Note: All dates in this Blog are CE “common eras” which are equivalent to AD.
The New Testament is the result of the efforts of fourth century politicians, church leaders, and editors all with vested interests to protect and advance. To understand what happened, it is necessary to carefully review its history. After Jesus “departed” the historical scene, various writings appeared some 30 to 75 years after the fact and were attributed to various people. Prior to that the New Testament history was oral, passed on from one person to another. After these oral histories were recorded, thousands of handwritten copies existed in various languages. These writings were translated from Greek to Latin and eventually to German, English and other languages. In all language translations, original intentions and meanings can be distorted or loss. For example when the Hebrew word “messiah” was translated to Greek it became “christos” or in English, Christ. Another example is the Hebrew word “almah” meaning a young unmarried woman was translated to the Greek word “parthenos” for virgin.
Some time in and around the year 36 early “Christians” were divided into two major factions with separate objectives. The first group was primarily political interested in maintaining the “right to the throne,” claiming that Jesus was the Messiah and a descendant of the House of David. The second, the “message” group was interested in establishing a religion and church based on the life of Christ as a deity. This second group was eventually dominated by Saul of Tarsus (5 - 67) who was also known as the Apostle Paul, the most influential early Christian.
The King James’ version of the New Testament is for the most part the result of a political process more than a theological or historical one. Early Christian word of mouth accounts were eventually reduced to writing by those without any first hand knowledge about the events they were writing about. Please keep in mind that Paul was born after Christ died and obviously never met him. Yet he wrote thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, which is about 32% of the text. It is important to also remember that for the most part the disciples were illiterate, ignorant fishermen who spoke Aramaic. Therefore it is not surprising that there is an honest historical dispute over who wrote what. If all of this is not enough to question New Testament’s veracity, the Emperor Diocletian destroyed almost all of the “original” written sources in the year 303.
By the year 325 (almost three-hundred years after his death) the issue of the nature of Christ was so much in doubt that the Council of Nicaea had to decide the matter by a vote. In the same year the Roman Emperor Constantine, a pagan follower of Sol Invictus (the sun God), “embraced” Christianity for political reasons as a means of consolidating his power by bringing Christians into the fold in an attempt to unify the Roman Empire. Constantine himself was not baptized until shortly before his death causing many Bible scholars to seriously doubt the sincerity of his conversion to Christianity. Interestingly, he changed Jesus’s birth date from January 8 to December 25 (the birth date of Sol Invictus) Remember that on average December 25 is the first day of winter to have more daylight than the day before and of course was an important issue to sun worshipers. It is ironic that every Christmas, Christians cry out to put Christ back into Christmas without realizing that it was Sol Invictus not Christ that had been ousted.
When in the year 331 Constantine ordered and financed the publishing of the New Testament, Christian leaders such as Bishop Athanasius and Saint Augustine were presented with the perfect opportunity to rewrite history to fit their agenda, and they took full advantage of their chance. As a result many texts were omitted, modified, or outright changed. Athanasius compiled a list of what material was to be included in the New Testament in the year 367. Excluded as not being canonical was the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Judas. Some scholars, based on references in ancient texts, believe that there were as many as twelve other gospels that have been lost or destroyed. The Council of Hippo and Saint Augustine approved Athanasius’ work in 393 resulting in the King James Bible.
The matter would have probably been settled except for the fact that Diocletian’s efforts to rid the world of all the early Church writings were not entirely successful. Apparently monks at various remote monasteries disobeyed orders to surrender their treasured holy writings and instead hid them in various ways. In 1947 a Bedouin shepherd discovered ancient writings in what was then Jordan called the Dead Sea Scrolls. This caused Christian apologists and defenders even more problems concerning the historical veracity of the King James Bible.
In 1958 the “missing” fragment of the Gospel of Mark was found which contradicts John’s version of the raising of Lazarus from the dead essentially saying that it did not happen. Mark also failed to make any reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Apparently the resurrection was added to Mark’s Gospel by editors back in the fourth century. It should be noted that the Vatican has controlled the excavation, interpretation, and publishing of any resulting work concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Since the Bible (the Old and New Testament) is presented as the history of the Jewish people and the life and death of Christ, it is only natural that it would command the interest of historians. They, of course, brought the tools and procedures of their profession with them. These tools included various means of determining the accuracy of any historical record. Historians distinguish between primary and secondary sources. A primary source is one where the author personally witnessed the events under consideration. A secondary source is one who did not personally witness an event but is relying on someone else claiming personal knowledge. In the legal world, secondary sources are called “hear say” and with a few careful exceptions are not allowed.
Sources can also be classified as known, unknown, or anonymous. Of course the most reliable sources are known primary sources. In the case of the King James Bible the authorship of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) is in serious dispute. Most scholars believe that all the Gospels are based on Mark and most likely were not written by him. These unknown writers relied on oral histories that had been circulating in the area for many years. There is little or no evidence that the authors of the Gospels were known or primary sources of the information.
The degree that different accounts of any historical event are in agreement is very important to historians in determining their accuracy. In the case of the four Gospels there are sufficient factual differences to cause suspicion about their authenticity. For example, Mark did not report any appearances of the raised Jesus whereas the others provide three different accounts of Jesus' appearances after his resurrection. John 7:42 says that Christ was from the town of Bethlehem but Luke 1:26 cites Nazareth as his birth place. There are enough significant differences between the four Gospels to seriously question their value as reliable historical evidence.
Objectivity is another important consideration when evaluating historical writings. It is unreasonable to think that the authors of the New Testament would be objective. With this in mind historians are very interested in what secular historians wrote concerning the same period of time. In fact, they said very little and what is more significant is what they did not report. For example, Matthew 27:52 describes a mass resurrection of many saints at the same time as the resurrection of Christ. In his words, “And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.” By anyone’s standards the resurrection of many long dead persons would be a most newsworthy story that would get passed along and eventually find its way into the records of historians of the time. However, this extraordinary event was not mentioned by any historian of the time.
The credibility of the King James’ version of the New Testament would be greatly enhanced if the writings of the leading historians of the time referenced events mentioned in the Gospels. However, support for the Gospels’ narrative of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ is both scant and oblique in the writings of contemporary secular historians.
Christian apologists are fond of citing the works of Flavius Josephus in support of the historical accuracy of the Bible. Flavius was a first century Jewish-Roman historian who even fought against the Romans during the First Jewish–Roman War. He was the leader of Jewish forces in Galilee until surrendering in 67 to Roman forces. His two most important writings were, The Jewish War (75) and Antiquities of the Jews (94). The Jewish War is his account of the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation from the years 66 to 70 whereas the Antiquities of the Jews recounts the persecution of the Jews by the Romans. According to John Remsburg, as quoted by Kenneth Harding, modern versions of the Antiquities of the Jews contains the following passage:
"Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."
Josephus was a renowned Jewish historian, a native of Judea, and a contemporary of the Apostles. He was also a prolific chronicler of persons and events of the first seventy years of the Christian era. It is strange that in his first book, The Jewish War written in the year 75, there is not any mention of Christ but the Antiquities of the Jews (a twenty-volume tone) written almost twenty years later “contains” the definitive passage cited above supporting the Gospels. The passage cited is obviously Christian in tone. It is also extremely brief in contrast to Josephus’ voluminous and exhaustive style. In one case he devoted almost forty chapters to the life of just one king. He wrote pages on petty robbers and obscure leaders of the time, but who could believe that he only wrote one paragraph about Christ? According to Kenneth Harding and other scholars it is a blatant Christian forgery that was added to the Antiquities of the Jews many years later.
New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman, a James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of four New York Times bestsellers, concurs saying that there are not any reliable historical accounts of the life and resurrection of Christ. Thomas Paine, one of the heroes of the American Revolution, wrote “the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which parts to believe or whether any.”
Of course the underlying “truths” of any document does not rest entirely on the judgements of historians and scholars. One can read and enjoy Shakespeare and gain valuable insights on human nature without actually knowing who he or she actually was. Christianity like all religions can be evaluated based on two criteria: Are they true and are they beneficial? In the words of Matthew 7:20 “Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.” Questions about the usefulness or morality of the fruits of the tree of Christianity is a subject for another time.
From the earliest days of the Christian church there has always been two ways of reading the Bible, literally and allegorically. Saint Jerome suggested a literal interpretation for the illiterate masses and an allegorical one for more advanced minds. Evangelical Christians (especially in the United States) insist that the Bible is literally true. They are so strong and dogmatic in their belief that they devote enormous time and expense in denying evolution and insisting on teaching Creationism (as spelled out in Genesis) in schools as an alternative to evolution. They apparently have forgotten the words of Augustine who said “it would be hard to convince rational men to follow a religion that denied things one could see for oneself.”
Voltaire once said that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” Later Karl Marx claimed that “Man makes religion, religion does not make man.” For me the conclusion is inevitable; all the evidence and reason strongly suggest that Christianity like all religions is man made.
Sources:
1. The Rocks Don’t Lie (2012) by David Montgomery
2. A History of God (1993) by Karen Armstrong
3. The Evolution of God (2009) by Robert Wright
4. The Gnostic Gospels (1979) by Elaine Pagels
5. The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (1991) by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh
6. Do Any First Century Historians Mention the Jesus of Christianity? by Kenneth Harding (2002)
