Author Archives: Neil

End Of Term Test

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Which of the terms mythological, symbolic, theological is most appropriate when discussing biblical tropes?

Apparently, it’s ‘theological’ because it has an air of respectability, whereas the other terms suggest something with only theoretical underpinning. In fact, this also applies to ‘theological’, which by definition is the study of deities, for which there is no evidential verification. The use of ‘theological’ therefore is as unsubstantive as arguing that a concept is metaphorical or symbolic. None of these terms represents a sound, reliable way to determine the accuracy, historicity or truth of religious claims.

With this in mind see how you do with these questions:

1. Did the original hearers of the Genesis creation story regard it as –

a) true.

b) a theological statement.

c) an entertaining myth.

Of course we’ve no way of knowing what the story’s original hearers thought but there is nothing in the text that suggests they would have regarded the creation story as anything but true. The creators of Jesus’ script certainly seemed to think so, a few centuries later and its original hearers would not have felt the need to preserve it otherwise. In this belief they were wrong.

2. Which of these gospel stories is true, as in ‘really happened more or less as described’ –

a) The virgin birth with its surrounding detail.

b) Jesus meeting with Moses and Elijah (the transfiguration).

c) Resurrected corpses roaming around Jerusalem.

d) The resurrection.

The answer is that either all of them are true or none of them are. If only one of them is mythic, symbolic or ‘theological’ (and more than one of them most certainly is) then it is highly likely the others are too. If we are scrupulous, we cannot assert that one story is symbolic because it’s making a theological point while another equally implausible story is historically accurate because we want it to be.

The criteria for determining the historicity of any story from antiquity are corroborative evidence and, failing that, plausibility. We have already established that there is no independent corroboration for many of the gospel stories. There is no corroboration for some of them even in the Bible itself. We are left then with plausibility: how plausible is it that a virgin gave birth or that resurrected corpses presented themselves to Jewish authorities? Vanishingly small. Jesus’ encounter with Moses and Elijah is equally improbable.

Is his resurrection the exception? No, because dead people do not spring back to life 36 hours after being buried. If the virgin birth, the transfiguration and the resurrection of dead saints are all highly implausible (and they are) then so is the resurrection. It is at best, a story making a theological point but it is not history. The implausibility it shares with many of the other implausible stories in the gospels discounts it as history. There are no grounds for saying it is the exception.

There is also the cumulative effect of implausibility. It is highly unlikely that one of the implausible events above is historical, but it is impossible that all four of them are. Add all the other implausible stories in the gospels – the other miracles; the healings; exorcisms; Jesus sparring with the devil, walking through locked doors and beaming up to heaven: piling implausibility on top of implausibility doesn’t make any of the component implausibilities more plausible. It makes all of them less plausible and collectively impossible.

The things the gospels tell us happened to Gospel Jesus, and those they say he did himself, are equalled only by heroes of myth. Did Osiris or Romulus rise from the dead, as their stories claim? Did Augustus really become a god once he died? Of course not. These are the implausible, improbable events we find in myth. Jesus’ story is no different.

3. While many or all of the gospel stories are highly improbable as history because they are intended to convey a theological point, the words attributed to Jesus in the gospels –

a) are completely accurate.

b) are more or less what he said.

c) passed through an inestimable number of people, being invented, edited and altered in the process, before being written down 40+ years after Jesus supposedly uttered them.

d) are inventions of the gospel writers and/or their particular sect and frequently copied between gospels.

If you’re opting for a or b, you’re now making the logia the exception; the one oasis of historical truth in a desert of implausibility. That’s a big ask. To get this one off the ground, you have to call upon contrivances like –

completely reliable (but different and conflicting) oral traditions;

     hypothetical lists of sayings;

         Peter’s dictation to Mark;

             eyewitness authors;

                  secret teachings;

                     super-translators and

                         the odd spot of collaboration.

So, c and/or d is far more likely to be the answer to this one, representing the explanation that requires the least conjecture and fewest hypothetical components.

How did you do? I expect most of you aced this end of term quiz. If not, better get down to some extra study and repeat the semester next year.

The Gospels and Other Fiction, part 3

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The final part of my critical look at Christians’ defence of scripture as truth.

‘The logia of the Lord in all three of the synoptics stand out from the narration of the author by style and grammar.’

The same way Elizabeth Bennet’s/Jay Gatsby’s/Hermione Granger’s dialogue stands out from the narration and the speech of other characters in Pride and Prejudice/The Great Gatsby/Harry Potter. A skilled author can make all of their characters speak in different and distinctive styles, with their own particular grammar and syntax. This doesn’t mean those characters are real. Nor does the fact that some of the ‘logia of the Lord’ was carried over from Mark into Matthew and Luke mean the two later authors were at pains to preserve the real words of Jesus. They were, as scholars, including the evangelicals Dr Strauss and Dr Wallace suggest, copying, plagiarising, editing, amending and inventing his script.

There are also the omissions to take into account: words recorded by Mark that Matthew and Luke didn’t see fit to copy into their gospels. Were they not convinced these were genuine sayings of Jesus? Did they just not like them? On what basis did they jettison these ‘logia of the Lord’?

If only there were a fourth gospel that didn’t lift its logia from Mark, one whose Jesus speaks in a very different style, with different content, vocabulary, syntax and grammar from the synoptics, but which is itself internally consistent. We would know then his script could be made up.

Miracles of miracles, we do have such a gospel, one in which Jesus is completely different from the version in the synoptics. Where does this character’s logia come from? A different oral tradition, one totally separate from and uninfluenced by that used by Mark but which existed in parallel to it? Highly unlikely. An eyewitness? One who heard Jesus speak an entirely different set of words from whoever supposedly heard those eventually used by Mark? Of course not. The fourth gospel’s logia was invented by a much later author and his collaborators, with no direct experience of Jesus (if he existed). He and they do a pretty good job of writing his fake lines.

And if they can do it, why not Mark forty years earlier?

‘There are, in the synoptic gospels, fewer variations in the logia than in the surrounding shared narrative.’

This doesn’t mean there aren’t any. There are. For example:

Whoever is not against us is for us’ (Mark 9.40) v. ‘Whoever is not with me is against me.’ (Luke 11.23). 

‘And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ (Mark 4:20) v. ‘But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.’ (Luke 8:15) [Luke makes a terrible job transferring this parable from Mark to his own gospel. His is full of errors and discrepancies, generally attributed to ‘author fatigue’. He was just so tired of cribbing from Mark and Matthew.]

‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’ (Mark 1:15) v. ‘The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you of you.’ (Luke 17.21)

It looks like isolating the logia and claiming because they are similar across the gospels they must be the actual words of Jesus. Matthew and Luke copying from Mark (and each other?) while John invents his own unique dialogue, makes for a far better explanation of both the similarities and the differences.

The Circular Reasoning of Apologists

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This is what what we’ve got so far:

Human behaviour is controlled by beings from an invisible, undetectable spiritual realm. We know this invisible, undetectable spiritual realm exists because of the effect it has on human behaviour (even if dumb old atheists can’t wrap their minds round the fact.)

Circular reasoning, not evidence.

The synoptic gospels rely on an earlier oral tradition. We know there was an earlier oral tradition because the synoptic gospels rely on it.

Circular reasoning, not evidence. (The same applies to Q.)

We know the stories about Jesus are indisputably true because they’re in the gospels that no-one at the time disputed. We know the gospels are indisputably true because they tell us stories about Jesus that at the time no-one disputed.

Circular reasoning, not evidence. There is no corroborative, independent evidence for any of the stories about Jesus. (I’ll get to the indisputable claim soon.)

 

 

My Gay Demon

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I am demon possessed. I know this for a certainty because Christians all over the Internet tell me. I am gay therefore I am possessed by a demon. Maybe more than one, I don’t know.

I’ve been trying to get in touch with my inner demon but he’s been keeping schtum. I assume he’s a him given he’s a demon of gayness, but again who knows. I’ve enquired in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind and have searched my heart (though if I’m honest I wasn’t really sure how to do this) and can’t find him anywhere.

I was going to ask him why, if he’s a demon and therefore a real nasty piece of work from the pit of hell, why he’s led me to a happy and loving relationship with Dennis, one that has taken each of us from loneliness and depression to peace and contentment. I just didn’t know demons were so… well, so positive and creative. I always thought they were destructive and devious, like C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape. I think mine must be shy and more like Casper the Holy Ghost.

Alternatively, maybe there’s no such thing as demons, invisible evil super-beings who can’t be detected in any way. In my ‘worldview’ anything that’s invisible, undetectable and is a figment of rather dim-witted people’s imaginations is a being that doesn’t exist.

But then maybe that’s just me.

  And science.

    And every other academic discipline.

       And rationality.

         And reality.

It’s possible, after all, that a book written thousands of years ago by ignorant religious zealots trumps all of that.

The Gospels and Other Fiction, part 2

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‘The gospels were written as history. Their writers did not make things up.’

History, as koseighty has reminded us, is not littered with angels, devils, demons, spirits, apparitions, miracles, voices from the sky and resurrected corpses. Real history was being written at the same time as the gospels, by Josephus and Suetonius for example, who do not include the supernatural but do reference their sources, something the gospels never manage.

And of course the gospel writers did make things up. They invented numerous stories for Jesus to make it appear he is fulfilling prophecy (even when that ‘prophecy’ wasn’t prophecy to begin with.) This included making up ‘history’; Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents (a rewrite of a fiction about the infant Moses), the crucifixion eclipse, the rending of the temple curtain and more. These are all symbolic events. They didn’t really happen. Jesus’ own resurrection can safely be added to the list. It’s ironic that those who defend the gospel authors against the charge they made stuff up are the same who invent stories themselves: Mark and Luke knew each other? Mark proof-read Luke’s first draft? There were people who would fact check the gospels and point out any errors? But the original Christians wouldn’t do such a thing. Except they did.

‘There are no Inconsistencies, contradictions and inaccuracies in and between the gospels, but if there are, these are irrelevant. It’s the bigger picture that counts.’

Jesus is different in all four gospels. Despite Matthew and Luke’s plagiarising of Mark, they alter him to reflect the Jesus they believe in. John’s Jesus is so far removed from Mark’s that he’s a different character altogether. The inconsistencies do matter: did Jesus perform signs and wonders or not? Was he crucified on Thursday or Friday? Was it Peter, John or Mary who was first to see him resurrected? Did he hang around for one day or for 40? These conflicting details tell us that the creators of the Jesus story were more than happy to alter it when it suited their purposes. This is not how history is written. It is how propaganda is created. The ‘bigger picture’ is, in any case, made up of these smaller details. They work collectively and cumulatively to create the bigger picture. If we can’t rely on their being accurate how can we be sure the bigger picture is? When the gospel writers are unreliable in the smaller details, how can we be certain they’ve got the bigger picture right, given they’re all copying it from the same source, Mark, and giving it their own spin?

‘There is corroborating evidence of the gospels’ accounts’.

There is? Where? Just because there is some evidence that Nazareth existed doesn’t mean Jesus performed miracles, any more than Dunsinane castle’s existence proves Macbeth murdered King Duncan (he didn’t). Just because Pilate was a real historical figure doesn’t mean he crucified Jesus, any more than the existence of King’s Cross Station means Harry Potter catches his train there. And these, surely, are merely the small details. There is no corroboration at all for the bigger picture. Mention of the followers of Chrestus in Suetonius confirms at best that there were Christians in Rome at the time of Claudius, but no-one is disputing that. At worst, for the apologist, this curious reference has nothing whatever to do with Jesus. Later references to incidents from his story, by the much vaunted Church Fathers, are derived from the gospels and are therefore dependent on them. As such, they don’t constitute independent corroboration.

‘Everything Jesus prophesies or predicts in the gospels will come to pass, then sceptics will see that everything in the Jesus story is true.’

This one is from a commenter on Don’s blog. (I only went there by accident, honest.) The problem with this one is that everything Jesus is made to promise should already have come true, two thousand years ago. The Son of Man should have appeared in the sky with the heavenly host to usher in God’s Kingdom on Earth, while sending most of mankind to the fiery pit or outer darkness or some other damn place. Both he and Paul claimed that this would happen within their and their followers’ lifetimes. The trouble with Christianity is it is always winter and never Christmas. Its fulfilment God’s – God’s Kingdom on Earth, life after death, the final judgement – is always going to be at some indeterminate time in the future, a time and fulfilment that never quite arrives. It never will; part of ‘the big picture’ we can be confident we will never see.

More to come (unlike Jesus). 

‘

The Gospels and Other Fiction, part 1

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Christian apologists vigorously deny the idea that the Jesus story is fiction even though all of the evidence, both internal and external, points to the fact that it is. I’m not going to rehearse that evidence in this post (I address it in several earlier posts, including here and here, and there are always primary sources that, God forbid, defenders of the faith could read for themselves.) I’m interested here in looking at Christians’ defence of scripture as truth. What arguments do they have and better still, what evidence, that the gospels are historically accurate depiction of events in 1st century Palestine? Most of these arguments have been offered by our resident apologist, Don Camp, and although I’m fairly sure Don makes things up as he goes along, I’ll not reference other sources except where I’m introducing an argument he hasn’t offered.

‘Church Fathers believed the gospels were accurate, therefore, because they lived closer to the time of the gospels’ composition, they’re more likely to be right.’

Church Fathers, such as the unreliable Eusebius,, Papias, Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp were predisposed to believe the gospels were accurate; they had already converted to the faith and had a vested interest in seeing it promulgated and preserved. They were also steeped in the thinking of the age, typified by Paul and other NT writers, that the Earth was at the centre of a cosmic war between God and the forces of Satan. Above all, the Jesus story was theirs, a new revelation from God that didn’t, as far as they were concerned, belong to Jewish tradition or any other. It was new and it belonged to them: they wanted and needed it to be true. Later scholars, from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, did not come with these particular encumbrances and while of course not entirely free of prejudices of their own, considered the texts more dispassionately as history and found them to be wanting.

‘‘Mark’ is an accurate record of the disciple Peter’s time with Jesus.’

There is no evidence at all for this claim. Analysis of Mark (and also Matthew and Luke) demonstrates how the story is constructed around supposed prophecies from Jewish scriptures. Mark also incorporates much of Paul’s gospel to the Gentiles, a feature Matthew is at pains to ‘correct’. His Jesus is distinctly Jewish.

‘There was an oral tradition that accurately preserved the stories about Jesus until such time as they could be written down.’

There is no evidence that this tradition, if it existed, was accurate. It is, as Bart Ehrman shows in Jesus Before The Gospels, highly unlikely that it was. We know that stories conveyed orally are altered, embellished and modified with successive retellings.

‘There was an earlier document that preserved sayings of Jesus’ until such times they could be incorporated into the gospels.’

Then it simply vanished so that no fragment of it survived. The Church Fathers don’t appear to know anything about it. Wouldn’t such a priceless document have been preserved somehow, somewhere by someone? Q, as it’s called, is entirely hypothetical. It’s unlikely it existed. Even if it did, it is considered to have been a sayings gospel. It did not preserve details of Jesus’ life, death or resurrection. We’ll get to the so called ‘logia’ in part 3.

‘The gospels were written by eye-witnesses or associates of eye-witnesses.’

We know with certainty that this is not the case. All of them were written in Koine Greek and are carefully constructed literary creations. None was written in Palestine but much further afield and all reflect the concerns of the later cult. Over a hundred years after they were written, Irenaeus ascribed the names by which they are now known without any evidence that the authors were called Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Later compilers of the New Testament didn’t even know of ‘Mark’s’ primacy, which is why ‘Matthew’s’ gospel appears first in the New Testament. ‘Matthew’ and ‘Luke’ are heavily dependent on ‘Mark’ (as is ‘John’ for its overall structure), an incongruous and inexplicable approach for Matthew to take, and John too, if they were eye-witnesses themselves. Eye-witnesses do not need to rely on the testimony of people who weren’t.

More next time…

In the name of Jesus Christ

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A young man went on a murderous spree today in a children’s park in France. He stabbed repeatedly four very young, defenceless children, a woman who was looking after one of them and an elderly couple. As he did so, he shouted, not Alluha Akbar, but ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’.
Religion is responsible for so much evil in the world.

The Power of Figments

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Since his death, no-one has seen the itinerant preacher now known as Jesus. Some dispute he existed in the first place and certainly the character depicted in the gospels is a fictional creation. Assuming, however, that there was a real individual on whom this character was based, no-one has seen him in the flesh for 2000 years.

This includes all or most of those who wrote about him in the early years of the cult and whose writing now forms the New Testament. They either learnt about Jesus by word of mouth, as most converts throughout history have done, or they had a vision within their own heads of – what exactly? Those who write of such visions are either vague about what they claim they saw (Paul in Galatians 1: 15-16), are evidently making it up (John of Patmos in Revelation) or their visions are related by third parties many years down the line (Peter and Mary in the gospels, Stephen in Acts.)

Either way, the character believers claim to have seen or have heard about is a fantasy figure, not the rabbi who may or may not have existed. It’s this fantasy who lives in heaven snuggled up to his equally fictitious father, monitoring people’s behaviour, listening into their thoughts while simultaneously observing ‘the destruction the world is bringing on itself’ and doing not a thing to help.

All this from the heaven no Christian can locate: in another unspecified, invisible, undetectable dimension is the best they can offer. Nonetheless, if only more people would turn to him, Super-Jesus would help us solve the problems we face.

Because theocracies have always been so effective. They’ve led to a more just, fairer world as wise compassionate religionists have listened to their heavenly leaders – God, Allah, Jesus, Muhammed – and have applied the principles of their holy books to the running of their societies. Only obstinate sinners have had anything to fear from the arrangement: the degenerate, like those who have sex outside marriage and want access to contraceptives; gay people (especially); women who don’t know their place; women who seek abortions; the powerless; other, ‘inferior’ races; those of other religions, non-believers and atheists. None of these would have a place in Jesus’s new perfect world either, just as they don’t in societies controlled by Muhammed’s holy ones. Jesus’ agents will be happy to exterminate them, just as he instructs.

Magic Jesus as a figment of his followers’ imaginations can be made to say whatever they want, just as he was when he was being created by Paul and the gospel writers. He is a perpetual work in process, constantly changing to conform to what those who claim to know him want him to be. It’s easy to achieve this with a non-existent being from a non-existent place.

Don makes up more stuff

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Don is making stuff up again (see recent comments) and passing it off as fact. I’m not going to respond to all of his nonsense – I have a life to live – but here are some basic refutations:

Don: ‘Did Jesus rise from the dead? The whole reason for the church, which exists to this day and which can trace its history back to the early 1st century, rests on that. It is the consequence that confirms the real history of the event.’

No. He didn’t. If he had done, all the things he and Paul promised would happen as a result would have happened, and two thousand years ago at that. https://rejectingjesus.com/2022/08/09/if-the-resurrection-had-really-happened/

This is irrefutable evidence he did not rise from the dead. It also puts the lie to those other supposedly fulfilled prophesies you reference. But we’ve been down this road before, Don. I suggest you go back and read the refutations of your claims that others provided then. https://rejectingjesus.com/2022/07/24/more-on-prophecy/

Don: ‘It is possible that Mark and Luke met in Rome; they were there at approx. the same time.’
And it is more likely they did not. In any case ‘possible’ is not ‘probable’, and absolutely not ‘certain’. This is all invented conjecture on your part.

Don: ‘Luke may have been the proofreader for Mark’s manuscript, who knows.’
Certainly not you. This is more fantasy. There is no evidence of it happening. In my thirty years of reading round this kind of thing this is the first time I’ve encountered the suggestion. That’s because you made it up. Next you’ll be telling us they were drinking buddies who invented the printing press together.

Don: ‘Most significant, at best Mark/Peter only supplied a small portion of Luke.’
According to Bible.org about 88% of Mark is in Luke. That’s hardly ‘a small portion.’

Don: ‘You will find few pericopes that are word for word the same.’
According to the same a source, much of the plagiarised material is verbatim.
https://bible.org/article/synoptic-problem

Don: ‘In any case all the Gospels call Jesus the Son of God.’
These are faith statements, not historical facts. They’re evidence that that is how the writers of the gospels – who were not eyewitnesses – and early converts saw him. Significantly, the synoptic gospels don’t make Jesus claim the title for himself. In any case, and as you know, the world back then was awash with sons of God. It didn’t mean every claimant was the real progeny of a deity. However much you want him to be, your man is no exception.

None of what you write, Don, is evidence of God, which is supposedly what you’re providing. That some in the first century claimed someone they never met was divine in some way is not evidence that God exists. Believe in him all you like but don’t think that that belief and the spiritual experiences it gives rise to in your own head are evidence. They are not.

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

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Sadly, we’ve failed to locate Jesus, the celestial super-being who is everything, everywhere, all at once yet nowhere at all. We’ve been presented with some possibilities, specifically that he exists in another dimension, which may or may not exist, from where he whispers directly into the brains of those who, over in this reality, call upon him. He even appears occasionally in visions, when the two dimensions ‘intersect’, which, as everyone knows, they’re capable of doing.

Unfortunately, all of this is undetectable by science but there’s no reason for concern because there is more to reality than that which science can observe. Equally regrettably, there’s no way of verifying this claim either; this is because science is deficient, limited as it is to investigating only ‘dirt and rocks’.

* * * *

It is far more likely that science can’t detect heaven and the eternal Jesus in precisely for the same reason it can’t detect Narnia, Valhalla and all the other fantasy worlds created over the millennia by human minds. Applying Occam’s razor, the imagination accounts for all these other ‘realities’ and the immortals that inhabit them.

No further explanation necessary.