Incongruous Doctrines and Events
Alternative explanations for the Gospels
It is argued that the Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (the Gospels) cannot be trusted as historical records for the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Instead, skeptics alternatively assert that:
1. Jesus never lived;
2. Jesus was never crucified, but a replacement victim was substituted;
3. Jesus was crucified and survived the ordeal; or
4. Jesus was crucified and died, but his body was secretly removed from the tomb.
It is further argued that the Gospel authors could honestly have thought Jesus was resurrected, but it is more likely that the entire resurrection story was a deliberate lie. In other words, the Gospel writers were either duped or liars.
We will begin by noting that there is no objective evidence to support any of these claims. None. They are conclusions presented in the form of argument or evidence. There is general agreement, however, that the identity of the gospel writers is, in fact, uncertain. Were they the men whose Gospels bear their name? Their scribes? Their immediate followers or students? Were they written by followers of a later generation?
Red herrings and the real issue
A red herring is a false issue or a diversionary one, and the question of human authorship is a red herring. The real question is whether God is the author using humans (whoever they might be) as his instruments to communicate his word. I can’t say what other Christian churches teach, but the Catholic Church clearly holds that the Gospels are of apostolic origin – whether directly from the apostles themselves or through the apostles. The identity of the person God used to write the Book of Luke, for example, is of secondary importance. The overriding issue is whether the New Testament faithfully hands on what Jesus Christ did and taught for our eternal salvation.
Ignoring the obvious
Christian and non-Christian scholars unanimously agree that the Gospels were written in Palestine sometime between AD 40 – 125. If you are a skeptic, pick whatever dates you like within that spectrum, and you are still faced with issue of explaining how the early authors, assuming events described in the New Testament were lies, were able to piece together a narrative of incredible love, complexity and deep theological significance and teaching in all their parts. You need to explain how literally overnight a new religion, called Christianity, could have been created by Jews which flew in the face of Judaism and its expectations of the Messiah. Additionally, even while this new Christianity was forging a new and completely unanticipated path to salvation, you need to account for the fact it was simultaneously continuing and augmenting the Old Testament story of salvation.
Rejecting the Gospels requires us to accept the notion of incredibly gifted scholars and logicians never before heard of (or after unless they were the named authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) breaking away from their Jewish heritage to introduce a new theology centered around an insidious superstition of resurrection and eternal life for Jew and Gentile, made possible by the life and death of a carpenter. This would be a carpenter born in the hinterlands of the Roman empire, into poverty, who never wrote a book, never went to a university, and just walked around for three years in a limited geographical area telling everyone that he was the Son of God. Then to prove his point, he suffered a tortuous death and came back to life. This deceitful story would have been created overnight; this would be your fake religion.
If we were to make up a religion, this would not be what we would devise. We would create a belief system that everyone would expect, be simple to explain, and an easy sell. Christianity doesn’t do that – in fact, it is just the opposite.
Here is a great irony. The Resurrection is the core event of Christianity. Skeptics attack it as an historical event, but rarely attack the reality of other Gospel events which, if true, would substantiate the Resurrection and that Jesus was the Son of God. The intricate web of lies and the strange events the writers of the Gospels and other New Testament books would have to have devised to trick the gullible is ignored.
Go to The Apostolic Conspiracy and your will get a flavor of what I mean.
Some websites and references
Last modified July 30, 2019