The New Testament: History or Legend

The Bible is arguably the most “important” book ever written as measured by the number of copies sold and in circulation and its influence in the world.  Bibles are ubiquitous and can be found in almost every hotel room and are routinely provided free-of-charge to anyone requesting one.  The Bible is also highly significant given the fact that 54% of the world’s seven billion people claim belief in one of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, or Islam).  Christianity alone accounts for two billion adherents worldwide.   In the United States 247 million people identify themselves as Christians representing 78% of all adults. The Bible, of course, is not just for Christians or people of “faith.”  Knowledge of the Bible is a sign of being educated, and is absolutely required in order to read and understand large bodies of secular literature.  It took the atheist Richard Dawkins, two full pages (in The God Delusion) to cite just some of the Bible’s inspired literary references, including, “a mess of pottage,” “he escaped by the skin of his teeth,” and “the apple of his eye.”  The Bible consists of 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament (OT) and 27 in the New Testament (NT). The OT was written by dozens of authors over a period of 600 years and the NT were written by 16 or 17 authors over a period of 70 years.  Most of this essay concerns the NT but some understanding of the OT is necessary to understand the NT because portions of the NT are alleged to have fulfilled OT prophecies.

Before it is possible to understand the NT and how it came to consist of its current 27 books, it is necessary to have some idea about the history of Palestine (and surrounding areas) in and around the first century.  Forgery prevalence, illiteracy, oral tradition, political strife and polytheism, and Proto-orthodoxy Christianity (in alphabetical order) are some of the important considerations vital to the understanding of how the NT and Christianity came about. 
                                               
                           Forgery prevalence

Forgery in the first century took many forms based on a variety of motivations.  Some students or followers wrote in the name of their master as a sign of respect.  Even today it is not unusual for professors to publish the work of their students in their name with or without crediting them.  Another practice was to ascribe the name of someone else to their writing such as “The Gospel According to Matthew” where Matthew is the claimed source, but not the actual author.  Other unknown authors wrote in the name of some known authority in order to gain recognition for their ideas that would not be possible if they wrote in their own name. This practice is still popular today.  For example, Martin Dugard writes in the name of the more famous Fox News celebrity Bill O’Reilly. Other writers forged writings in an attempt to further their ideas as well as to discredit competing ideas.  For example, the Apostle Paul (Saul of Tarsus) is generally considered to have written 14 of the 27 books in the NT,  although many Bible scholars think that seven of them are forgeries.  Many ancient writings were forged simply for profit.  Keep in mind that before the advent of the printing press (in 1439) everything was hand-written, a situation that made forgery a profitable undertaking.

                                       Illiteracy

Very few first-century Palestinians could read or write primarily because only the wealthiest citizens could afford education.  Reading and writing were considered separate skills and even by the low standard of  being able to copy letters, less than ten percent could write.  The average person was forced to employ scribes when faced with a requirement to read a document or commit something to writing.  The wealthier and better-educated people lived in cities compared to rural areas such as Galilee where their poorer country-cousins enjoyed fewer education experiences.  This relationship between cities and education persist worldwide even today.   Edward Glaeser, a leading urban economist wrote a book titled, Triumph of the City where he declared that “cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in both cultural and economic terms) places to live.”  In the United States, “Appalachian” is a dog-whistle word for poverty and ignorance.  In rural agricultural families, the smartest sons or daughters are often selected and financed to attend college, and after graduation they move to the city and seldom return.  Michael Pollan expressed this idea in The Omnivore’s Dilemma sardonically when he remarked, “It’s a foolish culture that entrusts its food supply to simpletons.”


                                Oral Tradition

Given the low literacy rate of the first-century Palestinians, it is not surprising that the stories of their day-to-day activities would not be recorded but instead entrusted to the grape vine. The unreliability of such a system with its ample opportunity for distortion and fabrication is well-documented and will not be repeated here.  The important fact (accepted by a majority of scholars) to keep in mind is that the earliest writings upon which the NT rests  were not committed to writing for at least 40 to 70 years after the death of Christ.  It is also important to remember that the primary language of  Jesus and his disciples was Aramaic.

                  Political Strife and Polytheism

The first century was characterized by tension between the Jewish people and the Roman authorities.  The Jews were very much both a political and theological minority during this time.  The majority of the Roman population were polytheist (pagans) and employed many Gods to govern every aspect of their lives.  The concept of monotheism or one God was considered a strange and dangerous idea at the time.  It also posed a veiled threat to the legitimate authority of the Roman Emperor who was also considered to be a God.  Obviously the idea of only one God puts the emperor in competition with the God of the Jews.  Essentially the OT is the story of the struggles of the Jewish people against their enemies and various Roman Emperors and the expectation that God would send them a warrior King or Messiah who would lead them in victory over their Roman oppressors and establish a Jewish nation.
 
                         Proto-orthodoxy Christianity

Professor of NT Scripture, Bart Ehrman coined Proto-orthodoxy Christianity in recognition of the fact that until the fourth century there was not any such thing as Christianity. The NT only contains three references to the word “Christian,” and never in the context of Jesus founding a church or religion.  Until around 330 CE what existed was a number of religious ideas and advocates competing to become the dominate religion that we now call Christianity.  They include Ebionites, Marcions, Gnostics and the Paulines (followers of the Apostle Paul).

The Ebionites were the “Jewish Christians.” They considered Jesus to be the Messiah and rejected his divinity.  They also insisted that Jewish law and its rites must be strictly followed, including circumcision which was mandatory for any adult pagan man seeking to convert.  Ebionites believed that to be “right” with God was a matter of obeying Jewish Law and not a matter of having faith in Jesus.  The only Gospel they used was the non-canonical Gospel of James, who they considered the brother of Jesus.

Marcions  believed that there were two Gods, the God of the OT and the God of the NT.  The OT God was the wrathful and vengeful God of judgment that contrasted with the God of the NT (Jesus) who was the loving and merciful God of salvation.  The OT God created the world, chose Israel to be his people, gave them the law, and then condemned them and everyone else to eternal punishment when they disobeyed.  Jesus came into the world to save people from the wrath of the OT God.

Gnosticism was a mystical movement that stressed enlightenment as the only path to salvation.  They held the view that Christ was sent by God to reveal the secret knowledge enabling people to learn the truth.  They isolated themselves and lived in remote areas practicing personal poverty and sexual abstinence. They believed that after they mastered the truth that they would rise to God.

The Paulines were the followers of Saul of Tarsus (5 - 67 CE) who is considered the hero of the NT.  His very name reveals a startling fact (at least to modern people) that most ancient peoples did not have last names! The phrase, “road to Damascus moment” has become a popular synonym for indicating someone has changed their mind in a startling fashion perhaps even more of an epiphany.  The story of Paul traveling around and persecuting “Christians” until he received a vision from God while on the road to Damascus is perhaps the biggest story to come out of the oral tradition.  Paul's story of Christ, including the virgin birth, death, and resurrections eventually became canonical and lies at the heart of Christianity today.  There were other Proto-orthodoxy Christians in addition to the four mentioned here, but since “history is written by the victors,” their stories are either lost or hidden away and in many cases kept from the public eye.  History provides numerous examples of the synergy between pairs of men of thought and men of action. Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul,  John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, and Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin are three notable examples. Paul, Jefferson, and Lenin all used the teachings of a philosopher to start three of the most monumental movements in history: a great religion, the first secular government, and a communistic dictatorship.  The story of Paul is in fact the story of the NT that eventually prevailed.  According to Bart D. Ehrman, “It was on his [Jesus’] later followers who have Jesus starting a new religion. Jesus appears to have had no intent to start a new religion.”


“Gospel” comes from the Greek word meaning “good news.”  The four NT Gospels consists of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and are shorthand for their actual titles such as The Gospel According to Matthew. This is an explicit recognition of the fact that the biblical scholars do not know who originally wrote them.  In fact, The Gospel of John explicitly claims not to be written by an eyewitness. The first three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are called the “synoptic gospels” because they include many of the same stories about the life of Jesus. Matthew and John were disciples whereas Mark and Luke were apostles (associates).  Matthew was thought to be a tax collector and Mark was a secretary to the disciple Peter. It is thought that Luke was a traveling companion of Paul.  Bible scholars agree that Mark was written first (66–70 CE) and John last (90 to 95 CE).   Matthew is considered a summary of Mark and was written from 30 to 40 years after the death of Christ.  Its source was the “oral tradition,” a collection of stories passed from person to person in the manner of the children’s game of telephone where the first child receives a short message and the whispers it to the adjacent child who then repeats the process until the 30th child reveals the final message which typically bears scant resemblance to the original message.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell a similar story, however only Matthew and Luke give accounts of Jesus’ birth.  Jesus does not appear in Mark until he was an adult.  John on the other hand is the outlier of the Gospels and was written last. According to Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, “The idea of Jesus being divine was a later Christian invention and is only found in John.”  Paul’s writings constitute over 50% of the NT (counting the forgeries). In Galatians, Paul claimed that he did not meet with the apostles in Jerusalem and he learned the “Gospels” via divine revelation.  Later in Galatians 1:18:21 he refers to a trip to Jerusalem as his second trip,  but in Acts 9:11,15 there is a third trip.  Is Paul denying that he ever meet with the apostles in Jerusalem in order to boost the idea that he received the source for his writings directly from Jesus?   Many NT scholars believe that what people today call Christianity is based more on Paul teachings than those of Jesus.  The synoptic Gospels all portray Jesus as establishing the Kingdom of God with him as King and with the disciples each ruling over one of the twelve tribes of  Israel on earth.  Heaven was not a place you went to, but would take place on earth and would happen during the lifetime of the disciples.  This is a far-different story from the one in current Christianity.

The Virgin Birth is only claimed in Matthew and Luke.  Matthew is keen to show Jesus’ life and death, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 which he accomplished by mistranslating the word alma (maiden or young unmarried woman) as parthenos (virgin).  Perhaps the most startling thing about the NT is the fact that it does not contain the story of the resurrection.  Mark, Luke, and Matthew all begin the story with the empty tomb, but differ on who was involved in the discovery.  According to Mark, they saw one man, according to Luke they saw two men, and according to Matthew they saw an angel.  Amazingly, the Gospel of Peter, the only actual account of the resurrection was excluded from the NT by the founding church founders.  His account included the following:

"Early in the morning, when the Sabbath dawned, there came a crowd from Jerusalem and the country round about to see the sealed sepulchre. Now in the night in which the Lord's day dawned, when the soldiers were keeping guard, two by two in each watch, there was a loud voice in heaven, and they saw the heavens open and two men come down from there in a great brightness and draw near to the sepulchre. That stone which had been laid against the entrance to the sepulchre started of itself to roll and move sidewards, and the sepulchre was opened and both young men entered. When those soldiers saw this, they awakened the centurion and the elders, for they also were there to mount guard. And while they were narrating what they had seen, they saw three men come out from the sepulchre, two of them supporting the other and a cross following them and the heads of the two reaching to heaven, but that of him who was being led reached beyond the heavens. And they heard a voice out of the heavens crying, “Have you preached to those who sleep?” and from the cross there was heard the answer, “Yes.”  Apparently the image of two angels so tall that their heads reached the heavens, supporting Jesus, whose head reached beyond the heavens, and a talking cross was just too much for the church fathers."
   
Matthew and Luke are the only Gospels that give a genealogy of Jesus’ family, and they are vastly different.  They both trace his lineage from David and through Joseph and also insists that Mary was a virgin meaning that Joseph was not his father.  This creates a problem.  According to the OT, God will send a Messiah to lead the Jewish people against the Romans and reclaim Israel for the Jews as promised by God.  Both versions cannot be true; if Jesus was born of a virgin, he cannot be in the required line of Joseph.  If Joseph was his father, he cannot be divine.  Interestingly, Matthew traces Jesus back to Abraham, whereas Luke goes all the way back to Adam.  Matthew emphasizes Jesus as the Jewish savior, whereas Luke makes him the savior of all people.  Paul selected Matthew’s version in an attempt to convert the pagans in the Roman Empire because they represented a largest and richest source of converts for his version of Christianity.  Matthew also dropped three generations from Luke’s genealogy because he wanted to remain in the tradition that something very important happens every fourteen years.  Matthew wanted three groups of precisely fourteen generations in the genealogy of the son of David, the Messiah Jesus. 

It is important to note that there is some numerology at work in the NT.  Seven has always held special meaning for people and 14 is of course 7 times two.  This plus the idea that there are three generations of groups of fourteen in Matthew’s genealogy yields up the number three with an obvious link to the trinity and a somewhat obvious link to the number of books (twenty-seven) in the NT since three cubed equals twenty-seven! Other examples are the number “3;” Jonah (3 days in the whale), Jesus (3 temptations). In Luke, Pilate declares three times that Jesus is innocent in a subtle way of deflecting blame away from the Romans and onto the Jews.

The divinity of Christ can be seen more as a reflection of Paul’s thinking, rather than the earlier oral traditions of the first century.  Remember, writings attributed to Paul constitute more than fifty percent of the NT.  Paul quickly learned that the Jews were hostile to his version of “Christianity” and refused to convert and insisted on following Jewish law completely.  Paul also realized that the pagans constituted a larger source of converts, and the requirement to undergo circumcision was a major impediment to their conversion. This represented a basic conflict between Peter and James, and Paul.  According to Matthew 5:17-20,  converts to “Christianity” had to keep the Jewish law (including circumcision) to enter the Kingdom of heaven, whereas Paul in Galatians 5:4, says “Christians need not keep Jewish Law to enter the Kingdom of heaven and circumcision puts a man in danger of losing his salvation.”  A number of Paul’s writings were very much in conflict with Jesus’ teachings.  For example in 1 Corinthians 7:7,  he says “ For I wish that all men were [single] even as I myself.” In 1 Corinthians 7:1, he states “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”  And in 1 Corinthians 7:4,  Paul claims “The wife does not have authority over her own body.”   Modern readers should be forgiving if they detect a whiff of homosexuality and gender bias emanating from the Apostle Paul.

This was the situation that existed until the Emperor of Rome, Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 CE.  In 331 CE. he ordered fifty Bibles produced at the empire’s expense.  Bishop Eusebius was charged with the task and hired professional scribes to do the writing and also built a special place where the work would take place called a scriptorium.  Their task was to gather up all the copies of the various Gospels and determine which one’s were the “originals” reflecting what the original authors actually said.  The first copy of the NT was written in Greek sometime between 330 and 360 CE. It could not have been written before 325 CE. because it contains the Eusebian Canons, and it could not have been written after 360 CE. because of certain references to Church fathers in the margin.  Pope Damasus I commissioned the Greek Scholar Jerome to translate the Greek NT into Latin and he spent three years (382–385 CE.) in Rome working closely with Pope Damasus and the leading Christians to produce what was called the Latin Vulgate (Latin translation of the Bible).  Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria was the first to list the 27 books of the NT in 367 CE.  It took 300 years to decide which books were canonical, but it took Johannes Gutenberg and the printing press (1439) to seal the deal.

Most modern NT readers are not aware of the “Gospels” that were excluded by church fathers such as Bishop Eusebius, Bishop Athanasius, and St. Jerome.  According to Chris Carpenter, the Program Director for the Christian Broadcasting Network there are fifty-two books from the second and third centuries that were excluded from the NT.  Collectively, they give evidence of an attempt to meld Greco-Roman philosophy and Christianity in order to make Christianity more palatable to a Greco-Roman world.   One such book, The Gospel of Barnabas claimed that the OT belongs to Christians because the Jews broke their covenant with God when Moses smashed the first set of the Ten Commandments.  The Gospel of John (8:42-44)  makes the same point stating that “the Jews are not the children of God, but the children of the Devil.” Other examples of  apocrypha Gospels include, The Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Judas, Mary, and Marcion.

The adage that “the victors are the ones who write the history” was never more clearly illustrated than in the case of the NT.  A cursory review of its history gives rise to the suspicion that it reflects more the hand of man than the inspired word of God.  This is more evident to those who read it as history rather than as a devotional.  The historical story of the NT is seldom taught, except in the various seminaries attended by those primarily destined for the ministry.  Lay people are zealously shielded from the fruits of the clergyman’s education and are instead fed a steady diet of a sanitized “Sunday-school” version which is more the story of Paul than the story of Jesus.  Perhaps, Friedrich Nietzsche had this thought in mind when he said, “In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.”  Thomas Jefferson was both captivated by the moral philosophy of Christ and repelled by the corruption of his message by Paul and the other Christian founding fathers.  He believed so passionately in Jesus, the moral philosopher that he compiled and published his own personal Bible (The Jefferson Bible) and considered himself to be a Christian Deist.  Mahatma Gandhi shared the sentiments of Nietzsche and Jefferson when he said,  “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”



Sources:                               

1.  Misquoting Jesus  (2005)  Bart D. Ehrman
2.  Jesus, Interrupted (2009) Bart D. Ehrman
3.  Forged (2011) Bart D. Ehrman               
4.  The Battle for God (2000) Karen Armstrong 
5.  The Gnostic Gospels (1979) Elaine Pagels
6.  The Bible: God's Word or the Work of Man? (05/6/2015) Blog (The Needlefish Chronicles)