Jesus Lied - He Was Only Human: Debunking the New Testament (9 page)
Read Jesus Lied - He Was Only Human: Debunking the New Testament Online
Authors: CJ Werleman
Now, have you ever thought how possible it was for a star to lead someone to an actual house? Considering that stars are hundreds, thousands, times larger than earth (notwithstanding that the nearest star – Alpha Centauri – is almost 17 freaking light-years away!), it’s like giving directions of a new restaurant to a friend by saying, “It’s located on the third rock from the sun. See you there at 7pm sharp.”
Scholars believe the star mythology was borrowed from Zoroastrianism. This now mostly defunct religion was, until the rise of Islam, the national religion of the Iranian people (Persian) from the fourth to the sixth century. In Matthew’s biblical narrative, the magi are given Zoroastrian titles and bear the same gifts as stated in Zoroastrian myth. Therefore, it seems likely that later scribes added this story into Matthew’s Gospel, centuries after.
A study of ancient literature reveals that virgin birth mythologies were commonplace throughout the Arabian Peninsula and central Asia before, during, and after the commencement of the myth of Christianity. “The gods have lived on earth in the likeness of men” was a common saying among ancient pagans, a belief that supernatural events led to the existence of gods upon earth in human form.
The Egyptian god Horus was said to have been born to his virgin mother Isis. Attis, the Phrygian god, was said to be the son of the virgin Nana, who conceived him by putting in her bosom a ripe almond or pomegranate. Dionysus, the Grecian God, was said in one version of the myth concerning him to be the son of Zeus out of the virgin goddess Persephone. Jason, who was slain by Zeus, was said to have been another son of the virgin Persephone, and to have had no father, either human or divine. At the time when Christianity arose, all these gods were worshipped in various parts of the Roman Empire. It is well documented that religions with their origins in this part of the world borrowed mythology from one another. Christianity was not exempt from ‘sharing’ myth.
Don’t forget that the likeness of God, the old dude with the flowing white hair and beard, is stolen from both Zeus (King of the Greek gods) and Jupiter (King of the Roman gods).
The wise men find the family in the house, offer their gifts and flee quickly to their home nations as an angel warned them in a dream that King Herod, fearful of a Jewish newborn king, would hunt them down and kill them. Matthew finds an obscure passage in the Old Testament to validate his story:
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Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children.” (Matthew 2:18)
Similarly, Joseph receives the same dream; only the angel warns them that Herod has put out a decree that all Hebrew boys under the age of two are to be slaughtered. Joseph grabs his family and flees to Egypt for sanctuary, not to return until they learn of Herod’s death some years later.
Where have you heard such a baby killing decree before? That’s right, the story of Moses. The Pharaoh learns of a new born child that will one day become the Hebrew ‘deliverer’, and subsequently issues an edict that all Hebrew children under the age of two are to be executed. Moses’ mother places him in a papyrus basket, and you know the rest of the story. This is Matthew at it again, trying to win his Jewish audience over with similarities to the most revered man in Jewish history, Moses. At the very least, you can’t mock Matthew for trying.
Michael Grant, author of
Herod the Great
(1971), writes:
“
The tale is not history but myth or folklore. Herod the Wicked, villain of many a legend, including the Massacre of the Innocents: the story is invented.
Matthew’s story of the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod the Great, because he was afraid of a child born in Bethlehem ‘to be King of the Jews’, is a myth allegedly fulfilling a prophecy by Jeremiah and mirroring history’s judgment of the great but evil potentate Herod.”
Moreover, the story of a ‘threatened child becomes a great leader’ is commonplace amongst ancient literature and myth. It is the theme of Romulus & Remes, Sargon the Great, and Hercules, amongst many others. And now we see it reworked into the story of Jesus by one of his four nutty biographers.
Back to Luke again, and he says nothing of the family’s exodus into Egypt. Moreover, his narrative is completely at odds with Matthews. Luke mentions nothing of wise men led by a star, but instead it’s an unknown number of shepherds attending to their flocks in the fields that are descended upon by an angel. The angel says, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you, he is Christ
the Lord.” The angel leads them to a manger, not a house, where baby Jesus is wrapped in blankets. Some more angels appear on the scene, they all give praise to baby Jesus, and that’s the end of the scene. No star, no King Herod, no wise men, but plenty of angels.
At this same point in Luke’s narrative, Matthew has the family fleeing into Egypt but Luke has 8-day-old Jesus presented at the Temple in Jerusalem to be circumcised. How can both accounts be right at this point? Who are we to believe?
Well, we can start by throwing out Matthew’s account, as it is completely fallacious. Firstly, there are no ancient records or sources whatsoever that suggest that King Herod ever slaughtered children in or around Bethlehem, or anywhere else. In fact, historians such as Josephus, who maintained extensive records of Herod’s numerous crimes, makes no mention of what would have unquestionably been his greatest atrocity, the murder of innocents. Does this mean Luke’s account is more historically reliable? Well, not by any stretch! Luke’s big mess up is his unique claim that there was an empire-wide census decreed by Caesar Augustus:
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In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This is the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone went to his own town to register.” (Luke 2:1-3 NIV)
Small problem, despite extensive records of Roman history, there is nothing to suggest that such a census ever took place. If it had, historians would know about it, but they don’t. M Arnheim wrote in
Is Christianity True
:
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The Roman census would not have affected Nazareth in any case, as Galilee was not under Roman rule but had its own ruler, the ‘tetrach’ Herod Antipas, son of King Herod.’”
Can you imagine what such an event would have looked like? Millions of people across the entire European and African continents returning to their original towns of birth just to register that they’re alive. Logistically improbable, most likely impossible! Certainly, the literary madness of writing about an event decades post the event, without the benefit of Wikipedia as a reference source, is self-evident.
Furthermore, Rome’s purpose for any of the census’ they conducted was to quantify the wealth of its citizenry so they could charge a tax. One’s wealth is where is one resides, not where one’s long lost ancestral home was. With this in mind, how could Rome possibly benefit by forcing tens of millions of people to travel to a place far from where their homes and businesses (i.e. their wealth) resided? It defies logic, and therefore it’s just another sloppy error on behalf of sloppy Luke.
Luke was the only Biblical author who attempted to triangulate some kind of historicity, however. That said, he digs himself further into the historical dung heap with Luke 2:1-3 verse, insofar as his claim that Jesus’ birth occurred during the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria. This is irreconcilable with Matthew’s pronouncement - that it occurred during Herod’s reign and makes the two gospels completely contradictory to one another.
We know for certain that Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until ten years after the death of Herod. Once again both Matthew and Luke cannot be correct. As close an admission as you will get from a devout Christian apologist, and distinguished biblical archaeologist G. Ernest Wright of Harvard Divinity School conceded: “This chronological problem has not been solved”
Talk about a reluctant willingness to surrender the point, but thankfully we do have an abundance of more open and forthright scholars such as Robin Lane Fox
The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible
:
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Quirinius, the governor of Syria whom Luke’s Gospel mentions, is known from a careful history of affairs in Judea which was compiled by Josephus, an educated Jew, writing in Greek at Rome between c. 75 and c. 80. Josephus had his own prejudices and areas of interest, but he worked with a framework of hard facts which were freely available for checking and which he had collected responsibly. According to Josephus, Quirinius was governor of Syria with authority over Judea in AD 6, when the province was brought under direct Roman control. The year was a critical moment in Jewish history, as important to its province as the 1972 to Northern Ireland, the start of direct rule. On such a fact, at such a moment, Josephus and his sources cannot be brushed aside. There is however, an awkward problem. Luke’s Gospel links Jesus’ birth with Quirinius and with King Herod, but in AD 6 Herod had long disappeared. He had died soon after an eclipse of the moon, which is dated by astronomers to 12-13 March 4 BC, although a minority of scholars have argued for 5 BC instead. The Gospel, therefore, assumes that Quirinius and King Herod were contemporaries, when they were separated by ten years or more.”
A further conundrum, the respective authors Matthew and Luke find themselves in, is their attempts to include a genealogy for Jesus, whereas, Mark and John make no mention of his bloodline, and seemingly wisely. Why? Well, in short the genealogies of Matthew and Luke differ greatly. We will come to the contradictions shortly but for now let’s highlight the most puzzling dilemma both have unwittingly created: if Jesus’ mother conceived him as a virgin, as both writers claim she was, then this means, naturally, that Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ daddy. By direct implication this also means Jesus was not a blood-relative of Joseph.
But this fact doesn’t stop Matthew and Luke from jumping under the bus, as both Gospels go forth and provide us with a genealogy of Jesus that does include Joseph’s ancestry. If their stories were to maintain any credibility of consistency then his bloodline would travel only through Mary’s ascendants. Matthew and Mark give no reason as to why they wrote what they wrote in regards to his bloodline, but what is of greater interest is their respective family trees provide conflicting records. Matthew has Jesus traced to his father Joseph, then to Joseph’s father Jacob. Jesus’ grandfather is Jacob right? Wrong, if you read Luke’s account. Luke has Jesus’ grandfather named as Heli.
Matthew: “and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” (1:17)
Luke: “Jesus was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli.” (3:23)
The differences don’t stop here. In Matthew, Jesus’ great grandfather is Matthan, before him was Eleazar, onto Eliud, and on past. Whereas Luke says Jesus great grandfather is Mathat (possibly a scribe’s typo), but then onto Levi then to Melchi. As you can see, this pair couldn’t organize a cuddle in Amsterdam’s red light district.
What I believe to be the real nail in the cross, as it were, is that Matthew traces Jesus’ genealogy right back to King David and ultimately finishing with the founding patriarch of the Jewish religion (and effectively the monotheistic founder of Islam and Christianity), Abraham. Whereas Luke takes the family lineage all the way back to Adam, the first human to ever walk the planet. Even with the advent of modern day accounting I can only trace my forebears 150 years back, most probably because our family wanted to erase our bread thieving convict ancestry that had them involuntarily sent to Australia, but for Luke, without computer or DNA tracing technology, to go back 3,000 years is pretty darn impressive, if not outright ludicrous.
The comedy doesn’t end there, however, if you go ahead and read the list of names included in Matthew’s genealogy in Matthew 1:2-16, you’ll find there are three sets of fourteen names. Matthew even makes a footnote to ensure the reader doesn’t overlook this fact:
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Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.” (Matthew 1:17 NIV)
At the risk of spelling it out to you, Abraham the father of Israel is born, fourteen generations later the most revered king of Israel, David, is born. Fourteen generations after David the collapse of the kingdom; and another fourteen generations after the exile we have, you guessed it, Jesus H Christ.
Ask yourself why the number fourteen, fourteen, fourteen? Well isn’t it obvious? Matthew has carpentered Jesus’ genealogy to demonstrate to his Jewish audience that something of great significance to the Hebrew people occurs every fourteen generations and after three such successions we have Jesus. Da-da!
Now we could leave this hack job here, as I think the point is pretty darn self-evident, but there’s more fun to be had at Matthew’s expense. If you now turn to page 1071 of your New International Version Bible, count the names in the third stanza of fourteen generations, from verses 1:2-16, you will find that there is only thirteen names. If Matthew’s last name were Palin, I’m sure he too could see Russia from his backyard in Athens. What a pity too, he was doing so well…
The reader of the Bible must now ask himself the question; if the genealogies are meaningless then why did Matthew and Luke include them in their respective gospels? The simple answer, of course, is that the genealogies originally said that Jesus was the son of Joseph and thus Jesus fulfilled the messianic requirement of being a direct descendent of King David.
