by Charles Kluepfel
6/13/. On "The Handbook of Christian Apologetics"
More Catholic apologists speak (professors, including a Jesuit, this time)
Summary
- This book of Catholic apologetics claims truth for Christianity, and Catholicism in particular. Here I critique their arguments.
This book, written by Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, S.J. (that is, a Jesuit), attempts to show that
- God Exists
- Jesus was divine and rose from the dead
- There is life after death
- Christianity is the true religion
My purpose is not to refute God's existence or to criticize the proofs offered, although this is a subject that is better approached by personal experience and introspection than by formal proof.
The question of life after death is another area of mystery -- one about which we know nothing. If Christianity were true, of course, we would then know something about life after death, as the Christian view on it would be true.
My purpose here is to refute the authors' claim to show the truth of Christianity in Jesus's divinity and resurrection. I will therefore skip directly to chapter 7: The Divinity of Christ.
On the first page of this chapter, the authors make some claims as to what Jesus said: he called himself the "Son of God"; "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30); "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (Jn 14:9). Yet only a couple of pages later they admit "If Christ was only human, he could have made mistakes." Well the author of the Gospel of John was human; so these quotes need not even be an accurate reflection of Jesus's own thoughts. Plus, even if they were, if Jesus were not divine he could have mistakenly thought he was. But it is more likely he saw the spark of divinity in himself that we each have, and his disciples mistook this for a claim to a unique divinity different from everyone else's.
Among other points, the authors admit that "if Christ is God, then, since he is omnipotent and present right now, he can transform you...". Why yes, if Jesus were God, he would be omnipotent and omniscient. But how does that square with the Gospels' claim that "Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor." (Luke 2:51)? After all, where can you increase from omniscience? Any "kenosis" is merely the "kenosis" that hides the divinity in each one of us.
The authors then again rely on John 7:46 to say that "Never has anyone spoken like this [Jesus]". They claim "everyone who met Jesus was shocked." Well, reminiscences can blur the truth, even if we were to admit the disciples wrote the Gospels, which we don't anyway. This has bearing also in why no one refuted the resurrection at the time the claim was first made. Aside from the fact that (1) it may not have been asserted near the time of Jesus's death, and (2) any such refutation might have been made but either not written down or destroyed later by "zealous" Christians, there is also the possibility of a "so what" attitude toward one more divine claim in an era full of "messiahs" that no importance was attached to this one person, far from the claim advanced in the later-written Gospels that everyone paid a great deal of attention to Jesus and his followers.
Then the authors try to reconcile two natures to Jesus, divine and human, by analogizing to two natures in ourselves: "material and immaterial", "spatial and non-spatial", "visible and invisible" -- "body and soul". But the materialists deny that the soul exists. The dualists recognize both, but then these are two different things and it is more the case that we are our souls, and only have a body. The idealist would say that even that body is merely a thought, an object of sense impressions. In any case the divinity of Jesus is said to be about both his body and soul -- to have two natures of soul -- to be omniscient, yet not so. Clearly no one expects the body to be omniscient, only the soul, that informs the body. With a divine soul informing Jesus's body, he would be omniscient, period, and not growing in wisdom. To say otherwise would be to pervert the meaning of language.
Parallels to the Jesus story in other myths.
The apologists make a strange admission:
Scattered generously throughout the myths of the ancient world is the strange story of a god who came down from heaven. Some tell of a god who died and rose for the life of man (e.g., Odin, Osiris and Mesopotamian corn gods). Just as the Garden of Eden story and the Noah's flood story appear in many different cultures, something like the Jesus story does too.
For some strange [?] reason, many people think that this fact--that there are many mythic parallels and foreshadowings of the Christian story--points to the falsehood of the Christian story. Actually, the more witnesses tell a similar story, the more likely it is to be true. The more foreshadowings we find for an event the more likely it is that the event will happen.
For some strange [?] reason, many people think that this fact--that there are many mythic parallels and foreshadowings of the Christian story--points to the falsehood of the Christian story. Actually, the more witnesses tell a similar story, the more likely it is to be true. The more foreshadowings we find for an event the more likely it is that the event will happen.
I am at a loss to understand what they mean. Are they really saying that the stories of Odin, Osiris, and innumerable other resurrected saviors are true? If so, what makes Christianity the unique or real truth, but not the other religions? If they don't mean to lend credence to those other stories, then again, what makes Jesus's story the unique one in the bunch to be declared the true one, since they all are said to reinforce one another? One can see how the flood stories for example do in fact point to the truth, in fact, of many floods, as floods take place in various parts of the world. There can never be literally one flood that covers the whole earth, as the bible claims, but the flood stories have a mythic reality, representing all the flood devastations that have taken place in all parts of the world. But these authors do not seek a mythic reality for Jesus's divinity (a divinity in which we all really could be said to be divine) but an actual reality. While all the various flood myths share that mythic reality, how can Christians share the mythic reality with Osiris, Tammuz, Dionysius, etc., and still be Christians?
Further on, we are asked "How do you, the critic who says the Incarnation is impossible, know so much that you can tell God what he can or cannot do?" Well, those of us who do not believe in God, of course will say that God cannot do anything, since he doesn't exist. Those of us who do believe in God, don't deny that he could do what he wants, just that we see no evidence that this is what happened in particular in the case of Jesus. You say that the faithful do not need evidence? Then why not have faith in the angel Moroni from the Book of Mormon? ... or in the prophet Mohammed, more important even than Jesus? You say there is evidence? This refutation shows that circular biblical logic only claims to give evidence.
The very next paragraph even goes on to "put the same point more positively": "If a being exists worthy of the name 'God,' that being must be omnipotent, that is, able to do anything that is intrinsically possible, anything that is meaningful, anything that does not involve a self-contradiction (like a rock that is not a rock, or a rock too heavy for infinite power to lift)." This does not sound like a description of the babe in the manger. As mentioned above for the divine attribute of omniscience, to be omniscient and not-omniscient is in fact a contradiction as is to be both mortal and immortal, and only the non-omniscient can grow in wisdom as described in Luke 2:51, and only the mortal can die on a cross. And even if the dead could be raised, only a living being could do the raising, not a dead one. Even God cannot reify a contradiction. Claiming it to be true does not make it so.
Acknowledged Beliefs?
The next page claims that "Everyone who reads the Gospels agrees that Jesus was a good and wise man, a great and profound teacher. Most nonreligious people, and even many people of other religions, like Gandhi, see him as history's greatest moral teacher. He is, in short, eminently trustworthy."
Not everyone even believes that Jesus existed. G.A. Wells and others certainly have read the Gospels, but deny that Jesus actually existed. Others see Jesus as a true (though failed) messianic figure; that is, as a political rebel, seeking to break Israel from the yoke of Roman imperialism, who failed in his efforts. His disciples, and their disciples in turn, and the great religion maker Paul, attributed to him the wise counsel that actually originated from the leaders of the rabbinical Judaism that was developing at that time, such as Rabbi Hillel. Even if Jesus were "eminently trustworthy," we could not be sure of what he said, since he was reported on by mere humans, who can be in error, as admitted to even by the apologetic authors. One should not misread the politeness of non-Christians as belief in the goodness of a real Jesus. People who believe as Gandhi is reported here as believing, would in fact be a type of Christian. Also, the average Christian has not even thought out these questions, and goes along with his family's traditions and what the "experts" say.
Alternatives anyone?
The claim: "If the Gospels lie, who invented the lie and for what reason? Was it Jesus' apostles? What did they get out of the lie? Martyrdom--hardly an attractive temptation. A liar always has some selfish motive." Then: "Why did thousands suffer torture and death for this lie if they knew it was a lie?" and "What force sent Christians to the lions' den with hymns on their lips?"
Liars?
Does a liar always have a selfish motive? Do parents who tell their children the Santa Claus myth as truth have a selfish motive? Such parents would deny it: after all they give up credit for the gift-giving. Yet does that imply that there really is a Santa Claus? Is this the same order of reality that is claimed for Jesus? If one does not use the word "lie" for such non-truths, then we need not posit a lie upon the part of the early Christians. Paul said
To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
(1 Cor 9:20-23)
something like a modern politician.
(1 Cor 9:20-23)
Misremembered details and pious untruths, and second-hand storytelling under pseudonym of supposed disciples convince second-generation believers, who in good faith accept the stories as truth, and transmit them.
What lie ever sent martyrs to their deaths?: What divine emperor's power sent the Kamikaze pilots to their willing deaths? Have not thousands of Muslims died for their faith in Allah as defined by Mohammed? Have not Jews in the Inquisition, and heretics being burned at the stake, refused to compromise their beliefs by agreeing with their tormentors, and thereby forfeited their lives? If such tenacity vouched for the truth of Christianity, it would also vouch for the truth of non-Christianity.
The authors go on to say:
The fundamental difficulty unbelievers have is with the data. How can they explain the data of history: a [purportedly] good and wise man who [purportedly] claimed to be God? No one has ever satisfactorily answered the simple question: If Jesus is not God, as Christians say he is, then who is he? If any answer to that question had even a specious staying power, it would have served as a mainstay of all unbelievers' arguments for all time. But hypothesis after weak hypothesis is tried, and each fares about as well as fog on a sunny morning.
However, because so little is known about Jesus's life, the above is like saying that U.F.O.s must be extraterrestrials because there are so many other explanations that any other one explanation is likely not right. But one of those other explanations is quite likely right, more probably than the extraterrestrial hypothesis. And some explanation, such as Wells's, or Crossan's, or any of a number of authors' different spins on the "real" Jesus, as if such could be known, is likely to be right, though which one is well nigh impossible to tell.
The authors attack various theories:
They start by presenting the famous dilemma/trilemma/etc.: Jesus was either God, liar or madman.
The trilemma claims that Jesus is or was either the Lord, a liar, or a lunatic. The poser then goes on to rule out the latter two options leaving only "Lord". But any such arguments require us to believe that Jesus actually claimed to be Lord. He need not have, as the Gospels were in fact written by fallible humans. As for the specifics, the authors repeat the notion that "unselfish, loving, caring, compassionate" people like Jesus, who was "passionate about teaching truth" would not lie, again ignoring the millions of loving, caring parents who tell stories about Santa Claus to their children as if they were true. It also assumes that Jesus was "unselfish, loving, caring, compassionate" and was "passionate about teaching truth". This is also not necessarily true.
The authors acknowledge that mythology is another alternative that has been proffered as an alternative to the tri-lemma, and therefore introduce a quadrilemma: "Lord, Liar, Lunatic or Myth". True to their calling, they also wish to dispose of the fourth possibility, but unsuccessfully so. Let's see what they say:
1. If the same neutral, objective, scientific approach is used on the New Testament texts as is used on all other ancient documents, then the texts prove remarkably reliable. Complex, clever hypothesis after hypothesis follows another with bewildering rapidity and complexity in the desperate attempt to debunk, "demythologize" or demean the data -- like declawing a lion. No book in history has been so attacked, cut up, reconstituted and stood on its head as the New Testament. Yet it still lives -- like Christ himself.
What does this mean? We can accord stories of Christ the same scientific approach as stories of the Minotaur, but that doesn't make it any more real. Of necessity, hypothesis after hypothesis are proposed for the "true" story of Jesus, as we really haven't a clue as to what really happened, except that each demythologizer's hypothesis is more likely than the literal truth of the Gospels. No book in history has needed to be so criticized, as no other book has been so uncritically venerated by faithful followers, in many instances forced under pain of burning at the stake, social ostracism, or wishful thinking.
2. The state of the manuscripts is very good. Compared with any and all other ancient documents, the New Testament stands up as ten times more sure. For instance, we have five hundred different copies earlier than A.D. 500. The next most reliable ancient text we have is the Iliad, for which we have only fifty copies that date from 500 years or less after its origin. We have only one very late manuscript of Tacitus's Annals, but no one is reluctant to treat that as authentic history. If the books of the New Testament did not contain accounts of miracles or make radical, uncomfortable claims on our lives, they would be accepted by every scholar in the world. In other words, it is not objective, neutral science but subjective prejudice or ideology that fuels skeptical Scripture scholarship.
The manuscripts that we have, in addition to being old, are also mutually reinforcing and consistent. There are very few discrepancies and no really important ones. And all later discoveries of manuscripts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, have confirmed rather than refuted previously existing manuscripts in every important case. There is simply no other ancient text in nearly as good a shape.
The manuscripts that we have, in addition to being old, are also mutually reinforcing and consistent. There are very few discrepancies and no really important ones. And all later discoveries of manuscripts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, have confirmed rather than refuted previously existing manuscripts in every important case. There is simply no other ancient text in nearly as good a shape.
Do the authors mean to imply that the Iliad is better history than Tacitus's Annals? Are we to believe in Minotaurs and the Golden Fleece? How in fact do scholars view the Homeric Epics? To quote the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
The absence of hard facts puzzled but did not deter the Greeks; the fictions that had begun even before the 5th century BC were developed in the Alexandrian era in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC (when false scholarship as well as true abounded) into fantastic pseudobiographies, and these were further refined by derivative scholars under the Roman Empire. The longest to have survived purports to be by Herodotus himself; but it is quite devoid of objective truth.
So much for taking all ancient writings as being the "Gospel truth".
As for consistency, just refer to the other chapters on my web site or visit the Biblical Errancy web site. The only consistency, aside from writers copying from one another, is the desire to wed Jesus's life to purported old-testament prophesy, at whatever cost to the truth, as evidenced for example by Matthew and Luke's two completely different birth narratives designed to place Jesus's birth in Bethlehem despite his being known as Jesus of Nazareth. One has Jesus's parents living in Bethlehem, only to move after Jesus's birth, for fear of a king in Judea; the other has his parents only journeying to Bethlehem for a temporary stay away from their home in Nazareth, to which they return after Jesus's birth. This is not consistent at all except for the desperate measures the writers take to have Jesus born in Bethlehem.
Myth
3. If Jesus' divinity is a myth invented by later generations("the early Christian community," often a code word for "the inventors of the myth"), then there must have been at least two or three generations between the original eyewitnesses of the historical Jesus and the universal belief in the new, mythic, divinized Jesus; otherwise, the myth could never have been believed as fact because it would have been refuted by eyewitnesses of the real Jesus. Both disciples and enemies would have had reasons to oppose this new myth.
However we have no evidence at all of anyone ever opposing the so-called myth of the divine Jesus in the name of an earlier merely human Jesus. The early "demythologizers" explicitly claimed that the New Testament texts had to have been written after A.D. 150 for the myth to have taken hold. But no competent scholar today denies the first-century dating of virtually all of the New Testament--certainly Paul's letters, which clearly affirm and presuppose Jesus' divinity and the fact that this doctrine was already universal Christian orthodoxy.
However we have no evidence at all of anyone ever opposing the so-called myth of the divine Jesus in the name of an earlier merely human Jesus. The early "demythologizers" explicitly claimed that the New Testament texts had to have been written after A.D. 150 for the myth to have taken hold. But no competent scholar today denies the first-century dating of virtually all of the New Testament--certainly Paul's letters, which clearly affirm and presuppose Jesus' divinity and the fact that this doctrine was already universal Christian orthodoxy.
Where does Paul claim Jesus was equal to God? He refers to God as Jesus's father and says we should seek God through Jesus and that God raised Jesus up, but nowhere does Paul say Jesus is God. And the Gospels (all written after Paul's writings)? It is not until the last Gospel that Jesus is made to say "Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58), written around A.D. 100, about 3 generations after Jesus's traditional date of death.
Not only is there a difference in time in the growth of these stories. There is also distance. The Gospels were written in Greek. (If the authors claim otherwise, then there goes their claim that we have manuscripts that are nearly the original.)
4. If a mythic "layer" had been added later onto an originally merely human Jesus, we should find some evidence, at least indirectly and second-hand, of this earlier layer. We find instead an absolute and total absence of any such evidence anywhere, either internal (in the New Testament texts themselves) or external, anywhere else, in Christian, anti-Christian, or non-Christian sources.
However, this ignores the ancient people's ability to transmit oral legend. As for indirect evidence for a level of a mere human Jesus, why not take
Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
(Mark 10:18)
(Mark 10:18)
or
"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
(Matthew 27:46)
These sound to me like evidence of a human layer in the building of the Jesus myth.
(Matthew 27:46)
5. The style of the Gospels is not the style of myth, but that of real, though unscientific, eyewitness description. Anyone sensitive to literary styles can compare the Gospels to any of the mythic religious literature of the time, and the differences will appear remarkable and unmistakable-- for instance, the intertestamental apocalyptic literature of both Jews and Gentiles, or pagan mythic fantasies like Ovid's Metamorphoses or Flavius Philostratus's story of the wonder-worker Apollonius of Tyana (A.D. 220).
Well Ray Bradbury and Norman Mailer are both contemporary authors, but they certainly do not have the same style, though both write fiction. The Homeric legends are not like the Upanishads, either, but they are both still legendary.
If the events recorded in the Gospels did not really happen, then these authors invented modern realistic fantasy nineteen centuries ago. The Gospels are full of little details, both of external observation and internal feelings, that are found only in eyewitness descriptions or modern realistic fiction. They also include dozens of little details of life in first-century Israel that could not have been known by someone not living in that time and place (see Jn 12:3, for instance). And there are no second-century anachronisms, either in language or content.
For an example of the apocalyptic literature mentioned above, one need only look at the book of Revelations, the last book of the New Testament, also called the Apocalypse. Yes, this is a different genre from the gospels. But the same genre as the gospels can be seen in the non-canonical gospels. Take for example the Infancy Narrative of Thomas. It describes the home life of the youthful Jesus, his playmates and their parents. Surely a homey type of atmosphere. Not like Ovid's Metamorphoses or Flavius Philostratus's story of the wonder-worker Apollonius of Tyana. The fantasy events would also make Stephen King proud:
The stories of Thomas the Israelite, the Philosopher, concerning the works of the Childhood of the Lord.
I.
1 I, Thomas the Israelite, tell unto you, even all the brethren that are of the Gentiles, to make known unto you the works of the childhood of our Lord Jesus Christ and his mighty deeds, even all that he did when he was born in our land: whereof the beginning is thus:
II.
1 This little child Jesus when he was five years old was playing at the ford of a brook: and he gathered together the waters that flowed there into pools, and made them straightway clean, and commanded them by his word alone.
2 And having made soft clay, he fashioned thereof twelve sparrows. And it was the Sabbath when he did these things (or made them). And there were also many other little children playing with him.
3 And a certain Jew when he saw what Jesus did, playing upon the Sabbath day, departed straightway and told his father Joseph: Lo, thy child is at the brook, and he hath taken clay and fashioned twelve little birds, and hath polluted the Sabbath day.
4 And Joseph came to the place and saw: and cried out to him, saying: Wherefore doest thou these things on the Sabbath, which it is not lawful to do? But Jesus clapped his hands together and cried out to the sparrows and said to them: Go! and the sparrows took their flight and went away chirping.
5 And when the Jews saw it they were amazed, and departed and told their chief men that which they had seen Jesus do.
III.
1 But the son of Annas the scribe was standing there with Joseph; and he took a branch of a willow and dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered together.
2 And when Jesus saw what was done, he was wroth and said unto him: O evil, ungodly, and foolish one, what hurt did the pools and the waters do thee? behold, now also thou shalt be withered like a tree, and shalt not bear leaves, neither root, nor fruit.
3 And straightway that lad withered up wholly, but Jesus departed and went unto Joseph's house. But the parents of him that was withered took him up, bewailing his youth, and brought him to Joseph, and accused him 'for that thou hast such a child which doeth such deeds.'
IV.
1 After that again he went through the village, and a child ran and dashed against his shoulder. And Jesus was provoked and said unto him: Thou shalt not finish thy course (lit. go all thy way). And immediately he fell down and died. But certain when they saw what was done said: Whence was this young child born, for that every word of his is an accomplished work? And the parents of him that was dead came unto Joseph, and blamed him, saying: Thou that hast such a child canst not dwell with us in the village: or do thou teach him to bless and not to curse: for he slayeth our children.
V.
1 And Joseph called the young child apart and admonished him, saying: Wherefore doest thou such things, that these suffer and hate us and persecute us? But Jesus said: I know that these thy words are not thine: nevertheless for thy sake I will hold my peace: but they shall bear their punishment. And straightway they that accused him were smitten with blindness.
2 And they that saw it were sore afraid and perplexed, and said concerning him that every word which he spake whether it were good or bad, was a deed, and became a marvel. And when they (he ?) saw that Jesus had so done, Joseph arose and took hold upon his ear and wrung it sore.
3 And the young child was wroth and said unto him: It sufficeth thee (or them) to seek and not to find, and verily thou hast done unwisely: knowest thou not that I am thine? vex me not.
VI.
1 Now a certain teacher, Zacchaeus by name, stood there and he heard in part when Jesus said these things to his father and he marveled greatly that being a young child he spake such matters.
2 And after a few days he came near unto Joseph and said unto him: Thou hast a wise child, and he hath understanding. Come, deliver him to me that he may learn letters. And I will teach him with the letters all knowledge and that he salute all the elders and honor them as grandfathers and fathers, and love them of his own years.
3 And he told him all the letters from Alpha even to Omega clearly, with much questioning. But Jesus looked upon Zacchaeus the teacher and saith unto him: Thou that knowest not the Alpha according to its nature, how canst thou teach others the Beta? thou hypocrite, first, if thou knowest it, teach the Alpha, and then will we believe thee concerning the Beta. Then began he to confound the mouth of the teacher concerning the first letter, and he could not prevail to answer him.
4 And in the hearing of many the young child saith to Zacchaeus: Hear, O teacher, the ordinance of the first letter and pay heed to this, how that it hath [what follows is really unintelligible in this and in all the parallel texts: a literal version would run something like this: how that it hath lines, and a middle mark, which thou seest, common to both, going apart; coming together, raised up on high, dancing (a corrupt word), of three signs, like in kind (a corrupt word), balanced, equal in measure]: thou hast the rules of the Alpha.
VII.
1 Now when Zacchaeus the teacher heard such and so many allegories of the first letter spoken by the young child, he was perplexed at his answer and his instruction being so great, and said to them that were there: Woe is me, wretch that I am, I am confounded: I have brought shame to myself by drawing to me this young child.
2 Take him away, therefore I beseech thee, my brother Joseph: I cannot endure the severity of his look, I cannot once make clear my (or his) word. This young child is not earthly born: this is one that can tame even fire: be like this is one begotten before the making of the world. What belly bare this, what womb nurtured it? I know not. Woe is me, O my friend, he putteth me from my sense, I cannot follow his understanding. I have deceived myself, thrice wretched man that I am: I strove to get me a disciple and I am found to have a master.
3 I think, O my friends, upon my shame, for that being old I have been overcome by a young child;- and I am even ready to faint and to die because of the boy, for I am not able at this present hour to look him in the face. And when all men say that I have been overcome by a little child, what have I to say? and what can I tell concerning the lines of the first letter whereof he spake to me? I am ignorant, O my friends, for neither beginning nor end of it (or him) do I know.
4 Wherefore I beseech thee, my brother Joseph, take him away unto thine house: for he is somewhat great, whether god or angel or what I should call him, I know not.
VIII.
1 And as the Jews were counselling Zacchaeus, the young child laughed greatly and said: Now let those bear fruit that were barren (Gr. that are thine) and let them see that were blind in heart. I am come from above that I may curse them, and call them to the things that are above, even as he commanded which hath sent me for your sakes.
2 And when the young child ceased speaking, immediately all they were made whole which had come under his curse. And no man after that durst provoke him, lest he should curse him, and he should be maimed.
IX.
1 Now after certain days Jesus was playing in the upper story of a certain house, and one of the young children that played with him fell down from the house and died. And the other children when they saw it fled, and Jesus remained alone.
2 And the parents of him that was dead came and accused him that he had cast him down. (And Jesus said: I did not cast him down) but they reviled him still.
3 Then Jesus leaped down from the roof and stood by the body of the child and cried with a loud voice and said: Zeno (for so was his name called), arise and tell me, did I cast thee down? And straightway he arose and said: Nay, Lord, thou didst not cast me down, but didst raise me up. And when they saw it they were amazed: and the parents of the child glorified God for the sign which had come to pass, and worshipped Jesus.
X.
1 After a few days, a certain young man was cleaving wood in the neighborhood (MSS. corner), and the axe fell and cut in sunder the sole of his foot, and losing much blood he was at the point to die.
2 And when there was a tumult and concourse, the young child Jesus also ran thither, and by force passed through the multitude, and took hold upon the foot of the young man that was smitten, and straightway it was healed. And he said unto the young man: Arise now and cleave the wood and remember me. But when the multitude saw what was done they worshipped the young child, saying: Verily the spirit of God dwelleth in this young child.
XI.
1 Now when he was six years old, his mother sendeth him to draw water and bear it into the house, and gave him a pitcher: but in the press he struck it against another and the pitcher was broken.
2 But Jesus spread out the garment which was upon him and filled it with water and brought it to his mother. And when his mother saw what was done she kissed him; and she kept within herself the mysteries which she saw him do.
XII.
1 Again, in the time of sowing the young child went forth with his father to sow wheat in their land: and as his father sowed, the young child Jesus sowed also one corn of wheat.
2 And he reaped it and threshed it and made thereof an hundred measures (cors): and he called all the poor of the village unto the threshing floor and gave them the wheat. And Joseph took the residue of the wheat. And he was eight years old when he wrought this sign.
XIII.
1 Now his father was a carpenter and made at that time ploughs and yokes. And there was required of him a bed by a certain rich man, that he should make it for him. And whereas one beam, that which is called the shifting one was too short and Joseph knew not what to do, the young child Jesus said to his father Joseph: Lay down the two pieces of wood and make them even at the end next unto thee (MSS. at the middle part). And Joseph did as the young child said unto him. And Jesus stood at the other end and took hold upon the shorter beam and stretched it and made it equal with the other. And his father Joseph saw it and marveled: and he embraced the young child and kissed him, saying: Happy am I for that God hath given me this young child.
XIV.
1 But when Joseph saw the understanding of the child, and his age, that it was coming to the full, he thought with himself again that he should not be ignorant of letters; and he took him and delivered him to another teacher. And the teacher said unto Joseph: First will I teach him the Greek letters, and after that the Hebrew. For the teacher knew the skill of the child and was afraid of him: notwithstanding he wrote the alphabet and Jesus pondered thereon a long time and answered him not.
2 And Jesus said to him: If thou be indeed a teacher and if thou knowest letters well, tell me the power of the Alpha and then will I tell thee the power of the Beta. And the teacher was provoked and smote him on the head. And the young child was hurt and cursed him, and straightway he fainted and fell to the ground on his face.
3 And the child returned unto the house of Joseph: and Joseph was grieved and commanded his mother, saying: Let him not forth without the door, for all they die that provoke him to wrath.
XV.
1 And after some time yet another teacher which was a faithful friend of Joseph said to him: Bring the young child unto me to the school, peradventure I may be able by cockering him to teach him the letters. And Joseph said: If thou hast no fear, my brother, take him with thee. And he took him with him, in fear and much trouble of spirit, but the young child followed him gladly.
2 And going with boldness into the school he found a book lying upon the pulpit and he took it, and read not the letters that were therein, but opened his mouth and spake by the Holy Spirit, and taught the law to them that stood by. And a great multitude came together and stood there hearkening, and marveled at the beauty of his teaching and the readiness of his words, in that being an infant he uttered such things.
3 But when Joseph heard it, he was afraid, and ran unto the school thinking whether this teacher also were without skill (or smitten with infirmity): but the teacher said unto Joseph: Know, my brother, that I received this child for a disciple, but he is full of grace and wisdom; and now I beseech thee, brother, take him unto thine house.
4 And when the young child heard that, he smiled upon him and said: Forasmuch as thou hast said well and hast borne right witness, for thy sake shall he also that was smitten be healed. And forthwith the other teacher was healed. And Joseph took the young child and departed unto his house.
XVI.
1 And Joseph sent his son James to bind fuel and carry it into his house. And the young child Jesus also followed him. And as James was gathering of faggots, a viper bit the hand of James.
2 And as he was sore afflicted and ready to perish, Jesus came near and breathed upon the bite, and straightway the pain ceased, and the serpent burst, and forthwith James continued whole.
XVII.
1 And after these things, in the neighborhood of Joseph, a little child fell sick and died, and his mother wept sore. And Jesus heard that there w as great mourning and trouble and he ran quickly and found the child dead: and he touched his breast and said: I say unto thee, Child, die not, but live and be with thy mother. And straightway it looked up and laughed. And he said to the woman: Take him up and give him milk, and remember me.
2 And the multitude that stood by saw it and marveled, and said: Of a truth this young child is either a god or an angel of God; for every word of his is a perfect work. And Jesus departed thence, and was playing with other children.
XVIII.
1 And after some time there was work of building. And there came a great tumult, and Jesus arose and went thither: and he saw a man lying dead, and took hold of his hand and said: Man, I say unto thee, arise and do thy work. And immediately he arose and worshipped him.
2 And when the multitude saw it, they were astonished, and said: This young child is from heaven: for he hath saved many souls from death, and hath power to save them all his life long.
XIX.
1 And when he was twelve years old his parents went according to the custom unto Jerusalem to the feast of the Passover with their company: and after the Passover they returned to go unto their house. And as they returned the child Jesus went back to Jerusalem; but his parents supposed that he was in their company.
2 And when they had gone a day's journey, they sought him among their kinsfolk, and when they found him not, they were troubled, and returned again to the city seeking him. And after the third day they found him in the temple sitting in the midst of the doctors and hearing and asking them questions. And all men paid heed to him and marveled how that being a young child he put to silence the elders and teachers of the people, expounding the heads of the law and the parables of the prophets.
3 And his mother Mary came near and said unto him: Child, wherefore hast thou so done unto us? behold we have sought thee sorrowing. And Jesus said unto them: Why seek ye me? know ye not that I must be in my Father's house?
4 But the scribes and Pharisees said: Art thou the mother of this child? and she said: I am. And they said unto her: Blessed art thou among women because God hath blessed the fruit of thy womb. For such glory and such excellence and wisdom we have neither seen nor heard at any time.
5 And Jesus arose and followed his mother and was subject unto his parents: but his mother kept in mind all that came to pass. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and grace. Unto him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
I.
1 I, Thomas the Israelite, tell unto you, even all the brethren that are of the Gentiles, to make known unto you the works of the childhood of our Lord Jesus Christ and his mighty deeds, even all that he did when he was born in our land: whereof the beginning is thus:
II.
1 This little child Jesus when he was five years old was playing at the ford of a brook: and he gathered together the waters that flowed there into pools, and made them straightway clean, and commanded them by his word alone.
2 And having made soft clay, he fashioned thereof twelve sparrows. And it was the Sabbath when he did these things (or made them). And there were also many other little children playing with him.
3 And a certain Jew when he saw what Jesus did, playing upon the Sabbath day, departed straightway and told his father Joseph: Lo, thy child is at the brook, and he hath taken clay and fashioned twelve little birds, and hath polluted the Sabbath day.
4 And Joseph came to the place and saw: and cried out to him, saying: Wherefore doest thou these things on the Sabbath, which it is not lawful to do? But Jesus clapped his hands together and cried out to the sparrows and said to them: Go! and the sparrows took their flight and went away chirping.
5 And when the Jews saw it they were amazed, and departed and told their chief men that which they had seen Jesus do.
III.
1 But the son of Annas the scribe was standing there with Joseph; and he took a branch of a willow and dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered together.
2 And when Jesus saw what was done, he was wroth and said unto him: O evil, ungodly, and foolish one, what hurt did the pools and the waters do thee? behold, now also thou shalt be withered like a tree, and shalt not bear leaves, neither root, nor fruit.
3 And straightway that lad withered up wholly, but Jesus departed and went unto Joseph's house. But the parents of him that was withered took him up, bewailing his youth, and brought him to Joseph, and accused him 'for that thou hast such a child which doeth such deeds.'
IV.
1 After that again he went through the village, and a child ran and dashed against his shoulder. And Jesus was provoked and said unto him: Thou shalt not finish thy course (lit. go all thy way). And immediately he fell down and died. But certain when they saw what was done said: Whence was this young child born, for that every word of his is an accomplished work? And the parents of him that was dead came unto Joseph, and blamed him, saying: Thou that hast such a child canst not dwell with us in the village: or do thou teach him to bless and not to curse: for he slayeth our children.
V.
1 And Joseph called the young child apart and admonished him, saying: Wherefore doest thou such things, that these suffer and hate us and persecute us? But Jesus said: I know that these thy words are not thine: nevertheless for thy sake I will hold my peace: but they shall bear their punishment. And straightway they that accused him were smitten with blindness.
2 And they that saw it were sore afraid and perplexed, and said concerning him that every word which he spake whether it were good or bad, was a deed, and became a marvel. And when they (he ?) saw that Jesus had so done, Joseph arose and took hold upon his ear and wrung it sore.
3 And the young child was wroth and said unto him: It sufficeth thee (or them) to seek and not to find, and verily thou hast done unwisely: knowest thou not that I am thine? vex me not.
VI.
1 Now a certain teacher, Zacchaeus by name, stood there and he heard in part when Jesus said these things to his father and he marveled greatly that being a young child he spake such matters.
2 And after a few days he came near unto Joseph and said unto him: Thou hast a wise child, and he hath understanding. Come, deliver him to me that he may learn letters. And I will teach him with the letters all knowledge and that he salute all the elders and honor them as grandfathers and fathers, and love them of his own years.
3 And he told him all the letters from Alpha even to Omega clearly, with much questioning. But Jesus looked upon Zacchaeus the teacher and saith unto him: Thou that knowest not the Alpha according to its nature, how canst thou teach others the Beta? thou hypocrite, first, if thou knowest it, teach the Alpha, and then will we believe thee concerning the Beta. Then began he to confound the mouth of the teacher concerning the first letter, and he could not prevail to answer him.
4 And in the hearing of many the young child saith to Zacchaeus: Hear, O teacher, the ordinance of the first letter and pay heed to this, how that it hath [what follows is really unintelligible in this and in all the parallel texts: a literal version would run something like this: how that it hath lines, and a middle mark, which thou seest, common to both, going apart; coming together, raised up on high, dancing (a corrupt word), of three signs, like in kind (a corrupt word), balanced, equal in measure]: thou hast the rules of the Alpha.
VII.
1 Now when Zacchaeus the teacher heard such and so many allegories of the first letter spoken by the young child, he was perplexed at his answer and his instruction being so great, and said to them that were there: Woe is me, wretch that I am, I am confounded: I have brought shame to myself by drawing to me this young child.
2 Take him away, therefore I beseech thee, my brother Joseph: I cannot endure the severity of his look, I cannot once make clear my (or his) word. This young child is not earthly born: this is one that can tame even fire: be like this is one begotten before the making of the world. What belly bare this, what womb nurtured it? I know not. Woe is me, O my friend, he putteth me from my sense, I cannot follow his understanding. I have deceived myself, thrice wretched man that I am: I strove to get me a disciple and I am found to have a master.
3 I think, O my friends, upon my shame, for that being old I have been overcome by a young child;- and I am even ready to faint and to die because of the boy, for I am not able at this present hour to look him in the face. And when all men say that I have been overcome by a little child, what have I to say? and what can I tell concerning the lines of the first letter whereof he spake to me? I am ignorant, O my friends, for neither beginning nor end of it (or him) do I know.
4 Wherefore I beseech thee, my brother Joseph, take him away unto thine house: for he is somewhat great, whether god or angel or what I should call him, I know not.
VIII.
1 And as the Jews were counselling Zacchaeus, the young child laughed greatly and said: Now let those bear fruit that were barren (Gr. that are thine) and let them see that were blind in heart. I am come from above that I may curse them, and call them to the things that are above, even as he commanded which hath sent me for your sakes.
2 And when the young child ceased speaking, immediately all they were made whole which had come under his curse. And no man after that durst provoke him, lest he should curse him, and he should be maimed.
IX.
1 Now after certain days Jesus was playing in the upper story of a certain house, and one of the young children that played with him fell down from the house and died. And the other children when they saw it fled, and Jesus remained alone.
2 And the parents of him that was dead came and accused him that he had cast him down. (And Jesus said: I did not cast him down) but they reviled him still.
3 Then Jesus leaped down from the roof and stood by the body of the child and cried with a loud voice and said: Zeno (for so was his name called), arise and tell me, did I cast thee down? And straightway he arose and said: Nay, Lord, thou didst not cast me down, but didst raise me up. And when they saw it they were amazed: and the parents of the child glorified God for the sign which had come to pass, and worshipped Jesus.
X.
1 After a few days, a certain young man was cleaving wood in the neighborhood (MSS. corner), and the axe fell and cut in sunder the sole of his foot, and losing much blood he was at the point to die.
2 And when there was a tumult and concourse, the young child Jesus also ran thither, and by force passed through the multitude, and took hold upon the foot of the young man that was smitten, and straightway it was healed. And he said unto the young man: Arise now and cleave the wood and remember me. But when the multitude saw what was done they worshipped the young child, saying: Verily the spirit of God dwelleth in this young child.
XI.
1 Now when he was six years old, his mother sendeth him to draw water and bear it into the house, and gave him a pitcher: but in the press he struck it against another and the pitcher was broken.
2 But Jesus spread out the garment which was upon him and filled it with water and brought it to his mother. And when his mother saw what was done she kissed him; and she kept within herself the mysteries which she saw him do.
XII.
1 Again, in the time of sowing the young child went forth with his father to sow wheat in their land: and as his father sowed, the young child Jesus sowed also one corn of wheat.
2 And he reaped it and threshed it and made thereof an hundred measures (cors): and he called all the poor of the village unto the threshing floor and gave them the wheat. And Joseph took the residue of the wheat. And he was eight years old when he wrought this sign.
XIII.
1 Now his father was a carpenter and made at that time ploughs and yokes. And there was required of him a bed by a certain rich man, that he should make it for him. And whereas one beam, that which is called the shifting one was too short and Joseph knew not what to do, the young child Jesus said to his father Joseph: Lay down the two pieces of wood and make them even at the end next unto thee (MSS. at the middle part). And Joseph did as the young child said unto him. And Jesus stood at the other end and took hold upon the shorter beam and stretched it and made it equal with the other. And his father Joseph saw it and marveled: and he embraced the young child and kissed him, saying: Happy am I for that God hath given me this young child.
XIV.
1 But when Joseph saw the understanding of the child, and his age, that it was coming to the full, he thought with himself again that he should not be ignorant of letters; and he took him and delivered him to another teacher. And the teacher said unto Joseph: First will I teach him the Greek letters, and after that the Hebrew. For the teacher knew the skill of the child and was afraid of him: notwithstanding he wrote the alphabet and Jesus pondered thereon a long time and answered him not.
2 And Jesus said to him: If thou be indeed a teacher and if thou knowest letters well, tell me the power of the Alpha and then will I tell thee the power of the Beta. And the teacher was provoked and smote him on the head. And the young child was hurt and cursed him, and straightway he fainted and fell to the ground on his face.
3 And the child returned unto the house of Joseph: and Joseph was grieved and commanded his mother, saying: Let him not forth without the door, for all they die that provoke him to wrath.
XV.
1 And after some time yet another teacher which was a faithful friend of Joseph said to him: Bring the young child unto me to the school, peradventure I may be able by cockering him to teach him the letters. And Joseph said: If thou hast no fear, my brother, take him with thee. And he took him with him, in fear and much trouble of spirit, but the young child followed him gladly.
2 And going with boldness into the school he found a book lying upon the pulpit and he took it, and read not the letters that were therein, but opened his mouth and spake by the Holy Spirit, and taught the law to them that stood by. And a great multitude came together and stood there hearkening, and marveled at the beauty of his teaching and the readiness of his words, in that being an infant he uttered such things.
3 But when Joseph heard it, he was afraid, and ran unto the school thinking whether this teacher also were without skill (or smitten with infirmity): but the teacher said unto Joseph: Know, my brother, that I received this child for a disciple, but he is full of grace and wisdom; and now I beseech thee, brother, take him unto thine house.
4 And when the young child heard that, he smiled upon him and said: Forasmuch as thou hast said well and hast borne right witness, for thy sake shall he also that was smitten be healed. And forthwith the other teacher was healed. And Joseph took the young child and departed unto his house.
XVI.
1 And Joseph sent his son James to bind fuel and carry it into his house. And the young child Jesus also followed him. And as James was gathering of faggots, a viper bit the hand of James.
2 And as he was sore afflicted and ready to perish, Jesus came near and breathed upon the bite, and straightway the pain ceased, and the serpent burst, and forthwith James continued whole.
XVII.
1 And after these things, in the neighborhood of Joseph, a little child fell sick and died, and his mother wept sore. And Jesus heard that there w as great mourning and trouble and he ran quickly and found the child dead: and he touched his breast and said: I say unto thee, Child, die not, but live and be with thy mother. And straightway it looked up and laughed. And he said to the woman: Take him up and give him milk, and remember me.
2 And the multitude that stood by saw it and marveled, and said: Of a truth this young child is either a god or an angel of God; for every word of his is a perfect work. And Jesus departed thence, and was playing with other children.
XVIII.
1 And after some time there was work of building. And there came a great tumult, and Jesus arose and went thither: and he saw a man lying dead, and took hold of his hand and said: Man, I say unto thee, arise and do thy work. And immediately he arose and worshipped him.
2 And when the multitude saw it, they were astonished, and said: This young child is from heaven: for he hath saved many souls from death, and hath power to save them all his life long.
XIX.
1 And when he was twelve years old his parents went according to the custom unto Jerusalem to the feast of the Passover with their company: and after the Passover they returned to go unto their house. And as they returned the child Jesus went back to Jerusalem; but his parents supposed that he was in their company.
2 And when they had gone a day's journey, they sought him among their kinsfolk, and when they found him not, they were troubled, and returned again to the city seeking him. And after the third day they found him in the temple sitting in the midst of the doctors and hearing and asking them questions. And all men paid heed to him and marveled how that being a young child he put to silence the elders and teachers of the people, expounding the heads of the law and the parables of the prophets.
3 And his mother Mary came near and said unto him: Child, wherefore hast thou so done unto us? behold we have sought thee sorrowing. And Jesus said unto them: Why seek ye me? know ye not that I must be in my Father's house?
4 But the scribes and Pharisees said: Art thou the mother of this child? and she said: I am. And they said unto her: Blessed art thou among women because God hath blessed the fruit of thy womb. For such glory and such excellence and wisdom we have neither seen nor heard at any time.
5 And Jesus arose and followed his mother and was subject unto his parents: but his mother kept in mind all that came to pass. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and grace. Unto him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Does this not sound like the same genre as the gospels? It is a gospel, from New Testament times, though it was not included in the canon that makes up the New Testament. Is it myth? One would think that even, or especially, the Christians would admit of its mythical nature, despite its twelve-year-old's Jerusalem-trip tie-in with the canonical gospels. It would take a foolhardy Jesus-believer indeed to claim that Jesus would strike a playmate dead and the playmate's parents blind. The realism, with a mischievous kid, and parental complaints, is no less than the canonical gospels' in which people are raised from the dead, water is turned into wine, and demons are cast out of people into pigs.
Anachronism
Anachronisms and lack of knowledge of Palestine? King Herod, who the New Testament claims slaughtered the "Holy Innocents", died almost a decade before the census of Quirinius, making the familiar birth narrative of Luke impossible. A contemporary would not have tried to put this over on the people. The author was someone to whom the detestable deeds of Herod (the real ones don't include this) and the census were tales told in rumor, from long ago.
How about
Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the region of the Decapolis (Mark 7:31 RSV).
To quote Dennis McKinsey (Biblical Errancy):
The geographical knowledge of Mark's author is questionable in that it's hard to imagine going from Tyre to the Sea of Galilee by passing through Sidon, much less the region of Decapolis. Sidon is to the north of Tyre and the Sea of Galilee while Decapolis is to the south of Tyre and the Sea of Galilee. This assertion was made by Mark when there were no coasts of Decapolis, nor was the name so much as known before the reign of the emperor Nero.
So when the believer says there are no anachronisms, he is blowing smoke.
Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?
The apologists continue (I will intersperse my comments, using the usual convention of square brackets[ ]):
6. The claim of Jesus to be God makes sense of his trial and crucifixion. The Jewish sensitivity to blasphemy was unique; no one else would so fanatically insist on death as punishment for claiming divinity. Throughout the Roman world, the prevailing attitude toward the gods was "the more, the merrier." [So how did the Jews convince the Romans to crucify a blasphemer?]
Jesus had no political ambitions. [How do you know? The very idea of a Messiah was to have political ambitions. It makes more sense to say that the real Jesus wanted to throw off Roman rule, failed, and was crucified by the Romans. The disillusioned Messianic community gained hope through imagined visitations from their leader, and associated current rabbinical thought with their leader, and attributed a more unworldly aspect as part of the myth-building. The better to win favor in the Roman world, the crucifixion stories got twisted into punishment by the Jews for blasphemy.] His politics cannot explain his crucifixion. [Says who?] He disappointed the political expectations of both his friends and his enemies. [Yes, of his friends, as he got caught by the Romans, was executed, and there went the hopes for a revolution.] The main reason why most Jews rejected his claim to be the Messiah was that he did not liberate them from Roman political oppression. [as well they should, since this is what a Messiah is.]
It was not easy for Jesus to be apolitical. [and he wasn't] In his day, religion and politics were closely interwoven. He was not afraid to touch political issues (e.g., calling King Herod "that fox" and saying "Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's") but he would not be identified with any of the polarized political parties of his day. He went so far as to forbid his disciples to speak publicly of his miracles because the people wanted to make him a king. [That is the mythologizing. The authors apparently don't see this apotheosis as the after-the-fact sour-grapes rationalizing that it is.]
Why then was he crucified? The political excuse that he was Caesar's rival was a lie trumped up to justify his execution, since Roman law did not recognize blasphemy as grounds for execution and the Jews had no legal power to enforce their own religious laws of capital punishment under Roman rule. [How, again I ask, were the Jews to convince the Romans to execute him. The more parsimonious explanation is that Jesus was a rabble rouser, indeed no rival to Caesar. But surely political rebels did not have to be potential kings to be executed by the Romans quite voluntarily without any prodding from the local population.]
7. There are four Gospels, not just one. [Actually there are even more; the authors here count only the ones that made it into the Canon (or list) of the New Testament.] Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by four different writers, at four different times, probably for four different audiences and for four somewhat different purposes and emphases. So a lot of cross-checking is possible [as it was for the later writers themselves--they didn't write in a vacuum]. By a textual trigonometry or triangulation [more akin to divination] , we can fix the facts with far greater assurance here than with any other ancient personage or series of events. [Hardly. We know much more about Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, to mention just a few of the ancient philosophers, whose lives are fixed much more definitely and attested to much more extensively by a wider range of types of source, than Jesus.] The only inconsistencies are in chronology (only Luke's Gospel claims to be in order) and accidentals like numbers (e.g., did the women see one angel or two at the empty tomb?). [The theory of the Big Lie: make it a whopper, and you will be believed. Just to name one example, notorious for its attempt to fit Jesus's known origins in Nazareth to a putative need for a savior to be born in Bethlehem, are Luke's and Matthew's disparate tales of a birth in Bethlehem. Matthew has Mary and Joseph move from Bethlehem to Nazareth as a new home-- "But when he[Joseph] heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, 'He will be called a Nazorean.'"--Mat 2:22-23. But Luke has the familiar story of Mary and Joseph traveling from Nazareth for a census in Bethlehem and then return there after Jesus's birth. This is more substantive than a difference in chronology or number, and shows the lengths to which the gospel writers went to fit Old Testament prophesy and the gospels' Jesus.]
8. If the divine Jesus of the Gospels is a myth, who invented it? [Like other myths, it just grew in the telling.] Whether it was his first disciples or some later generation, no possible motive can account for this invention. [Just as no possible motive could account for attributing the cherry-tree/I-cannot-tell-a-lie myth to George Washington. The Jesus story was probably already largely mythological when the attribute of "divine" was added. In the Greek world, it could have been of benefit to make the historical leader divine for added prestige to one's cult.] For until the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313, Christians were subject to persecution, often tortured and martyred, and hated and oppressed for their beliefs. [What better atmosphere to add: "Well, my leader, who you hate, just happens to be God, and he'll get you!" It also adds courage to believe in the leader's divinity--just look at how an emperor's divinity gave courage to kamikaze pilots.] No one invents an elaborate practical joke in order to be crucified, stoned or beheaded. [Again, think of the kamikaze pilots; and I don't think Shinto deserves, any more than any other religion, to be called a "practical joke", no matter how mythological we consider its tenets.] Yet no one ever confessed that they made it all up--even when martyred. [1. Not every myth-believer is one of the myth-makers. 2. How do you know no one ever recanted? Stories of Christian recantation were not maintained in the Christians' stories. 3. Kamikaze pilots were also tenacious to Shinto beliefs, not to mention non-Christians who were tortured and killed in the days of Christian strength, in preference to recanting their non-Christian beliefs.] Some refused martyrdom, rejecting Christ and worshipping the emperor, to save their lives; but not one of these ever said Christ was a myth that they had fabricated. They simply did what the emperor commanded them to do to save their lives. [We are not saying that every Christian is a myth maker--only a myth believer. Also, the some who refused martyrdom are similar to the Marrano Jews ( Marrano: n., pl. -nos, a Spanish or Portuguese Jew who was converted to Christianity during the late Middle Ages, usually under threat of death or persecution, esp. one who continued to adhere to Judaism in secret.). Why would a Jew risk death to practice Judaism in secret, if Judaism's denial of Jesus's divinity were a lie?]
9. First-century Jews and Christians were not prone to believe in myths. They were already more "demythologized" than any other people. The orthodox were adamantly, even cantankerously and intolerantly, opposed to the polytheistic myths of paganism and to any ecumenical syncretism. Nor would anyone be less likely to confuse myth and fact than a Jew. Peter explicitly makes the point that the Gospel story is historical fact, not "cleverly devised myths" (2 Pet 1:16). [I guess you also believe any president who says "I am not a crook." The large majority of Jews did reject the story of Jesus. There are always, in every culture, those who will opt for other nations' ideals, and try to fit them into their pre-existing framework. Did not Herod have many Greek ways? Could this not happen at lower levels, and with different Greek ways?]
10. Finally, if you read the Gospels with an open mind and heart, you may well conclude, along with Dostoyevsky and Kierkegaard, that no mere man could possibly have invented this story. [Agreed, just as no man invented the Osiris story, or the Odysseus story. It takes a collaboration, in this case also borrowing from ancient mystery religions, traditional Jewish Messianism, and the newly growing Rabbinical Judaism, not to mention the apocalyptic literature, as evidenced at its height in the book of Revelations.]
Jesus had no political ambitions. [How do you know? The very idea of a Messiah was to have political ambitions. It makes more sense to say that the real Jesus wanted to throw off Roman rule, failed, and was crucified by the Romans. The disillusioned Messianic community gained hope through imagined visitations from their leader, and associated current rabbinical thought with their leader, and attributed a more unworldly aspect as part of the myth-building. The better to win favor in the Roman world, the crucifixion stories got twisted into punishment by the Jews for blasphemy.] His politics cannot explain his crucifixion. [Says who?] He disappointed the political expectations of both his friends and his enemies. [Yes, of his friends, as he got caught by the Romans, was executed, and there went the hopes for a revolution.] The main reason why most Jews rejected his claim to be the Messiah was that he did not liberate them from Roman political oppression. [as well they should, since this is what a Messiah is.]
It was not easy for Jesus to be apolitical. [and he wasn't] In his day, religion and politics were closely interwoven. He was not afraid to touch political issues (e.g., calling King Herod "that fox" and saying "Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's") but he would not be identified with any of the polarized political parties of his day. He went so far as to forbid his disciples to speak publicly of his miracles because the people wanted to make him a king. [That is the mythologizing. The authors apparently don't see this apotheosis as the after-the-fact sour-grapes rationalizing that it is.]
Why then was he crucified? The political excuse that he was Caesar's rival was a lie trumped up to justify his execution, since Roman law did not recognize blasphemy as grounds for execution and the Jews had no legal power to enforce their own religious laws of capital punishment under Roman rule. [How, again I ask, were the Jews to convince the Romans to execute him. The more parsimonious explanation is that Jesus was a rabble rouser, indeed no rival to Caesar. But surely political rebels did not have to be potential kings to be executed by the Romans quite voluntarily without any prodding from the local population.]
7. There are four Gospels, not just one. [Actually there are even more; the authors here count only the ones that made it into the Canon (or list) of the New Testament.] Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by four different writers, at four different times, probably for four different audiences and for four somewhat different purposes and emphases. So a lot of cross-checking is possible [as it was for the later writers themselves--they didn't write in a vacuum]. By a textual trigonometry or triangulation [more akin to divination] , we can fix the facts with far greater assurance here than with any other ancient personage or series of events. [Hardly. We know much more about Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, to mention just a few of the ancient philosophers, whose lives are fixed much more definitely and attested to much more extensively by a wider range of types of source, than Jesus.] The only inconsistencies are in chronology (only Luke's Gospel claims to be in order) and accidentals like numbers (e.g., did the women see one angel or two at the empty tomb?). [The theory of the Big Lie: make it a whopper, and you will be believed. Just to name one example, notorious for its attempt to fit Jesus's known origins in Nazareth to a putative need for a savior to be born in Bethlehem, are Luke's and Matthew's disparate tales of a birth in Bethlehem. Matthew has Mary and Joseph move from Bethlehem to Nazareth as a new home-- "But when he[Joseph] heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, 'He will be called a Nazorean.'"--Mat 2:22-23. But Luke has the familiar story of Mary and Joseph traveling from Nazareth for a census in Bethlehem and then return there after Jesus's birth. This is more substantive than a difference in chronology or number, and shows the lengths to which the gospel writers went to fit Old Testament prophesy and the gospels' Jesus.]
8. If the divine Jesus of the Gospels is a myth, who invented it? [Like other myths, it just grew in the telling.] Whether it was his first disciples or some later generation, no possible motive can account for this invention. [Just as no possible motive could account for attributing the cherry-tree/I-cannot-tell-a-lie myth to George Washington. The Jesus story was probably already largely mythological when the attribute of "divine" was added. In the Greek world, it could have been of benefit to make the historical leader divine for added prestige to one's cult.] For until the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313, Christians were subject to persecution, often tortured and martyred, and hated and oppressed for their beliefs. [What better atmosphere to add: "Well, my leader, who you hate, just happens to be God, and he'll get you!" It also adds courage to believe in the leader's divinity--just look at how an emperor's divinity gave courage to kamikaze pilots.] No one invents an elaborate practical joke in order to be crucified, stoned or beheaded. [Again, think of the kamikaze pilots; and I don't think Shinto deserves, any more than any other religion, to be called a "practical joke", no matter how mythological we consider its tenets.] Yet no one ever confessed that they made it all up--even when martyred. [1. Not every myth-believer is one of the myth-makers. 2. How do you know no one ever recanted? Stories of Christian recantation were not maintained in the Christians' stories. 3. Kamikaze pilots were also tenacious to Shinto beliefs, not to mention non-Christians who were tortured and killed in the days of Christian strength, in preference to recanting their non-Christian beliefs.] Some refused martyrdom, rejecting Christ and worshipping the emperor, to save their lives; but not one of these ever said Christ was a myth that they had fabricated. They simply did what the emperor commanded them to do to save their lives. [We are not saying that every Christian is a myth maker--only a myth believer. Also, the some who refused martyrdom are similar to the Marrano Jews ( Marrano: n., pl. -nos, a Spanish or Portuguese Jew who was converted to Christianity during the late Middle Ages, usually under threat of death or persecution, esp. one who continued to adhere to Judaism in secret.). Why would a Jew risk death to practice Judaism in secret, if Judaism's denial of Jesus's divinity were a lie?]
9. First-century Jews and Christians were not prone to believe in myths. They were already more "demythologized" than any other people. The orthodox were adamantly, even cantankerously and intolerantly, opposed to the polytheistic myths of paganism and to any ecumenical syncretism. Nor would anyone be less likely to confuse myth and fact than a Jew. Peter explicitly makes the point that the Gospel story is historical fact, not "cleverly devised myths" (2 Pet 1:16). [I guess you also believe any president who says "I am not a crook." The large majority of Jews did reject the story of Jesus. There are always, in every culture, those who will opt for other nations' ideals, and try to fit them into their pre-existing framework. Did not Herod have many Greek ways? Could this not happen at lower levels, and with different Greek ways?]
10. Finally, if you read the Gospels with an open mind and heart, you may well conclude, along with Dostoyevsky and Kierkegaard, that no mere man could possibly have invented this story. [Agreed, just as no man invented the Osiris story, or the Odysseus story. It takes a collaboration, in this case also borrowing from ancient mystery religions, traditional Jewish Messianism, and the newly growing Rabbinical Judaism, not to mention the apocalyptic literature, as evidenced at its height in the book of Revelations.]
Guru?
After the authors imagine they have done away with the possibility of myth, they add another possibility to refute: Jesus as Guru. I have alluded above to the idea that Jesus had been a Jewish revolutionary, the mildest of whose actions, the cleansing of the temple, got recorded in the Bible even though out of character for the "Prince of Peace". The lack of definitive knowledge about Jesus being what it is has, of course, led others to postulate a different sort of Jesus--Guru, or as the authors say, "according to this theory, we should interpret his claim to divinity not in a Western, Jewish or Christian, sense but in an Eastern, Hindu or Buddhist, sense. Yes, Jesus was God, and knew it, and claimed it--but we are all God."
How do the authors counter this possibility? Not with a logical questioning of why again would the Romans execute a person for being a guru. Not by mentioning that the "prince of peace" claimed not to bring peace but a sword. What then is their reasoning?
They say "For one very simple reason: because he was a Jew. No guru was ever a Jew and no Jew was ever a guru." But would it not make just as much sense to say No one claiming to be God was ever a Jew and no Jew ever claimed to be God? Merely making such an assertion does not prove it. They continue
The differences--more, the contradictions--between the religious Judaism of Jesus and the teaching of all the gurus, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist or New Age, are so many, so great and so obvious that you have to be a dunce or a professor to miss them. It is utterly unhistorical, uprooted and deracinated [is there a difference between uprooted and deracinated?] to see Jesus as a Hindu and not a Jew; as a kind of generic, universal type of "enlightened consciousness." You cannot ignore his Jewishness.
Well yes, from some statements you'd think Jesus was a Jew:
These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.'
Matt 10:5-7
Matt 10:5-7
When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
Matt 10:23
Matt 10:23
Despite the contradictory thread in the narrative:
Mat 28:19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
In fact, even if Jesus was not a guru, that does not mean that the mythologizers who added to his story did not have ideas that were influenced by Greek thought and by other, eastern, influences. The idea that Jesus was a guru comes from the difficulty of disentangling real quotations of Jesus (if there are any) from words put into his mouth by believers with different threads of belief. Does the following not sound Zen-like:
Then the disciples came and asked him, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" He answered, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. The reason I speak to them in parables is that 'seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.' With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: 'You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn-- and I would heal them.' But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.
Mat 13:10-16
Mat 13:10-16
A more realistic appraisal of why he spoke in parables is that these parables are not really quotations of Jesus, but rather, sayings that were going around during that time. Similar to Zen koans, they are intended more to make one think than to state a fact. The myth-makers incorporated what they liked into the Jesus myth, but in so doing, they added a guru-like persona that the original did not have. But with sayings like these, is it any wonder that those who focus on them (as all biblical believers have to focus on parts of the Bible to the exclusion of contradictory parts) see Jesus as a guru? This is much like the blind men who feel parts of an elephant and proclaim that an elephant is like a snake, or like a tree trunk, or like a rhinoceros.
It is curious that the authors then quote Jesus as saying, while on trial and under oath,
Then the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching. Jesus answered, "I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said."
John 18:19-21
John 18:19-21
Spoken openly? He is said to have spoken in parables so as not to be understood! The Jesuits continue:
The Eastern mystics or gurus believe in a pantheistic, immanent God. For them, "enlightenment" consists in the realization that we and everything else are all, ultimately, God. As the upanishads, the holy books of Hinduism, say: "The idea 'one' is the source of all truth; the idea 'two' is the source of all error."
Judaism's distinctive doctrine of God is that God is distinct from the world. He created it out of nothing. There is an infinite gap between Creator and creature [God and man? -- united in Jesus? ...not!]. To confuse or identify a creature with the Creator is idolatry, a terrible sin. [Didn't the authors say that the Jews did indeed find Jesus guilty of great sin?] The belief in the transcendence of God clearly distinguishes Judaism from the mystical religions, and Jesus from the gurus. [Did not the supposed Son of God say to is followers to pray to "Our [not just Jesus's] Father"? And "cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.' Luke 10:9-11]
Judaism's distinctive doctrine of God is that God is distinct from the world. He created it out of nothing. There is an infinite gap between Creator and creature [God and man? -- united in Jesus? ...not!]. To confuse or identify a creature with the Creator is idolatry, a terrible sin. [Didn't the authors say that the Jews did indeed find Jesus guilty of great sin?] The belief in the transcendence of God clearly distinguishes Judaism from the mystical religions, and Jesus from the gurus. [Did not the supposed Son of God say to is followers to pray to "Our [not just Jesus's] Father"? And "cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.' Luke 10:9-11]
Then comes the strangest rebuttal to guruhood that they offer:
If a Hindu announced to his guru, "I just discovered that I am God," the response would be: "Congratulations. You finally found out." If a Jew had said that 2000 years ago, the response would have been stoning or crucifixion.
Well, isn't that what he got? Am I missing something here? Was he not treated, even according to the authors' belief, like a guru out of place?
The authors continue
For the mystics, time and history are also ultimately unreal, illusory, projections of unenlightened consciousness. Enlightenment consists of emancipation from time. [When Jesus said his second coming would be "soon", he also must have had the idea that time, such as the 2000 years that have gone by so far, is an illusion.] Salvation is found in timelessness [John 8:58 Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am."] Buddha forbade his disciples to perform miracles because that would have fostered the illusion that the temporal, material world was real and important. [Mark 8:12 And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, "Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation."] But for the Jews, time and matter (which are relative to each other) are real because God created them. For Judaism, God is known and loved and lived within time. Judaism is a historical religion; God has revealed himself in historical events. [but Christianity broke with Judaism.]
For the mystic, salvation consists in going back beyond the birth of the ego to the simplicity of the womb. [ Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' John 3:3-7]
For the mystic, salvation consists in going back beyond the birth of the ego to the simplicity of the womb. [ Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' John 3:3-7]
The idea of being a guru should not be taken literally, for as the authors say a few pages later, all that the guru metaphor was meant to convey was that Jesus claimed divinity in a mystical way, a way that we all can share. Nothing is meant of specific Hindu or Buddhist beliefs. However, I myself am of the opinion that it is the early Christian faithful who brought these ideas into Christianity from outside. Yet these ideas do exist in the Bible attributed to Jesus, and form an other-worldly tradition, with ideas that saw to it that the early Christians were thrown out of the synagogues.
For the Jews, God is the active initiator. ... Religion is not our search for God but God's search for us.
For the Eastern mystics, God is passive. We find him, not he us. ...
Then why does Christianity say that Jesus the Jew taught us to pray? ... and to seek the kingdom of heaven?
For the Eastern mystics, God is passive. We find him, not he us. ...
The pantheistic God of the gurus ... is "beyond good and evil."
But In 1 Cor. 6:12 and 10:23 Paul says: "All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient." and "all things are lawful." Is this not "beyond good and evil."
Jesus was a Jew; this simple fact refutes the guru hypothesis.
And the God hypothesis. Yes, Jesus was a Jew. Guru-like sayings were attributed to him by others in the early Christian tradition. And like all Jews he would not think of calling himself God.
Chapter on the Resurrection: the Same Arguments Repeated
In the chapter following the one in which they try to show that Jesus must have been God, the authors present apologetic support for the literal truth of the Resurrection.
The resurrection also sharply distinguishes Jesus from all other religious founders. The bones of Abraham and Mohammed and Buddha and Confucius and Lao-tzu and Zoroaster are all still here on earth. Jesus' tomb is empty.
Have the authors seen Mohammed's bones? The Encyclopaedia Britannica reports Islamic tradition as saying that "his [Mohammed's] ascension to heaven (mi'raj) is still celebrated: he rode the winged horse Buraq in the company of the angel Gabriel through the seven spheres, meeting the other prophets there, until he reached the divine presence, alone, even without the angel of inspiration." I can't imagine this being the tradition if his bones are lying around to be seen.
Tutankamun's tomb is empty also. We know where those bones are, but archaeologists were too late in arriving at other Pharaoh's tombs, which were found empty. That doesn't mean they rose from the dead, either. Also the legendary figures Osiris, Tammuz, and many others were said to have risen from the dead. This is an accretion to Christian thought that was tacked on years after Jesus's death, and incorporated into the Gospels. Certainly by the time Christianity grew to a reasonable size, the Jews had no opportunity to find the body to refute Christian claims.
The authors spend considerable time distinguishing resurrection from resuscitation, reincarnation, etc., but tend to beg the question: "Jesus' resurrection body was seen in public by many at the same time. He was touched. He ate." But these are merely the pious fictions placed into the record by the evangelists. "Resurrection is also distinct from legend. Legends, however wise, are only fictions devised by mortal minds, not by God or nature." The authors have not demonstrated that the resurrection is not such a fiction; they merely deny it is.
The authors claim to prove the resurrection is true based only on "the existence of the New Testament texts as we have them, and the existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian religion as we find it today." Quite heady stuff, considering we also have the non-canonical gospels such as the infancy narratives of Thomas, quoted above, and the Book of Mormon and the existence of Mormonism. If the mere existence of the testament and the believers, makes for truth of the content, then the angel Moroni, and the coming of Jesus to the native Americans can be proved also.
The authors reiterate their multi-lemma, with a new emphasis on the resurrection: "Thus either (1) the resurrection really happened, (2) the apostles were deceived by a hallucination, (3) the apostles created a myth, not meaning it literally, (4) the apostles were deceivers who conspired to foist on the world the most famous and successful lie in history, or (5) Jesus only swooned and was resuscitated, not resurrected." The authors don't seem to allow for a situation in which one or more of the apostles were deceived by their wishful thinking and/or hallucinations, others were deceived by what seemed the good-faith wonder in the first group, still others took it metaphorically and mythically, and perpetuated the myth. Other possibilities are the misattribution of the gospels to apostles, with attendant misinterpretation of apostles recollections as handed down to the evangelists.
Kreeft and Tacelli continue, arguing against their choice (5) first ("the swoon theory"). However, in doing so they repeatedly rely on Biblical accounts. They say "John, an eyewitness, certified that he saw blood and water come from Jesus' pierced heart (Jn 19:34-35). This shows that Jesus' lungs had collapsed and he had died of asphyxiation. Any medical expert can vouch for this." I'm sure there were plenty of crucifixions around for people to get an idea of what happens, regardless of what happened to Jesus. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says this about the Gospel of John:
Although the Gospel is ostensibly written by John, "the beloved disciple" of Jesus, there has been considerable discussion of the actual identity of the author. The language of the Gospel and its well-developed theology suggest that the author may have lived later than John and based his writing on John's teachings and testimonies. Moreover, the facts that several episodes in the life of Jesus are recounted out of sequence with the Synoptics and the final chapter appears to be a later addition suggest that the text may be a composite. The Gospel's place and date of composition are also uncertain; many scholars suggest that it was written at Ephesus, in Asia Minor, in about AD 100 for the purpose of communicating the truths about Christ to Christians of Hellenistic background.
A.D. 100 was about 70 years after Jesus is said to have died. It does not make for reliability in the author of John's accounts such as the authors quote here: "The body was totally encased in winding sheets and entombed (Jn 19:38-42)." or "The postresurrection appearances convinced the disciples, even 'doubting Thomas,' that Jesus was gloriously alive (Jn 20:19-29)."
The authors ask "How were the Roman guards at the tomb overpowered by a swooning corpse? Or by unarmed disciples?" But it is a foolhardy assumption to say there were guards posted over the burial site. Once the criminal is dead, what do the Romans care if the body is stolen? The authors continue "And if the disciples did it, they knowingly lied when they wrote the Gospels, and we are into the conspiracy theory, which we will [attempt to] refute shortly." But it's more likely that someone writing in A.D. 100 was not a disciple, but the recorder of the mythology that had been accreting about the life of Jesus.
The authors then go back to their possibility (4), "the conspiracy theory".
They ask "While Jesus was with them, he could sustain them; but afterwards, if he did not appear to them, who did make them act?" Answer: memories of their charismatic leader. After all, what motivated them after the putative ascension?
They claim "The hypothesis that the Apostles were knaves is quite absurd. Follow it out to the end, and imagine these twelve men meeting after Jesus' death and conspiring to say that he had risen from the dead. This means attacking all the powers that be." How so? The sayings were only repeated among their small group, a set of believers, and their close friends and family. Do cult leaders have to "attack all the powers that be"? Whether they do or not, they still gain a following.
The authors claim that "no one, weak or strong, saint or sinner, Christian or heretic, ever confessed, freely or under pressure, bribe or even torture, that the whole story of the resurrection was a fake, a lie, a deliberate deception." The people being tortured weren't the ones who made up or imagined the events. The are the believers at second hand, having heard and believed people who they trusted, much as David Koresh's believers trusted in him, and died at Waco.
The further claim "If they made up the story, they were the most creative, clever, intelligent fantasists in history, far surpassing Shakespeare, or Dante or Tolkien. Fishermen's 'fish stories' are never that elaborate, that convincing, that life-changing, and that enduring." But resurrection stories were not unique to Christianity. Many would argue that the authors mentioned are in fact more creative, clever and intelligent than the evangelists--the production of miracles is not the measure of creativity and cleverness; on the contrary Deus ex Machina is looked upon as a literary device for writers lacking in cleverness. Homer's Odyssey, and the Gilgamesh epic are just two examples of narratives more enduring than the gospels.
The authors say
The disciples' character argues strongly against such a conspiracy on the part of all of them, with no dissenters. They were simple, honest, common peasants, not cunning, conniving liars. They weren't even lawyers! Their sincerity is proved by their words and deeds. They preached a resurrected Christ and they lived a resurrected Christ. They willingly died for their "conspiracy." Nothing proves sincerity like martyrdom.
How do Kreeft and Tacelli know the disciples' character? Are all peasants honest? Haven't peasants been known to play tricks on city folk? No one says that all of them conspired anyway. They felt an attachment to the deceased Jesus, manifest in strong feelings of presence, that Paul picked up upon, and later storytellers wove a resurrection that they surmised "must have happened." Some evangelists wrote the stories down for the edification of what was becoming a church. These evangelists were not the disciples, but folklore assigned disciples' names to these anonymous authors' works. The very late-found need for writing is evidence of the earlier expectation of Jesus's second coming "soon". By the time the gospels were written down for posterity, it had become apparent that there would be a posterity. If that had been expected earlier, maybe we would have gotten more first-hand written knowledge.
As for martyrdom, just look to Jonestown, Guyana, or Waco, Texas, or the Heaven's Gate cult. All the members were sincere. Waco included all the aspects of martyrdom, including death at the enemy's hands.
Use your imagination and sense of perspective here. Imagine twelve poor, fearful, stupid (read the Gospels!) peasants changing the hard-nosed Roman world with a lie.
Are the authors calling the disciples stupid? Maybe that's why they believed in Jesus. Even if we read the gospels, that is no reason to believe what the gospels say. Did they "change the hard-nosed Roman world"? No, that came much later, when Constantine adopted Christianity, after much work by charismatic leaders like Paul, and Christianity's lucky break in having the emperor's mother for a convert.
In denouncing the idea of lying evangelists, the authors claim "Lies are always told for some selfish advantage." Tell that to millions of parents who lie about Santa Claus. While many of us disagree whether such lies are right, many parents think they are.
What did the Branch Davidians (the followers, not the leader) gain from their living a lie? These disciples of Koresh were mistaken victims--not liars. They would have said wonderful things about their leader. Many were fine upstanding people. Does that mean that Koresh really was wonderful because fine upstanding people would testify that he was?
If the resurrection was a lie, the Jews would have produced the corpse and nipped this feared superstition in the bud.
The "feared superstition" only became so much too late for anyone to have access to the body. Even if we take as true the church-claimed origin at the Pentecost, that's seven weeks after the event. And if we are right and the legend of the resurrection didn't grow until years later (and certainly the church didn't grow to be "feared" until years later), then certainly the Jews wishing to refute Christian claims would no longer even possibly hope to find a body. Do the authors think that Jesus had a marked grave: "Here lies Jesus, king of the Jews. R.I.P."?
... unarmed peasants could not have overpowered Roman soldiers or rolled away a great stone while they slept on duty.
The authors here again assume the gospels are right in having Roman soldiers guard Jesus's tomb, and even more fundamentally, about there being a tomb with a giant rock. If Jesus was only guilty of violating Jewish laws against blasphemy, he would not have mattered to the Romans. If he was charged by the Romans with sedition, then he was only one of a multitude, buried in a pauper's grave or potters field. What would the Romans care about anyone stealing the body. The stories about Roman soldiers guarding a tomb with a huge boulder are embroidery added to the Jesus story by later tellers, like fish stories that get bigger with each retelling. And that doesn't make fishermen evil, only human.
The disciples could not have gotten away with proclaiming the resurrection in Jerusalem--same time, same place, full of eyewitnesses--if it had been a lie.
As William Craig says,
As William Craig says,
The Gospels were written in such temporal and geographical proximity to the events they report that it would have been almost impossible to fabricate events.
They did not proclaim the resurrection any more than the Branch Davidians proclaimed Koresh the Messiah. That is, the disciples met with their own people, and became convinced, and developed a small following that grew bigger in time. The gospels were so far removed culturally, in time and in space, that they were written in Greek.
The church only grew to a point where it was even known outside its own small band, at a point in time too late for critics to find evidence to refute a resurrection. Do we know what happened to Judge Crater, Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa? Only in the case of Amelia Earhart do we have even an idea. And this is in our era of modern forensics and extensive communication, with well-known celebrities missing.
Now our authors continue on, attempting to refute the "hallucination theory":
There were too many witnesses. Hallucinations are private, individual, subjective. Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples minus Thomas, to the disciples including Thomas, to the two disciples at Emmaus, to the fishermen on the shore, to James (his "brother" or cousin) [the gospels say "brother" without the quote marks, not "cousin"], and even to five hundred people at once (1 Cor 15:3-8). Even three different witnesses are enough for a kind of psychological trigonometry [an odd analogy]; over five hundred is about as public as you can wish [and the gospel writers wished it so much that they put it in]. And Paul says in this passage (v.6) that most of the five hundred are still alive, inviting any reader to check the truth of the story by questioning the eyewitnesses [but he doesn't identify the 500, so how could the reader question them?]-- he could never have gotten away with it, given the power, resources and numbers of his enemies, if it were not true. [The church didn't make big enemies until it got bigger itself.]
The Nature of Myth
Here, the authors again rely on what they read in Paul and the gospels. But you must remember that these were written by people who believed based on little or no evidence, who then made up what "had to have happened" -- in other words, constructed (they would say reconstructed) events. Not lies, because they believed it. Not hallucinations, because they are recounting what "must have" happened to others. But this does not rule out a small number of individuals having hallucinations; a larger number of their contemporaries believing them; a growing church with growing beliefs and legends; and finally a "re"-construction of events that "must have" taken place, including edifying stories (like Aesop's Fables) about "the multitude" and doubting Thomas. And they were written in Greek, for a non-Palestinian audience, with no access to any Jerusalem crowd to seek verification of any stories. They incorporated high moral beliefs, actually originating with rabbinical Judaism, and attributed support for them to Jesus, this being considered a highly moral thing to do, as it adds support from the group's founder to ideals that are considered worthy.
The witnesses were qualified. They were simple, honest, moral people who had firsthand knowledge of the facts.
Again: How do the authors know this?
The five hundred saw Christ together, at the same time and place. This is even more remarkable than five hundred private "hallucinations" at different times and places of the same Jesus. Five hundred separate Elvis sightings may be dismissed, but if five hundred simple fishermen in Maine saw, touched and talked with him at once, in the same town, that would be a different matter.
Again the fish stories. Fishermen are not more scrupulously honest than other people. Also, five hundred people together (even if this event did happen, which it didn't) at a grouping of believers would in fact be less reliable than five hundred separately, as each person reinforces the other's beliefs and observations. ("Don't you see that face in the moon? I do. Oh, yeah, now I see!"; "The emperor's new clothes are so beautiful, aren't they?" "Indeed!") So if, rather than Maine fishermen, a convention of Elvis fans were to see Elvis, we could easily understand why. The same is true of early Jesus fans.
The authors then go on to repeat other claims in the gospels as if they were known to be true: that Jesus stayed around 40 days between his resurrection and his ascension to heaven, that Jesus was seen by many people many times, that Jesus did surprising and unexpected things, that the people involved did not believe at first, that the resurrected Jesus ate, and the disciples touched him; that the disciples spoke with them and he spoke back, speaking profound truths, that Jesus had a tomb in which it would be easy to verify if his body was there. They repeat the claim that the Jews could have produced the body, if the disciples were hallucinating; but we've already said, most people at the time could not have cared less about Jesus's body. It is only later that the church grew large enough to be worth refuting.
Our Jesuits really go off the deep end of the tendentiousness pool when attempting to refute "the Myth Theory":
The style of the Gospels is radically and clearly different from the style of all the myths. Any literary scholar who knows and appreciates myths can verify this. There are no overblown, spectacular, childishly exaggerated events. Nothing is arbitrary. Everything fits in. Everything is meaningful. The hand of a master is at work here
I imagine bringing the dead back to life and walking on water are not overblown and spectacular. That evil spirits could be pulled out of a man and made to enter a herd of swine is not childishly exaggerated. Sure! And how does "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46) fit with the general tenor of the gospels' message about Jesus presumably being God?
The authors' statement "The character depth and development of everyone in the Gospels--especially, of course, Jesus himself--is remarkable," is ludicrous. By focusing on various portions of the New Testament, different authors have come up with wildly different ideas as to Jesus's true nature. Was he the firebrand who cleansed the temple with whips as in John 2:15-17, and said "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household." (Mat 10:34-36)? Or was he the prince of peace? That phrase doesn't appear in the Bible; the closest we can come is "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." (Mat 5:9) or "But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," (Mat 5:39-44). But even this is enough to see that the evangelists were not masters of harmony in delineating Jesus's character. Far from it.
Other examples: In Matthew 19:19 Jesus said "Honor thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." while he said to his own mother "...Woman, what have I to do with thee?" (John 2:4)
The firebrand Jesus is probably the more authentic--one who would provoke the Romans into an execution. The kinder, gentler words such as the beatitudes, which include "blessed are the peacemakers", sound more like later accretions to the Jesus legend, borrowed from the contemporary beginnings of rabbinical Judaism, possibly being true sayings of the real-life rabbi Hillel.
The authors claim that the only reason the writer of John put in the detail about Jesus writing in the sand when asked whether to stone the adulteress, since it is not essential to the moral point, was that the writer saw it happen. But again, this is a limited view of possible reasons. Another is that whatever moral story was current at the time, about forgiveness and not being judgmental, had this incident in it, and it was carried over into the gospel, with the attribution changed over to Jesus. It is certainly not a miracle story that would be applicable only to a putative god, and the detail about writing in the ground has the point that the moralizer (Jesus or his prototype in the story) doesn't really find the punishment of adultery important enough to bother giving his full attention to it. The people of that time were not moral ignoramuses. There were plenty of moral stories going around, and many moral philosophers thinking about these things, and very moral rabbis in the Jewish world.
The authors go on to criticise comparisons between stories about Jesus and those other wonder-workers of the time, such as Apollonius of Tyana. They cite what they call a "typical passage about healing miracles":
"A woman who had had seven miscarriages was cured through the prayers of her husband, as follows. The Wise Man told the husband, when his wife was in labor, to bring a live rabbit under his cloak to the place where she was, walk around her and immediately release the rabbit; for she would lose her womb as well as her baby if the rabbit was not immediately driven away."
Is this story really more like a fairyland than the story of how Jesus healed the blind man:
When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?"
(John 9:6-8)
(John 9:6-8)
Or the time that Jesus drove "demons" out of two men and into a herd of swine:
When he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs coming out of the tombs met him. They were so fierce that no one could pass that way. Suddenly they shouted, "What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?" Now a large herd of swine was feeding at some distance from them. The demons begged him, "If you cast us out, send us into the herd of swine." And he said to them, "Go!" So they came out and entered the swine; and suddenly, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the water.
(Mat 8:28-32)
(Mat 8:28-32)
So it's not really a whole different genre of literature from the pagan stories.
They proceed then to bypass the gospels and claim that the Pauline letters are certainly not myth, because they are written too close to the alleged time of occurrence. But Paul was writing to the people in Corinth when he claimed that Jesus appeared to the 500 in Jerusalem, and the people in Corinth were not ready to check him out on the subject. Remember that Paul did not become a member of the Christian group until well after Jesus died and, according to Christians, went to heaven after his 40 post-resurrection days on earth, so he was no eyewitness.
Then the authors say that "[Julius] Muller challenged his nineteenth-century contemporaries to produce a single example anywhere in history of a great myth or legend arising around a historical figure and being generally believed within thirty years after that figure's death. No one has ever answered him." Maybe that's because in the nineteenth century people still believed the myths and legends surrounding George Washington, who died December 14, 1799, while "Mason Locke Weems, known as Parson Weems (b. Oct. 11, 1759, Anne Arundel county, Md. [U.S.]--d. May 23, 1825, Beaufort, S.C.), American clergyman, itinerant book agent, fabricated the story of George Washington's chopping down the cherry tree. This fiction was inserted into the fifth edition (1806) of Weems's book The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington (1800)," according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
And how long ago did Elvis die? answer: 1977
Nobody says the Christianity of that day was the same as in AD 100, when John was written. I repeat that Paul said that God raised Jesus up, not that Jesus rose from the dead by himself or that Jesus was/is God.
In this chapter the authors repeat the previous chapter's contention that "there is not the slightest bit of any real evidence whatever for the existence of any [first] layer [of the Jesus myth, in which Jesus was merely human, not divine]." As mentioned above, this is not true no matter how often you say it. When Paul says that God raised Jesus up, there is a subject and an object in that sentence, that are different beings. And remember the quotes I gave previously:
Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
(Mark 10:18)
(Mark 10:18)
or
"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
(Matthew 27:46)
(Matthew 27:46)
Again, these sound to me like evidence of a human layer in the building of the Jesus myth. There are none so blind as they who will not see.
The authors quote Augustine, asking those who claim that the New Testament is a corruption of the true life of Jesus to produce the uncorrupted version. This is like asking for the uncorrupted version of the life of William Tell, Helen of Troy or Robin Hood.
By the way, Christian believers like to say that Jesus is picked on as being doubted by historians. Let's see what they think about William Tell, as given by the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
German WILHELM TELL, Swiss legendary hero who symbolized the struggle for political and individual freedom.
The historical existence of Tell is disputed. According to popular legend, he was a peasant from Bürglen in the canton of Uri in the 13th and early 14th centuries who defied Austrian authority, was forced to shoot an apple from his son's head, was arrested for threatening the governor's life, saved the same governor's life en route to prison, escaped, and ultimately killed the governor in an ambush. These events supposedly helped spur the people to rise up against Austrian rule.
The classic form of the legend appears in the Chronicon Helveticum (1734-36), by Gilg Tschudi, which gives November 1307 as the date of Tell's deeds and New Year 1308 as the date of Switzerland's liberation. There is no evidence, however, for the existence of Tell; but the story of the marksman's test is widely distributed in folklore. In the early Romantic era of nationalist revolutions, the Tell legend attained worldwide renown through the stirring play Wilhelm Tell (1804) by the German dramatist Friedrich von Schiller.
The historical existence of Tell is disputed. According to popular legend, he was a peasant from Bürglen in the canton of Uri in the 13th and early 14th centuries who defied Austrian authority, was forced to shoot an apple from his son's head, was arrested for threatening the governor's life, saved the same governor's life en route to prison, escaped, and ultimately killed the governor in an ambush. These events supposedly helped spur the people to rise up against Austrian rule.
The classic form of the legend appears in the Chronicon Helveticum (1734-36), by Gilg Tschudi, which gives November 1307 as the date of Tell's deeds and New Year 1308 as the date of Switzerland's liberation. There is no evidence, however, for the existence of Tell; but the story of the marksman's test is widely distributed in folklore. In the early Romantic era of nationalist revolutions, the Tell legend attained worldwide renown through the stirring play Wilhelm Tell (1804) by the German dramatist Friedrich von Schiller.
So the historical William Tell is much like the historical Jesus.
Kreeft and Tacelli continue:
A little detail, seldom noticed, is significant in distinguishing the Gospels from myth: the first witnesses of the resurrection were women. In first-century Judaism, women had low social status and no legal right to serve as witnesses. If the empty tomb were an invented legend, its inventors surely would not have had it discovered by women, whose testimony was considered worthless. If, on the other hand, the writers were simply reporting what they saw, they would have to tell the truth, however socially and legally inconvenient.
They ignore the fact that the very distrust of women's testimony could serve the authors in case the women in question were to disclaim knowledge of the events being portrayed.
The authors' claim that the Bible, with its claim not to be based on legends, is therefore either an out-and-out lie, or it tells the truth. An alternative is that it is based on well-meaning people who took a legend to be the historical truth.
The authors claim that "since Luke was written before Acts, and since Acts was written prior to the death of Paul, Luke must have an early date, which speaks for its authenticity."
What does the Encyclopaedia Britannica say about Luke? The significant paragraphs say:
The author has been identified with Luke, "the beloved physician," Paul's companion on his journeys, presumably a Gentile (Col. 4:14 and 11; cf. II Tim. 4:11, Philem. 24). There is no Papias fragment concerning Luke, and only late-2nd-century traditions claim (somewhat ambiguously) that Paul was the guarantor of Luke's Gospel traditions. The Muratorian Canon refers to Luke, the physician, Paul's companion; Irenaeus depicts Luke as a follower of Paul's gospel. Eusebius has Luke as an Antiochene physician who was with Paul in order to give the Gospel apostolic authority. References are often made to Luke's medical language, but there is no evidence of such language beyond that to which any educated Greek might have been exposed. Of more import is the fact that in the writings of Luke specifically Pauline ideas are significantly missing; while Paul speaks of the death of Christ, Luke speaks rather of the suffering, and there are other differing and discrepant ideas on Law and eschatology. In short, the author of this gospel remains unknown.
Luke can be dated c. 80. There is no conjecture about its place of writing, except that it probably was outside of Palestine because the writer had no accurate idea of its geography. Luke uses a good literary style of the Hellenistic Age in terms of syntax. His language has a "biblical" ring already in its own time because of his use of the Septuagint style; he is a Greek familiar with the Septuagint, which was written for Greeks; he seldom uses loanwords and repeatedly improves Mark's wording. The hymns of chapters 1 and 2 (the Magnificat, beginning "My soul magnifies the Lord"; the Benedictus, beginning "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel"; the Nunc Dimittis, beginning "Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace") and the birth narratives of John the Baptist and Jesus either came from some early oral tradition or were consciously modeled on the basis of the language of the Septuagint. These sections provide insight into the early Christian community, and the hymns in particular reflect the Old Testament psalms or the Thanksgiving Psalms from Qumran. Though on the whole Matthew is the Gospel most used for the lectionaries, the Christmas story comes from Luke. The "old age" motif of the birth of John to Elizabeth also recalls the Old Testament birth of Samuel, the judge. All the material about John the Baptist, however, is deliberately placed prior to that of Jesus. When Mary, the mother of Jesus, visits Elizabeth, Jesus' superiority to John is already established. The Davidic royal tradition is thus depicted as superior to the priestly tradition.
Luke can be dated c. 80. There is no conjecture about its place of writing, except that it probably was outside of Palestine because the writer had no accurate idea of its geography. Luke uses a good literary style of the Hellenistic Age in terms of syntax. His language has a "biblical" ring already in its own time because of his use of the Septuagint style; he is a Greek familiar with the Septuagint, which was written for Greeks; he seldom uses loanwords and repeatedly improves Mark's wording. The hymns of chapters 1 and 2 (the Magnificat, beginning "My soul magnifies the Lord"; the Benedictus, beginning "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel"; the Nunc Dimittis, beginning "Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace") and the birth narratives of John the Baptist and Jesus either came from some early oral tradition or were consciously modeled on the basis of the language of the Septuagint. These sections provide insight into the early Christian community, and the hymns in particular reflect the Old Testament psalms or the Thanksgiving Psalms from Qumran. Though on the whole Matthew is the Gospel most used for the lectionaries, the Christmas story comes from Luke. The "old age" motif of the birth of John to Elizabeth also recalls the Old Testament birth of Samuel, the judge. All the material about John the Baptist, however, is deliberately placed prior to that of Jesus. When Mary, the mother of Jesus, visits Elizabeth, Jesus' superiority to John is already established. The Davidic royal tradition is thus depicted as superior to the priestly tradition.
AD 80 is about 50 years after the traditional date of Jesus's death; that's not early.
Completely incomprehensible is this claim:
"Jesus' prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem must have been written prior to Jerusalem's fall, for otherwise the church would have separated out the apocalyptic element in the prophecies, which makes them appear to concern the end of the world. Since the end of the world did not come about when Jerusalem was destroyed, the so-called prophecies of its destruction that were really written after the city was destroyed would not have made that event appear so closely connected with the end of the world. Hence, the Gospels must have been written prior to A.D. 70."
The prophecies merely state that the end of the world is coming soon. The Christians of the late first century, after the pillage of Jerusalem were awaiting that prophesied end, which of course included the destruction of a rebuilt Jerusalem. In no way was the Roman sack of Jerusalem foretold.
The authors say
"The stories of Jesus' human weaknesses and of the disciples' faults also bespeak the Gospels' accuracy."
Or the evangelists desire to make it seem so. And they succeeded with these authors.
Then the authors try to turn inconsistencies into consistency:
"Furthermore, it would have been impossible for forgers to put together so consistent a narrative as that which we find in the Gospels. The Gospels do not try to suppress apparent discrepancies, which indicates their originality (written by eyewitnesses). There is no attempt at harmonization between the Gospels, such as we might expect from forgers."
Well, are the gospels consistent, or do they contain apparent discrepancies? Was Jesus the rebel against the Romans, or the wise rabbi? How did Jesus get to be born in Bethlehem despite being known to be from Nazareth? Do we believe Matthew's account or Luke's? Both merely wanted to reconcile an expected Bethlehem origin for the Messiah with Jesus's origin in Nazareth.
I've already debunked the claim:
The Gospels do not contain anachronisms; the authors appear to have been first-century Jews who were witnesses of the events.
Recall Herod's death years before Quirinius's census. Recall Decapolis not existing until Nero's time yet being visited by Jesus in a roundabout trip evidencing a lack of knowledge of Palestinian geography.
The authors argue that "The disciples must have left some writings ...". But what happened to the idea of "simple fishermen"? Simple fishermen did not write in those days. The end of the world was coming soon and there was no time for memoirs anyway. The world (at least the Israelite world) had to be warned of its impending doom as fast as possible--by word of mouth.
The authors claim without proof that "there were many eyewitnesses who were still alive when the books were written who could testify whether they came from their purported authors or not". But the books were written far from Palestine.
The "extra-biblical testimony" that supposedly "unanimously attributes the Gospels to their traditional authors" is all from various church fathers, not unbiased observers, or people unfamiliar with the origins who, in deference to the Christians, accept the authorage. Also, the works of "Christianity's opponents" that are referred to were destroyed by the early church, and are known only through portions being quoted by church fathers, who might not give an unbiased, or complete rendition of their opponents positions.
Amazingly the authors claim that multiple copying of the text resulted in better preservation of the original text. That makes no sense. Copies are never better than the original.
To "The text has also remained unmarred by heretical additions," we can only say that heresy is in the eye of the beholder. The Gnostic Gospels were thrown out by the church fathers as being heretical. What the fathers allowed is what is considered non-heretical.
What does it mean when the authors say "The Gospels could not have been corrupted without a great outcry on the part of all orthodox Christians."? Is this like public outcry when they find out that George Washington really did not chop down the cherry tree? or the public outcry if someone publicly says there is no Santa Claus? It isn't truth that the public seeks to protect, but cherished myth.
How about "No one could have corrupted all the manuscripts."? Maybe, maybe not. But in any case there were many gospels which did not make it into the canon, as only those that fit with the point of view of the selectors made it in to the Bible. See the Infancy Narrative of Thomas, above, for just one example. Look up the Gnostic Gospels for more.
"There is no precise time when the falsification could have occurred, since, as we have seen, the New Testament books are cited by church Fathers in regular and close succession." But this is still well after the A.D. 100 writing of John. Most of the falsification (myth-making) occurred between Jesus's death in about A.D. 30 and the writing of the earliest Gospel, that called Mark, around A.D. 60-70. Even then, the mythmaking was not complete, as Mark does not even include an infancy narrative, which we first find in Matthew, written after 70. As mentioned previously it is not until the last canonical Gospel that Jesus is made to say "Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58), written around A.D. 100, about 3 generations after Jesus's traditional date of death. So yes, there is no precise time, as mythmaking does take a period of time.
"The text of the New Testament is every bit as good as the text of the classical works of antiquity.... To repudiate the textual parity of the Gospels would be to reverse all the rules of criticism and to reject all the works of antiquity, since the text of those works is less certain than that of the Gospels." So I guess Jesus is as real as Odysseus, Helen of Troy or Robin Hood. OK. We can even throw in Hercules, Apollonius of Tyana and many others. The authors go on to say "not trusting documents is like not trusting telescopes. Paper evidence suffices for most of what we believe; why should it suddenly become suspect here?" Well, for one, the Sun, being well-intentioned, told Virginia there was/is a Santa Claus; I'll grant he is as real as Jesus. On the more serious side, it is known that anyone who knows particulars about a given newspaper story will find holes in that story. They may not seem like much, but given the lack of scientific knowledge in intertestamental times, and lack of written documentation for 30 or more years, even wilder speculations could be given credence, such as people rising from the dead.
