MOSES AND OTHER HISTORICAL FABRICATIONS
If you’ve elected to read the preceding selections in this manuscript, you will have noticed that I often refer to the first five books of the Bible as the Pentateuch. In Greek, the term simply means “five volumes.” Scholars often refer to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy using this collective term because many of our predecessors erroneously assumed for over 2000 years that Moses personally wrote the books. Knowledge gained through modern scholarship and research, however, allows us to ascertain the logical impossibility of this scenario being true. More than likely, the Pentateuch is the work of several individuals, all of whom lived well after the stories they present and had varying oral traditions of how those events unfolded. Because of this societal concoction, the earliest recorded history of the Jews is afflicted with oft-erratic variance.
In order to consider an extraordinary event for inclusion in the modern canon of actual history, we must either have remaining evidence indicating what took place or obtain a record from a reliable eyewitness who documented the occurrence. We generally accept common daily events as fact because we know that these occasions are consistent and inconsequential in the grand scheme of human history. Extraordinary events on the level of those Moses allegedly recorded in the Pentateuch, on the other hand, should be thoroughly scrutinized before canonizing them as fact.
Two major biblical events that we should expect to be reasonably consistent with coexisting historical records and modern archaeological discoveries are the Exodus and Conquests. As you will see, however, these two hypothetical milestones have little, if any, substantiating support. If we are to ignore this contrary finding and just accept whatever the Bible says as truth, it isn’t fair to confine ourselves to the accounts of only one religion. Thus, we would have to accept any and all religious claims, regardless of their absurdity. To avoid such a logical disaster, we must reasonably pursue evidence for claims made by all beliefs in order to determine which, if any, has the most reliability as the correct religion. Christianity cannot simply trump other religions because it’s the one in which the most faith has been placed. Awarding any belief system with this favorable and prejudicial judgment should be an obvious act of intellectual dishonesty. Besides, if Christianity is the one true religion, it should have no trouble in avoiding claims that are disprovable by scientific and investigative scrutiny.
For our study of who initiated the history of the Jews, there’s no better place to start than the beginning. Thus, this chapter will discuss the following: how the Pentateuch came into existence, the standard reasons why Christians still maintain that Moses scribed it, why Christians desperately cling to traditional authorship claims, the contrast in writing styles among the multiple authors, and key pieces of information allowing scholars to debunk the traditional dates placed on the writings.
If Moses Didn’t Write The Books Of Moses…
Before we delve into much detail of how we know who wrote what in the early Old Testament, you should have an understanding of the different components combined to form the five books of the Pentateuch. This “document hypothesis” states that there were probably four authors and an editor responsible for the compilation. Since it’s currently impossible to determine their hypothetical identities, we commonly refer to them as J, E, P, D, and R for the reasons we’ll now discuss.
J received his name because he consistently uses JHWH as the unpronounceable name of God. Issues relating to humanity are the primary focus of his writing. J even extends this humanity-based focus by portraying a uniquely human interpretation of God. This author is compassionate and shows none of the bias against women discussed in 'Why Women And The Bible Don’t Mix'. Seeing as how J wrote a complete historical record of the Israelites from a Judean perspective, he probably resided within the Southern Kingdom of Judea. Based on clues found within his text, historians typically place a 950-750 BCE date on the work, which is about 500-700 years following the death of Moses.
E, whose primary focus is morality, acquired his name because he consistently uses Elohim as the name of God. E commonly emphasized the second born sons of families because they were of historical and personal interest to the North for symbolic reasons. Since E left us with a complete account of the Israelites from the perspective of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, historians generally believe that this was his domicile. Thus, we already have two independent accounts of early Middle Eastern history. Since the split of Israel took place no earlier than 950 BCE, it’s exceedingly unlikely that such a contrasting influence would appear in his work before that time. Consequently, estimated dates for the E document range from 900-700 BCE.
P obtained his name because he was almost certainly a priest. He identifies Aaron, the first High Priest, as his spiritual ancestor. His manuscripts include rituals, laws, sins, chronologies, genealogies, and other subjects of definite interest to a priest. In sharp contrast to J, P doesn’t attribute any human qualities to God. The Hebrew terms equivalent to mercy, grace, and repentance don’t appear once in P’s work, while they’re plentiful in the compositions of J and E. Furthermore, P is often cold and harsh with his writing unlike the more pleasant E. These interpretations and attitudes are what we would expect from a traditional church leader. He doesn’t include any mythical details, such as the ludicrous claims of talking animals, likely interpolated into history by J and E as a result of popular urban legends. As he was seemingly aware of the books of prophecy, while J and E never gave this indication, P probably wrote his share much later around 700-650 BCE.
D received his name because he was the author of Deuteronomy. It’s a good possibility that D wrote many of the historical books as well. It’s an even better possibility that he wrote the book of Jeremiah, which contains several carbon copies of statements made in the book of Deuteronomy. If this is the case, the author could be Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, or Jeremiah himself. D most certainly lived in Israel during a very spiritual era, the same era in which the likely author claimed to have discovered the book. Evidence for the document hypothesis indicates that the person compiling the Pentateuch tacked the author’s work onto the end of the compilation. Thus, we would expect it to have been created after, not in concurrent conflict with, the other three circulating versions of Jewish history. It then follows that the author probably finished it shortly before its “discovery” in 622 BCE.
We designate the individual responsible for combining the four accounts into one collection as R because he’s the redactor (editor). The process finally came to a conclusion some time around 500-434 BCE, but may have begun as early as the Babylonian Exile of 587-539 BCE. R also adds bits and pieces of commentary to make necessary transitions between the passages. The scholarly community consensually believes this redactor is the biblical priest Ezra.
To illustrate the document hypothesis, we’ll take a detailed look at the first eight chapters of Genesis. You may find it helpful to locate and follow along in a Bible before proceeding further.
One creation story scribed by P appears from Genesis 1:1-2:3. Notice that the first half of 2:4 doesn’t maintain the flow and seems to segue into the second creation account found in 2:4-2:25. That’s likely the redactor making a transition between P’s and J’s creation stories. J continues to the end of the fourth chapter with some recollections of stories centered on Adam and his children. Chapter 5 then hastily jumps in with some genealogy from P or R, but verse 29, written by J, seems recklessly tossed into the mix.
At the commencement of chapter six, J regains control and supplies a few verses set in the time immediately prior to Noah’s flood. This account abruptly stops following 6:8, and P’s story of Noah begins with his lineage. Furthermore, this section by P is an obvious repetition of the days before the flood, provided earlier in the chapter by J. Genesis 7:1 seems to pick right back up where J left off at 6:8. Genesis 7:6, written by P, appears haphazardly thrown in because it interrupts a cohesive story told by J. Verses 7:7, 7:10, 7:12, 7:17-20, and 7:22-23 tell one full story of the flood (J) while 7:8-9, 7:11, 7:13-16, 7:21, and 7:24 tell another (P). In chapter eight, J likely recorded verses 2, 3, 6, 8-12, the last part of 13, and 20-22, while the remaining verses stand alone as another complete story by the author P. If you happen to be carefully reading the texts in their native Hebrew language, you may even notice the contrasting writing styles of the two authors beginning to emerge.
How And Why Was The Pentateuch Combined?
This part, we cannot say for certain. It’s speculated that a number of Israelites fled south into Judea with the E document in hand when the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE. Consequently, the J document would now coexist with the E document in this society prior to their combination. Around this time, P likely became a widespread alternative priestly version of the J and E records. With these three variant interpretations, no doubt would come arguing factions. R then saw the need, or perhaps was elected, to combine the contrasting accounts into a single cohesive document agreeable to all parties. Not wishing to eliminate any essential parts of the respective documents, R would then combine the contrasting stories into one quasi-harmonious account and do the best he could to avoid contradictions, inconsistencies, and repetitions. Because the D document doesn’t step on the toes of the other three histories, the redactor likely tacked Deuteronomy onto the end for this reason. By 434 BCE, the redactor had certainly compiled the modern version of the Pentateuch.
There’s nothing novel about forming multiple author theories for the Moses biography. The first known hypothesis was proposed nearly a thousand years ago when it was discovered that a list of kings in the Pentateuch included some who apparently reigned following Moses’ death. Although the suggestion that Moses didn’t write this passage seems to bathe in common sense, the churches of the Middle Ages weren’t exactly known for embracing such heretical theories. Centuries later, biblical scholars began to propose that prophets and editors may have had limited involvement in the compilation. Scholars fortunate enough to live during the age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century concluded that different authors recorded the passages conspicuously appearing twice because one writer would use the name JHWH and the other would use the name Elohim when referring to the same god. Triplet passages, the beginning of the P discovery, were soon uncovered in the years to come. Later still, historians determined Deuteronomy has a style distinct from the ones found in the four preceding books. Presently, we have a four author and one editor hypothesis.
This will no doubt undergo alteration as well if subsequent research provides further evidence relevant to the authorship issue. On the other hand, regardless of what evidence researchers discover, the Christian community may indefinitely hold onto a Moses authorship.
While we’re certainly not fully able to explain the origins of the Old Testament with 100% accuracy, we can conclude with great certainty that the Pentateuch is a set of conflicting passages scribed 500-3500 years after the events it purports. Ask yourself how much oral tradition can change in a few years; then consider the subsequent alteration of details after 3500 years. Of course, this proposal assumes that an omniscient deity offered no input to this particular set of writers. Since we should be unanimous in deciding that a “wonderful” and “loving” God would have no part in the orders of rape, slavery, and the various other acts of extreme brutality contained within the Old Testament, we should also decide that these hundredth-hand stories were highly unlikely to be scientifically or historically accurate. Similarly, we see the inclusion of ridiculous fallacies in the form of Adam and Noah working unpaid overtime at discrediting their own reliability. Furthermore, we have upcoming archaeological evidence indicating that the Exodus and Conquests didn’t unfold the way they were recorded, if at all. Thus, we can certainly challenge the existence, or at least question the true nature, of the people on whom the authors based these stories.
There’s ample reason why Christians feel the absolute necessity for Moses to have been the sole author of the Pentateuch. First, we have inclusions of several passages indicating Moses did a lot of the writing. For example, “And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book…” (Deuteronomy 31:24). There are also several biblical passages outside the Pentateuch insinuating that Moses was responsible for its compilation. Paul demonstrated his conviction that Moses was an author when he said, “For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law” (Romans 10:5). Even Jesus implies that Moses wrote the books: “All things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses” (Luke 24:44). However, there’s no passage in the Pentateuch directly implicating Moses as the one and only author of the present compilation. I also fail to recognize any quotes concretely indicating that the New Testament characters were certain of Moses’ solitary authorship. The contemporaneous belief of the New Testament authors may have very well been that Moses only provided a foundation for the Old Testament writings.
For the past 2000 years, the church has merely gone on assumptions when making the attribution of the Pentateuch to Moses. In fact, there wouldn’t be any additional errors in the Bible if someone completely debunked the traditional hypothesis. The importance of the authorship question lies with determining the credibility and reliability of the authors, not with demonstrating an additional biblical mistake.
Evidence Clearly Pointing Away From Moses
The best evidence we have supporting the position that Moses didn’t write the entire Pentateuch is the description of his death and burial in the last chapter of Deuteronomy. Almost all Christians will make this small concession by admitting that Joshua may have finished the works, but some actually believe that God told Moses what to write beforehand. Nevertheless, the possibility of a second author for the final chapter isn’t exactly destructive to the traditional author hypothesis. The more critical discoveries arise from the widespread presence of contradictions and inconsistencies contained within repetitions of stories, such as the creation and flood. A single author would have known better than to write a certain passage, only to contradict it a few sentences later. However, these variations are, indeed, present and lead us to believe that the traditional single author hypothesis is completely discountable. Examples of these contradictions can be found in the next chapter.
The inclusion of city names and tribes yet to exist at the time of Moses’ death, approximately 1450 BCE, is equally devastating to the traditional Mosaic authorship claim. Genesis 11:31 says that the Chaldees lived in the city of Ur during the life of Abraham, but historical records tell us that the Chaldees didn’t even exist as a tribe until well after Moses was dead. In addition, they didn’t become a prominent enough group to occupy a city until the sixth century BCE.
Genesis 14:14 mentions the city of Dan, but the city didn’t acquire this name until it was seized one thousand years later via conquest. Genesis 37:25 mentions traders with spicery, balm, and myrrh, but these weren’t the primary trade products of the region until the eighth century BCE. Isaac visits King Abimelech of Gerar in Genesis 26:1, but Gerar didn’t exist until after Isaac’s death and wouldn’t have been powerful enough to require a King until the eighth century BCE. Genesis 36:31 says that there were “kings that reigned in the land of Edom,” but there’s no extrabiblical record of Kings in Edom until the eighth century BCE. Exodus 13:17 details Moses’ apprehension toward entering the land of the Philistines in Canaan, but there’s zero evidence that indicates the Philistines occupied Canaan until the thirteenth century BCE. In addition, they couldn’t have sufficiently organized in threatening numbers until a few hundred years later.
Moses references Palestine in Exodus 15:14, the only known mention of that name for hundreds of years. In Deuteronomy 3:11, Moses also mentions the city of Rabbath and Og’s location within the city, but no one outside of Rabbath could have held this information until it was conquered hundreds of years later. Jacob is called a wandering Aramean in Deuteronomy 26:5, but the Arameans didn’t have contact with the Israelites until the ninth century BCE. Some particular names mentioned in Genesis 14 and 25 (Chedorlaomer, Kadesh, Sheba, Tema, Nebaioth, and Adbeel) are consistent with names of people recorded by the Assyrians as living during the sixth through eighth centuries BCE, not a thousand years prior. The writers never provide the names of Egyptian Pharaohs even though Moses would have readily known this bit of information.
The Pentateuch authors claim that many of the leading Genesis characters, such as Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph, rode camels. However, there’s no archaeological evidence indicating that anyone domesticated these animals earlier than 1200 BCE. Again, this was hundreds or thousands of years after the deaths of these alleged biblical camel riders. Furthermore, no known person trained camels to carry people and other heavy loads until many years later.
Someone making these aforementioned claims in 1500 BCE would have had no ability to appreciate this futuristic information and no reason to present the information in a fashion identifiable only to a specific group of people living in a specific region during an arbitrary future time period. On the other hand, someone in 500 BCE would have had access to this information but lacked a way to know that the stories presented were historically invalid. Not only do these facts indicate a more recent authorship, they also suggest fabrications or alterations of actual events. Finally, many of the passages state that certain aspects of the Hebrew society are still the same “unto this day” (e.g. Genesis 26:33). This wording greatly implies that the complete record was finished well after the purported events took place.
The Exodus: Timeline Inconsistencies Now let’s turn to the particular account of the Exodus and consider the possibility of such a magnificent event taking place. First, we should recognize the plethora of peculiarities concerning the approximate time that the authors say the enslavement and subsequent Exodus took place. We arrive at the aforementioned 1500 BCE estimate for the Exodus because the three different chronologies used to date it differ by about 150 years but tend to center around the designated 1500 BCE date. We commonly use the most accepted and latest possible date of 1447 BCE because it’s the easiest to derive.
1 Kings 6:1 says that Solomon’s fourth year as ruler was concurrent with the 480th anniversary of the Exodus. Given that Solomon began his first year of rule in 970 BCE, his fourth year as ruler would have been in 967 BCE. Consequently, the Exodus must have taken place 480 years prior in 1447 BCE. Establishing the exact date isn’t as important as obtaining a period to which the events must be bound in order to compare it to established historical events.
According to the Bible, the Israelite slaves were used to build the Egyptian cities of Pithom and Raamses (Exodus 1:11). Since the Exodus took place no later than 1447 BCE, the Israelites would have at least had to start construction on Raamses by that time in order for the story to remain reliable. In a great setback to Christian apologists, there wasn’t even a Pharaoh named Raamses until 1320 BCE, 127 years after the Exodus. For an additional dagger in the heart of biblical inerrancy, consider Egypt’s own records. These archaeological findings state that Egypt’s own people built the city and not until it came via order of Raamses II who reigned from 1279-1213 BCE. A Hebrew writing a story of his origins several hundred years after all these events had long played out would have had no way of determining when Raamses was constructed without committing to a thorough investigation of Egypt’s historical records. Needless to say, the author didn’t have such access and made a poor guess on when the city was actually built.
The Exodus: A Valid Counterargument From Silence
Upon the Israelites’ alleged escape from their forced construction duties, Moses parts the Red Sea so that they can cross and escape from the pursuing Egyptians (Exodus 14). This was supposed to be the last that Egypt would see of them, and it was as far as the Bible is concerned. Moses seemingly marches his people straight through the other Egyptian regions without contest because the author was no doubt ignorant of the soldiers stationed in the surrounding cities. As you might have subsequently guessed, there are no Egyptian reports of such a massive group crossing these outposts.
The story then purports Moses leading the Israelites into the vast wilderness for forty years of aimless wandering. According to the biblical account, Moses freed 600,000 men in addition to the safely presumed multitude of women and children. If we assume only one wife for each man and only one child for every other couple, which is a very low estimate, there’s a total of one and a half million escapees in addition to the “mixed multitude…of flocks, and herds, even very much cattle” (Exodus 12:37-41). After forty years, the count probably swelled to three million, a number in agreement with many religious Jewish sources.
Since we have millions of mouths to contend with, let’s look at the problem of finding something to feed them. We’ll assume that the Israelites were always proximate to a large water source unless stated otherwise. An average individual requires at least a half pound of food per day to meet typical nourishment requirements. In order to just barely survive, we’ll assume that the Israelites had half that amount over the course of forty years. If each person ate a quarter pound of food every twenty-four hours, the entire camp would need 375 tons of sustenance every day. While we know that they primarily survived off manna, a dried plant material (Numbers 11:6-9), it’s ludicrous to believe that they could obtain this much nourishment day after day without supernatural intervention. From what we’ve learned about this god’s true lack of interaction with the people on earth, such unsubstantiated circumstances were highly unlikely to have ever taken place.
Considering that the Bible provides some precise locations of the events surrounding the desert journey, archaeological evidence of three million people wandering around in a confined area for forty years shouldn’t be too difficult to locate. In fact, we know that the Israelites were in Kadesh-barnea for most of their long journey (Deuteronomy 1:19). However, not one piece of evidence of an Israeli encampment or occupancy has ever arisen from the multitude of undertaken excavations. In contrast, civilizations with populations less than three million over their entire time of existence have left behind considerable amounts of remains that inform us of their cultural facets. Furthermore, archaeologists weren’t necessarily looking for any evidence from these people; they casually stumbled upon the initial discoveries due to the sufficient number of artifacts large groups tend to leave behind. Asserting that unfound archaeological evidence exists for an Exodus is an absurdly difficult position to defend.
Similarly, we have no evidence for three million people invading the land of Canaan and destroying the inhabitants’ possessions forty years after the Exodus (Numbers 33:50-54). Archaeological findings in the form of bodies, waste products, documents, and clothing tell us that the population of Canaan was never greater than 100,000. Thus, we can reasonably dismiss the possibility of a group in excess of one million ever conquering and inhabiting the region.
Fortunately, the Egyptians were much less fond of including hyperbole in their historical records. Of the thousands of fourteenth century BCE Egyptian records uncovered at el-Amarna and Boghazkoy detailing the governments, armies, religions, trade routes, and everyday lives of the people living in the region, none pay any respect to the millions of Israelites allegedly moving about like nomads in Kadesh-barnea. In fact, we don’t posses a single mention of Israel made prior to the creation of the 1207 BCE Merneptah Stele. The inscriptions on this essential historical artifact inform us that Pharaoh Merneptah had recently entered Canaan and easily defeated the Israelites. Curiously, just seventy-eight years earlier, Pharaoh Raamses recorded his army as numbering only 37,000. Although Egypt is widely acknowledged to have been the most powerful country in the world at that time, how could an army the size of a small city go on the offensive and defeat three million inhabitants in a region with nearly one million men of fighting age? If Merneptah did defeat the enormous Israeli army, why didn’t he acknowledge such a remarkable, unrivaled victory in his writings, and why does the Bible neglect to mention this humiliating defeat?
The Exodus: Bogus Solutions
Because attempts to justify the number of Israelites have consistently fallen flat, apologists have often sought a way around this perplexity. Sound familiar? The Hebrew word used to describe thousands is eleph. In a couple of the five hundred or so instances in which the Old Testament authors utilize the term, it meant an army or clan. If this was one of those highly unusual cases, apologists could claim that Moses freed six hundred families instead of six hundred thousand men. This gives us roughly 1500 people escaping from Egypt. Even if we allow the convenience of the word just happening to mean something else at the whim of the apologist, the tale still has unanswered problems. The archaeological evidence and Egyptian historical records for this smaller group of people are still absent. More importantly, there are no longer enough of them to invade and take the land of Canaan. When one difficulty is resolved, another takes its place.
As a way of solving the Egyptian silence, Bible defenders have proposed that the records did include the Israelites’ stay in their country. A writer named Manetho of the third century BCE wrote that, according to some mythical books, a group of people known as the Hyksos invaded Egyptian land and took over the leadership for five hundred years before Pharaoh Ahmose ejected them in 1570 BCE. Some apologists looking for any loophole claim that the Hyksos are a reference to the Israelites. However, several reasons why this isn’t the case should already be painfully obvious. The dates are way off; the Israelites didn’t invade Egypt; they didn’t stay five hundred years; and Ahmose didn’t run them off. While the stories are in no way congruent, the Egyptian tale may help explain the provenience of the biblical legend.
Another difficult aspect of the accord for an apologist to defend would be the Israelites’ total lack of faith in their god’s abilities. After God frees his people from captivity and performs all the plague miracles to ensure their freedom, they still don’t trust him. Since they think that they’re going to die when the Pharaoh decides to chase after them, they complain about the method used to release them from Egyptian custody. Consequently, God has Moses part the sea in order for them to cross and lure the Egyptians into their watery graves. Just a few days later, they complain about an onset of dehydration. Consequently, God provides them with water. Forty days following that incident, the people complain about having no meat. Consequently, God sends them a multitude of quail. A while later, the Israelites once again think that they’re going to dehydrate even though God provided them with water on the previous occasion. Consequently, God provides them with water once again. When the people complain again about not having any meat, the divinely delivered quail fly in once more. Later still, people start complaining about having no land to call their own. When God is about to provide them with some land, they doubt that they can defeat the multitude of inhabitants to obtain it. Instead, they all desire to return to Egypt as slaves rather than fighting and dying in the wilderness.
The Israelites obviously have zero faith in God even though he performs unbelievable miracles for them on a consistent basis. Why, then, are they so skeptical of a god who has provided them with so many blessings in the past? Why would they later turn their backs on such a powerful confederate? It doesn’t make any sense for the Israelites to be so thoroughly convinced that they were going to die when the supernatural interventions of God save them time after time after time. This is another great reason why the story is probably an exceedingly ridiculous fable with an intended moral, much like the repeated enslavement story discussed in the previous chapter.
The Conquests
As I mentioned in The Flat Earth Society, God grants Joshua’s request to make the sun cease its motion so that he can defeat his enemies in the daylight. Since no society with astronomers recorded this unique event, the ball really started to roll on determining the legitimacy of events claimed in the conquest accounts of the Pentateuch and historical books. Subsequent thorough scientific analyses turn up some very interesting facts relevant to these biblical endeavors.
The size of the army Joshua used to conquer his enemies is astonishing even by today’s standards. As I alluded to earlier, the greatest nations of the era had no more than 50,000 soldiers serving simultaneously. The military that Joshua claims to be under his command, however, even outnumbers the current United States Army. While there was an astounding amount of soldiers numbering in the hundreds of thousands during Joshua’s conquests, there were over one and a half million enlisted by the time David was King. Such an outlandishly sized army could have easily conquered the entire ancient world unopposed if the enlisted men so desired. However, there’s no contemporaneous record of an existing force even a tenth of that size. In addition, the population problem arises once again because the Israelites could not have possibly grown to this size over such a short amount of time when you necessarily take the subpar living conditions of the era into consideration.
The consensus of archaeological findings, such as the nearly exhaustive collection of proposals reviewed by William Stiebing in 1989, points away from Moses or Joshua ever conquering the cities claimed by the Bible. We know that the conquests directed by Moses had to have taken place during the time that he and Joshua lived concurrently (approximately 1550-1450 BCE), while the conquests following the Pentateuch must have taken place between Moses’ death and the lifetimes of his various successors (approximately 1450-1200 BCE). Of the four cities that the Israelites take via force in Numbers 21 (Arad, Hormah, Heshbon, and Dibon), none exhibit any clear evidence that they were occupied during the required period. Areor’s remnants, another city claimed to have been conquered while Moses was still alive, offer no credence to the claim that the city was occupied any earlier than two hundred years following the alleged victory (Deuteronomy 2:36).
Although Joshua’s most famous battle takes place in Jericho long after the death of Moses, there’s overwhelming archaeological evidence that suggests the city was destroyed before Moses would have even been born (Joshua 6). Likewise, impartial archaeologists aren’t ready to conclude that the cities of Ai, Gibeon, and Hebron had occupants at the same time that this so-called historical book claims they were destroyed (Joshua 7, 9, and 10, respectively).
Occupational eras of the remaining cities will vary according to different sources, possibly putting their demise around the time of Joshua’s conquests. However, the fallacies presented about the other cities demonstrate the need to seriously question the Bible when attempting to place an accurate date on those remaining towns. Even if future findings confirm the dates provided by the Bible, there’s no evidence that any “Joshua” was doing all the conquering.
Unless there’s compelling evidence to the contrary, we should always give reliability and precedence to correspondence written at the time of the event rather than propagandistic records compiled hundreds of years afterwards. You should realize by now that the Bible is anything but compelling evidence. The blatant signs of a more modern authorship, the lack of documented eyewitnesses, and the obvious embellishments clearly indicate that we should take the aforementioned accounts with a handful of salt.
The Significance Of Moses’ Absence
Since Moses didn’t write the outlandish stories found within the Pentateuch, we must consider the fact we only know of his existence through oral tradition a millennium in the making. With this in mind, could he have been a legend based on a real person? Is it possible that he’s a complete work of fiction?
The Law of Moses, supposedly handed down by God himself in Exodus, is probably patterned after the Code of Hammurabi, which was written well before 2000 BCE. This date places the code’s origins several centuries prior to Moses’ trek up Mt. Sinai. Both codes of conduct contain similar guidelines along with similar punishments in lieu of following the established rules (murder, theft, perjury, adultery, etc.) Simply put, several moral codes existed in the Middle East prior to these unoriginal directions from Moses.
Aspects of Moses’ birth are likely to be a copy of King Sargon of Agade’s early years as well. Like Moses, Sargon was also said to have been placed into a basket on a river as a baby. The important difference is that Sargon’s story was purported a thousand years prior to the same affair Moses allegedly endured as a child (Exodus 2). Is it possible that the original tellers of the story could have based the legend of Moses on this historical figure? Minor details like these add up to further challenge the legitimacy of Moses’ existence, and we should not honestly dismiss such parallels as mere coincidences.
Implications Of A Fabricated History
If no “Moses” or any other individual from the contemporaneous era wrote anything in the Pentateuch, how do we really know that God carried out and ordered all the monstrous deeds preserved in those books? We can’t be certain of the records for two simple reasons: the stories are utterly ridiculous, and we can scarcely consider hundredth-hand accounts to be reliable. That’s why we must analyze the veracity of even the simplest of claims made in the books of Moses to render a verdict on their proper place in history.
The truth is that Moses couldn’t have realistically written the books, and we have no reason to believe that he was an actual historical figure. Because the majority of the Old Testament was critically inaccurate in its detail, we cannot conclude that the events contained within are factual and accurate without further evidence. Since the required evidence is completely absent, we should only conclude that the books from Genesis to Job are mythological or greatly exaggerated legends.
The balance of the Old Testament is nothing but songs and prophecies of a god no longer in contact with anyone but a handful of prophets who, as we will see in A Different Future, also display a total lack of credibility. By the time the Israelites had a compiled history of their origins, no one ever claims that God had such liberal verbal and visual contact with anyone. All of a sudden, God seemingly ceases to exist from the observable world, a world in which no supernatural events take place. No known Hebrew authors make extraordinary claims in the multi-century span between the documentation of these events and the beginning of the Common Era. In fact, the Israelites existed pretty much as we do now: living normal lives and never recording any verifiably miraculous acts.
How It Came To Be
One man under the divine inspiration of God didn’t write the Pentateuch; it was the product of several different perspectives of a common legacy passed down by fallible oral tradition for hundreds of years. When we analyze the texts, we clearly observe the Pentateuch as a convolution of several works from different authors with interpolated segues to signal subject transitions. Considering these observations, we cannot possibly anticipate the Pentateuch to be 100% accurate in its detail.
Following the Assyrian invasion and Babylonian Exile, conditions were certainly indicative of a rising necessity for a cohesive religious society. Perhaps these tales arose from the necessity to instill fear into the hearts of Israel’s stronger enemies. Consequently, it would be very likely that these bits of propaganda were intended to be nothing more than methods of keeping superstitious enemies at bay so that such forces wouldn’t overrun the demonstrably inferior and ill-equipped Israelites.
Exaggerated oral traditions and urban legends during this highly superstitious era no doubt played a large role in forming the first draft of the Old Testament. The seemingly countless number of horrible acts carried out by God, recorded in the Old Testament, and discussed in the previous three chapters of this book weren’t the result of angry divine interactions. Instead, these tales of unfath-omably enormous armies and insanely angry deities were undoubtedly the product of a vivid human imagination. Thus, we cannot reasonably attribute the earliest writings of the Bible to an omniscient deity, much less the “wonderful” and “loving” Christian god. In short, the historical account left by the Hebrews is a problematic report filled with wild, unsubstantiated, ridiculous, and extraordinary claims without a shred of evidence to back it up.
THIS WAY AND THAT: BIBLICAL CONTRADICTIONS
When a series of fallible authors attempt to create a cohesive testimonial manuscript, one would expect to find contradictions among accounts of those claiming to be witnesses and/or reporters. We could say the same for a group of conspirators convening to invent stories for whatever purpose they might have in mind. On the other hand, when billions of people deem a certain collection of accounts to originate from the inspirations of a perfect God, there’s a reasonable expectation that the facts presented should be free from contradictions.
In the case of the Holy Bible, there’s an overwhelming amount of inconsistencies between its covers. However, you must be careful with the plentiful lists found across the Internet and within certain publications because many of the so-called contradictions are justifiably harmonizable. Estimates of these occurrences are often in excess of one thousand, but conservative skeptics offer a number only in the dozens. Most Christians, of course, refuse to budge from zero under the guise of divine inspiration.
I’m confident that there are at least one hundred contradicting passages that should be classified as “irreconcilable through rational means,” but such a list would be too laborious to compile and too boring to read if I were to include them all here. Consequently, I’ll limit our overview to around forty of the best examples and explain why there’s a contradiction in cases when it’s not painfully obvious. While many liberal Christians will accept that there are complications due to obvious human authorship, quite a few still hang onto the ridiculous notion that the Bible is the infallible and inerrant word of God. We’ll look at some of the apologetically proposed solutions to these difficulties, and I’ll specifically explain why they don’t fully solve the problems at hand.
Interwoven Myths Of The Pentateuch
As we concluded in the previous chapter, Moses was not the sole author of the Pentateuch. Furthermore, we should give credit for the books to no less than four distinct writers. Because we have a variety of authors present, there will subsequently be divergent details in their recollections when we come upon doublet and triplet passages. As these discrepancies are most noticeable in the creation and flood stories, this is where we will begin our analysis.
The more popular creation account found in the first chapter of Genesis is the one written by the author P. In his account, he provides a very rigid timeline covering a course of six days on the creation of the earth’s contents. Genesis 2:4 begins a more relaxed creation account by J, thus there’s a repetition of the story with several different details this trip around.
According to the popular P version, God produced the animals before he created Adam (Genesis 1:25-27). However, J says just the opposite. By his account, God first created Adam and then produced the animals so that Adam wouldn’t be alone. Unable to comply with God’s request to find an animal that would be sexually pleasing to him, Adam is put to sleep so that God can remove one of Adam’s ribs to build Eve (Genesis 2:18-25). To further complicate matters, P completely ignores the story of the rib and implies that Adam and Eve were made simultaneously after the animals were assembled (Genesis 1:27).
Needless to say, both creation accounts cannot be true since they directly contradict one another. Apologists will often claim, without substantiation, that segments of each story were not written chronologically. As is the case with all contradictions, they begin with the erroneous premise of the Bible being perfect and mold the facts to fit this belief. When you read the passages from an impartial point of view, however, you’ll understand how unlikely it would be for their proposal to match the truth. It’s highly illogical to assert that the animals came before Adam when the author mentions that God created them following the realization of the man’s loneliness. Be cautious of the NIV in this passage, as it disingenuously slips “had” into verse 19 in order to alter the verb tense into past perfect. No such tense shift is present in the original Hebrew language.
The redactor interwove the two flood stories even tighter than the creation myths, often flip-flopping between authors after each verse. P once again manages to write the more popular version of the story in which the animals board the ark as a couple, male and female (Genesis 6:19, 7:8-9, 7:15). On the other hand, J records the number of clean animals taken as “sevens” and the number of unclean animals as “twos” (Genesis 7:2). While this may seem like a change of plan or further clarification to those who believe Moses wrote these commands, the more respectable document hypothesis allows us to see contrasting versions of the same legend.
After the flood, P purports the sons of Noah traveling in separate directions because of their different languages (Genesis 10), yet we see that the world still has only one language when construction begins on the Tower of Babel. The needlessly agoraphobic God divides the one and only world language only after becoming fearful of being spotted from this tower (Genesis 11:1-8). The Pentateuch authors provide us with two completely different explanations for the world’s many languages.
What Is God Like?
The drastic alteration of God’s personality is the quintessential biblical contradiction. His attitude goes from that of a vocal, evil, and vengeful god in the Old Testament to a silent, benevolent, and forgiving god in the New Testament. It’s ridiculous to imagine a perfect, eternal being undergoing this 180-degree makeover at some arbitrary and unverifiable point long in the past. The real reason behind this change is the Bible’s allowance of representation by no less than two dozen authors living centuries apart. Since fallible authors void of divine inspiration should have variant perspectives on the nature of God, we should not be surprised when we encounter the anomalous behavior change between the two testaments. Still, this doesn’t explain why people were applying this new personality to the Hebrew god at the start of the Common Era.
The likely answer to this riddle may be related to the life cycle that all ancient religions have undergone. Belief systems must evolve with their followers or face extinction. Perhaps people grew tired of the threats made in the Pentateuch and felt there were no true rewards or consequences for their actions. Out of their desires for change, they may have created the Christian notion of Heaven. By this point, someone obviously grasped the notion that you could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
As I’ve said many times before, we have conflicting opinions on the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence of God. Hosea would have us believe that God’s knowledge is limited: “They made princes: and I knew it not” (Hosea 8:4). Pentateuch author J would have us believe that God cannot be everywhere: “And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord” (Genesis 4:16). The author of Hebrews would have us believe that there are some things even God cannot do: “It was impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18). These passages fly in the face of everything that the Bible and contemporary Christians claim about God’s infinite qualities.
Similarly, an omnipotent creator would have unlimited power. However, consider this ages old question: “Can God make a burrito hot enough that he can’t eat it?” This might seem silly at first, but it demonstrates a fundamental flaw in the existence of an omnipotent being. If he can eat any burrito he makes, he can’t make one hot enough; thus, he’s not omnipotent. If he makes one too hot to eat, he can’t bear the product of his own creation; thus, he’s not omnipotent. As I hope you realize from this illustration, an omnipotent being cannot exist. There can be no power strong enough to make squared circles, duplicated unique items, or any other interesting paradoxes that you can imagine.
What about the human qualities of fury and fatigue? Can God experience these feelings? With the new biblical insight that you should have gained over the past few chapters, it should be immediately obvious that God has the capacity to become quite upset at times. Nahum provides us with a nice example: “God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revengeth, and is furious” (1:2). Even so, Isaiah unambiguously claims that God told him “fury is not in me” (27:4). If fury is not in him, how can he experience fury? Even though it may be superficially obvious that God wouldn’t experience fatigue, it wouldn’t be wise to jump to such a conclusion. According to Jeremiah, God says, “I am weary with repenting” (15:6). According to Isaiah, however, “The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary” (40:28). Either God can experience fatigue or not. Either God can experience fury or not. Nahum, Isaiah, and Jeremiah simply presented their contrasting, divinely uninspired, human interpretations of their god. In the process, they inevitably end up contradicting one another.
How about those who call out to this mysterious being? Will he always save them? Most Christians believe that God will acknowledge these cries for salvation because most Christians only read the New Testament. After all, Paul proclaims, “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13). Contrast that statement with the one given by Micah: “Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but he will not hear them” (3:4). In other words, Paul claims that God will save anyone who calls out for the Lord. However, Micah provides a specific situation in which Paul’s unconditional statement wouldn’t apply. Sure, one can try to assert that Paul was referring to the time before judgment while Micah was referring to the time after judgment, but this doesn’t validate Paul’s statement. He plainly tells us that whosoever calls to God will be saved. If we only had Paul’s statement to go on, and we were given the scenario of people crying out to the Lord as described in Micah, we could only assume that God would save them. Such an assumption would be contradictory to what Micah claims. If Paul was simply being careless with his diction, consider what other important information he might have neglected to mention.
God’s Ambiguous Life Guidelines
Is it permissible to swear when making a promise? Pentateuch author D says we should “fear the Lord thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name” (Deuteronomy 10:20). However, Jesus instructs his followers to “swear not at all” (Matthew 5:34). An apologist will typically claim that the words of Jesus override all divergent information, but this line of reasoning fails to harmonize the contradiction. Even worse, this proposal would result in Christians ignoring large portions of God’s perfect law (Psalms 19:7). In case you’re wondering, both verses refer to taking an oath, not a degradation of ethical language.
Should we be happy when our enemies suffer? Common decency might lead us to have some sympathy for our adversaries when matters drastically worsen for them, as does the good Proverb 24:17: “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth.” However, we don’t need to look far to find portions of the Bible distant from the concept of decency. Psalms 58:10 speaks of a time when the righteous will rejoice after God lashes his vengeance on the wicked. I’m not sure I understand the Bible’s position on the issue. Am I correct to assume that God doesn’t want us to rejoice when our enemies fall unless he’s the one doing the punishing? If I didn’t know better, I’d say the Christian god could be quite hypocritical.
Are we supposed to pray in public or private? Most churches observe public prayer in accordance with the author of Timothy, who says, “I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands” (1 Timothy 2:8). Okay, but Jesus specifically told his followers to refrain from this behavior. “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” (Matthew 6:5-6). Granted, the people who pray in church aren’t doing so just to let others see them, but they’re still violating a direct order given by Jesus to avoid prayer in public. Jesus was clear in his desire of not wanting his true believers to have commonalties with the hypocrites who pray in public for counterfeit reasons. Even so, Christians continue to pray in church. Do the words in Timothy now trump the lessons taught by Jesus Christ, or do Christians not fully read the Bible?
Has God declared it permissible to be wealthy? Psalms 112:1-3 says, “Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. His seed shall be mighty upon the earth: the generation of the upright shall be blessed. Wealth and riches shall be in his house.” Considering that one obtains these riches for fearing God and following his commandments, it’s safe to say that these verses look favorably upon those who earn their wealth in this manner. On the other hand, Jesus says, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25). Why would God bless the righteous with riches when it’s impossible for rich people to go to Heaven? Yet again, the perfect Bible fails to be consistent with its moral guidelines.
Does God save his followers according to their faith or by the works they do while on earth? This is a fair question and one deserving of an honest answer if we’re to do what’s necessary to please God. As there are several contradictions on this matter, let’s look at only one example. The letter to the Ephesians says, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (2:8-9). In other words, we are saved by our faith and not through our works. Compare that with this passage found in the book of James: “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?…Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone” (2:14-17). Now, works are essential requirements for entering into Heaven. While Christians feel that they should satisfy both requirements to be assured of a spot in the afterlife, this measure doesn’t sufficiently solve the contradiction. Again, two fallible authors yield two contrasting viewpoints.
Should we love the members of our family? Of course we should, right? Jesus says, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). In other words, Jesus tells his listeners to hate their families and themselves before they follow him. Contrast that surprising declaration with “honour thy father and thy mother” and John’s words: “he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen” (Exodus 20:12 and 1 John 4:20, respectively). What about Jesus’ famous command that we “love one another” (John 15:17)? I wouldn’t have an answer for these discrepancies without modifying the obvious connotations of the passages. Once again, imperfect authors provide contradicting guidelines. It should be obvious that Jesus’ behavior in this passage is totally opposite of what most people have perceived for centuries. His statement simply goes against the way decent people are raised to respect their families.
Since passages like this are extremely disturbing to apologists, they try to find ways to alter the meanings in order for the Christian Jesus blueprint to remain unbroken. Luke 14:26 is certainly no exception. When discussing the matter with semi-informed opposition, you’ll often hear the assertion that the original Greek word for hate, miseo, can also mean “to love less than.” In other words, these Christians believe that Jesus said to love your family less than you love God. While this might be consistent with orthodox belief, you can be positive of one thing: there’s no truth to this interpretation, whatsoever. No other contemporaneous records, including the other forty New Testament uses, ever suggested miseo could have this proposed definition. In fact, miseo is an extreme form of hatred, not your every day disgust. Nonetheless, Christians truly believe this proposal because they, once again, start with the faulty premise of an ideological Jesus and only accept the most likely interpretation consistent with this belief. This line of rationale lies far outside the bounds of reality.
Did the arrival of Jesus serve to repeal the Laws of Moses? For those who like this justification for ignoring the Old Testament, Jesus provides a rebuttal: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:17-19). Jesus clearly instructs his followers to maintain their observance of the old laws. Furthermore, if the Old Testament “law of the Lord is perfect” (Psalms 19:7), for what conceivable reason would it ever need an overhaul?
The apologists’ claim that the old law has since collapsed seemingly has no merit with the Bible. Nevertheless, the author of Hebrews says, “But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second” (8:6-7). Now, this writer claims that the Laws of Moses given by God did have faults and require a replacement in the form of a new covenant. If someone argues that the Psalm is no longer valid because its self-proclamation fell under the Laws of Moses, an imperfect set of guidelines, this person has just replaced the contradiction with a blatant error committed by the Psalmist.
The Background Of Jesus Christ
The ability of the Bible to provide a consistent background for its main character astonishingly begins to falter even before Jesus came into the world. The genealogies provided in the books of Matthew and Luke yield an excellent example of an error avoided by one author but overlooked by another. Because of this human mistake, the Bible ends up containing yet another contradiction.
In the first chapter of Matthew, we see the ancestry of Jesus spanning from King David to Joseph, Mary’s husband. The complication with this genealogy is the absolute lack of a blood relationship between Joseph and Jesus. As the story goes, Jesus, a man without an earthly father, was born from a virgin impregnated by God. If the Matthew genealogy is true, Jesus was not a descendant of David. Consequently, he could not be the Messiah allegedly prophesied to arise from the line of David (Psalm 132:11). As you should expect, this was obviously not the author’s intent. Seeing as how the author of Luke probably realized that tracing Jesus’ lineage this way would be a blunder, he created his own genealogy passing through Heli. Even though Luke is specific in stating that Heli is Joseph’s father, I have given Christians the benefit of the doubt that he is Joseph’s father-in-law instead of a second father. To very little surprise, Heli and Mary just so happen to be descendants of King David as well (Luke 3:23-38). The Bible has now begun to insult the intelligence of its audience.
Accounts also differ from Matthew and Luke on when Jesus was born. The more popular account of Matthew has King Herod alive at the time of Jesus’ birth (Chapter 2). From several historical sources, we know Herod’s reign ended in 4 BCE with his violent death. Thus, according to Matthew, Jesus must have been born in or before 4 BCE. The date later designated as Jesus’ birth is misplaced, but there’s nothing biblically wrong about that. However, Luke says that Mary was still with child at the time Quirinius was conducting a census as Governor of Syria (2:1-5). According to meticulously kept Roman history, Quirinius couldn’t have carried out this census until at least 6 CE. Thus, according to Luke, Jesus must have been born in or after 6 CE. In order for the two accounts to be harmonious, Jesus had to be born before 4 BCE and after 6 CE: a feat impossible even for a supernatural being. The two accounts provide a ten-year discrepancy in need of a difficult resolution.
To rectify this insurmountable problem, Christians have desperately proposed, without justification, that Quirinius was a governor twice. They say this earlier phantom governorship was held sometime before 4 BCE in order for Luke to be consistent with Matthew. Here’s what we know from Roman history: Quintilius was governor from 6 BCE to 3 BCE; Saturninus was governor from 9 BCE to 6 BCE; Titius was governor from 12 BCE to 9 BCE; Quirinius, the governor in question, didn’t obtain consulship until 12 BCE, making him ineligible to hold Syria’s office of governor before that time; no one ever held the governorship of Syria twice; Josephus and Tacitus, the two most important historians from the early Common Era, never mentioned Quirinius holding the post twice; and there would be no reason for Quirinius to conduct a census prior to 6 CE because Judea wasn’t under Roman control until that time. A few contributions of irrelevant evidence and several wild explanations claim to rectify this obvious contradiction, each one through its own unique method, but they’re all nothing more than the most outrageous “how-it-could-have-been-scenarios.” The two accounts contradict greatly over the time Jesus was allegedly born.
The Death Of Jesus Christ
Shortly before Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter’s master tells him that he will choose to disavow any knowledge of Jesus on three occasions. After these events manifest, a rooster will crow to remind him of Jesus’ words. In Matthew, Luke, and John, Jesus warns Peter that all three of his denials will take place before the rooster crows (26:34, 22:34, and 13:38, respectively). In these three accounts, the situation unfolds exactly how Jesus predicted. The rooster crows after, and only after, Peter’s third denial is made (26:69-75, 22:56-61, and 18:17-27, respectively). However, the details are different in Mark. Here, we see Jesus warning Peter that the rooster will crow after his first denial and crow again after his third denial (14:30). Of course, this is exactly how the events play out (14:66-72). This is an undeniable contradiction without a rational explanation. If Mark is correct, the rooster crowed after the first denial even though Jesus said, in the other three Gospels, that it wouldn’t crow until after the third denial. If these three Gospels are accurate, Mark is wrong because the rooster could not have crowed until after Peter’s third denial.
In addition to the problem of the crowing rooster, the identities of the people interrogating Peter over his relationship with Jesus differ among the four Gospels. In Matthew, the subjects were a damsel, another maid, and the crowd. In Mark, the subjects were a maid, the same maid again, and the crowd. In Luke, the subjects were a maid, a man, and another man. In John, the subjects were a damsel, the crowd, and a servant of the high priest. While it may be possible to justify a harmonization among two, possibly three, accounts, there’s no possibility in fitting the four reports into one cohesive tale.
Once Jesus was summoned before Pontius Pilate, Matthew claims that Jesus “answered him to never a word” (27:13-14). John, however, records a lengthy dialogue between the two men (18:33-37). Apologists often assert that John was speaking of a different interrogation than the one reported in Matthew, but this meritless claim still doesn’t resolve the discrepancy. Matthew unambiguously states that Jesus never answered to Pilate. If Jesus never answered to Pilate, the discussion recorded in John could have never taken place.
On the way to his crucifixion, Jesus burdened his own cross according to John (19:17). The other three Gospel writers tell us that a man named Simon of Cyrene carried it (Matthew 27:32, Mark 15:21, Luke 23:36). While it’s true that both may have carried the cross at some point, as many apologists claim, what are the odds that all four authors would foul up by omitting this important detail?
The four Gospels also differ on what they purport was written on the sign above the cross. Matthew 27:37: This is Jesus the King of the Jews. Mark 15:26: The King of the Jews. Luke 23:38: This is the King of the Jews. John 19:19: Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews. Mark also claims that the thieves who were executed with Jesus insulted him (15:32), but Luke says that one thief insulted Jesus while the other begged his forgiveness to secure a place in Heaven (23:39-42). In addition, the Gospel writers also differ on what they imply were Jesus’ last words. Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Luke 23:46: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” John 19:30: “It is finished.” Furthermore, the four contradicting authors made similar errors and/or omissions with regard to the number of women and angels visiting Jesus’ tomb following his burial. I would never claim that minor variations in detail invalidate a story, but you must agree that writers inspired by an omnipotent deity should perform a little better than they have up to this point. These discrepancies obviously arise from several decades of playing the telephone game.
It’s All In The Details
Has anyone ever seen God? According to the Pentateuch, God made an appearance in human form over a dozen times in front of several people, such as Abraham, Jacob, and Moses (e.g. Genesis 12:7, Genesis 32:30, and Exodus 33:11, respectively). However, Jesus and John claim that no one has ever seen God face to face (John 6:46 and John 1:18, respectively).
Was Ahaziah eighteen years younger or two years older than his father (2 Kings 8:26 and 2 Chronicles 21:20-22:2, respectively)? The Bible says that a man was two years older than his father, yet Christians still parade it as perfect! Perhaps these apologists only read the NIV translation of 2 Chronicles, which deceitfully alters Ahaziah’s age from forty-two to twenty-two with only a minor footnote. Even more astounding than this perplexity is the exceedingly unfortunate Saul who died via four different methods: suicide by sword (1 Samuel 31:4-5), death by an Amalekite (2 Samuel 1:8-10), death by a Philistine (2 Samuel 21:12), and struck down by God (1 Chronicles 10:13-14).
How did Judas die after betraying Jesus? The popular account of Matthew is that he hung himself (27:5). However, there’s a lesser-known account of how he died in Acts. “Now [Judas] purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out” (1:18). I’ll openly admit that the common explanation proposed for this contradiction is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. Evidently, this is what took place: Judas hung himself from an extremely elevated tree branch in the field, the branch snapped, he did a flip to fall head first, and his body exploded upon impact. If someone were to add “how-it-could-have-been-scenario” in the dictionary, the editor would surely have to consider this example for inclusion.
There’s even a contradiction related to how the field was purchased. Matthew says Judas took the money that he received as a reward for surrendering Jesus and threw it into a temple. The priests within the temple then used the money to buy a field for burying strangers (Matthew 27:5-7). Remember, however, Acts claims that Judas, not the priests, was the one responsible for buying the field. The most likely reason for this blaring contradiction is a lack of one author’s access to the contrasting records of the other. Had something lifted this assumed restriction, we could be reasonably certain that this contradiction would disappear.
In the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus sends his disciples on a journey and tells them to take nothing but their staves and sandals (6:8-9). In Luke, Jesus says to take nothing, provides a list of items that the disciples are to leave behind, and includes staves on the list (9:3). In Matthew, Jesus reaffirms his desire for the disciples to leave everything at home, including both shoes and staves (10:10). Such a seemingly inconsequential detail is important for one reason only: demonstrating yet again that the Bible is a fallible record scribed by humans, not the perfect word of an eternal god.
Here are a few more impossible puzzles for you to solve if you ever get bored: “No man hath ascended up to heaven” (John 3:13) versus “Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven” (2 Kings 2:11); “And one kid of the goats for a sin offering: to make an atonement for you” (Numbers 29:5) versus “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4); “If a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him” (1 Corinthians 11:14) versus “He shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair on his head grow” (Numbers 6:5); “The earth abideth for ever” (Ecclesiastes 1:4) versus “Heaven and earth shall pass away” (Matthew 24:35); “And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go and number Israel” (2 Samuel 24:1) versus “And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel” (1 Chronicles 21:1); “Walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes” (Ecclesiastes 11:9) versus “Seek not after your own heart and your own eyes” (Numbers 15:39); “That Christ should suffer, and he should be the first that should rise from the dead” (Acts 26:23) versus Lazarus rising from the dead months ago (John 11:43) and the previous resurrection miracles of Elijah centuries in the past. Did the fig tree cursed by Jesus wither immediately (Matthew 21:19-20) or overnight (Mark 11:13-21)? Did Jehoiachin reign three months and ten days when he was eight (2 Chronicles 36:9) or three months when he was eighteen (2 Kings 24:8)?
“Even The Stuff That Contradicts The Other Stuff”
This chapter is but a small sample of possible biblical incongruities. God’s holy word contains contradictions of every kind from cover to cover within accounts of important events, rules for worship, how to get to Heaven, the nature of God, historical records of birth and rule, and the teachings of Jesus. Realizing the existence of such contradictions would destroy the ideal quality of the book many set out to explain by any means necessary. An impartial ear can often translate common justifications for these problems as “the Bible says something it doesn’t mean” or “the Bible means something it doesn’t say.” These dishonest and inconsistent apologists feel that as long as they put a nonsense scenario out there that’s capable of satisfying the contradiction, it’s up to everyone else to prove it wrong. This is a very dishonest and implausible attempt at holding the Bible to be perfect. Even worse, it doesn’t work because anyone can do that to any book. If all else fails, they often brush aside unexplainable predicaments as “the incomprehensible and mysterious ways of God.”
The contradictions exist for a reason. First of all, as I’ve said so many times before, there was no true divine inspiration from God guiding the authors to write their material. Each person wrote through his own limited interpretations and experiences because no one honestly expected the collection of books to grow in popularity to their current state. In addition, no one had any way of knowing which books were going to be enshrined in the Bible and which ones were destined to face omission. It would have been too daunting of a task for the authors to check every historical record for contradictions with their compositions. Instead, it’s likely that most authors simply tried to keep a steady theme set by preceding authors. As time progressed, the new generation of authors obviously sensed that the Israelites needed a new God. As the Gospel writers were perhaps aware of a growing disdain for the threats from the cruel god of the Old Testament, they set out to create a new one in their own image.
ABSURDITY AT ITS FINEST
No reader can truthfully deny that multitudes of curious occurrences are readily observable in the Bible. To a Christian believer, these strange events are nothing more than the mysterious ways of God. To a freethinker, the alleged phenomena are an indicative subset of the widespread superstitious beliefs held by our ancestors. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ridiculous statements made by the authors of the Bible. Whether you enjoy reading about plumb lines or talking donkeys, the Christian religion carries more than its fair share of absurdities. In fact, some of the biblical reports are illogical enough to disqualify explanations through supernatural means! As was the case for contradictions in the previous chapter, I forced myself to limit this overview to a small fraction of those eligible for this frank discussion. It’s my hope that this chapter will provide additional fuel for thought in the fight against religious conditioning.
Highly Suspect
Before we leap into the solid cases for biblical absurdity, we’ll begin by discussing some quite comical passages that could possibly have some far removed explanation for their content. Let’s first consider the sex life of Abraham and Sarah. Because they’re upset over failing to give birth to any children, God has pity on them and tells Sarah that they will soon have their wish granted. God maintains his promise, and Sarah eventually has a child. Soon after, Abraham finds another wife and has six more children with her. Going solely on this information, these events don’t seem too unlikely if we ignore the divine intervention. However, there’s an extremely questionable part of the story that wasn’t mentioned. Sarah was close to one hundred years old when she gave birth, and Abraham was well over the century mark (Genesis 18:11-15, 21:1-2, 25:1-2). Even worse, Noah was five hundred years old when he had three sons (Genesis 5:32).
The Devil finds God one day, and they thoroughly analyze Job, a wealthy and righteous man who is essentially perfect in God’s eyes. God points out Job’s good behavior to Satan, but Satan disagrees with him and says that Job would curse the name of God if all his possessions were taken away. The bet is on, and God permits Satan to do anything to Job as long as he doesn’t permanently harm him. Satan, whose location was previously unknown to the all-knowing God, once again leaves the presence of the omnipresent Lord (Job 1:1-12). God evidently stands idle while the Devil torments Job by stealing his possessions, slaughtering his livestock, murdering his family, killing his workers, and afflicting him with diseases. Withstanding even the most tumultuous of misfortunes, Job remains loyal to God and doesn’t curse him. I’m honestly not sure what other details could be added to this story to increase its fairy-tale connotations. Why does God feel the need to punish a respectable person in order to prove a point to Satan, and why doesn’t Satan just accept the statements of an omniscient being? Since Job was written around the same time as the Pentateuch, you should now be able to understand where the absurdity in this myth might originate.
While Moses was perched atop Mt. Sinai waiting for God to deliver his commandments, he goes without food and water for forty days and forty nights (Exodus 34:28). I can’t think of a justification for including such a statement unless the author was unaware of anyone ever suffering from dehydration. The author, in this case, could have thought that Moses went through serious agony during those forty days but eventually surmised there was no permanent risk to his health. While going without food for forty days and surviving is feasible for those who condition themselves to do so, we know today that there’s no realistic chance of survival without water for this extended period. Most people cannot survive five days under such grueling circumstances, while fourteen days without water would certainly weed out even the most conditioned participants. We should obviously file a report of a man going forty days without food and water under “highly suspect.”
God laid down a strangely curious law when he declared that any man with damaged or missing genitals, as well as any man who doesn’t know the names of his ancestors to ten generations, cannot enter into religious congregations (Deuteronomy 23:1-2). First, I don’t see how anyone would know another person had a genital abnormality unless someone literally screened the visitors at the door. As for the burden of proving an ancestry, I doubt that any Hebrew was able to keep accurate and truthful records thousands of years ago. How could anyone indisputably prove that he knew his family line that far back? What was to prevent someone from just conjuring up some names so that he could attend worship? If no one knew this person’s ancestry, no one could disprove him. Wouldn’t the omniscient God realize this futile law wasn’t going to work? More importantly, why is God thoroughly preoccupied with the condition of a man’s genitals? I know I’ve mentioned it before, but the whole matter is patently asinine. This is one of the many absurd rules that Big Brother allegedly distributes to keep his society in order. Likewise, instead of including undeniable proof for the book’s authenticity, he tells us not to wear a piece of clothing made of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19). These examples of God’s foolish rules will have to serve for now in order to keep the topic at a reasonable length.
It’s a safe wager that the majority of the free world has heard the tale of David slaying the towering Goliath. Most people commonly refer to Goliath as a giant, but a more specific height is given. The Bible lists him at six cubits and a span, which is approximately 9’9” in our modern measurement system. If we were to use known data to compare the rarity of Goliath’s height with other individuals, we would find that there may have never been, or ever will be, anyone within two or three inches of his extraordinary eminence. The verifiable record currently stands at 8’11”, though the record holder was anything but a robust warrior capable of supporting a 125-pound brass mail (1 Samuel 17:4-5). This monster would have been nothing less than a unique visual spectacle. If the tale of David slaying Goliath is a derivative of some true historical underdog overcoming great odds, wouldn’t you find it probable that the giant’s height was romanticized by fibbing humans until it reached tall-tale proportions?
Solomon was supposedly “wiser than all men” (1 Kings 4:31). In fact, his wisdom exceeded “the sand that is on the sea shore” (1 Kings 4:29). As wise as this man presumably was, “his wives turned away his heart after other gods” (1 Kings 11:4). I can certainly contemplate a few hypothetical factors that might lead an intelligent person to join a cult promising a better life on a far away planet; I cannot imagine any reason why the wisest man in the region could be led away from what is supposed to be the true god, especially since this being is in direct communication with him. It doesn’t make the least bit of sense unless we consider that his infinite wisdom may have told him something about the belief system in question.
As you well know, a rather cartoonish portrayal of God is offered throughout the Old Testament. However, we still haven’t fully covered the absurdity of God’s presence. Most poets, prophets, and historians certainly believed him to be a human-like personage. God shoots flames from his mouth and smoke from his nostrils like a mean ole dragon (Psalms 18:8). In fact, God has eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth, a finger, a hand, a back, loins, and feet just to name a few of his physical human attributes. God supposedly made man in his own image, but why would an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent spirit have human qualities that provide us with finite abilities? For instance, why does God need feet to walk if he’s eternally present? He roars and shouts (Jeremiah 25:30), loves the aroma of burning animals (Genesis 8:21), and wants the fat from animal sacrifices (Leviticus 3:16). God even seems a tad jealous when a woman leaves his word for other men (Hosea 2:7-13). Essentially, the Christian god is “perfect” with imperfect attributes. It’s a bit too coincidental for my liking that God made humans in his image when we can more rationally say the exact opposite. This deity isn’t benevolent; it’s absurd.
The book of Acts tells the reader a story in which a gathered crowd simultaneously understands all the speaking disciples in every language (Acts 2:1-6). While that sounds quite deranged, it’s not the point I intend to make because apologists often rely on the divine miracle fallback. When the men in the audience accused the speakers of drunkenness, Peter reminded the crowd of what Joel understood God to say. “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God” (Acts 2:17). Peter’s speech goes on to explain how unusual events were to be expected when the world was about to end. Thus, he was obviously under the impression that they were living in the final days on earth. Even so, we’re still here. It’s hardly likely that “the last days” have been the past 2000 years when the earth was supposedly only 4000 years old at the time Peter made this prediction.
James argues that it didn’t rain anywhere on the entire planet for three and a half years because Elias (Elijah) prayed for a drought (James 5:17). There’s absolutely zero evidence that a prayer answerable only by supernatural means has ever been accommodated. It’s highly unlikely that it ceased to rain over the whole earth for that long, and it’s even more unlikely that this unusual weather phenomenon would come about because a mortal man prayed for it to take place. The lack of rain would have caused untold devastation by instigating mass dehydration in all living organisms. Of course, no such extreme drought was recorded consistently around the world at any point in history. There’s a good reason for this discrepancy: the unverifiable drought didn’t happen.
The Greatest Show On Earth
Among all of God’s strange and ridiculous regulations, a large portion involves animals. We can find two examples making little to no sense in Deuteronomy. First, God doesn’t want anyone to boil a young goat in its mother’s milk (14:21). If you’re going to boil a young goat in milk, is it that much more deviant to do it in its mother’s? Why is an eternal, omnipotent god concerned with such trivial and outdated matters? This god also doesn’t want you to plow a field with an ox and a donkey on the same yoke (22:10). God, of course, gives no reason for this useless regulation. Instead of making certain that his holy word included clear abolishments of slavery and rape so that millions of his creations wouldn’t needlessly suffer, God decides to set idiotic rules for plowing fields and boiling goats. This should provoke indignation from any moralistically reasonable person, regardless of religious conviction.
In the beginning, when God allegedly created the animals, they were designed to consume plants rather than meat (Genesis 1:30). Even so, there’s certainly no reason to believe that the ancestors of present-day predators survived off an herbivore diet. The food chain is in harmony because of the fluctuations occurring due to a rising and falling cycle of predator and prey populations. Withdrawing that relationship would throw the chain into unknown chaos. Furthermore, we have fossil records of these animals purported to be herbivores. Their equipped teeth were intended to initiate and facilitate the digestion of meat, not plants. Six thousand years ago, just like today, many species could not survive solely on plants. In addition, parasites require blood from living hosts. Blood is neither a plant nor a meat. Suggesting that parasites also made their daily meals from plants is increasingly absurd. Science demonstrates that it’s impossible for some species to survive on plants, yet the erroneous Bible claims this testable statement isn’t true. Do Christians expect everyone to believe that the Bible is correct regardless of what it says?
The prophet Isaiah informs us that a cockatrice, a mythical creature able to kill its victim with a casual glance, will arise from a serpent (Isaiah 14:29). What tangible evidence do we have to believe that a creature with this incredible ability has ever existed? Again, the Bible provides stories that sound like something straight out of a fairy tale. While some animals are certainly capable of killing their prey by biting or strangling them, a look has no anticipated scientific capacity to kill another creature. While there may be some type of alternative mechanism of action for the attack, such as venom sprayed through the eyes, it wouldn’t be due to the act of looking. The cockatrice, unicorn, and dragon are examples of mythical creatures in the Bible that fail to leave any reliable evidence for their existence.
In John’s Revelation dream, which is conveyed to be an imminent and realistic future event, he sees crown-wearing locusts with faces of men, hair of women, teeth of lions, tails of scorpions, and wings sounding like chariots. These locusts also adorn iron breastplates in preparation for battle (9:7-10). Draw your own conclusions.
Like mutated locusts, talking animals aren’t uncommon in the Bible. Everyone should remember the talking serpent tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:1), but there’s an even more hilarious example of an atypical animal. In this instance, a man named Balaam is riding along on his donkey. When the donkey sits down on him twice, Balaam gives it a beating for its rebellion. When the donkey notices a murderous angel in their path, it sits down for a third time. Of course, Balaam delivers an additional flogging upon the donkey’s body. The donkey then asks Balaam, “What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?” Yes, the donkey argues with its master! Then, Balaam, who does not appear to be the least bit surprised that his ride is questioning his motives, decides to engage in a debate with the donkey by claiming that it mocked him by sitting down. Furthermore, he informs his donkey that it would have already been dead if he had a sword nearby. The donkey then outsmarts him by pointing out that he has always let his master ride him but never asked to ride his master. Thoroughly outsmarted and outclassed, Balaam then concedes defeat in his debate with the donkey (Numbers 22:27-30). Seeing as how no concluding comment that I could make here would do this outdated and obtuse blunder justice, we’ll move on.
Health And Knowledge
Is the Bible a reliable guide for maintaining good health and expanding our knowledge? Within 2 Chronicles, we learn of Asa contracting an unspecified foot disease. “Yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians” (16:12). The passage clearly displays a negative attitude toward Asa for trusting doctors more than God. According to the author of this passage, we are to believe that God is a better source than a physician for curing our ailments.
Recall the prayer experiment proposed all the way back in The Psychology Hidden Behind Christianity. God does not have a higher success rate than physicians for curing diseases. Even so, the Bible wholeheartedly endorses prayer as the more powerful force. Unfortunately, many smaller denominations of Christianity secretly follow this “no physician” guideline. It doesn’t work, and that’s why it’s illegal to enforce it on minors in most of the civilized world. There has never been any scientific study indicating an act of God has facilitated a recovery from sickness. A person will surely die from a fatal ailment if they refuse medical treatment, regardless of whether or not this individual prays to any god. Even so, most Christians believe praying to their god will prompt a divine intervention that has some unknown and immeasurable positive effect on the outcome. While prayer and faith may comfort a patient enough to facilitate recovery, the acts of the divine are worth nothing if no one’s paying attention. Such a misguided belief is blindly illogical, patently absurd, and without a place in reality.
The author of the first letter to Timothy advises his reader to drink wine instead of water (5:23). While researchers in the medical profession currently believe that alcohol is beneficial in moderation, consuming enough wine to remain hydrated for the rest of Timothy’s life would certainly destroy his liver after a very brief period. Of course, the author was unaware of the biological effects of alcohol on the liver’s filtration system because he wasn’t divinely inspired with advanced physiological knowledge. Had he been cognizant of such information, this horrible recommendation would have never made it into the Bible.
Briefly returning our attention to John’s dream in Revelation, we learn of an angel who holds out a book for John to eat. He consumes it and describes the taste to be as “sweet as honey” even though it made his stomach bitter (Revelation 10:10). Like replacing water with alcohol, eating a book is not a healthy activity. Another book eater, Ezekiel, recorded so many fantastic experiences, I had to give him his own section. We’ll discuss his personal endeavors in a moment.
One of the Proverbs offers the universal answer for any nonsensical statements found within the Bible. “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” (3:5). The author really went the extra mile to cover all his bases, but the problem with this advice serving as a fallback answer for all discrepancies is that any religion can invoke such an alibi in order to divert attention away from its flaws. This method doesn’t automatically dissolve the problems of any text, including the Bible. Simply put, a book isn’t correct because the book says so. Accepting this fallacious reasoning, ignoring common knowledge, and refusing to examine what might very well be the truth creates the prototypical mindless sheep.
Paul uses himself as an example for the mindless sheep when he tells his readers that he doesn’t want to know anything except Jesus (1 Corinthians 2:2). “That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:5). “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8). In other words, blindly follow whatever the Bible says even when overwhelming evidence arises to the contrary. I’m sorry, but blind faith should never trump the observable world. Even so, billions of people have lived in similar ignorance and subsequently died clinging to all sorts of myths.
God’s Necromancers
Moses and Aaron are apparently well known throughout the region for the magic tricks that God teaches them. God demonstrates to Moses how to cast his rod to the ground in order to make it become a serpent. The transformation frightens him, but the serpent becomes a rod again when he grabs it by the tail. God also shows Moses how to make his hand become leprous. He can reverse the spell by touching the leprous hand to his body (Exodus 4:2-7).
When the hour arrives for Moses and Aaron to impress the Egyptian Pharaoh, they perform the rod trick. However, the Pharaoh’s magicians are able to follow suit by transforming their rods into serpents. Aaron’s serpent rod then eats all the other serpent rods (Exodus 7:10-12). In a second attempt to outperform the Pharaoh’s magicians, Moses and Aaron transform an entire river into blood by touching it with their rods. Again, the Pharaoh’s magicians are able to replicate the feat. Moses and Aaron, refusing to give up, induce an aggregation of frogs to emerge from the waters and occupy the land. Yet again, the Pharaoh’s magicians demonstrate the same gimmick. In a fourth attempt to demonstrate God’s overwhelming power over Egypt, Moses and Aaron are able to create lice out of dust. Since the creation of life ex nihilo proves too difficult for the magicians, they concede that Moses and Aaron have the true power of God. As an encore, the victorious couple produces plagues of flies, cattle death, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the eventual killing of all the firstborn male children previously mentioned in The Darker Side Of God (Exodus 7-11).
Even after the unprecedented accomplishments in Egypt, Moses still has a few tricks remaining up his sleeve. He’s able to satisfy the water requirements of millions by tapping a rock with his rod (Exodus 17:6). Moses also accomplished the construction of a serpent statue capable of preventing people from dying of snakebite, provided the victims were looking at it while bitten (Numbers 21:6-7). He even supports Joshua’s army in its war against Amalek by simply keeping his hand aloft. Whenever Moses raises his arm, Joshua gets the better of Amalek in the battle; whenever his hand falls from fatigue, the fates reverse. Eventually, Moses begins to rest his arm by propping it on a rock. This ingenious tactic enables Joshua to defeat Amalek (Exodus 17:11-13). I’m not sure what possible impact that Moses raising his hand could have on a truly historical battle.
Elijah obtained his meals from ravens that “brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening” (1 Kings 17:6). Why would ravens do this for him, and how does one go about training these birds to perform such a feat? While there’s never been any indication a flock of ravens would bring food to a human on a regular twelve-hour basis, this is the man who caused a three-year drought by simply praying to God.
Elijah’s successor, Elisha, is yet another biblical wizard ordained with magnificent powers. He’s able to separate the Jordan River by hitting it with his cloak and correspondingly able to rejoin it by adding a pinch of salt (2 Kings 2:14-22). In addition, Elisha can make an iron axe head float in the water (2 Kings 6:6). Assuming this axe head wasn’t in a shape enabling it to float, he’s able to alter the density of iron with no assured scientific knowledge of what enables certain substances to remain above others.
Later, Elisha asks the King to take some arrows and strike the ground with them. The King does so three times, but Elisha becomes irate and says that he would have been victorious over his enemies if the ground had been struck a couple more times (2 Kings 18:19). Again, more biblical daffiness. Even after death, Elisha still isn’t finished working his magic. When a corpse is thrown into Elisha’s grave, the body jumps back to life after coming into contact with Elisha’s bones (2 Kings 18:20-21). Remember, those verse references that you see after each statement mean you can find all this nonsense in the Bible.
Ezekiel
Ezekiel, perhaps the most eccentric man in the entire Bible, claims to see four creatures in a windstorm from what some believe to be a flying saucer. Each of the four creatures had four faces (a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle) and four conjoined wings. They had human hands under the wings, one on each squared side of their bodies. The feet, which looked like those of calves, shone like brass and were attached to peglegs (Ezekiel 1:4-10). I’m not entirely sure I shouldn’t have classified this passage within the animal absurdities, but I decided to keep it here out of obvious confusion. Needless to say, evidence for such avant-garde creatures does not exist. Besides, this make-believe story fits in perfectly among the multitude of other ancient superstitions involving holy animals taking on several forms.
Ezekiel also claims to have caught a side glimpse of God. Evidently, and I use the term loosely, God is an amber metallic color above his waist, on fire down below, and completely encompassed by a rainbow (1:27-28). Ezekiel would later see God again, this time standing next to bodies, backs, hands, wings, and wheels all packed full of eyes (10:12). With all he witnessed, it’s far more likely that Ezekiel was on a hallucinogenic trip than a divine inspiration.
As I promised earlier, God gives Ezekiel a scroll to eat. He eats it and, like John, says that it tastes as sweet as honey (3:1-3). Why does God desire to inform us of his atypical obsession with asking people to eat paper? God then turns sadistic and decides to torment Ezekiel by tying him up in his house and sticking his tongue to the roof of his mouth (3:24-26). Prolonging the torture, God forces Ezekiel to lie on his left side for 390 days and his right side for 40 days in order to symbolize the number of years certain regions lived in sin (4:4-6). What enjoyment could this possibly bring to an omnipotent being? Not thoroughly satisfied with his brutal deeds thus far, God commands him to bake his bread using human dung. After Ezekiel pleads with him to reconsider, God, an omniscient being who should have already known that he was going to go with Ezekiel’s alternative plan, changes his mind and lets him use cow dung instead (4:9-15). Did God just get a sick satisfaction out of making this poor man think that he was going to have to eat something baked from his own waste?
God forces Ezekiel to shave his head and gather the hair into thirds. He burns one pile, strikes one with a knife, and scatters the last into the wind (5:1-2). What purpose could these uncanny orders serve? Ezekiel also claims that God informed him of his anger at a wall destined to be destroyed (13:15). Why is God angry at a wall? Nearer the end of his time together with God, the almighty takes Ezekiel to a location filled with bones. Here, God tells him to give an order for their assembly. Once Ezekiel follows this strange demand, the skeletons grow flesh and inhale a breath of life. Now, the skeletons are an army (37:1-14). Why do so many Christians claim to know so much about the omnibenevolent creator? God isn’t concerned with giving heartfelt rules for ethical conduct; he wants to waste time watching people play with their hair.
Jesus
While I consider exorcism more of a scientific error than an absurdity, there are definitely some aspects of Jesus’ demon-removals that fit better in this section. According to Matthew, Jesus once encountered a couple of men possessed by devils. As they ask Jesus for a cure, he approves their request by driving the devil spirits into a drove of pigs. Possessed by demons, the pigs leap off a cliff and plunge to their deaths. The witnesses in the town then turn against Jesus as a result of his decision to drive the swine insane (Matthew 8:28-34). Why would a man this powerful not just cast the spirits deep into space or somewhere else out of harm’s way? Why intentionally kill innocent animals to make people turn against you? Nevertheless, Jesus also donned his disciples with the mystic power to perform exorcisms (Mark 3:15). Even so, there has yet to be a reliable documented case containing evidence that spirits had possessed a human being. On the other hand, the science of so-called “possessions” closely resembles the effects of neurochemical imbalances.
Now let’s see what Jesus says about faith. First, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can literally cause a mountain to jump into the sea by telling it to do so (Matthew 17:20 and 21:21). Christians living today have endless faith that Jesus spoke only the truth, but no one has ever been able to move a mountain even one inch by using this incredible method. It’s absurd to think that anyone could accomplish such a remarkable feat, and it’s absurd that the son of God would assert such a false and preposterous claim. Has Jesus just demonstrated himself to be a liar? The only other possibility is that Jesus spoke of some physical component to faith that’s required to grow to the size of a mustard seed, but this proposal is as equally ridiculous as the previous claim. This interesting character also announces that every person who came before him was a thief and a robber (John 10:8). I find it very difficult to imagine a world without a single person who didn’t steal something prior to Jesus’ arrival.
Jesus also purports some questionable aspects about gaining admittance into Heaven. Most of us are aware of the more common requirements, but there are quite a few of which many Christians are obviously unaware. Jesus says, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). Are we really to believe that it’s easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to meet the commonly accepted requirements? If not, Jesus offers no clear standard by which a person can enter into Heaven. If Jesus truly means what he says, it’s yet another outright contradiction. Rich people are more than capable of satisfying the requirements set by many other New Testament authors.
Staying with this notion of having to earn Heaven for a moment, Jesus also claims that anyone who says “thou fool” is in danger of Hellfire (Matthew 5:22).
Yet, in Luke 11:40, he calls a group of people “fools.” While the authors of the two passages record different Greek words, the meaning remains the same. How absurd is it when a perfect person who lays down standards of how to avoid Hell remains flawless even though he breaks the same standards strong enough to put a regular person in Hell? Additionally, what kind of example does he set for his followers? It seems as though the hypocritical Jesus is above his own laws. Once again, different authors predictably yield different interpretations.
Jesus provides his followers with instructions for helping out their fellow man. First, he advises you to turn the other cheek if someone hits you. Such a recommendation would eventually end in death if one continued to follow Jesus’ advice when faced with a vicious adversary. Second, if someone steals from you, offer him more. Following this godly advice would eventually cause you to leave yourself with nothing. Third, give whatever someone asks from you. This advice could be deadly as well, depending on what the person asked for. Fourth, never ask for anything you gave away (Luke 6:29-30). All of these are good in principle, but there’s no limit to them because people will definitely take advantage of someone following this advice to the letter. Thus, I feel the need to take it upon myself to encourage the few of you who want to obey Jesus to place reasonable limits on his philosophies. The majority of followers already know better than to obey Jesus in this instance. Yes, almost all Christians blatantly and hypocritically disregard many of the teachings provided by their Lord and savior simply because they’re lethal, hazardous, or inconvenient.
Matthew 21:22 is Jesus’ most damaging statement against the legitimacy of Christian faith. He says, “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” In other words, you will receive anything you pray for as long as you believe that you’ll receive it. That statement is undeniably false, and we can easily demonstrate it as such. Apologists have tried to justify this statement over the years by postulating that Jesus’ statement is true only if the request is in God’s will. However, there is no biblical text supporting the inclusion of God’s will into the words from Jesus’ mouth. He says if you believe, you will receive. End of story.
If a request were already in God’s will, however, what impact would the prayer truthfully have? If the request isn’t in God’s will, he won’t answer it no matter how much one prays. Thus, God’s will, not prayer, is the sole determining factor for future events. Once again, since it’s impossible to shift from the future that God envisioned at the beginning of time, prayer can have no effect on the outcome. Even so, Jesus repeats this promise no less than three additional times in John’s Gospel (14:12-14, 15:7, 16:23-24). The red text is there for everyone to see these claims. I really can’t emphasize enough how damaging these statements are toward the assertion that Christianity is a legitimate faith.
Iron: God’s Kryptonite
The Bible contains farces that even an act of God cannot explain. After the creation, God asks Adam to look over the animals and find one “suitable” for him (Genesis 2:18-20). The all-knowing god is absolutely clueless as to what kind of partner Adam might desire. Did he not already realize that he was going to make a woman for him? Isn’t it also disgusting for God to propose that Adam should find an animal to be his sexual companion?
Two additional stories in Genesis seem relevant to about every topic we cover: Noah and Babel. During Noah’s flood, God kills almost the entire world population of humans and animals because the people are evil. Why would an omniscient god lack the common sense to get his creation right the first time so that he isn’t required to redo everything? Afterwards, he promises to never do it again because humans are evil (Genesis 8:21). As stated before, God admits that the flood solved nothing. Several years later, groups of people assemble to build a tower so that they can see God in Heaven. Since God doesn’t like this seemingly impossible idea of people spotting him, he confuses their language to cease construction on the tower (Genesis 11:1-8). The people may not have realized that God didn’t actually live on top of a dome over the earth, but God should have been aware of this information for obvious reasons. We’ve looked deep into space with telescopes, but God didn’t stop us on those endeavors. Why would he think that these primitive people could see him? Is this when he moved from the earth’s dome to the outer boundaries of the universe? What about all the other authors who claim to have caught a glimpse of God? The Tower of Babel myth is definitely one of the most absurd stories ever told. Even so, a good portion of the world still ignorantly accepts it as truth. That’s a shame, too.
Later in Genesis, God asks himself if he should hide his plans for destroying Sodom from Abraham (Genesis 18:17). Why would God not know what he’s going to do, and how could Abraham’s knowledge of the matter have any possible outcome on God’s ultimate decision to exercise his infinite power? On the other hand, perhaps God has good reason to worry since we’ve already established that he isn’t all-knowing or all-powerful as the Bible claims.
When God is preparing to go on another murdering spree, he tells the people of Israel to smear blood on their doors so that he’ll know which homes are occupied by his chosen people (Exodus 12:13). With this directive completed, he’s free to kill all the Egyptian firstborn male children without accidentally harming an Israelite, but why does he need blood on the doors to serve as a reminder if he knows everything? Jonah, like Cain before him, was able to leave the presence of God (Jonah 1:3). According to Zephaniah, God will search through Jerusalem with candles and find people who scoff at him (1:12). Why would God need candles to see in the dark?
Judges 1:19 says that God was with the men of Judah in a battle, yet they couldn’t drive out the enemies because the other side was riding upon chariots of iron. If God is with someone, shouldn’t this person be able to do the miracles that every other God-accompanied individual performs? Honestly, did authors bother to proofread their work centuries ago?
Whatever’s Left
Since I couldn’t think of a way to categorize many of the remaining biblical absurdities that I wanted to include, we’ll just take a blitzkrieg approach at covering them. Abraham has a picnic with God (Genesis 18:1-8). Lot’s wife is turned into salt for looking at the destruction of a city (Genesis 19:26). Jacob wrestles with God and defeats him (Genesis 32:24-30). God becomes a burning bush while talking with Moses (Exodus 3:3-4) and has intentions to murder Moses’ son because he wasn’t circumcised (Exodus 4:24-26). God will kill Aaron if he goes to minister without wearing a golden bell and blue pomegranates (Exodus 28:31-35). God says that we can cure leprosy by killing a bird, putting the bird’s blood on another bird, killing a lamb, wiping the lamb blood on the leper, and killing two doves (Leviticus 14). A storm is stopped because Jonah is tossed into the sea (Jonah 1:15). God says that he will eat some people like a lion (Hosea 13:8). God stands on a wall and hangs a plumb line in front of Amos (Amos 7:78). This people-eating god decides to reveal himself to Amos via a plumb line demonstration but not to all the people currently killing each other over who is holding his true book!
God says that Joshua’s army can destroy the city walls of Jericho by marching around them and blowing horns (Joshua 6). Wine makes God happy, or at least that’s what the vine says (Judges 9:13). Samson claims his strength originates from his long hair (Judges 16:17). David buys Saul’s daughter with two hundred foreskins (1 Samuel 18:27). People who don’t believe in a god fail to do anything good (Psalms 14:1, 53:1). People are cured from their illnesses by touching Paul’s handkerchiefs and aprons (Acts 19:12). A person who eats only vegetables is weak (Romans 14:2). It’s wrong to take a dispute into court (1 Corinthians 6:6-7). Nature teaches us that it’s shameful for a man to have long hair (1 Corinthians 6:11-14). Anyone who doesn’t confess Christ is an antichrist who deceives others (2 John 1:7). If you don’t repent your sins, Jesus will attack you with the sword in his mouth (Revelation 2:16). As a way of discerning people, the righteous eat all they want while the wicked don’t have anything to eat (Proverbs 13:25). What correlation does eating have with faith? Are Ethiopians wicked? Is that why God allows thousands of them to die every day?
All Of This Is In The Bible?
I hope this chapter has brought some of the absurdities contained within the Bible to your attention. As I stated earlier, this is a mere fraction of those actually told by the Christian text. I encourage you to do an impartial reading of the Bible and consider the others you will no doubt encounter.
Many of the referenced passages in this paper were guided by superstition and deceitfulness on the part of the authors, particularly those of the Pentateuch. Even Jesus made absurd statements because he was ignorant of many aspects of human behavior. When absurdities like these appear in other religions, no Christian would think twice about the validity of the events because no Christian is conditioned to accept those sources as absolute and unquestionable truth. As a result, they immediately dismiss the fictitious accounts. Because, and only because, the aforementioned absurdities are in the Bible, Christians fully accept the comical blunders out of fear and ignorance.
As it stands, people were a lot less knowledgeable hundreds of years ago. They had no reason to disbelieve the accounts of God and were very much afraid to make statements as bold as the ones in this book. Conversely, Christians continue the tradition of blindly accepting whatever the Bible says even though we know the problems are there. Like the careless and negligent ostriches of the biblical universe, everyone has seemingly buried their heads deep in the desert sand.
A DIFFERENT FUTURE
Prophetical books were presumably included in the Bible to offer the reader insight into the days of supernatural extravaganzas yet to come. Fortunately, the test of time has shown the majority of these bleak prophecies to be total bunk. In fact, there hasn’t been a single verifiable prophecy fulfillment outside of those incredibly obvious to predict. As a few notable zealots have often altered clear meanings of specific terms or taken passages out of context in order to create biblical intent in lieu of their agendas, we’ll take a realistic approach toward studying the fulfillments in question so that you can better understand why the apologetic methods of interpretation aren’t reliable.
Even Jesus was among those guilty of making false prophecies. The most condemning of such prophetic statements were his predictions of a return to earth during the long-passed era that he designated. Even though you’ve no doubt been repeatedly told that the Bible doesn’t indicate when Jesus is going to make his return, such statements are demonstrably false. The truth is that Jesus failed to follow through on the promises unambiguously included in the text as his own words. I imagine such a bold declaration may be difficult to swallow at first for two primary reasons: you’ve received an overwhelming wealth of information to the contrary, and it seems that Christianity would crumble at Jesus’ failure to reappear. Probably for these very same reasons, early Christians found a way to circumvent the problem and convince their associates not to renounce his imminent return.
Prophecies Yet To Be Fulfilled
We’ll initiate our discussion of the future according to the Bible by looking at prophecies very unlikely to be fulfilled due to a variety of current circumstances. Isaiah predicts, “Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap” (17:1). Damascus, the largest city in Syria with a population of sixteen million inhabitants, is now the most ancient capital in the world. It’s highly unlikely that Damascus will be in ruins any time in the foreseeable future unless massively cataclysmic natural forces are doing the destruction. In such a scenario, we should deem Isaiah’s conjecture as painfully obvious with respect to the eventuality of these types of predictions. Nature will inevitably drive all cities to become ruinous heaps, but not in a manner shocking enough to warrant special mention from an infallible prophet.
Isaiah also warns, “for the nation and kingdom that will not serve [God] shall perish” (60:12). I agree 100% with his assessment, but to reiterate, nations and kingdoms won’t perish based on their refusal to worship Isaiah’s interpretation of God. Nations and kingdoms will eventually fade from existence because it’s the nature of a dynamic global society. Countries are established, conquered, and reconquered in continuous cycles. If we leave the verse alone in its obvious intention of conveying a causal relationship between the downfall of a region and its refusal to worship God, we should note that this prophecy remains unfulfilled.
Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah offer an additional geographical speculation by guessing that the Nile River will eventually run dry (19:5, 30:12, and 10:11, respectively). The Nile is currently the largest river in the world and has never given any indication to reinforce the claims of these three prophets, but again, nature will take care of the Nile one day. What factor of this natural event is important enough to warrant special consideration? Every river will cease to run at some point; every mountain will crumble to the ground one day; every living being will be erased from existence after a matter of time. Such developments will play out in natural cycles, not because oblivious ancients prophesied that they would take place.
Ezekiel also expresses that a time will arrive when the people of Israel “shall dwell safely therein” (28:26). It seems rather obvious that every country would enjoy an era of peace at some point during its existence. Ironically, Israel is one of the few to fail in ever obtaining this luxury. Based on events from the past few decades, the chances of Israel realizing Ezekiel’s promise don’t seem to be improving. Instead of peace and freedom, the country has witnessed the occupation of several foreign states, such as Rome and Palestine.
Jeremiah predicts, “…at that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem” (3:17). To paraphrase, every country will come together and worship the Hebrew god one day. Barring a return of the universe’s creator to set the record straight on which religious interpretation is, indeed, correct, there will certainly never be only one religion. Every passing year produces a growing and diversifying number of beliefs, sects, denominations, and cults. Even if God did appear before us, as I proposed before, many countries and religious groups would absolutely refuse to accept the truth because it’s [insert the local evil spirit here] trying to tempt them away from the true god(s).
Prophecies That Cannot Be Fulfilled
The prophets of the Old Testament also offer several predictions that are either provably false or unattainable due to the constraints placed upon them. In addition, there are several still-outstanding prophecies that cannot be fulfilled due to cultural changes that have taken place since the prophets recorded their predictions.
Isaiah and Jeremiah both speculate that Babylon will never be reinhabited after its fall in 689 BCE (13:19-20 and 50:35-39, respectively). Withstanding the wisdom of God’s appointed speakers, Nebuchadnezzar II reconstructed the city less than a century later. Babylon would thrive until Alexander the Great conquered the city in 330 BCE. Isaiah and Jeremiah have unquestionably demonstrated their prophetic incompetence once again. Why has God provided his inspiration to those who transmit blatantly false information to their readers? Well, this magnificent holy invention of the people is flawed as well because God says he’ll make Babylon “perpetual desolations” in Jeremiah 25:12. I suppose the all-knowing god of perfection prefers to demonstrate his changing desires instead of his omniscience.
Jeremiah declares Hazor to be a region of enduring desolation while it serves as a dwelling place for dragons (49:33). As common sense told you before reading contrary information in the Bible, there’s no reliable reason to accept the existence of mythological dragons at any point in the past. Furthermore, Citadels remained in Hazor until the first century BCE. Nevertheless, as I’ve mentioned before, predicting that a city will undergo desertion is as easy as predicting that the sun will shine tomorrow. Nature will eventually satisfy these vague and unconditional predictions.
Jonah also enjoyed a short six-verse stint as a reliable prophet. In 3:4, he says Nineveh will be overthrown in forty days. However, God scratches the foretold destruction of the city in 3:10. This is an extraordinary example demonstrating the flaws even the “divinely inspired” carry over into their works. If Jonah was stimulated to write an outright mistake, what falsehoods without subsequent corrections may have found their way into the text? Being swallowed by a fish, perhaps?
Egypt, the former nemesis of Israel, has predictably found itself at the losing end of several Old Testament forecasts. Jeremiah tells us that God will kill all the Israelites migrating into Egypt “by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence and none of them shall remain or escape from the evil that I will bring upon them” (42:15-18). Even so, I believe we can be reasonably certain that people from Israel have journeyed into Egypt without suffering God’s wrath. Since Egypt is no longer an archenemy of Israel, would God even display his anger at the Israelites for trying to get along with their neighbors? Correspondingly, Isaiah predicts that there will be five cities in Egypt to undergo a language conversion to the Canaanite tongue (19:18). This prophecy has failed to be the least bit accurate, and the language of the Canaanites is now dead. There’s virtually no chance a dead language would make an appreciable return, much less one triumphant enough to satisfy the conditions Isaiah has set forth.
A few verses later, Isaiah alludes to a coalition among Egypt, Assyria, and Israel (19:23-25). This affiliation has also failed to take place, and Assyria is no longer a nation. Even if Assyria reformed and made a pact with modern-day Egypt and Israel, the new Assyria wouldn’t necessarily be valid toward fulfilling the prophecy because it’s not the same country to which Isaiah was clearly referring. If this man truly had a gift for seeing the future, one would certainly expect him to mention such a significant detail. If Isaiah wasn’t divinely inspired with futuristic knowledge, one might expect him to earn the same low success rate as you or me for predicting the future. So you must ask yourself, which of these two scenarios have we witnessed thus far?
Isaiah also informs Jerusalem of a time when the “uncircumcised and the unclean” will no longer visit the city (52:1). This transcendentally imposed impediment has yet to be set in effect, and there’s no credible reason to believe it ever will. The notion of “uncircumcised equals unclean” is superstitious, ancient, and nonsensical. We can reasonably assume that uncircumcised men have consistently resided in Jerusalem since its foundation. The chances of a government passing a law in this modern age in order to enforce such senseless views are exceedingly remote. Besides, Jerusalem has much larger problems to contend with than the condition of its male inhabitants’ reproductive organs.
Ezekiel purports God making claims that the Ammonites will be “no more remembered” (21:32). The difficulty with accepting this bold declaration is the very act of this statement’s inclusion into the Bible. Ironically, the Bible would need to become obsolete if we were truly to forget the Ammonites. If this happens, however, the prophecy is no longer of importance because no one will remember it! God seriously fouled up on the logical consequences of this one.
Amos and Ezekiel claim that the Israelites will enjoy a permanent place of residency while God protects them from encroaching enemies (9:15 and 34:28-29, respectively). First, the Israelites have never enjoyed a home of undisputed territory. Second, we’ve never witnessed God lifting a finger to save the hapless Israelites from their enemies. Third, this omnipotent being apathetically watched in unnervingly lonesome silence as Hitler exterminated his chosen people by the millions. With these facts in mind, suggesting that God protects the Israelites in some immeasurable fashion is disturbingly wicked.
A common underlying theme of false biblical prophecy is the prediction that all these events are to take place sometime in the immediate future. Joel, Obadiah, and Zephaniah claim that the day of reckoning is “near” (2:1, 1:15, and 1:14, respectively). Keep in mind that the human race was supposedly only 3500 years old during the lives of these prophets. As was the case for Peter defending the actions of the multilingual disciples, it would be erroneous and extremely foolish to assume that there was any implication “near” could have meant 2500+ years from the time that such allegations were made. These predictions failed, and they will certainly continue to fail. Although these instances do a sufficient job of removing credibility from biblical scribes, we’ll look at some much more devastating “near” prophecies very shortly. Isaiah 7:14
The Old Testament contains a seemingly endless list of scriptures that Christians point to as references for the foretelling of Christ. Since there’s no reliable evidence that anyone can predict the future to a respectable degree of accuracy, the burden of proof is on those who assert that people capable of this gift once existed. As you should already be able to tentatively conclude that the Old Testament prophets were void of this talent, you might have quickly deduced that apologists have taken these verses out of context or ran some translatory manipulation on them in order to make the upcoming proposals feasible.
From my experiences, I’ve noted approximately fifty passages consistently used to support the quasi-reality of a fulfilled prophecy. Since debunking all these claims would require a retort lengthy enough to lose the majority of the audience’s attention, we’ll analyze what I feel are the ten most popular claims that biblical apologists offer in defense of prophecy realizations. Unless you wish to do some independent research on the validity of these reports, you’ll have to trust me again when I say that not one of the overlooked passages has any more foundation in reality than the ones discussed at length in this chapter.
We’ll begin with the verse that I believe Christians most commonly cite as a prophecy fulfillment. Isaiah 7:14 reads, “A virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Even so, the claim of a prophecy fulfillment fails miserably due to both context and content of the message.
Let us consider the content of Isaiah 7:14 first. In this passage, the English word virgin was translated from the Hebrew word almah. However, the most accurate term in the Hebrew language for conveying a sexually untouched woman is betula. Almah is a general term for a young woman, not necessarily a virgin. If Isaiah wanted his audience to believe that a virgin was going to give birth to a child, he had a much better word at his disposal. One would do well to think that he should utilize this more specific term for such a unique event so that his contemporaries wouldn’t first have to know that he was invoking the much less anticipated, potentially vague meaning of almah.
Furthermore, Proverbs 30:19 is extremely detrimental to the virgin translation of almah: “The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with [an almah].’” Since the term doesn’t necessarily mean virgin, one must look for the obvious connotation of the original Hebrew word. With this responsibility in mind, virgins don’t have children. In all reasonable likelihood, almah refers to a young woman in this passage. Even so, Matthew 1:23 may have tried to relate the Immanuel birth to Jesus by altering the obvious content of the Old Testament prophecy. Ironically, even the Greek word parthenos used in Matthew doesn’t necessarily mean virgin, as repeatedly demonstrated in Homer’s Iliad.
A second and seemingly more overlooked clue in the passage’s content is the name of the child, Immanuel. To put it in the simplest of terms, Jesus’ name wasn’t Immanuel. The fact that Immanuel means “God with us” doesn’t make one iota of difference because hundreds of Hebrew names have references to God. For example, Abiah means “God is my father,” which, in my opinion, would have been slightly more impressive. The verse plainly declares that she “shall call his name Immanuel,” but the so-called Messiah’s mother called him Jesus.
As for the contextual misapplication of Isaiah 7:14, one must read the chapter in its entirety since this supposed prophecy is part of a larger story. Within this passage, a battle is about to begin in which Rezin and Pekah are planning to attack Ahaz. God informs Ahaz that he may ask for a sign as proof that this battle will never ensue. Ahaz is reluctant to put God to a test, but Isaiah interjects and declares that there will be a sign. God will reaffirm his reliability on the issue when a young woman gives birth to a son named Immanuel who will eat butter and honey. Before this boy can choose evil over good, the land will fall out of the grip of Rezin and Pekah.
We can continue studying context by reading ahead to Isaiah 8:3-4, where we find a prophetess who has recently given birth to a son. This is immensely more likely to be the child that Isaiah wanted us to believe he predicted, especially when you figure in the fact that Isaiah 7:14 uses the more specific term ha-almah, translated as the woman, to specify a particular woman most likely known by the author and his audience.
When you consider the most accurate translation of almah, the actual name of the child, the context of the message, and the contiguous birth of an ordinary child, this passage is in a different ballpark from reports of Jesus’ birth from his virgin mother. Even though the case for Isaiah 7:14 appears solidly shut, we should consider two more questions. If Isaiah wanted to predict a virgin birth story, wouldn’t he have drawn more attention to the most important and unique event in human history? If God were truly interested in convincing more people of Jesus’ authenticity, wouldn’t he have Isaiah make a more direct and less disputable prophecy?
More Alleged Prophecy Fulfillments
A lesser-known prophecy made by Isaiah reads, “for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (9:6). This sounds like the version of Jesus we’ve all heard, but where is the textual evidence of a link between him and this verse? The Jews have always maintained that this passage, full of usual praises given to a King, refers to King Hezekiah. Furthermore, the following verse says that this individual will run the government with great power while sitting upon the Throne of David. Jesus never sat upon a throne or ran a government “upon his shoulder.” Since a plethora of circumstances could make bits and pieces of a prophecy come true, a divinely inspired prediction for the future should be clear and accurate in all of its details if we are to accept the legitimacy of such a bold statement.
We can also find another supposed reference to Jesus as the subject of Isaiah 53. In the last part of Chapter 52, God mentions one of his servants who will be exalted, only to be later despised, rejected, oppressed, afflicted, imprisoned, judged, acquainted with grief, wounded for our sins and transgressions, and loaded with iniquities. The man in question was sans deceit or violence. On the surface, there seems to be a strong correlation with Jesus; once we vigorously inspect all the facts, the analogy once again fails. One of the poorest translations possible fuels the misdirection. The grief acquainted with this servant is actually sickness, from the Hebrew word choli. God “putting our iniquities on him” is better translated as “hurting him with our sin,” as if to punish him. Furthermore, this superior translation parallels better with the physical injuries he sustained in the previous verse. The children this man had (Hebrew word zera) are direct descendants, not a spiritual family as it has been suggested in order to add credence to apologetic claims. Finally, Isaiah claims that the oppressed and afflicted man never opened his mouth. How can such a statement apply to Jesus who did a lot of preaching and correcting? Can we honestly state with reasonable certainty that this was a divinely inspired passage referring to Jesus Christ?
The delusional author of Matthew would like for the reader to believe that Jeremiah correctly predicted the timeframe of Jesus’ birth by asserting that a girl named Rachel crying for her dead children is a reference to King Herod’s alleged child massacre in the era of Jesus’ birth (Matthew 2:17-18 referring to Jeremiah 31:15). First and foremost, no historian contemporaneous with Herod’s reign ever mentioned this incredible act of brutality. In addition, if you continue to read the passage Matthew referenced, as all honest researchers should, you’ll discover God telling Rachel that their deaths were not in vain because the people will return to their homeland (31:16-17). With a modest background in Ancient Middle Eastern history, one can easily surmise that the passage in Jeremiah refers to the Babylonian captivity, not the time of Jesus’ birth. Since there are no true prophecies of Jesus’ arrival, apologists must resort to grasping straws that appear increasingly remote.
Daniel 9:24-27 proclaims that in seven sets of seventy weeks (490 weeks), a ruler will arrive and reconstruct a city. The Hebrew word for week, septad, actually means sevens, but the Israelites commonly used the term to refer to a set of seven days. In order for the upcoming prophecy to fit, disingenuous apologists must alter the obvious meaning of septad to seven years in quintessential post hoc fashion. Nevertheless, even if we give the benefit of the miniscule doubt to the apologists and assume that septad refers to a set of seven years, the arrival of this ruler would take place in 55 BCE. We know the starting point of the time in question because the passage refers to Cyrus’ order of cleansing the city in 545 BCE. Thus, prophecy inventors must once again alter the obvious intent of the passage and claim that Cyrus’ heir, Artaxerxes, was the one who gave the order. This puts the new date of arrival around 39 CE, approximately seven years after the presumed death of Jesus. Next, the apologist must shorten the length of a year by averaging the length of a solar year and the length of a lunar year in order to make the prophecy fit nicely with the year of the crucifixion. Even when you allow all of these absurd leniencies, there’s no potent evidence to support the notion that this passage refers to Jesus in any way, shape, form, or fashion. Jesus wasn’t a ruler, and he didn’t rebuild any cities. Even so, a few Christian zealots would like the world to believe that this is a fulfilled prophecy. Would these same apologists bend over backwards to support the text if such statements were found in the Qur’an?
Hosea 6:2 reads, “after two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight”. This might seem to be another loose reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus if you haven’t read the passage in its proper context. The preceding verse, an important piece of the whole picture, concerns a group of people who will return to God in order to be restored through him. After two days, God will revive the people; on the third day, they’ll arise so that they can live in his sight. When a more thorough analysis replaces the shallow one, the reader will discover that the verse has nothing at all to do with Jesus. This claim of a prophecy fulfillment is just another use of a passage out of context in order to meet an apologetic agenda.
Hosea has another supposed Jesus prophecy in the first verse of Chapter 11: “When Israel was a child, then I love him, and called my son out of Egypt.” This is supposedly an allegory for Mary and Joseph fleeing the country. In this case, Jesus would be represented in the verse by “Israel.” If the reader takes time to review the next verse, as it would only be responsible to do so, the lack of merit in the apologetic interpretation becomes obvious. In 11:2, we learn that Israel sacrificed to
Baalim (Baal) and “burned incense to graven images.” The Jesus of the scriptures certainly wouldn’t be guilty of observing this blasphemous ceremony. A realistic investigation would lead us to believe that the verse is a certain reference to the Israeli Exodus from Egypt. As authors often refer to groups and countries in the singular form throughout the books of prophecy, this conclusion is far more sensible than the apologetic stretch.
Micah offers another Jesus foretelling of great popularity in the Christian crowd, but it fails to hold the aforementioned qualities of valid prophecy fulfillment for several reasons. The passage in question says, “but thou, Bethlehem Ephratah though you be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler of Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” (5:2). Once again, a quick sweep across the surface might lead the reader to believe that this verse is about Jesus’ birth. Such an assertion is especially convincing with the inclusion of his hometown, Bethlehem, but you might wonder what role “Ephratah” serves in this passage. We can find the answer all the way back in 1 Chronicles 4:4. There, we learn that Bethlehem Ephratah was a person: Bethlehem, the son of Ephratah. In essence, the prophecy refers to the line of descendants from that individual. Even if we blindly assume that Ephratah was a more specific location within Bethlehem rather than a people, apologists still have the problem of Jesus never having ruled Israel.
The authors of Matthew and John both conveniently leave Ephratah out of their references to this prophecy (2:5-6 and 7:42, respectively). This disingenuous act can only be the result of a desire to add credibility to an otherwise convincingly weak case. Furthermore, if the ones making this claim read to verse six, they would discover Micah predicting that this same individual will lead a battle against Assyria in order to deliver people out of slavery. No record of Jesus ever performing this noble deed exists, nor would we expect one to.
Zechariah informs us that a just King will arrive in Jerusalem riding upon an ass and a colt (9:9). In fact, Jesus did ride into Jerusalem on an ass and a colt according to the account given by Matthew (21:1-7). The primary problem of claiming a miraculously fulfilled prophecy in this instance is the awareness of Matthew and John (12:14-15) that Zechariah had made the prediction. The others involved, including Jesus, were almost certainly aware of the Old Testament passage as well. In fact, Matthew 21:4-5 says, “all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by saying…thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.” To paraphrase Matthew, the disciples had Jesus ride into Jerusalem using this method just so that they could fulfill the prophecy. You must forgive me if I personally deem this quasi-actualization unimpressive. Had the group honestly been unaware of the forecast, there might be the slightest hint of some underlying validity for those presenting this claim.
For the final investigated prophecy, we’ll switch gears away from Jesus for a moment. The author of Mark implies that the arrival of John the Baptist satisfies Malachi’s prophecy of God sending Elias/Elijah forth “before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Mark 8:28 referring to Malachi 4:5). He makes this erroneous proposal because the observers thought John was the reincarnation of Elijah. Making people think something has happened isn’t the same thing as the event actually taking place. Since John himself even denies being Elijah (John 1:21), we can safely assume that he’s not involved with Malachi’s prophecy.
I hope that these passages will be beneficial toward demonstrating the absence of a verifiable prophecy fulfillment concerning Jesus’ birth or any other futuristic happenings. The fact that Jesus and the Gospel writers deceitfully invented their own prophecies and fulfillments, a charge we will now investigate, lends a hand to this assessment.
Jesus makes the claim that his persecution, death, and resurrection are realizations of an Old Testament prophecy (Luke 18:31-33). I assure you that there is no such statement in the Old Testament; I challenge anyone to find it. Jesus also claims that Moses foretold his arrival (John 5:46). Not only is it highly unlikely that Moses wrote any part of the Pentateuch, there’s no mention of Jesus in that text either; I challenge anyone to find it. The author of Matthew says Jesus “dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene” (2:23). Not only do the prophets fail to offer such conjecture, there’s not a passage in the Old Testament that includes a single word related to Nazareth or Nazarene; I challenge anyone to find it. Finally, the author of John claims that a prophecy was fulfilled when the bones of Jesus remained unbroken throughout the crucifixion (19:36). Again, there is no such prophecy in the Old Testament; I challenge anyone to find it. No one has brought forth and verified any information with the potential to lend credence to these fortune-telling products for obvious reasons.
The Return Prophecies
This is the part you’ve probably been anticipating. Did Jesus truly put a time-frame on when he would reappear? When he instructs his disciples to preach the good news on all their ventures, Jesus warns, “Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities ofIsrael, till the Son ofman be come” (Matthew 10:22-23). In comprehensible modern English, Jesus is saying that he’ll return to earth before the disciples finish their journeys to all of Israel’s cities. The word of God has long completed its travel throughout the region, but Jesus continues to fail Promise Keeping 101.
When Jesus’ disciples beg him to avoid any actions with fatal consequences, he comforts them by proclaiming, “For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son ofman coming in his kingdom’ (Matthew 16:27-28, also see Mark 9:1 and Luke 9:27). In this instance, Jesus unambiguously informs his followers that there were people living on the earth at that time who would still be alive when he made his ultimate return. While preaching to his disciples, Jesus says, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other…Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled’ (Matthew 24:29-34, Mark 14:24-30). Aside from projecting scientifically erroneous notions, Jesus yet again gives a proclamation that includes his return during that generation.
In a scene involving Jesus with the high priest, “the high priest arose, and said unto him, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee?’ But Jesus held his peace. And the high priest answered and said unto him, ‘I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.’ Jesus said unto him, ‘Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you Hereafter shall ye see the Son ofman sitting on the right hand ofpower, and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:62-64, also see Mark 14:60-62). Jesus informs the priest that he will personally witness the imminent return of the son of God and gives clear indication that these events will transpire while the high priest is still alive. The high priest is long dead, and Jesus has been truant for nearly 2000 years.
Speaking to a crowd of Pharisees, Jesus preaches about a series of events destined to come upon them that inevitably conclude with their damnation to Hell (Matthew 23). When will these scenarios play out? “Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation” (Matthew 23:36). The connotation is clear: the events mentioned throughout the chapter were to take place during the lifetimes of those living in that generation. In order to defend Jesus’ statement, some Christians claim that the makers of the KJV Bible should have translated the Hebrew word genea as age or race. While modern lexicons may support this translation for the very same reason that Christians believe it, what evidences contemporaneous with the era do they have to support this assertion? Nowhere in the New Testament did the translators interpret genea to be anything other than generation. The obvious choice of translation is also consistent with all other failed return prophecies. Again, they begin with the faulty premise of inerrancy and search for the most likely way to maintain this quality. What religion wouldn’t survive an infallibility test given such luxurious leniencies?
The celebrated Paul was also convinced that the arrival of Jesus was drawing near. In his letter to the Romans, he says, “now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand” (13:11-12). In his first letter to the Corinthians, he says, “the time is short” (7:29). In his letter to the Philippians, he says, “The Lord is at hand” (4:5). In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul reminds them that “the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (4:1617). Paul clearly held an unwavering belief that some of those living at the time would serve as witnesses to these divine occurrences. As you will see in the upcoming chapter, however, Paul was making predictions for Jesus’ primary visit to the earth, long after his alleged crucifixion during a prehistorical era. Nowhere did Paul mention a “return” because nowhere did Paul claim any knowledge of Jesus’ earthly residency as told in the Gospels.
A variety of other New Testament authors also believed that Jesus was returning soon. “The day of Christ is at hand” (2 Thessalonians 2:2). “God…hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2). “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that, shall come will come, and will not tarry” (Hebrews 10:36-37). “Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh” (James 5:8). “Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you” (1 Peter 1:20). “The end of all things is at hand” (1 Peter 4:7). “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time” (1 John 2:18). “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John…Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand” (Revelation 1:1-3). “I come quickly” (Revelation 3:11, 22:7, 22:12, 22:20). Jesus wasn’t the only one on a train bound for misdirection.
The second book of Peter, penned around 120 CE and probably the last of the New Testament Epistles to be completed, came at the heel of the generation promise allegedly made by Jesus. His followers were no doubt starting to become impatient, and they demonstrate a hint of restlessness by inquiring, “Where is the promise of his coming?” (3:4). In order to settle doubts and downplay the “generation” claims, Peter says, “be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (3:8). Unfortunately, Peter’s explanation satisfies absolutely nothing. Not once did Jesus offer a return date in terms of days and years. However, Jesus does give us a rough timeframe in reference to generations and lifetimes. Jesus did not satisfy the conditions that he personally established in order for all his future worshippers to appreciate. Peter’s speculative assertion is an incredibly futile attempt at solving Jesus’ perpetual absence.
Looking At The Fortune Tellers
This chapter demonstrates several important points: prophets of the Old Testament made predictions that have yet to come true; predictions made by those same prophets are either erroneous or impossible to fulfill; there are no prophecies from the Old Testament truly satisfied by the alleged arrival of Jesus Christ; Jesus and the Gospel writers invented supposed prophecy fulfillments; Jesus failed to return within the timeframe he promised; and it was commonly believed that Jesus was going to return about 1900 years ago. These factors inevitably subtract even more credibility from the authors’ claims of divine inspiration.
While we shouldn’t honestly expect a self-proclaimed prophet to have the ability to predict the future with any appreciable accuracy, there should be an elevated level of expectation for those who Christians claim that God divinely inspired. The Old Testament prophets are nowhere near meeting this reasonable expectation. What we do see is a Nostradamus-like post hoc set of poor explanations and analyses of old scriptures undoubtedly designed to invent prophecy fulfillments. Thus, we can conclude that not one of the prophets truly mentions anything interpretable as the supposed arrival of Jesus. Bits and pieces extracted from here and there do not add up to a verifiable resolution of this indispensable difficulty.
Jesus Christ did not satisfy any prophecies made in the Old Testament, and some of the prophetical forecasts that he and the Gospel writers claim as fulfilled weren’t even included by any known preceding authors. If we are to consider Jesus’ biblical proclamations accurate, he undeniably made several statements requiring him to return within the century. As further evidence in support of this conclusion, there was a consensus among the alleged divinely inspired authors that Jesus would be returning extremely soon. When people thought that the earth was only 4000 years old, “soon” did not mean 2000+ years later, nor will it mean 20,000+ or 200,000+ years later when those times inevitably arrive undisturbed. In short, Jesus defiantly broke his promise of returning. This brings us to wonder how many of Jesus’ quotes and workings we can actually consider for the realm of historical plausibility. Consequently, we will explore this essential consideration of utmost importance in the next shocking chapter.
THE FIGURE BEHIND THE LEGEND
The paramount aspect of Christian faith is the unwavering belief that a man named Jesus from Nazareth was the supernatural son of God. This character performed a variety of incredible miracles and attributed their possibility to the faith that his followers held in his Heavenly father. Such an extraordinary being would eventually be crucified for his teachings, as the story goes, only to follow through on his promises of resurrecting from death and returning to his disciples shortly thereafter. Before his ultimate reunion with God, he pledges to redescend one day in order to take all those with him who believe in following his examples. Suffice to say, this is the mother of all extraordinary cultish claims requiring extraordinary evidence. Consequently, this chapter will review all pertinent biblical and extrabiblical evidence that casts doubt on these wild assertions.
At the present, it’s honestly impossible to verify or dismiss Jesus as a real person because we lack evidence and crucial eyewitness testimony. Thus, the Christian belief of Jesus being a true historical figure is entirely predicated upon blind faith. Even if we assume a successful completion of an endeavor to legitimize a historical Jesus who lectured on various subjects of life, the burden of proof would still be on the shoulder of the apologist to prove the typical claims of outlandish miracles. Thus, it’s these allegations of mystic performances that are relevant to our analysis.
If Jesus Christ was merely an ordinary man with extraordinary teaching abilities, or if he was a legend born from the obvious necessities of turbulent times, the entire foundation of the New Testament quickly implodes. While we’re still unable to offer the undeniable proof that contradicts these liberal Christian claims, we can easily demonstrate the incredibly overwhelming unlikelihood of Jesus ever having lived a life anything like the one depicted in the Gospels. Such an elementary presentation is, in fact, the intent of this chapter. For now, try to forget everything you know about Jesus Christ so that you may have the benefit of learning about this mysterious figure from a refreshingly unbiased perspective.
Paul’s Jesus
The Apostle Paul composed the earliest known records mentioning the name Jesus Christ from 49-60 CE. Even if he truly realized an earthly Jesus, Paul’s twelve-year span of writing falls outside the life of his subject. Thus, instead of providing an eyewitness account written while the miraculous events were still works in progress,
God apparently leaves us with a curious absence of any contemporaneous testimonies for Jesus’ existence. In fact, there are absolutely no records of an earthly Jesus until several decades after his presumed legacy on earth ended with his crucifixion around 30 CE. We’ll return to this essential consideration a little later.
Since Paul was the first known individual to write about Jesus, it seems quite peculiar that he chooses to abstain from mentioning any of the astounding miracles accomplished by his subject. By no means, however, is this consideration a conclusively modern discovery. The early church, notoriously recognized for its own redaction of future biblical works, may have noticed this glaring insufficiency and decided to interpolate four or five statements into Paul’s work for a variety of potential reasons. Seeing as how greater than 99.9% of Paul’s writings are shockingly void of details on Jesus’ life, the handful of upcoming passages should already be held suspect.
Although we can attribute large portions of the New Testament to Paul, scholars have generally refuted the idea of one individual being responsible for the completion of the traditional Pauline works. Such is the case for the phrase “who before Pontius Pilate,” which appears in the sixth chapter of 1 Timothy, one of the New Testament works certain to be a second century product. Thus, someone other than Paul likely wrote this passage during a time in which the Pilate story was already enjoying widespread circulation.
Let’s begin our analysis of the authentic Pauline books with 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16. Verse 16 is, of course, highly controversial for its direct implication of the Jews as Jesus’ murderers. Such an anti-Semitic passage is not only the most out of character of Paul’s writings, but it also breaks up a cohesive passage in the letter. Try reading the chapter with an omission of these verses to see if you don’t notice a much-improved flow of the text. In addition to the obvious tangent interjection thrown into the fray, the verse is typical of the early church’s hatred toward the Jews. For these and some additional reasons far too complex to delve into here, the verse is widely regarded in scholarly circles to be an interpolation.
Another passage often referred to as the Lord’s Supper appears in 1 Corinthians 11:23: “For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread.” Four major points cast doubt on the likelihood of this passage referring to the earthly supper purported in the Gospels. First, Paul declares that he gained this knowledge through the Lord. In other words, he was divinely inspired to tell this part of the story. Why would God need to be the one to inform him of what must have been a widely distributed report?
Nevertheless, I trust that you vividly remember how accurate these divine revelations tend to be. Second, Paul doesn’t offer any seemingly essential details of location or company with the taking of bread. Third, we know final and sacrificial meals are common mythological tales in a variety of other world religions. Fourth, translators rendered the word betrayed, a supposed reference to the traitor Judas, from the Greek word pare-dideto, a term that should have been more accurately translated as surrendered. Otherwise, we see Jesus betraying his life for us in Ephesians 5:2. Such an idea obviously isn’t consistent with the Gospel story of Jesus clearly surrendering his life to the Roman authorities. Likewise, no contemporaneous documents support the abused English translation of this passage. An individual who incompetently considered the postdated Gospel story was obviously responsible for committing this translatory blunder. For these reasons, there’s no rationality in assuming that Paul was discussing a worldly event over a fantastical one. If Paul had finished his letters after the Gospels were written, we could reasonably conclude that he was referencing the corresponding Gospel texts. In reality, the Gospel writers arrived on the scene well after Paul and had free access to include this intuitively transcendental event at their own discretion.
A vague reference to Jesus dying and resurrecting quickly appears and fades in 1 Thessalonians 4:14, but Paul offers no crucial details to discern these two momentous developments from mythological episodes. 2 Timothy 1:9 says that God’s grace “was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.” The combination of these two statements offers additional credence to the mythological Jesus hypothesis. According to this school of thought, Jesus died and returned in a spiritual form at some point in history long before the Common Era began. Similarly, most of the epistles refer to Jesus as an earthly spiritual presence instead of a formerly living individual. Based on the summation of these letters, it seems the popular belief was that Jesus’ spirit had been present since the world began around 4004 BCE.
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes about his journey to Jerusalem and his subsequent rendezvous with Peter and James. Even so, he completely fails to relay any details about these crucially important meetings to his readers. The Gospels claim that his two new acquaintances were disciples and close friends of Jesus, yet Paul is completely silent on the subject of their paramount conversations. Surely, they would have been capable of telling him something worthy of writing down!
Because we should find it difficult to accept that Paul would be ignorant of the audience’s desire to hear of Jesus’ divine birth, teachings, miracles, exorcisms, crucifixion, and resurrection, we should consequently question why he exercises this stunning silence. As I see it, there are several possible reasons for this omission: he simply forgot to include details of Jesus’ life in his enormous volume of work, God allowed the important documents detailing the life of Jesus to become mysteriously lost, Paul really was ignorant of what people wanted to hear, the events of Jesus’ life were not remarkable enough to convey to the readers, or there was no earthly presence to report. We must also wonder why Paul wasn’t able to locate someone else in the city who could personally testify to the physical existence of Jesus Christ and the historical events surrounding his residency. Paul would have had the ability to meet with thousands who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles, but what could these people possibly tell him about fantastic events that may have yet to become part of history?
We can find the most peculiar passage in Paul’s works in his letter to the Romans. He informs them of the necessity in believing that God raised Jesus from the dead if they want to be saved (10:9). Why would they need to have faith in this phenomenon if there were hundreds of witnesses who could verify the legitimacy of the supernatural claim? The Romans would have had the benefit of studying their own records, listening to eyewitness testimony in Jerusalem, and performing their own investigational research to determine if the assertions of an earthly resurrection were true. However, Paul speaks to them as though they must take the belief by heart rather than through tests of research and validity. On the other hand, if Jesus was the spiritual presence of a mythical figure who resurrected ages ago, Paul’s insistence on their blind faith is readily understandable. Furthermore, Paul recalls Elijah crying to God for killing his prophets in the next chapter. Could there have been a more perfect time to initiate a discussion on the crucifixion of the supreme prophet? Instead of undeniable inclusions of stories from Jesus’ Gospel life, Paul’s writings offer abstract concepts and ultra-sporadic references to vague events appearing independently from the most opportune times. Paul’s chosen subject matter of a spiritual presence is extremely inconsistent with that of the Gospel writers’ earthly savior.
A Wealth Of Missing Information
As I mentioned earlier, there are no existing records of Jesus made prior to 49 CE. This often-overlooked exclusion might be understandable, perhaps even anticipated, if there were no reputable historians or philosophers around to document the unique phenomena purported by the New Testament. However, this supposed explanation cannot be the case. The quintessential reason is Philo of Alexandria (approximately 15 BCE—50 CE), a devotedly religious Jewish philosopher with a volume of work sizable enough to fill a modern publication of nearly one thousand pages with small print. Even though he was adamant about the legitimacy of the Hebrew scripture, not once does he indicate that he knew the first thing about an earthly Jesus. However, Philo did choose to refer to the son of God in the form of Logos, which is to say a spiritual medium between God and man. As it stands in the biblical world, the supernatural son of the universe’s almighty creator was supposedly performing unprecedented miracles and fulfilling prophecies that this philosopher spent his life analyzing, yet Philo, living well before Jesus’ birth and well after the crucifixion, never mentions such occurrences! This fact alone should assuredly convince you that the Gospel authors based a great deal of their work on rumors, urban legends, and mere fiction.
Justus of Tiberias (approximately 35-100 CE), born in Galilee, is another fine example of a first century Jewish author who never offered Jesus one line of notation in his works. Justus made extensive historical writings on the Jewish war for independence and other contemporaneous events of local interest, but he never mentioned the name of Jesus once. This is undeniably remarkable. Was the earthly presence of the divine not important enough to merit a single mention? The purported rumors on the life of Jesus had at least sixty years to spread to Justus, but he totally neglected them. What possible reason could Justus have to ignore such pertinent information other than its nonexistence?
Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE), a scientist who wrote on a diverse number of subjects, never mentions any of the darkness or earthquake phenomena concurrent with Jesus’ crucifixion. Since these events were within his interests of natural history, one would do well to suppose that these inexplicable calamities, if they took place, should have been of some interest to future generations. Jerusalem born Josephus Flavius (approximately 37-100 CE) is a favorite reference among Christians for Jesus’ earthly existence. While he wrote an enormous volume of work covering Jewish history and their ongoing wars, only two short passages out of the enormous 93 CE chronicles mention the name Jesus. As was the case for the handful of alleged references in Paul’s works, we should impartially scrutinize these passages before accepting them as valid. As expected, this careful scrutiny demonstrates that the authenticity of these acknowledgements is highly questionable.
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared (Antiquities 18). Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others (Antiquities 20).
Out of several hundred pages of work, the preceding material constitutes everything Josephus supposedly had to say about the most important man to ever live. If the son of God were a true historical figure, one would anticipate a much broader explanation by the exhaustive historian.
The first passage raises concern for several reasons: only Christians referred to Jesus with the phrase “a wise man,” and Josephus was not a Christian; other sections of Josephus’ work are already known to have been altered by the church centuries after his death; the passage was discovered by Eusebius, a man widely known to have forged other material about Jesus; and no other Christian writers referenced the notable excerpt until two hundred years after its supposed documentation.
The second passage is also suspect for at least two additional reasons: even though Josephus was extremely meticulous about referencing his earlier work, the mention of Jesus in Antiquities 20 doesn’t refer to the previous mention in Antiquities 18; and “Jesus called the Christ” was another phrase of Christian diction.
Since Josephus’ writing style would have been easy to mimic after several days of transcribing, we can establish that there was opportunity in addition to the motive for interpolating foreign ideas into his chronicles. When researching the historicity of Jesus, we should obviously only consider the Antiquities with extreme caution. Even if someone were to prove the passages authentic, a possibility very much in doubt, the first mention of an earthly Jesus meekly appears more than sixty years following his alleged death and resurrection. It’s wholly inconceivable to suggest that the life of Jesus was too insignificant to warrant earlier mention.
It wasn’t until the second century when undeniable references to Jesus’ life began to emerge. Pope Clement I alluded to the blood of Christ in a 101 CE letter to the Corinthians, but that’s a vague crucifixion reference at best. Around the same time, Pliny the Younger and Trajan from Bithynia became the first to record the Christianity movement, but they strangely offer no details concerning an earthly life of the campaign’s source. Instead, they merely reference other Christian works. Finally, in 107 CE, Ignatius mentions Jesus’ birth from Mary during the reign of Herod and his execution ordered by Pontius Pilate. Ignatius was an adamant Christian, but he becomes yet another writer to offer only a crude synopsis of the world’s most prominent figure. Suetonius mentions the name Chrestus around 110 CE, but there’s no clear indication he intended to reference Jesus when he mentioned this common name. In 115 CE, Tacitus possibly becomes the first non-religious individual to include a somewhat complete account on the life of Jesus. Barnabas offers his readers some stories of Jesus’ life around 120 CE, but he relies quite heavily on sources that we would later know as the Gospels. Likewise, Polycarp records additional history of Jesus around 130 CE with the inclusion of minor life events. The Gospel ofThomas (135 CE?) offers a complete record of Jesus’ known sayings, but it ignores his birth, death, and resurrection.
Of all the writers who attempt to convert people with other faiths over to Christianity before 180 CE, only Justin (150 CE?) and Aristides (145 CE?) choose to include solid references to a historical Jesus. The rest focus their teachings entirely on the spiritual Jesus known by Paul. It would be foolish to assume that the balance of these missionaries would think such undeniably miraculous accomplishments wouldn’t be essential in the conversion of those with contrasting religious beliefs. Again, we can only conclude that these authors were ignorant of Jesus’ earthly residency or had good reason to consider the Gospels fraudulent. It should be clear by now that stories depicting Jesus on earth were either still in the creation process or considered unreliable by the vast majority of early Christians.
Making A Bible
Until the twentieth century came along, the Christian consensus maintained that the Gospel authors finished their works some time between 50-70 CE, a date based on the inclusion of vague references to the destruction of Jerusalem. With the exception of a few individuals refusing to budge from their own agendas, the Christian community has now conceded that this was an optimistic assessment. Their current estimations are now moving into the early end of the 70-120 CE spectrum provided by unbiased secular scholars. Although there’s no direct evidence to contradict the early extreme of that assessment, I find it difficult to accept that no one would reference the Gospels through the first five decades of their existence. Thus, we must consider the Christian silence of the late first century and compare it to the movement’s explosion in the early second century.
As a matter of personal opinion, I surmise that 100 CE is an approximate but fair designation (for reasons far too lengthy to discuss here) for the first Gospel. Essentially, one person’s guess is as good as any, provided some impartial and unbiased research on the subject is involved. There’s simply no foreseeable way for the Gospels to have positively affixed dates from the universally held 50-120 CE composite timeframe.
Even worse than not being able to date the scriptures, we can’t be sure of who wrote them. The authors don’t positively identify themselves by the names designated in the titles or by any other handle. In addition, not one of the authors claims to have personally known Jesus. This is no surprise for Mark and Luke, but Matthew and John were two of his disciples. Moreover, the Gospels are written in a manner hardly befitting of eyewitnesses: third person. Furthermore, there are no known original documents for the accounts, only copies. Since it’s probable that several people handed the tales down via oral recitation before they were archived, thus the “Gospel According to X” designation preceding each one, we have a justifiable reason for the glaring complications and contradictions among the four books.
You may have noticed that I mentioned the Gospel of Thomas in the previous section, a reference definitely capable of arousing confusion for readers who have never researched early extrabiblical Christian writings. Instead of there only being four divinely appointed Gospel writers to represent the most important person ever to walk the earth, there were at least a dozen authors who claim to have a unique story about Jesus. Incidentally, there were about seventy-five known Gospels, epistles, and letters eligible for New Testament inclusion; a mere third of these made the cut. Since a number of the Gospels, such as James, Nicodemus, Mary, and Peter, weren’t chosen to be enshrined in the Bible, you may be curious who made the decision to include only the four now-canonized versions of Jesus’ life.
With the explosion of Gospel accounts in the second century, containment was an obvious priority for keeping the religion within reasonable limits. The first man known to have offered such a proposal on behalf of the church was Irenaeus of Lyon around 180 CE. His idea was to accredit only four Gospels because there were four zones of the world, four winds, four forms of living creatures, four divisions of man’s estate, and four beasts of the apocalypse. For these poorly thought-out reasons, Irenaeus believed that there should only be four Gospels accepted by the church. As was the case for the horrendous slave-trading institution having its origins in superstitious nonsense, it certainly follows that the most potentially important books in human history would have been decided in a likewise manner. Instead of God providing an unquestionably fitting reason for these Gospel choices, we have a perfectly appropriate act of senselessness leading to the foundation of contemporary Christian faith. Yet, it’s no wonder surrogate accounts, such as the Infancy Gospel, didn’t make the cut when you consider that Jesus strikes his teachers and playmates dead for attempting to correct him.
Just like the apologists of every world religion, I could make the same bald assertion that the Infancy Gospel, along with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, had God’s inspiration to make it 100% accurate. If anyone thinks that they can find a way to invalidate my claim, I’ll simply generate a “how-it-could-have-been-scenario” that maintains the Gospel’s inerrancy while paying no attention to the improbability and absurdity of my proposed solution.
What if Irenaeus accidentally omitted a fifth truthful Gospel that contained an additional prerequisite for entering into Heaven? Christians won’t accept the stated extrabiblical requirement because there are four, not five, beasts of the apocalypse. I trust that you understand the fundamental flaw with the blatantly uncertain Christian system.
The Canonical Gospels
Most likely for no other reason than to round out the beasts of the apocalypse, John was chosen to be one of the four Gospels. For the sake of cohesive inerrancy, it would have been more beneficial in its absence. Although the author doesn’t venture too far on a tangent from the life of Jesus depicted in the other canon Gospels, there are some distinguished omissions in this account. The most notable absences are the exorcism of devils, the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness, the transfiguration, the virgin birth from Mary, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ proclamations of his return, and every last one of the parables. Scholars agree that the original Gospel of John started at 1:19 and ended at 20:31. Furthermore, they’ve determined that the remainder of the book seems heavily edited and reworked. For these reasons, John fails to be an unquestionably reliable and synoptic source of divine inspiration for the story of Jesus.
Scholars unanimously agree that Mark is the most primitive of the four canon Gospels. Its details are relatively less developed, consequently making this biography ofJesus very brief. Interestingly, Jesus’ primary biographer was obviously a distant Roman who never knew him. In fact, the original version of Mark doesn’t even contain Jesus’ appearance following his crucifixion (16:9-19)! This concession is made in the NIV but left out of the KJV. Even though the author was from Rome, he provided enough minor details to have a fair understanding of his subject. Why, then, would he leave out the indispensable element of the world’s most important story unless he lived during a period without a resurrection rumor?
Since about 80% of the verses in Mark appear verbatim in Matthew, we can seemingly tell that the author of Matthew used Mark as a template when writing his own account. However, he alters many of Mark’s details and adds several stories presumably unknown to its author. The Gospel of Matthew most certainly had a Jewish writer since he strives to correct many of the mistakes arising from Mark’s ignorance of local knowledge. Since we have no clear evidence that the author of Matthew was one of Jesus’ disciples, we can’t rule out the likely possibility of its author simply plagiarizing the Mark account in order to make it more acceptable to residents of the Middle East. It’s far too coincidental for the writings to match so well in some passages and contradict in others for there not to have been some minor transcribing taking place. Thus, we’ll analyze the contrasting details of the two accounts in order to exemplify the unreliability of the latest God-inspired product.
Mark (1:2) makes an incorrect reference to Hebrew scripture by quoting Malachi 3:1 as being the work of Isaiah. The KJV does not contain this error, although biblical translations concerned more with honesty and accuracy than advancing inerrancy leave the misattribution in the text. Needless to say, the more knowledgeable Matthew author doesn’t repeat Mark’s mistake. Mark also claims that only God can forgive the sin of another (2:7), but that’s a direct contrast to actual Jewish beliefs, which hold that other men can forgive sins as well. Again, Matthew drops this statement from the record (9:3). Mark mentions the region of Gadarenes being near a large body of water, but it’s about thirty miles from even a sizable lake (5:1). The Matthew author, realizing that Mark knows next to nothing about local geography, changes Gadarenes to Gergesenes, which is only a few miles from a lake (8:28).
Mark mentions multiple “rulers of the synagogue” even though almost all synagogues only had a single leader (5:22). The Matthew author corrected this phrase so that the reader could ambiguously interpret it as having only one ruler (9:18). Mark records Jesus ridiculing the ancient food laws set by God and Moses (7:18-19), but the author of Matthew, being a Jew, no doubt considered this to be sacrilegious and dropped the passage from his account (15:18-20). Mark also has Jesus misquoting one of the commandments as refraining from defrauding others (10:19). Meanwhile, Matthew strictly adheres to the exact commandments of Moses by omitting this curious deception rule but including the “love one another’’ summary commandment (19:18-19). The author of Mark strangely refers to David as “our father” (11:10). This is something no Jew would ever do because all Jews weren’t descendents of David. Seeing as how Abraham and Jacob would be the only individuals referred to in this manner, the desire for accuracy forces the Matthew author to correct another one of Mark’s blunders (21:9).
Mark also gets the traditional date for killing the Passover incorrect (14:12), but the Matthew author settles the mistake by omitting the phrase from his own work (26:17). The very next verse in Mark has Jesus ordering two of his disciples to locate a man bearing a pitcher of water (14:13). In Jewish culture, carrying pitchers of water was the work of a woman. Naturally, Matthew must drop this phrase as well (26:18). On the night of the crucifixion, Mark says that it’s the time before the Sabbath (15:42). Being a Roman, the author was obviously unaware that the Jewish day begins with the evening. Thus, the evening following the crucifixion wasn’t the night before the Sabbath; it was the start of it. Matthew must yet again omit one of Mark’s divinely inspired statements in the transcription (27:57). Unaware that the Sabbath had already arrived, Mark’s account has Joseph of Arimathaea buying linen to wrap around Jesus’ body (15:46). Because it was a sin to make purchases on the Sabbath, Matthew must consequentially drop that detail as well (27:59). Finally, Mark mentions “the fourth watch of the night” (6:48). The Jews actually divided the night into only three watches, while the Romans made the division into fourths.
The author of Matthew makes a few additional minor corrections from Mark’s account, but I trust that you get the point I’m attempting to convey. However uncomfortable it may feel, the divinely inspired author of the earliest Jesus biography, who seemingly invented details out of thin air, knew very little about what he was writing.
The Gospel of Luke begins with a surmised admission that the author didn’t personally experience any of the details contained within his account because he alleges the presence of eyewitnesses but fails to notify himself as one. Like Mark’s Gospel, Luke was probably narrated by an individual residing far from Jerusalem because he commits several translational errors when converting Old Testament Hebrew scripture into Greek. Additionally, in a manner similar to the way in which Mark was penned, Luke’s author goes into extensive detail on his explanations of local phenomena but not those pertaining to Rome. Following the lead of Matthew’s author, Luke’s consistent duplication of Mark’s verses seemingly indicates that he also relied heavily on that text when making his report. However, researchers soon discovered that they could not find 230 verses common to Matthew and Luke in the more ancient Mark.
The two more recent authors couldn’t have derived identical verses from a sole source void of necessary information. Consequently, we can only surmise the hypothetical existence of an even earlier document used by all three authors as a template. This deduction would eventually become known as the Q hypothesis (from the German Quelle, meaning source). The canonical appearance of quotes from Thomas’ Gospel reinforces the theoretical existence of Q. While Thomas was completed around the same time as John, it offered an entirely different perspective on the mystery ofJesus. Even though the Thomas account is nothing but a series of Jesus’ sayings, it may help to explain the origin of other Gospel material. Thus, it’s quite possible that a primitive set of quotes served as the foundation from which the Gospel legends arose. In such a scenario, the early Jews may have actually known a man who traveled about and shared his philosophies with a number of audiences. This individual may have even been executed for his heretical teachings. His followers would then collect these teachings on paper, only to later subject them to decades of human hyperbole.
The Conventional Idea
The whole concept of a male god and his son wasn’t novel to the world when stories of Jesus began to emerge. Almost all preceding religions and philosophies contain a gender-ridden god of anger who speaks to his chosen people through an earthly medium, most often his son. It’s somewhat amusing that the “one and only true God” would choose the exact same tired avenue of communication.
Historians refer to the original concept likely serving as a basis for the exaggerated Jesus as Logos, the communicating spiritual medium between a deity and its chosen people. The idea had been floating around for centuries prior to Jesus’ arrival and probably started with the prophet Zarathustra who founded Zoroastrianism around 600 BCE.
Even more lethal to the Christian cause is the unoriginal nature of Jesus Christ himself. Around 3000 BCE, the ancient Egyptians had the Sun God Trinity of Atum (father), Horus (son), and Ra (holy spirit). When we take the Egyptian Book ofVivifying the Soul Forever into consideration, Jesus appears to be a mere carbon copy of Horus. Supporters of both beings claim that their respective subjects are the light of the world, the way, the truth, and the life; refer to them as good shepherds, lambs, and morning stars; claim that they are children of virgins; associate them with a cross and refer to them as Christ/Krst; claim that they have a revelation and bear witness to the world; claim that they initiate their educations at the age of twelve and have twelve followers; claim that they venture out on a boat with seven other passengers; and claim that they become baptized with water upon which they’re miraculously able to levitate. There are few more parallels than what I’ve listed here, but they’re rather loose. This analysis isn’t one of those laughable lists in which an author is determined to parallel a given celebrity with the antichrist; these are two sons of gods from Middle Eastern religions, alike in an unforgettable abundance of ways. What evidence do we truly hold that we should reject one while we embrace the other?
The comparison of Jesus to other religious characters doesn’t end with Horus. Hercules is another famous legendary figure consistently drawing parallels with Jesus. Both were products of the local primary god and a human mother; both had members of royalty seeking to kill them in infancy; both were travelers who helped people as they made their journeys; and both became widely worshipped as heroes following their deaths. Like Jesus, Hercules is a notable reference in many subsequent historical books. In fact, Josephus and Tacitus both mention Hercules in their exhaustive works. Like Jesus, Hercules failed to leave artifacts or eyewitness accounts for his existence. As you can see, Jesus and Hercules are drifting in the same boat with only one exception: Christianity survived the collapse of the Roman Empire while ancient Greek religions did not. As was the case for Horus, why should Hercules face rejection while Jesus is readily accepted?
Aside from Horus and Hercules, there are hosts of supernatural figures remarkably similar to the Christian one. The stories of Attis, Isis, Dionysos, Mithras, Osiris, Hermes, Prometheus, and Perseus include aspects of sacred meals, fasting, wise men, temporary deaths, violent confrontations, celestial birth announcements, virgin mothers, divine fathers, and insurmountable odds for surviving through infancy. If Jesus is the son of the one true God, why is his origin so pathetically unoriginal that we could have easily predicted it using a random religion generator that contained aspects of preceding superstitious myths? Out of the hundreds of divine creatures allegedly capable of miraculous performances, what actual evidence, not blind faith or gut feelings, tells Christians that Jesus is the force behind their comfortable sensations? Remember, correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation.
Problems Galore
As I mentioned in This Way and That: Biblical Contradictions, there’s a discrepancy between two Gospel accounts of at least ten years on when the world’s savior was born. That’s the equivalent of two people disagreeing today on whether Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States when Bob Hope was born. However, the potential importance of Bob Hope is nothing compared to that of the alleged son of God. While it’s true that we have increasingly accurate records in our modern society, it shouldn’t be insurmountably difficult to remember a specific year when an individual was born because biblical authors tend to base their dates relative to concurrent events. Such a comparative detail can hardly be easily exaggerated by the passage of time. If, on the other hand, people whimsically created the birth story decades after its setting, we could anticipate this large discrepancy. Also, remember that the Gospel writers had the advantage of divine inspiration for maintaining consistency. What modern technology could be more helpful in preventing complications than an omnipotent god’s assistance? Nevertheless, Christians would like the world to believe that Jesus was born during the distinctive incumbencies of King Herod and Quirinius.
The crucifixion legend has many problems in addition to the previously covered contradictions. Although the Romans rarely crucified thieves, we see them executing one on each side of Jesus. Even though Romans never performed executions so close to the Passover, they ignore tradition and carry out the crucifixions on the day before this sacred observance. While the Romans were meticulous in their documentation, they have no record of Jesus or his crucifixion. The whole idea of this Roman procession should be disconcerting if you consider that Rome, the undeniable democratic leader of the planet, didn’t offer Jesus due process.
Yet another reason why it’s highly improbable that the son of God appeared in human form was the tendency of religious Jews to be very adamant about keeping a separation between God and the human appearance. The Israelites even rioted on one occasion because a picture of Caesar appeared in the vicinity of their temple. It wouldn’t make much sense for them to readily accept a human savior when you take their willful convictions into consideration. Even so, thousands of Jews quickly accepted the notion of Christ. Instead of the immensely popular human Jesus, they most likely acknowledged and worshipped the aforementioned spiritual presence of God’s son. As time progressed and the Gospels emerged, however, those in the region who believed that their recent ancestors worshipped a human savior joined the Christian movement. Others who adhered to the traditional spiritual presence remained loyal to Judaism. To this day, the Jews do not acknowledge a human presence as the son of God.
The Truth Hurts, Unfortunately
According to Christian preaching, we are to accept Jesus Christ based on the divinely inspired accounts contained within the Gospels. Fortunately, one can easily demonstrate the fundamental flaw in blindly accepting such outrageous claims. Even though this supernatural being was supposedly performing unbelievable miracles before rising from the dead, historians and philosophers neglected these theoretical milestones in favor of mundane historical accounts. Consequently, we don’t have an attempted portrayal of an earthly Jesus until several decades following his supposed execution.
Paul was the most important initiator of the religious movement, yet he never conclusively mentions any earthly activity of his subject. In a nutshell, the Gospels are wholly unreliable because they present obvious ignorance of Jewish traditions, contradiction-inducing variations of oral tradition, a lack of eyewitnesses, extraordinary claims without a shred of evidence, known historical anomalies, inexplicably delayed reporting, probable acts of plagiarism, embarrassing scientific blunders, and unoriginal religious themes invoked many centuries before Christianity ever came into being.
I can think of no more than two reasonable hypotheses for the origin of Jesus Christ. Whichever is correct, either upcoming scenario is incalculably more likely to represent what took place 2000 years ago than the wishful thinking that Christians rapidly but blindly develop. The first possibility, and the more probable in my opinion, is that a respectable teacher from Jerusalem who preached his beliefs to a variety of audiences served as an earthly template for a spiritual entity. While his lessons may have been positively motivating for some, he may have pushed the envelope far enough to warrant his death in the opinions of others. As the gossip of his life spread in subsequent years, his followers probably went into a desperate frenzy to positively determine that sacred Old Testament prophecies foretold the arrival of this well-liked man. Spotting possible links here and there, certain individuals may have combined post hoc details, real life events, and the notion of a mythical Christ until the stories were arbitrarily deemed worthy of recording. The only sensible alternative to this “true historical figure” proposal requires us to write-off the stories as total myths arising from known social desperation and ancient superstition.
There’s simply no reasonable method of deduction allowing us to accept the legitimacy ofJesus Christ as the son of the universe’s omnipotent and omniscient creator. The Christian community doesn’t acknowledge stories similar to the ones in the New Testament because they appear in religious texts outside of the Bible. In reality, the Jesus story engages as much sensibility as any other unsubstantiated claims made by a number of ancient religions. For these reasons, we must consider the incredibly dubious set of Jesus biographies to be the final nail in the Bible’s coffin.
A FINAL WORD ON BIBLICAL NONSENSE
Using the methods provided in this book, our study allowed us to form hundreds of supporting reasons for the absence of divine inspiration in the Bible’s content. Seven essential recurring themes of biblical nonsense are readily noticeable when an unprejudiced, emotionless, and objective analysis of Christianity is undertaken.
The Hebrew god is a loathsome, despiteful, and abominable deity. The Old Testament portrays him as a being that experiences pleasure from distributing strange and ridiculous punishments for breaking his equally strange and ridiculous laws. This being is also guilty of torturing innocent people for the sins committed by others, murdering millions of our fellow human beings, and forcing his own creations into slavery. Furthermore, he unambiguously supports the very institution of slavery and the practice of severely oppressing women into a state of subordination. Had the invented God held the moral fortitude to believe otherwise, he would have surely exercised his unlimited power to ban these customs. Instead, he makes promises to deliver a multitude of cruel punishments, including an eternal torture of unimaginable proportions, for those who refuse to bow down and worship him.
The Bible fails a plethora of independent and unbiased scientific tests. Regardless of what scientific field we review, it’s likely to contain evidence contrary to the Bible’s claims. Several methods used to date the earth’s contents have long refuted the temporal setting of the creation, and attempts to harmonize or independently justify the Genesis account have served as embarrassing examples of biblical apologetics. Noah’s flood, a plagiarized story with numerous logical impossibilities, has mysteriously left no signs of its occurrence. The Bible’s ignorance of our planet’s spherical and kinetic attributes is also readily apparent.
The Bible demonstrates overwhelming evidence ofauthorship by fallible, divinely uninspired humans. In addition to the previously mentioned scientific flaws arising from an obvious limitation of knowledge and perspective, a seemingly countless number of preposterous suggestions can be found within the Bible. These absurdities include talking animals, miraculous war victories, contradictions in every conceivable category, hordes of failed and impossible prophecies, and an array of additional superstitious beliefs readily accepted by unsuspecting biblical readers. The newly acquired ability to assign a much more recent date to the Pentateuch through analyses of fictitious historical accounts debunks the notion of a Moses/God authorship and assists in the demonstration of the book’s human origins. Furthermore, these works contain references to people and places contemporaneous with the Babylonian Exile that took place a thousand years after Moses’ death. With this consideration, the reasons for the Bible’s flaws become readily apparent. Humans inventing stories set centuries in the past had no reason to anticipate that the fraudulent accounts would ever be unmasked. God did not tell us to kill people with other religions. God did not give us orders to take slaves. God did not intend for women to be socially inferior to men. God did not say that he created the universe only a few thousand years ago. God did not kill the entire world in a flood. There’s no evidence God did anything. Men were the sole driving force behind the creation of the Bible’s shameless hatred and propa-gandistic intentions.
There are fundamental flaws with the existence of God as described in the Bible. His appointed writers parade him as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, yet they mistakenly drop several clues that this isn’t the case. Using a bit of common sense, we can easily demonstrate that omniscience cannot coexist with freewill. Likewise, prayers are not truly answerable by an omniscient god because he would have already envisioned the concrete results of the future. Furthermore, this strangely gender-assigned deity spends his time giving instructions for trivial superstitious rituals rather than pertinent information for proving his existence, ceasing religious wars, or assisting his creations in their daily lives.
The life account of Jesus Christ is highly questionable. Contradictory to what the Gospel writers claim, there were no prophecies of this terribly unoriginal man. Besides, these writers conveniently stall for decades before writing about the unbelievable miracles allegedly performed by their subject. In addition, contemporaneous historians and philosophers frequently ignored the immensely important stories as if they never took place. Even Jesus Christ himself failed to make a return in accordance to his own prophecies. Prior to the purports of all these magnificent tricks and speeches, Paul tells the story of a completely different concept of Christ based in the spiritual realm that may have served as the basis for the Gospel legends. Although the Old Testament was certainly doomed for dismal failure, the New Testament fares no better.
Christians believe strange things for strange reasons. The expansion of Christian beliefs in the West was predominately dependant upon three factors: Rome’s desire for a new moral code and its ability to spread such views, the luxury of the religion having the only dominant and hostile belief system of the East, and its maintenance of isolation from other world religions. Once society met these requirements, the continuance of the religion was entirely reliant upon its individual followers. Parents who unknowingly condition their children to shun logic and reason when confronted with testable and observable Bible-debunking evidence now perpetuate the domination of Christian beliefs. Contributors to our environment deceitfully teach us that certain things are unquestionably true. Such nonsensical ideas begin at an age at which we have yet to behave or think in a rational manner. The same ideas are also continuously reinforced in an isolated Christian environment until they accumulate to a degree at which cognitive dissonance takes over and renders common sense impotent.
Counterarguments used by Christian apologists are often dishonest or irrelevant. Although there’s an enormous amount of Christian material claiming to debunk skeptical arguments, you have a duty to ask yourself some uncomfortable questions regarding these works. Can you better describe the apologetic arguments as “how-it-could-have-been-scenarios” rather than probable solutions? Do the arguments originate from a biased researcher with a deep emotional investment or an obvious agenda to prove something one way or another? Do the arguments resort to the use of logical fallacies to reach a desired conclusion? Do the arguments take biblical passages out of context or use a premise that is contradicted by what the Bible plainly says? If you’ve answered _yes to any of these questions after considering an apologetic explanation to anything that you’ve read in my work, keep looking. I encourage you to read books on Christianity by both secular and religious authors. You will no doubt discover which group acts as its own worst enemy by grasping at slippery straws to support its erroneous viewpoints. If you’ve heard an argument that you think solidly disproves something I’ve written, I hope you’ll choose to bring it to my attention. I’d certainly like to be able to respond to any claims made against the ones in this book. I may be able to more clearly explain the problem or, perhaps, correct the mistakes I made. You see, no author is infallible.
As a last request, I would ask any readers who still stubbornly insist that Christianity is the one true religion to allow others, including their children, to observe their own religious beliefs without fear of punishment or disappointment from you. If the truth is strong enough, it will find them. The majority of the world’s hostilities would vanish overnight if everyone would adhere to this simple guideline.
With the credibility of the Bible repeatedly demolished, perhaps you have opened your eyes to see the real world. There’s no certainty that we experience anything more than the challenges we face in this life. While this thought is probably haunting enough to make a few people want to crawl back into the comforts of religion, you will inevitably learn that such an idea is nothing to fear. Consequently, I hope you’ll decide to help others who have fallen victim to conditioned thinking provoked by ancient religions.
One day, perhaps, we’ll all be free of conditioned thinking and learn to rely on observable and testable evidence when examining religious claims. One day, perhaps, we can all peacefully coexist. Whatever force might be watching us now probably realizes that the majority of us are currently incapable of achieving these goals. If this being is observing our planet during a search for an enlightened race that’s ready for the deepest secrets of the universe, it should probably try us again later.
Written by Jason Long in "Biblical Nonsense A Review of the Bible for Doubting Christian", iUniverse, USA, 2005. Digitized, adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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