The Lost Number

Let alone a fact.

When arguing for evidence of Jesus being the son of God, risen from the dead, performed miracles and such, the bulk of such (Christian) arguments come from some supposed "historical confirmation" of these things. I was curious as to how history comes anywhere near confirming anything miraculous about Jesus, considering some facts (starting with examination of the gospels since they probably are the most important) :

1.The Gospels are anonymous.
You can come up with various theories on who might have authored them, but nobody can say with even near certainty what theory is correct. The Gospels are therefore anomymous, overall. When arguing for an extraordinary claim, one should at least know the identity of those who made it so that their integrity and reliability--or lack thereof--can be properly evaluated. When you have X extraordinary claim and you don't even know who made it, that alone is justification for some serious skepticism.

2.The Gospels are plagiaristic.
How can you trust writers if they clearly rip stuff off from other people? For example, Jesus healing the blind man by putting spit in his eyes is clearly a copy of Emperor Vespasian's alleged act of doing so (which happened around 70 A.D., as recorded by Tacitus, Suetonius and Dio Cassius). Not to mention the fact that 2 (most likely Matthew and Luke) of the 3 synoptics are largely just direct copies of information from the earliest one (probably Mark) or from the Q source. Even if John was independent, this makes only two sources: the Synoptics and John. Such dishonest, outright plagiarism being found in a document describing extraordinary claims does not cast a pretty reflection in the honesty mirror.

3.The Gospels were written decades after the events they describe.
The general scholarly consensus is that the Gospels began around 70 A.D. and were (more or less) complete by 90 A.D. That's a four to six decade timespan for false info weeding its way in. However, even if the much earlier plausible dates given by some--50-66 A.D.--are accepted, one is still left with two to three decades for innacuracies to creep in. In fact the Gospels probably were based largely on just rumors and second and thirdhand info. Innacuracies such as miracles, or otherwise minor, possibly unexplained phenomenon blown way out of proportion into (tall) tales of grandois miracles. Skepticism is all the more justified in this case.

4.The Gospels are historically innacurate.
Events such as Herod's slaughter of the innocents as described in Matthew(not recorded in any independent record about Herod, not even when speaking ill of him was the theme. Nor in any other Gospels for that matter); an authoritative, cruel despot like Pontius Pilate refusing to kill Jesus even when having his own reputation threatened (if he didn't do it "he was no friend of Caesar!", or so the Gospel's record of threats made against him say); Joseph of Aramithea being "of" a town that (to my knowledge) has no record of even existing; a lack of any of the expected brutal legal interrogation of the apostles for the whereabouts of Jesus' body, which the Pharisees accused them of stealing; etc. These are clearly works of fiction. They are clearly false, and were fabricated by the Gospel authors. When those making an extraordinary claim are quite willing to lie, skepticism again is only being fair when blocking their path down Justification Road.

5.The Gospels contradict each other.
I won't even go into any great discussion on this because it's too obvious to deny. But when such huge discrepancies exist between extraordinary stories, being skeptical of them is perfectly fair and rational.

6.The Gospels are illogical.
They tell a number of stories which make no sense. For example, in Mark, the women go to the tomb and then ask "who will roll away the stone for us?". If you need somebody else to do it, and you were greatly preparing for this event in the previous days, why didn't you get a few strong friends to help you? Did they just "forget" some other person was needed to open the tomb? Or, look at the Disciples reaction to Jesus' resurrection. Remember what happened before he was even put in trial - supposedly, his disciples witnessed more of Jesus' miracles than any other Christians in all of human history. Yet they are highly doubtful when claims of his raising from the dead are made. Why? If he walked on water, turned 5 loaves into 5,000, healed the sick, raised the dead, and had God himself come from the clouds and praise him, what exactly would make resurrection from death so impossible? These are but two examples of illogical Gospel stories. They are much more fitting for a poorly written, false story worthy of great skeptical inquiry than a reliable document demonstrating the truth of an extraordinary claim.


7.There is no independent, non-Christian evidence for Jesus' divinity.
The closest one can come is Josephus' dubious passage about Jesus' "astonishing works/deeds" (something like that), but in addition to the interpolated nature of it which already creates doubt, it's unlikely that he would refrain from using something like "sorcery", "demonic deception" or some other derogatory term for any miraculous phenomenon surrounding Jesus. If things like this were happening, Christianity would have gained converts by the boatload, not taken over 80 years to even make mention of these events outside of the Gospels, and another hundred years for knowledge of them to become commonplace. Even if this wasn't true, independent evidence is still needed. Come up with excuses if you want, but the fact remains that without independent evidence, one is all the more burdened if trying to prove the claim since the honesty of sources is rendered more dubious. And remember, the burden of proof is on the believer. A lack of evidence from other sources casts it into doubt, in a similar manner to the way tabloid stories are never confirmed by non-tabloid newspapers. It's time for skepticism again.

8.There is precious little expected, independent Christian evidence for it.
Modern preachers the world over, of many different cultures and worldviews, fill their sermons, pamphlets, books and so on with countless statements about Jesus, and have done so ever since Jesus' (alleged) biography and teachings were widely known. It is therefore quite perplexing why all of the epistles and early Christian writings mention next to nothing about his earthly life, and even the very few ones that do are almost always non-extraordinary (i.e. Jesus taught this or had that happen to him - nothing miraculous). Christian writings mention practically zero miraculous Gospel stories of Jesus until about 80 years after his death, and even then it took another hundred for this practice to become popular. Such a deafening silence about all of Jesus' important teachings and actions is difficult to explain if one assumes they really happened.

9.Many non-Christian extraordinary claims are far better documented.
Many of them. As but one example, consider that millions of people claimed to have been abducted by UFOs. Some say they were given highly advanced societal plans for the human race to follow if it wanted to survive and prosper instead of face extinction. This is all documented in modern times, within the times the events were said to have happened, by highly reliable sources (newspapers, major news broadcasts, even scientific writings). In a small few cases, some people even were willing to risk great persecution (i.e. "abductee" Travis Walton's buddies stuck to their 'he was taken into the sky by a flying light' story even when threatened with kidnapping and murder charges). Yet Christians do not submit themselves to whatever "teachings" stem from abductees supposed discourse with aliens--and their general incoherence isn't a good complaint, since the sheer volume of Christian denominations present theological views that are at least that unclear and inconsistent--, and indeed many, if not most, outright reject any non-skeptical explanation for UFOs. Why then should we skeptics be any different when presented with the far worse evidence for Jesus being divine?

Given that the evidence for Jesus being the son of God comes from, at best, two anonymous, plagiaristic, rumor based, historically innacurate, self contradicting, illogical, otherwise unsubstantiated documents that can't even compare to a number of more modern absurdities (such as alien abductions), skepticism is simply sanity, at the very least.

King Arthur

Dude! You're as indoctrinated as the Christians, man!

trunks2k

Can you prove this claim? At least provide some evidence that what he has said is wrong. I cannot comment on his post, simply because I have not studied the religion to such an extent that would allow me to comment.

Toto

It all looks pretty defensible to me, except for "Christian writings mention practically zero miraculous Gospel stories of Jesus until about 80 years after his death" - I think this refers to the Gospel of Mark, which is usually dated 70-80 C.E., or 40-50 years after Jesus' presumed death.

I don't know what King Arthur's problem with it is - maybe that it takes Christianity too seriously?

Vinnie

I think you can determine things about an author from his/her work. Some NT books contain better Greek than other NT books. Also, some might argue that based upon a reading of GLuke we see that its author was an educated Greek speaker and skilled writer who knew the Jewish Scriptures in Greek and who was not an eyewitness of Jesus' ministry. He drew on mark, Q, and some other avaliable traditions, oral or written. Luke was not a Palestinian and probably not raised a Jew but converted to Judaism before he endorsed Christianity (which really started off as a form of Judasim in the eyes of scholars like NT Wright).

Much of my above material was paraphrased/copied from Brown's Intro to the NT, p 226.

You forgot Q. What about L and M as well?

Vorkosigan

3.The Gospels were written decades after the events they describe.
The general scholarly consensus is that the Gospels began around 70 A.D. and were (more or less) complete by 90 A.D. That's a four to six decade timespan for false info weeding its way in.

This of course assumes that the Gospel rendering of Jesus' death in Pilate's time is accurate.....

Vorkosigan

The Lost Number

Perhaps. I should have mentioned that, sorry - I was quite tired after the end of a busy day when I wrote my initial post.

Still, being hidden in the shadows of history; Q is so bad a source--indeed, we aren't even sure that it existed--that it isn't even worthy of being labelled a third one. Probably better to call it 1/2 of a source. Keeping that in mind, you'd have two sources and a third scrap of info.

Mark was most likely the original synoptic source - Luke and Matthew copied off of it. Luke and Matthew are therefore simply creative rehashes and plagiarisations, not true independent sources. John was probably a reworking of synoptic Gospels, too, but even if it wasn't, that only makes for one other source.

Not to impressive.

[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: The Lost Number ]</p>

Radcliffe Emerson

Well stated, TLN.
I can add this about the alleged trial before Pilate.
Studies of Roman history say while they were cruel in their punishments, they did not condemn people to death without evidence. They certainly would not send someone to be crucified because a crowd called for it.
Pilate would not say "I find no guilt in this man", then crucify him. If Pilate found no guilt in him, he would have been set free.

Vinnie

"""""This of course assumes that the Gospel rendering of Jesus' death in Pilate's time is accurate....."""""

Why shouldn't we?

Sojourner553

Bravo on a good post, Lost number!


Here is a post I wrote in response to why I am no longer religious. I can't get any serious takers on it. Maybe King Arthur can answer some of these...

________________________________________________It

It took a lot of reasons to persuade me to give up my childhood religion -- not just one. I first began studying the Bible to answer some questions that had bothered me growing up:

(1) If religion is really true, shouldn’t GOOD people of different cultures and time periods have arrived at the same doctrines? History shows just the opposite. How many sects are there just in Christianity? If God’s will is “absolute” why are there something like 20,000 Christian sects? That’s before you start in with the other religions…

(2) How many times have you seen a person proclaiming they know “God’s will”, when it’s obvious they are talking to themselves (fooling themselves). Nice people have compassionate gods; mean people have authoritative, cruel gods.

(3) Why are something like 95% of people born into the religion of their parents? This points to religion being something we learn as children and carry with us in life.

(4) Good people have honestly struggled to find the “true” religion, for millennium. If they are sincere, it is inconsistent that a good God would punish them for honestly choosing the wrong religion; But it is PERFECTLY consistent if this is a human invention: (priests desiring power, secular authorities encouraging people to “wait” for social justice, etc) "It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated bybolts of lightning." – Calvin

(5) Why is there such evil in the world? Why has so much evil been done in the name of religion? (Inquisitions, wars, pograms, witch trials, slavery, torture)? Why have CONSERVATIVE Christian authorities (who have ruled for most of the millennium) been opposed to much of the progress from the last couple of centuries. Indeed most of the American Founding Fathers were either deists or greatly influenced from the deism from the Enlightenment. See Section V. <a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html</a>

(6) Why have literal verses in the Bible been used to oppose much of the progress of science? Why are there discrepancies between biblical texts; why are there discrepancies between science and the bible in the area of astronomy and geology?http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/SCIENCE.TXT

(7) Why are there so many superstitions in the Bible? For example the belief that ALL mental illnesses were DEMONIC in nature, and required exorcism.

(8) If you analyze the stories in the New Testament, it is apparent they are simplistic superstitions.See Section II. <a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html</a> (

9) Much of the stories of Jesus’ miracles were taken from stories of miracles in other religions – especially the Greek mystery religions. <a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/MIRACLE.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/MIRACLE.TXT</a>

(10) All the classical philosophies that prove God exists, are merely built on foundations of sand!http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/PHILOSOP.TXT


(11) Why are important morality laws omitted in the Bible – that are today considered basic to any “humane” civilization: The Ten Commandments do not have laws outlawing slavery, torture and child abuse. Look at the history of slavery and cruelty to blacks? The arguments FOR it were based on religion and great opposition to these laws came from Christian fundamentalists/conservatives. (usually not liberals though – if you could find any back then!)

This is not a timeperiod issue. The Egyptian Book of the Dead has many humane laws not found in the OT – examples of virtuous living (I like the last one.) I have not caused terror.I have not burned with rageI have never fouled the water.I have not caused shedding of tears.

Also, look at the terrible suffering from witch trials in Salem and Europe that occurred because of superstitious lines like “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” in the OT. As one example. In 1769, John Wesley, founder of Methodism wrote in his JOURNAL: "It is true, likewise, that the English in general, and indeed most of themen of learning in Europe, have given up all accounts of witches andapparitions as mere old wives' fables. I am sorry for it, and I willinglytake this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against this violentcompliment which so many that believe the Bible pay to those who do notbelieve it. I owe them no such service. I take knowledge that theseare at the bottom of the outcry which has been raised, and with suchinsolence spread through the land, in direct opposition, not only tothe Bible, but to the suffrage of the wisest and best of men in allages and nations. They well know (whether Christians know it or not)that the giving up of witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible."(as quoted by Montague Summers, GEOGRAPHY OF WITCHCRAFT, UniversityBooks, 1970, p 169-70)

(12) If God is omnipotent, if he willed it, everyone would wake up and “know” what was true vs. false (Right now all religious people guess or hopes theirs is THE ONE TRUE RELIGION. The vast MAJORITY of people must be wrong on the EXACT ONE RELIGION to choose, because of the large number of different sects/religions, yes? Shelley summarized this once: "If God has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?

In short, I switched after overwhelming evidence against religion. And I choose truth! As Carl Sagan put it: "It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

Sojourner