Jesus Lied - He Was Only Human: Debunking the New Testament (13 page)

Mark, writing before the other Gospels, creates a theological pothole for the early Christians, as he writes:

What, the repentance of sins? Then why does Jesus need to be baptized if he was “born without sin”? Oh Mark, you dropped the ball there, buddy. Thankfully, Matthew spots this conundrum when writing his account, and adds a few sentences in an effort to sweep Mark’s error under the carpet. Instead, his narrative has John the Baptist protesting that it is he that should be baptized by Jesus, and not the other way round:

Thanks to Matthew’s observation and correction of Mark’s passage, Christians can breathe a moment’s sigh of relief, for now.

The baptism is the first event of Jesus’ biography whereby all four Gospels give an account. However, the baptism itself is only mentioned in passing rather than narrated by the Gospel John.

The other three Gospels give similar narratives of the baptism, for the most part, including the opening of the heavens upon Jesus’ emerging from the water. Then there is the appearance of a dove, before a voice from the sky begins to speak. It’s here, however, that the three amigos take divergent paths. As Jesus emerges from the water held in the arms of John the Baptist, what does God say from Heaven?

Given a quick glance, each of the Gospels accounts do indeed sound similar, if not somewhat identical. I can assure you, however, that these lone few verses contain some very deceptive theological discrepancies. In Matthew, it is as if God is speaking to John the Baptist directly, giving him and the curious onlookers along the shore confirmation that this is the Messiah. In other words, God is not speaking directly to Jesus.

Whereas Mark and Luke have God is speaking directly to Jesus, thereby confirming his identity as the son of Sky-Pixie. This seems reasonable enough, if, for example, your friends and family were hell bent on convincing you that you were the Son of God, you’d probably want confirmation from the celestial father figure that you weren’t merely over self-medicating on the Zoloft.

This being a further illustration that not all Gospels can be correct; at absolute least, one must be wrong. A further problem I have with this baptism narrative, at least from a historical perspective, is that Mark writes that enormous crowds would flock, everyday, to watch John the Baptist perform his dunking water show, as the people were amazed with his preaching’s of repentance and forgiveness:

Matthew and Luke make similar statements but none include a passage in regards to the day Jesus was baptized, “On this day the crowds were gone. Jesus’ baptism was done in strict privacy”. In strict privacy? How is this possible? Because neither John the Baptist nor Jesus write about their meeting. Therefore there had to have been witnesses. But if there were onlookers, how come no one bothered to write about what he or she witnessed?

Surely someone couldn’t have waited to get home to write in his or her journal the following entry:

John continued to preach - calling on everyone to repent - that is until his arrest by King Herod. Whilst in prison, John sent his followers to ask Jesus,
“Are you he that is to come, or is there another?”

Effectively, John was asking:

Jesus gave the following reply:

This was Jesus’ way of communicating to John the Baptist that he indeed saw himself as the promised Messiah. And that he truly believed John’s prophesized end of day’s apocalypse was within sight.

Before we progress too far, let us make a quick backtrack to examine the contradicting accounts of the Gospels as they independently retell what events transpired
the day after
John had baptized Jesus in the Jordan River.

The plot twists again, this time in relation to the events that transpire the day after Jesus’ baptism. The Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all pretty much say the same thing:

Ok, the trio maintains some consistency on what takes place the day after Jesus’ baptism. But let’s see what John says:

John, regarding the temptation of Jesus, utters not a single solitary word. John is resolute in his mind in regards to what takes place the following day and it completely differs from the other dude’s respective accounts. The following day, John the Baptist announces to all and sundry that indeed Jesus is “the Son of God”. Immediately thereafter, according to John, Jesus begins assembling his disciples. Problem being the other three have Jesus on day two of his forty-day temptation with the Devil in the desert.

Who is right and who is wrong? They can’t all be right. In fact, I’d be willing to put my grandfather’s war medals on them all being wrong. Nonetheless, if John is correct, the Synoptics are false, which places the spotlight of critical enquiry on their claims of credibility.

A further discrepancy is that the author of John, writes that John the Baptist did not know who Jesus was until after the baptism. But Matthew and Luke write that John the Baptist insisted that because he was beneath Jesus, then it should be Jesus doing the baptizing of him. As you can see it’s not easy starting a new religion, a bookish religion, without the aid of fact checkers and editors… and with the absence of journalistic integrity.

The following question has always troubled me. Why was it that if John the Baptist believed Jesus to be the Son of God, did
he
not become one of Jesus’ followers or disciples? You would presume that if John the Baptist heard the voice of God say that Jesus was the ‘chosen one’, as written by the Gospels, then he would have dropped everything and followed the magic man wherever he went, but he didn’t. Furthermore, most of John’s disciples stayed loyal to
him
, and likewise chose not follow Jesus. In fact, John the Baptist had many followers, even centuries after his death. Why did they continue to follow John, instead of the prophesized Son of God?

Henceforth, we have an additional vast number of Jews who never met or heard of Jesus and who remained less than impressed with Christianity’s Superman.

Some time after being baptized by John in the Jordan River, and tempted by Satan in the Judean desert, Jesus is described as having left his hometown of Nazareth to begin the choosing of his disciples, and the commencement of his ministry. A ministry that, at its core, promised his second coming, a time that will usher in the Last Judgment of the living and the dead.

Christians are familiar with the idea that Jesus spoke in parables, metaphor, allegory, sayings, and proverbs. His most well known teachings, “Give no thought for the morrow”, “Rich man”, “Prodigal son”, “He who is without sin”, “Sower and the Seeds” and “Do unto others.” Outside of this, however, your average Sunday Christian is a little hazy on the details, but we will cover these shortly.

Jesus saw a crowd chasing down a woman to stone her and approached them. “What’s going on here, anyway?” he asked.

“This woman was found committing adultery, and the law says we should stone her!” one of the crowd responded.

“Wait,” yelled Jesus. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Suddenly, a stone was thrown from out of the sky, and knocked the woman on the side of her head.

“Aw, c’mon, Dad...” Jesus cried, “I’m trying to make a point here!”

Ok, in regards to the Length of Jesus’ Ministry, here’s a question that most twelve year old Sunday school students can answer: How long did Jesus’ ministry last? Three years is the answer most often given, but is it correct? Well, according to John it is so. In his gospel, he includes the passing of three different Passover celebrations during the period between his baptism and his crucifixion. As the Passover is held only once per year, *ta-da*, we have our three years. So, yes Jesus’ ministry lasts for three years according to John.

What of Matthew, Mark, and Luke? Do they mention three Passovers? No. Do they give any clue that it may have been three years? No, they don’t. In fact, according to the Synoptic Gospels the duration of Jesus’ ministry is not even twelve months. As a matter of fact, it’s less than a few months. Admittedly, the Synoptic Gospels don’t give an explicit time period but we calculate the duration from the passages within the scripture. Matthew, for example, lists the course of events leading up to commencement of Jesus’ ministry, as the baptism; the temptation in the desert; the healing of a few; and finally the selection of the twelve disciples:

His ministry had begun, and what more or less follows immediately thereafter is the story of Jesus strolling through the cornfields on the Sabbath:

We only need a 2
^nd
grade education to understand that any locale more than 10 degrees north or south of the equator, one can only pick and eat the ears of the corn during the time of the harvest, which is the Fall. While it’s fair to assume you already knew that, did you know that he was killed in the same year his ministry begun? Well, that is most certainly the case if we measure the series of events between the cornfield story and the execution. We also know that Jesus was killed on the day of the Passover, which is in the spring. Therefore, by reason of deduction we have reduced the duration of Jesus’ ministry to only a few months.

Who’s right – John? Or Matthew, Mark and Luke? Either one or three of them are selling it. Ultimately, it’s your choice, but once you make that choice then whoever is shoveling the bullshit must be eliminated as a ‘credible’ source. Although I believe we have already discounted all four by process of elimination, but that’s just me. You can decide for yourself.

To be a bona fide Messiah, one of the first things you need in place is a fan base and thus Jesus’ first order of business was to select disciples capable of recruiting and rallying new supporters. Matthew summarizes this entourage selection process in a neat and tidy two-paragraph verse.