Why I can't take the Gospels seriously.

[Jehanne]

To take just one example (out of many), I believe that the story of Barabbas, which is common to all four Gospels, to be pure fiction:

Wikipedia -- Barabbas

I think that what the story tells Us, some 2,000 years later, is that all four Gospels were written post-70 AD, after the future emperor Titus had laid waste to the city of Jerusalem, and the fledgling Christian community wanted to frame its new religion as being friendly to the Romans, the victors, and hostile to the losers, the Jews.  As such, the growing and embellishing tales of the historical Jesus were continuing to evolve, which oddly, included the account of a fictitious individual (more oddly, enough, with the first name "Jesus") whom Pilate pardoned to appease the Jewish mob, who became guilty of the "crime" of deicide for having murdered the Son of God.

[brewer]

Oh camon, ya got to love suicidal pigs.

And feeding thousands with a few fish tacos, brilliant!

[HappySkeptic]

As the Wiki article suggests, this story makes no sense as history. Plus, the name of the bandit is literally, "Jesus, son of God". It sounds like some stories got mixed together.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I don’t take the Gospels seriously because most of the characters are thoroughly unlikable people. Wouldn’t have ‘em in me house.

Boru

[Jackalope]

I don’t take the Gospels seriously because most of the characters are thoroughly unlikable people. Wouldn’t have ‘em in me house.

Boru

Not to mention stinky, probably.

[Fake Messiah]

I think that what the story tells Us, some 2,000 years later, is that all four Gospels were written post-70 AD, after the future emperor Titus had laid waste to the city of Jerusalem, and the fledgling Christian community wanted to frame its new religion as being friendly to the Romans, the victors, and hostile to the losers, the Jews.

Maybe to appease the Romans but maybe Mr. Barabbas was there from the beginning of creating the mythical Jesus, and mythmakers took the symbolism of the two goats on Yom Kippur and turned it into Jesus and Barabbas.

From the Wikipedia

In the Bible, a scapegoat is one of two kid goats. As a pair, one goat was sacrificed (not a scapegoat) and the living “scapegoat” was released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities. The concept first appears in Leviticus, in which a goat is designated to be cast into the desert to carry away the sins of the community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat

To take just one example (out of many),

Everything in the Gospels is either invented or folklore or too impossible to have happened, so why do some people still insist that there was some historical Jesus?

The only historical figure that at least some small part of the Gospels was based on was Jesus ben Ananias, so maybe he was a "historical Jesus"?

[Ranjr]

Historical Jesus taught a few classes.  Should have put more into his writing.  Got caught with weed.  And that was it.  It's all right there in the Gospels.

[Rev. Rye]

Everything in the Gospels is either invented or folklore or too impossible to have happened, so why do some people still insist that there was some historical Jesus?

The only historical figure that at least some small part of the Gospels was based on was Jesus ben Ananias, so maybe he was a "historical Jesus"?

Mostly because the core story of an itinerant rabbi who may or may not have been named Jesus and preached many of the same things Jesus preached and perhaps ended up pissing off the Romans enough to give him a drawn-out death by crucifixion is plausible enough to have perhaps been real?

[Fake Messiah]

Mostly because the core story of an itinerant rabbi who may or may not have been named Jesus and preached many of the same things Jesus preached and perhaps ended up pissing off the Romans enough to give him a drawn-out death by crucifixion is plausible enough to have perhaps been real?

But did Jesus in the Gospels piss off Romans? It seems he pissed off Jews.

[Rev. Rye]

Mostly because the core story of an itinerant rabbi who may or may not have been named Jesus and preached many of the same things Jesus preached and perhaps ended up pissing off the Romans enough to give him a drawn-out death by crucifixion is plausible enough to have perhaps been real?

But did Jesus in the Gospels piss off Romans? It seems he pissed off Jews.

If Jesus was crucified in reality, it would have to be by the Romans. Judaism has some very stringent rules for capital punishment, and, the fact that there's a mess of rules so convoluted that there was something seen as seriously wrong with a court that passed a death sentence once in seventy years aside, there were exactly four methods of execution sanctioned by Jewish tradition: stoning, burning (with molten lead in the mouth), beheading, and strangling. While crucifixion might be considered strangulation of a sort, outside of the Gospels, there are ZERO confirmed cases of its use by the Jews, and is well-documented as a Roman punishment. What's more, there's a strong taboo against blood in Judaism (remember how many rules against touching blood there are in the Torah?), and notice how, even in the Gospels, the crucifixion of Jesus is actually bloodier than the process usually is, given that (in defiance of usual practice) it's combined with flogging and, instead of breaking a knee, a centurion slices into his chest.

Even if the core of the story is plausible enough, it is pretty obvious to anyone who knows the history that the Evangelists did fudge quite a few of the details in an attempt to appease Rome.