”Apart from the New Testament writings and later writings dependent upon these, our sources of information about the life and teaching of Jesus are scanty and problematic”
F.F. Bruce
Alright. This is a response to John Muncy and Curtis Luken. I posted a video from the movie “Zeitgeist” about a week ago and it has drawn some scholarly criticism to which Curtis generously provided links. John did a lengthy post about this on his thread shorty after I posted the video so now I feel I need to respond…
Let me say first off that I do not know for sure that Jesus was entirely an amalgamation of pagan ideas, in fact I do believe a historical Jesus may have existed. Where we run into problems; the gospel accounts of him “fulfilling biblical prophecy” and “performing miracles”. This type of nonsense was added after the fact, and is not part of a reliable historical account. What I’m saying here is this:
1) The gospels are not historically reliable accounts.
2) Thus the books of The Bible (especially the New Testament) were not inspired by god and do not claim to be. The Bible was put together by men, the sad thing is most people who believe The Bible couldn’t tell you anything about the history of the canon.
Lets start at the beginning. First I want to make quite clear that ZEITGEIST IS A BUNCH OF CRAP! That being said the woman who was consulted for the research of the first part is actually pretty decent. Check out her response to the “debunkers”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_9ZyddjaM4
Then take a look at the info on her website: http://truthbeknown.com/. Additional information can be found at: http://pocm.info/ and about a million other places.
Okay. Everybody ready to go back to school??? Good. Go dust off your New Testament survey texts from college. The books Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem like the perfect place to start. These three books make some claims to be accurate historical records at the beginning. Luke acknowledges in verse 1 that “many” had attempted to set forward a declaration of “those things which are most surely believed among us”. He says that the people who had delivered this message were “eyewitnesses from the beginning”. Luke was writing this record to a man named Theophilus for a reason, “that you might know the certainty of the things in which we have instructed you”…
What does this tell us right off the bat? Well it says that this is not the first attempt to write down a chronology of these events (i.e. there are many other “gospels”), and it is not the authors first hand experience alone that is being drawn from. Even the most conservative scholars concede that Luke copied portions from Mark or they both possible copied another existing document called “Q” which has never been recovered. When was this “historical account” written? About 70 AD is the earliest even the most conservative scholars will allow. That’s almost 40 years after the fact.
Lets put this all together. A person named Luke who we know next to nothing about wrote the history of events he alone did not witness, based on “eyewitness” sources he did not name, he did so 40 years after the events occured, he copied another unknown book he doesn’t bother to name, and despite all this we trust that he can recall exact word-for-word conversations and events with stunning detail? The reality here is, there was no one on the mount of transfiguration with a tape recorder. This is an account written specifically to convince someone of the reality of the authors beliefs! So I ask: Is this really a reliable historical account?
Of course, Luke doesn’t stop there. He goes on to give us SPECIFIC INFORMATION ABOUT THE TIME OF CHRISTS BIRTH!!!
“In the time of Herod King of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abkjah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron.” (Luke 1:5)
“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.(This was the first census that took place while[a] Quirinius was governor of Syria.)” (Luke 2:1-2)
Matthew adds two more important details: “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,” (mat. 2:1)
“Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.” (mat. 2:16)
That provides us with a comprehensive list of facts that we can use to check against historical sources. It turns out the Romans kept pretty good records such as, who was governor of what, when they died, and when census/taxes were taken. Here is the list of facts these gospels state:
1) Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
2) Jesus was born while Herod was king.
3) Quirinius was the governor of Syria.
4) A world wide census was taken shortly after Jesus birth.
5) Herod slaughtered all children age 2 and under in the city of Bethlehem.
Here is the problem. If this is a serious historical account this information could be cross referenced with outside historical accounts. See, there are 20+ historians living in and around the mediterranean area during the course of Jesus’ life. Josephus, one of the most well known, was a particularly harsh critic of King Herod. Unfortunately THERE ARE NO OUTSIDE ACCOUNTS OF ANY OF THESE EVENTS! Thats right. King Herod died in 4 b.c. and Quirinius was appointed in 6 AD! There was only a small census taken of 2 new additions to the Roman kingdom and NO ONE was required to go to their hometown to be counted, this would have created mass confusion. There is no record ANYWHERE of Romans ever making anyone do this. Furthermore, Herod never ordered the massive infanticide in Bethlehem. It never happend. Josephus would have mentioned it for sure. ANY historian would have mentioned a huge event like this. IT NEVER HAPPENED.
I think its best to start with a few quotes from Wikipedia:
The Gospel of Luke links the birth of Jesus to a “world-wide” census ordered by Augustus carried out while Quirinius was governor of Syria. This is thought to be a reference to the census of Judea in 6/7 AD; however, Luke also, like the Gospel of Matthew, dates the birth to the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC, ten years before the census of 6 or 7 AD. According to Raymond E. Brown, most modern historians suggest that Luke’s account is mistaken.[12] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirinius)
The single account of the Massacre comes in the Gospel of Matthew. The massacre is not mentioned in Luke’s gospel or by any contemporaneous historians, or by the later Roman Jewish historian, Josephus. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents)
If you don’t trust Wikipedia just consult any serious commentary on these verses and witness for yourself the elaborate mental gymnastics involved in not calling these accounts an outright legend. But why would the biblical authors falsify this information? Is this simply a human error or are they trying to employ a subtler tactic…?
The book of Matthew was most likely written to a primarily jewish audience. Which is why it goes to great lengths to show that Jesus fulfilled messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. These prophecies include being a descendant of King David, being born in Bethlehem, and infanticide occurring around the time of his birth. Each historical detail here is meant to provide a clever explanation for apparent contradictions; why was Jesus who was from Nazareth not born in the city the scriptures said he would be? SIMPLE! there was.. uh.. a census.. yeah, a census.. and uh… everyone had to go to their hometowns.. and Jesus father was from Bethlehem! Yeah, thats it!
So my real questions are these: Why do you believe these books are inspired by god? Why do you believe they are inerrant historical accounts? Why do you trust the authors of the gospels? Why is their account of this time period not corroborated by other historians at the time? I mean, if a guy feeds 5,000 people TWICE, walks on water, heals the sick people in whole towns, and ascends into heaven for all eyes to see you would think that some historian somewhere would have another record of these events…but no! Does the fact that they are historically inaccurate impact your absolute belief and devotion in them in any way??
The obvious conclusion here is best stated by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Short in 1820. He wrote:
“…My aim in that was, to justify the character of Jesus against the fictions of his pseudo-followers, which have exposed him to the inference of being an impostor. For if we could believe that he really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods and the charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind, that he was an impostor.”
