigation and chooses to believe in the God that most probably exists.

If you wish to prove that Christianity or theism belongs in the graveyard along with all of the failed gods and goddesses of the past, then provide some evidence as to why you believe that the God of classical theism has suffered the same fate as his mythological competitors.

Ah, I love the smell of special pleading in the evening.

Well, not really, because it stinks ... just like all shitty reasoning stinks.

You need to explain why your god is real, and how you were able to cross off every other deity in existence.

Mind you, I can conceive of one right this minute, and according to your idiotic misunderstanding of the burden of proof, you would have to be able to cross him off before you can say you have no faith in my deity.

And at any rate, you're lying about how you came to believe in god. You weren't trained first to believe in the idea of a god, and then through patient and steady investigation of the entire gamut of 4,000 or so religions (not to mention 40,000 sects of Christianity!) come to believe that the Catholic conception of god is the most accurate.

I wonder what your Bible says about false witness?

Maybe you should more closely respect the tenets you purport to hold, because your dishonesty is transparent to us, and we're only mere mortals.

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To prove that God does not exist, show that the idea of God involves a logical contradiction.

Perfect mercy and Hell. We can cross the Christian god off the list, y'all.

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It's Never Too Soon For Urban Legends
Urban legends can spring up in no time and persist despite their outrageous claims and evidence to the contrary. 

"But the early believers saw Jesus days after he died on the cross", you object.

One word: Elvis.

Well, I have to admit something...I didn't see this the first time around. I got so caught up in the whole "David Koresh proves the apostles were nuts" thing, that I complete missed this even GREATER stupidity.
[...]
(Man, this kinda stuff gives atheists a bad name.)

He's a deist, numbnuts. Can't you even read English?

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Ref. Post #516: If you accept the idea that the English wrote the Bible then all of the discrepancies make sense. The English writers included all of those discrepancies on purpose to show that the Bible was nonsense. They did it because Christianity was in conflict with their traditional Druid beliefs. It was just an elaborate prank since the Christians didn't have a single book for all of their stories. When they wrote the Bible as a gift to the Pope they simply included a lot of insider jokes because the Pope and his gang would never figure it out.

[Minimalist]

Oh, never mind, the last imperial census was in 9 BCE.

And as we learn from the Res Gestae Divi Augustus when the Romans did perform a census ( lustrum) it was to determine the number of Roman citizens.  The number of jewish peasants would have been a matter of no importance at all.

[Mudhammam]

Ref. Post #518: If you accept the idea that the Illuminati wrote the Bible then all of the discrepancies make sense. The New World Order writers included all of those discrepancies on purpose to show that understood in an allegorical sense and pieced together like a map, the Bible contains a hidden message that points towards the lost city of Atlantis. They did it because the reptilian people were in conflict with their apish subjects. It was just an elaborate prank since the reptilians didn't have a single book to communicate their secret agenda to the elites. When they wrote the Bible as a gift to Satan the Supreme Leader, they simply included a lot of insider clues because humans would never figure it out.

That's the real story.