THE FOUR GOSPELS ARE UNRELIABLE

 

Up until today, everybody thought witches could cause storms through using incantations and that mice can appear from nowhere in straw as if straw somehow makes them!  It was easy for the past not to question the resurrection for the stone of Jesus' tomb could have moved like the storm through magic and he could easily rise when straw turns into mice!

 

Christianity claims to be the only religion that has the power to save from sin.  If Christianity is really good, and if Jesus really is saviour from sin as it says, then why did so many forgers and so on lie for it in the early days?  The New Testament itself complains about forged letters allegedly from the apostles whose word is final for Jesus made them his spokesmen.  After that there are loads of fake gospels and epistles and Acts.  The lies go on and on and the Donation of Constantine, a forgery, is the biggest reason for the power of the Roman Catholic Church today.  A religion that lies like that and depends on lies and was empowered by lies is sectarian against historians.  Whose rights come first then?  The historians!  This page is not merely about debate but about respect.

 

The claim that if some of the New Testament writings are not authored by those who they made to seem to be that this is not forgery overlooks the fact that forgery back then like today was condemned.  A discovery narrative accompanies many examples of religious forgery such as the Archos Volume and the Book of Mormon.  An incredible tale about how they came to be grabs interest.  How do we know that somebody didn’t just find say the Gospel of John?  John could pass for that kind of book for it does not appear to have the same Jesus of the other gospels.  The Book of Revelation is a very good candidate for a "discovered" scripture.  It is written as if it only cares about itself.  It ends with a threat against anybody who would dismiss any of it.

 

The fact is what we have not the slightest information concerning how any gospel or New Testament document was transmitted for years after it was penned.

Christians argue that the four gospels have no proven major contradictions between themselves and fit what is known from other sources about the times Jesus lived in.  They say the gospels are reliable.  But the fact remains that many beg to differ.  The gospels do make huge blunders.  And a lot of what they say cannot be checked out.  Nazareth for example has never been located.  And the gospels were copied by hand so alterations could have been made at an early stage.  There is no proof for alternation and no proof against it either.  But that does not matter.  For some things you cannot expect evidence. For example, if the gospels were tampered with it is possible that it was done carefully.  The doctrine of gospel reliability is just an assumption.

The Roman Catholic Church has been forced to confess that the Bible is unreliable and contains stories that are not true.

 

The four gospellers and the rest of the New Testament works. They must have been the best experts on theology and ethics there ever was when they could be sure that Jesus always did right. Brighter people than them cannot agree on what is right and wrong so why should we listen to a few tax-collectors and fishermen that Jesus was sinless? They never ensured that the other side would be given a hearing and that is a sure sign of unjust bias towards making a superstar of Jesus. They did not want people to make up their own minds.

It cannot be true what Matthew says about all Jerusalem being disturbed by and interested in the Magi’s claim that the Messiah had been born. The citizens would have thought the Magi were cranks and how could they have been disturbed for they wanted the Messiah to come and throw the Romans out. The gospels says they went to Herod to ask him if he knew where the Christ child was. We cannot believe that Herod desperately wanted the child dead and instead of sending spies after the Magi depended on them to come back and tell him where the child was! The Magi would have known that he was a jealous fanatic from gossip so what did they go to Herod for in the first place?

It was also a scandal that Matthew said that everybody believed the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem for Micah predicted that when he did not actually say the Messiah would be born there only that he would come from there.

If Matthew believed that Joseph’s dream about an angel was a real vision and not just a dream that happened to be right (2) Matthew was commanding us to be credulous and so he cannot be trusted with his other miracle stories, the greater ones such as the resurrection. Jesus was the one who said that if you cannot trust anyone in small you cannot trust them in big things either.

It is said that there is no conflict between the records which give different numbers and accounts of the appearances of the risen Jesus for they do not mention them all. That would be true if the gospels were not written to function as evidence for the divine authority of Jesus Christ. They say that miracles were to be signs for the world and then they deny it by leaving out most of Jesus’ post-resurrection miracles. A complete contradiction.

Christians say the differences - and some would admit that there are contradictions - tell us that if the gospels agreed it would be a sign that the stories were being made up. We must realise and help Christians to realise that the accounts of two or more witnesses being identical are not contrived just because they are identical. If the witnesses could have met after the event they are testifying to and before they gave their testimony then and only then could the accounts be fabricated. It is totally ridiculous to argue that because the gospels differ that they are sincere for they could have looked up what the reports about Jesus were saying. They contradicted each other because they thought each other was wrong or each gospel was hoping to become the scripture of the Church and exclude the other gospels so the contradicting could have been on purpose. So if the gospels are true they have to agree on everything. So you can be sure that when the Gospel of John reports almost entirely things that Jesus did that do not match the other gospels and when John decrees that two witnesses are necessary it follows that John is telling us to scrap his gospel if he has no support. And there is nothing but his own word.

 

The reasons for regarding the four gospels as spurious outweigh the far-fetched justifications for trusting them.  The anonymous authors, the clear example of the story growing legs with every new gospel, the lies about the Old Testament prophecies, the lack of independent studies on them from the time they appeared, all those things point to how inappropriate it is to regard them as valid enough to present to the people for their committed and dedicated faith.

It Ain’t Necessarily So, Investigating the Truth of the Biblical Past, Matthew Sturgis, Headline Books, London, 2001
Conspiracies and the Cross, Timothy Paul Jones, Front Line, A Strang Company, Florida, 2008
The Jesus Inquest, Charles Foster, Monarch Books, Oxford, 2006

 
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