Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest
Micheal Nugent V WC
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
It's a possibility that everyone was lying ... but just like nowadays, lies in the public domain would get confronted and the truth would emerge via whistleblowing and leaks from some of those in the know about what really happened.
This would be doubly so, given that Christians were a tiny suppressed minority.
It's very telling that you consider the revelation that the gospels were fiction as an act of lying. Lying implies an intent to deceive which neither I nor the scholars in the field find to be present. These people, at least the gospel authors, weren't trying to deceive anyone. They were merely trying to create a backstory for someone about whom precious little was known.
You see, the gospel authors repeatedly make the claim that Jesus was someone who not only attracted large crowds to hear him speak but whose fame spread far and wide:
" The news about Him spread throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them. Large crowds followed Him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan."
Matthew 4:24-25
"Under these circumstances, after so many thousands of people had gathered together that they were stepping on one another, He began saying to His disciples first of all, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."
Luke 12:1
"Leaving the crowd, they *took Him along with them in the boat, just as He was; and other boats were with Him."
Mark 4:36
"Immediately the news about Him spread everywhere into all the surrounding district of Galilee."
Mark 1:28
"But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around, to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city, but stayed out in unpopulated areas; and they were coming to Him from everywhere."
Mark 1:45
"The large crowd of the Jews then learned that He was there; and they came, not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead. But the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death also; because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and were believing in Jesus."
John 12:9-11
However, despite this repeated claim about Jesus' fame, we are presented with a number of problems:- There are no firsthand eyewitness accounts from any of the apostles or other named characters in the Jesus story.
- There are no contempraneous extrabiblical accounts which support the Jesus story.
- The later extrabiblical sources for Jesus only point to his existence and are each flawed sources at best.
- There are no mentions of the events and characters in the story from people we should expect to hear from like Philo of Alexandria, Justus of Tiberius, Seneca the Younger or even Pliny the Elder.
The earliest accounts we do have are from Paul who writes 20 years after the events he purports to depict. However, Paul while carrying an obviously powerful theological message for the Jews of the time, has no biographical information about Jesus. The more the Pauline message took hold the more people wanted information about Jesus. This is where the gospel authors come in. The gospel authors, beginning with Mark start to build a backstory to flesh out the character of Jesus where there had previously only been teachings. Mark builds a hidden hero narrative, borrowing heavily from Greek literature and the Old Testament stories of Elisha. Of course, being written in Rome around 70 CE, it's extremely unlikely that there was anyone around to challenge Mark's version of events. Over a decade later, Matthew comes along and mostly copies Mark's story verbatim. He corrects some factual mistakes in Mark, changes the theology to a more pro-Jewish viewpoint and adds even more OT references to make it look as if Jesus' coming had been foretold. Then about a decade after that Luke comes along. Luke's intention is to talk up the emerging Christian movement and give it the veneer of historical reliability. He opens his gospel with a kind of faux historical introduction which he almost immediately undermines. He borrows heavily from Mark and even some material from Matthew but also uses Josephus' Jewish Wars and Antiquities to provide a sense of structure for his narrative. Then at the end of the century we have John, a composite work resulting from the contributions of multiple authors living in a kind of Johannine community who speak of a different kind of Jesus, a Jesus who unashamedly declares himself to be God where the earlier Jesus of the synoptics attempted to downplay this.
The intent of these accounts is not to lie to or deceive people, it is to expand the character of Jesus introduced by Paul. It's more like fan fiction, people writing stories about their favourite characters.
As for your point about the truth emerging through whistleblowers, that requires an assumption that seeking the truth was an important motivation for people of the time. From what was written by the early church fathers we can see that this is not the case:
"It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh."
Irenaeus
"That the character of the diction of the epistle entitled To the Hebrews has not the apostle’s rudeness in speech, who confessed himself rude in speech, that is, in style, but that the epistle is better Greek in the framing of its diction, will be admitted by everyone who is able to discern differences of style. But again, on the other hand, that the thoughts of the epistle are admirable, and not inferior to the acknowledged writings of the apostle, to this also everyone will consent as true who has given attention to reading the apostle…. But as for myself, if I were to state my own opinion, I should say that the thoughts are the apostle’s, but that the style and composition belonged to one who called to mind the apostle’s teachings and, as it were, made short notes of what his master said. If any church, therefore, holds this epistle as Paul’s, let it be commended for this also. For not without reason have the men of old handed it down as Paul’s. But who wrote the epistle, in truth God knows. Yet the account which has reached us [is twofold], some saying that Clement, who was bishop of the Romans, wrote the epistle, others, that it was Luke, he who wrote the Gospel and the Acts."
Origen
The early church leaders were much more interested in the theological message of the gospels and epistles than their historical reliability.
It can't be stressed enough also how far out of reach, both temporally and geographically the NT works are for anybody who might have been in a position to challenge them. The biographical sources for Jesus and the apostles (I'm including Acts here) were written between 40 and approximately 90 years after the death of Jesus in places like Rome and Syria.
Even Paul's writings, which don't contain any biographical information about Jesus weren't such that they could be easily refuted by eyewitnesses. Let's take an example of one of the churches, Galatians.
Galatians was a church probably somewhere around Antalya in Turkey about 440 miles from Jerusalem directly but about 880 miles for travellers of the time. It is likely from internal evidence in the letter and surrounding evidence in Acts 16:6 that it was Paul himself who founded the communities in Galatia and that they were not pre-existing communities. Moreover, Galatians 4:8 demonstrates that the churches were composed of primarily pagan converts. So already, we have no evidence that these people were eye-witnesses or had any contact with them.
What we can say is that these people had contact with other Christians who contradicted Paul's teachings:
"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ."
This passage is interesting since it echoes a similar one in Corinthians:
"What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”
So it is clear that Paul's teachings didn't always receive universal acceptance. It also shows that even in the early Church there were a multitude of different interpretations of the Jesus story. This is borne out by the multiplicity of sects which existed in early Christianity such as the Marcionites and Ebionites.
Furthermore, Paul doesn't suggest that his readers confirm his story with the other apostles he mentions. Instead he asks them to believe him on faith:
"I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie."
There is no evidence that the Galatians had any contact with eyewitnesses who were in a position to refute Paul's claims.
Similarly with Corinthians, the church in Corinth is hundreds of miles removed from Jerusalem and is a community which Paul himself had founded (Acts 18) and which was divided as a result of communications with other Christians. However, there is no evidence that any of these people had any direct contact with eyewitnesses.So, we can rely on the veracity of the New Testament.
No, we really can't. There are a number of reasons why we can't. To illustrate this point, let's look at these supposed eyewitness accounts using a well-recognised standard for judging witness testimony, the US Federal Rules of Evidence.
The Federal rules of evidence state that witness testimony shall be excluded for any or all of the following reasons:- Anonymity
- Competency
- Hearsay
- Bias
- Inconsistent statements
- Untruthfulness
- Contradiction
So let's look at the gospels under each of these headings.
1. Anonymity
All of the gospels are anonymous both internally and externally. Even in the early Church, as demonstrated by the quote from Origen above, there were debates about the authorship of early Christian writings.
2. Competency
Competency is handled under Rule 602 - Personal Knowledge. This requires that the witness demonstrate personal knowledge of the matter being tried, i.e. that they are in some way an eyewitness. Each of the gospels fails in this respect.
Mark fails because it is clear from reading the gospel that the author has no knowledge of Jewish law or customs or the geography of 1st century Israel. An example of this is the exorcism story at the start of Chapter 5. Here we have a story of Jesus healing a demon-possessed man. We are told that having cast out the demons from the man that they then go into a group of pigs who proceed to run down the hill into the sea (the Sea of Galilee) and are drowned. The problem here occurs when we look at the geographical evidence. At the outset of the story we are told that Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee and goes to the land of the Gerasenes. However, if we look at a map of the area here:
Map of Ancient Israel
we can see that Gerasa is about 30 miles from the sea of Galilee at its closest point. That would be a pretty big hill. In fact, this error is highlighted in the Gospel of Matthew when Matthew makes one of his rare changes to the text he copies from Mark when he changes Gerasenes to Gadarenes, which reduces the problem from 30 miles to about 5.
Matthew, Luke and John to greater and lesser extents borrow some of their material from Mark falling foul of the competency rule in the process.
3. Hearsay
Mark's gospel is told from an omniscient third person perspective and contains no first person commentary nor any personal anecdotes. Even if traditional authorship for Mark were correct it would still be hearsay but we have very strong reasons to doubt this. Matthew and Luke borrow heavily from Mark, making them, at best, hearsay. John's gospel also speaks in the third person even when he is supposedly speaking about himself such as in John 19.
4. Bias
Bias isn't necessarily the most important rule in this list but it does at times lead to contradictions which affect the veracity of the gospels. Each of the gospel writers have a distinct theological bias in their narrative, Mark's Pauline anti-Jewish approach, Matthew's pro-Jewish approach, Luke's woe-are-we manifest destiny approach and John's msyterious stranger with magic powers approach. These different approaches lead to contradictions between the authors as to what Jesus' message really was. For example in Mark 8:12 Jesus says:
"Sighing deeply in His spirit, He said, “Why does this generation seek for a sign? Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.”
while John 6:2 says:
"A large crowd followed Him, because they saw the signs which He was performing on those who were sick."
5. Inconsistent statements
This rule concerns witnesses making internally contradictory statements. Although these types of contradictions are not as numerous as the external contradictions we will see later they are still present.
One such example is Matthew's story following the sermon on the mount in Chapter 5. Matthew tells his audience that they are still bound by the Jewish laws in verse 17-20:
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven."
He even goes on to say that not only should they keep the laws, they should be better at keeping the laws than the scribes and Pharisees. He then explains this idea in verses 21-30 using examples of murder and adultery. However, this instruction to keep the commandments is not consistent with Jesus' later actions where he violates the Sabbath law in Matthew 12:3-5 and the commandment to honour his father and mother in 12:46-50.
Luke manages to beat Matthew by being doubly inconsistent. In Luke's nativity narrative Luke places it both "in the days of Herod" (1:5) and while Quirinius was governor of Syria (2:1), at the same time. In reality these events were separated by a minimum of 10 years. However, Luke further compounds this error in Chapter 3 by placing the beginning of Jesus' ministry in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius (3:1) when Jesus was thirty years old (3:23). Since Tiberius was emperor from 14 to 37 CE, the fifteenth year of his reign would have been 29 CE placing Jesus' birth at 1 BCE, contradicting not only his earlier nativity narrative but Matthew's as well.
6. Untruthfulness
There is a degree of overlap between this rule and the preceding and succeeding rules but this rule covers statements made which are factually untrue. As far as the gospels go, this covers not only incorrect statements but also stories about Jesus which are clearly borrowed from other sources. So in this section we have stories like Jairus' daughter in Mark 5, the feeding of the five thousand in Matthew 14, the raising of Lazarus in John 11 and the story of Jesus healing the widow's son in Luke 7, all of which were borrowed from earlier sources shattering the notion that any of these really happened. We also have things like Matthew's botched reading of the Old Testament because he couldn't understand Hebrew properly. So we have him misinterpret the term clan in Micah 5:2 to become a town in Matthew 2. We have him fail to understand the notion of hebrew parallelisms in Zechariah 9:9 so that Jesus ends up riding into Jerusalem on two separate animals.
7. Contradictions
You could probably fill a book with all the external contradictions present in the New Testament and even just the gospels but I'll just mention one or two here for illustrative purposes. There are many contradictions between the gospel accounts such that both stories cannot be true (and where neither is likely to be true). For example in Matthew 2:1 we are told that Jesus' birth occurred during the reign of King Herod:
"Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.”
while in Luke's gospel we are told that Jesus' birth took place during/following a census undertaken by Quirinius:
"Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria."
However, since Herod died in 4BCE and Quirinius was not appointed until 6CE, both stories cannot be true.
Of course, some people, who are inveterate liars themselves, cannot believe that everyone isn't lying, like themselves and sometimes they don't even believe that truth exists.
So when we take all of these rules into account and the many, many examples of each one in the gospels then no, we can't rely on the veracity of the New Testament.
One final minor point. It's not just the gospels which are anonymous. Out of the 27 books of the New Testament the authorship is only reliably known for 7 of these books, the 7 authentic Pauline epistles (1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, Romans). All the other books are either anonymous, pseudepigraphal (books written by someone pretending to be the named author) or where the authorship is dubious, at best.Pontius Pilate was one of those cynics who believe that truth cannot be established.
Why would anybody concoct such an elaborate hoax ... doubly so when such a concoction would be blasphemy at the time. If Jesus didn't resurrect, then His followers would react no differently to any of the followers of thousands of fake 'gurus' whose predictions didn't come to pass and who have been consigned to historical footnotes, as a result ... they would lose faith in Him ... just like Thomas did ... until he actually saw and touched Him.
Well, there are several points here.
Firstly, as I've said already it's difficult to establish what truly happened because of what we do know. We know from the authentic Pauline epistles that early Christianity was full of people who all preached different theories (as noted above). We know that these different branches of thought grew into sects like the Marcionites, Ebionites and the Docetics. So clearly, there was confusion right from the get go about what Jesus actually said, did, taught etc. This wouldn't have happened if there had been a multitude of apostles out in the world preaching the same message which they had received from the same source.
Secondly, as I've already explained, this wasn't an intentional hoax. It was something which grew over time. It developed from Paul and other's initial teachings into divergent sects with Pauline Christianity and it's narrative eventually winning out. But how could all this have happened if there were no real Jesus? Well, thankfully we already have real-world examples to explain this.
The Luddites "were a group of English textile workers and weavers in the 19th century who destroyed weaving machinery as a form of protest. The group was protesting the use of machinery in a "fraudulent and deceitful manner" to get around standard labour practices." They were named after their leader Ned Ludd who in 1779 smashed two stocking frames together in a fit of rage. However, this 1779 event was reported nowhere before 1811. Also despite the existence of documents signed by King Ludd and General Ludd, modern scholars have concluded that there never was a real person called Ned Ludd. He was a purely mythical creation.
A similar story exists in the form of John Frum. The tale as recounted by RationalWiki goes like this:
"John Frum is an even more interesting example as there was a 1952 professional academic paper done on the John Frum cargo cult. Even just 11 years after the cult's existence became known to the local authorities there were many stories about John Frum; some say it was the name of some supernatural being coopted by a native named Manehivi, others said it was a native who "was still at liberty"; some were saying "John Frum, alias Karaperamun, is always the god of Mount Tukosmoru, which will shelter the planes, then the soldiers." while other said John Frum was a man. Moreover the article contains one of the few surviving pieces of evidence that the John Frum cult could go clear back to the 1910s with the statement in a 1949 letter that "The origin of the movement or the cause started more than thirty years ago." Sometime in the late 1950s to early 1960s, a splinter faction calling itself The Prince Philip Movement gave John Frum an actual flesh and blood biological brother: Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. One problem: Prince Philip only has sisters. By that time the various natives who had used the name "John Frum" from 1940-47 were not in the oral traditions other then pretenders or prophets and John Frum effectively became a white World War II serviceman (sometimes being in the Navy) for the mainstream version of the cult.
John Frum is one of the best documented example of how mythology around a supposed founder can form. If Manehivi was the "real" John Frum then he was effectively wiped from oral tradition almost immediately and replaced by a person who for all practical terms didn't exist in the space of perhaps 15 years."
Even Penn and Teller make the point very well about how this phenomenon can occur in modern times:
Finally, you have made the point about how such a hoax (even though it's not a deliberate one) could be maintained when it could have been so easily challenged. The problem here is that any work which challenged the Christian narrative is unlikely to remain extant today. Not because of the actions of the early Church but the actions of the empire once it adopted Christianity. In his translation of Celsus, R. Jospeh Hoffman point out that once Christianity became the adopted religion of the empire, the ruling emperors of the 2nd and 3rd centuries destroyed anti-Christian narratives because of their political valence. So whether or not the church was responsible, the likelihood is that any refutuation of Paul or the gospels is not likely to have survived the religio-political climate of early Christianity.and yet these supposedly 'fictional' characters created the Christian Church that today numbers its adherents in the billions ... some achievement for supposedly fictional characters supposedly spouting lies and making up stories which all have the rig of truth about them!!
Well, no they didn't create the Church. Paul and Peter and the other early apostles created the church. Apart from Peter and John, we have no reliable record for the sayings, actions or even existence of the majority of the apostles. They left behind no writings of their own and the writings in which they are featured are in no way reliable.0 -
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
![[Deleted User]](/applications/dashboard/design/images/defaulticon.png)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_f177k0ytA
Advertisement