Read Jesus Lied - He Was Only Human: Debunking the New Testament Online
Authors: CJ Werleman
Jesus Lied - He Was Only Human: Debunking the New Testament (14 page)
That’s all it took for Jesus to convince the brothers to put down their rods, nets and follow this longhaired hippy who claimed to be from a town his disciples would had never heard of, Nazareth*. Mark writes in a similar vain to Matthew, but what does Luke have to say on the matter?
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One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret,
with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, he saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down
the nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”
When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.” So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.” (Luke 5:1-11 NIV)
To this date, scholars and historians debate whether or not Nazareth was a real town during Jesus’ time. Many contend that his Biblically claimed origins were penciled into fourth century manuscripts. This has a certain weight of credibility, as there is not a single mention of Nazareth outside of the New Testament until the early third century, when Sextus Julius Africanus, a Christian historian, speaks of “Nazara” as village in “Judea” and locates it near “Cochaba”, a town still not identified by archaeologists today.
Joan Taylor,
Christians and the Holy Places
, writes: “It is now possible to conclude that there existed in Nazareth, from the first part of the fourth century, a small and unconventional church which encompassed a cave complex.”
Luke’s passage is completely at odds with his Synoptic contemporaries. By his account Jesus had asked Peter to take him out in his boat so that he can preach to the multitude. There is no multitude, or crowd present according to Matthew, or Mark. Further, the former Gospels have Jesus leaving the boat, but Luke has him entering a boat. What does John say?
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The next day, after the Baptism, John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” They said, “Rabbi” “Where are you staying?” “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter.” (John 1:35-42 NIV)
By John’s account it is Andrew who hears of Jesus via John the Baptist, and it was Andrew that went onto to recruit his brothers.
As we have covered, John further distances himself from the Synoptic Gospels, in taking an enormous theological hammer in sculpting the divinity of Jesus. John is unabashedly brazen in his assertion that Jesus is God himself, that is - God in the human form. This is completely at odds with his contemporaries. John steps out swinging with this theological bombshell too, as the claim is made in the very first verse of his gospel:
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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was God in the beginning.” (John 1:1-2 NIV)
John doesn’t stop there, he adds:
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Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was light of men.” (John 1:3-4 NIV)
The language is a little tricky but the message is straightforward – Jesus was God. It is this passage that resulted in the founding church in Rome, the Catholic Church, getting all tongue-tied as they deliberated for centuries on the concept of the Trinity. It is a doctrine/dogma issue that still makes no sense to me. I mean if Jesus was God in the human form, then who was taking care of shit in Heaven while Jesus was alive? It’s just illogical nonsense, but that’s the beauty of religion; you can say whatever you like, and there’ll always be people who are either bat-shit crazy or sufficiently gullible to believe such stupendous drivel!
If we compare John’s bold assertion regarding the divinity of Jesus to the Synoptic Gospels, the difference couldn’t be starker if it tried. On each occasion the other three make reference to Jesus by tacking on a title, it is as the ‘Son of Man’. It is doubtful whether anyone could attach a more modest title, especially if he indeed was not the ‘Son of Man’ and instead the ‘Son of God’.
Never, in a single instance does Matthew, Mark, or Luke within a bee’s dick of making the same illustrious promise as John. And there is a really good reason for that; John had to make bigger and bolder claims about Jesus, because he was snookered behind the false prophecy promise of which the others had the luxury of writing still within the realms of the lifetime of the “current generation”.
As we saw in chapter one, Jesus promised his return before his generation had
“tasted death.”
Mark’s Gospel, however, was still within range, albeit at the outer edge, of fulfilling that promise. John, however, writing at least two generations after Jesus’ contemporaries had died - had to pour a little extra vodka into the party punch. He did this by proclaiming that Jesus was God himself. But big claims attract big attention!
While we’ve already addressed the fact that Jesus preached about as an apocalyptic prophet, the ‘end of times’ was the quintessential message and resounding theme of Jesus’ ministry throughout Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The message of ‘end times coming’ was basically that; judgment would follow; and the righteous would be rewarded with 24/7 harp music; and the evildoers cast aside into the bowels of hell for eternity.
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Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of that one will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels…Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God has come to power.” (Mark 8:38-9:1 NIV)
Jesus saw the world divided between the good and the bad. He, like John the Baptist, saw that the world was coming to an end because there was so much sin and evil in the world. They saw that the then current times mirrored the times of Sodom & Gomorrah and the chaotic and hedonistic times preceding the Flood, and naturally presumed that God’s wrath would return.
Only this time, the good would be spared. Presumably, God learnt his lesson of painting everyone the same brush as he had during his earlier global genocides. Matthew and Luke claim as much in the following verse:
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For just as the flashing lightening lights up the earth from one part of the sky to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day…And just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating, drinking, marrying, and giving away in marriage, until the day that Noah went into the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. So too will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed.” (Luke 17:24-27 NIV)
Moreover, Jesus not only promised all this would take place during his contemporaries lifetime, but he also hinted that it could take place on any day, at any minute. Jesus preached that all his disciples and followers should be prepared for the inevitable rapture:
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And you, be prepared, because you do not know the hour when the Son of Man is coming.” (Matthew 24:44 NIV)
Essentially, this was the essence of Jesus’ much proclaimed, “Take no thought for the morrow”. Christopher Hitchens writes in
God is Not Great:
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This suggests – along with many other injunctions – that things like thrift, innovation, family life, and so forth are a sheer waste of time. This is why some of the Gospels, canonical and apocryphal, report people (including Jesus’ family members) saying at the time that they thought Jesus must be mad.”
We have already put the liar accusation to bed, as Jesus is quite obviously guilty as charged, but what of being a lunatic?
Well, C.S Lewis certainly believed that if Jesus was not God himself then the only suitable character judgment the Bible leaves us with is that he was a sociopathic lunatic. This is especially so because Jesus never calls himself God in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Moreover, we don’t need to look too far to undercover many examples of Jesus’ apparent lunacy.
Case in point, the story found (only) in the Gospel of John, regarding the woman caught committing adultery. Interestingly, if you were to take a survey of Christians around the world there is little doubt that this narrative would be the most well known, at least outside of the nativity scene or the crucifixion.
This story is so celebrated by Christians, as many believe it portrays the wisdom and compassion of Jesus. A story so dear to the faithful that even the apparently Jew loathing Mel Gibson includes it, despite the scene being completely out of both context and order within the passion narrative, in his barely watchable and historically flawed
Passion of the Christ
.
The scene in question is the image of a woman dragged before Jesus and the Priests. The Pharisees ask Jesus should this adulterous woman be stoned to death in accordance with Mosaic Law. It is, of course, a trap set by the Pharisees, for if he agreed that she should be executed, he would have made nonsense of his own teachings of forgiveness and ‘turn the other cheek’. On the other hand, if he didn’t, then he was in violation of the Law and would have given the Pharisees reason to arrest him. Anyway, the Gospel John writes as such:
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The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:3-11)
There are a myriad of philosophical issues and matters of logic this passage presents:
1. Did Jesus just give his endorsement of sexual liberation and permissiveness? If so, then the Church has 2,000 years of sexual repression to answer for.
2. If the woman was caught in the act of intercourse, where was her accomplice, the husband?
3. The law of adultery applied only to a married woman, then what of her husband’s justice? What punishment for the man that bonked his wife? The law demands, according to Leviticus, that he be put to death, along with her.
4. Did the woman ever sin again? Most likely she did, because she did got off Scot-free in this instance.
5. Matthew, for example, would never have written any passage like this, and he didn’t, because this effectively has Jesus pissing on the pages of the Pentateuch. He would have been seen completely undermining the laws of Moses’ as handed down directly by God. Jesus said quite clearly in Matthew,
“Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.”
Jesus may have danced around the philosophical trap set by the Pharisees with some clever word play, but he inadvertently leaves at least one aggrieved party suffering and subsequently leaves us with more questions than answers. Furthermore, this story was written into the Gospel of John centuries later i.e. it was not written into the original. We know this because the story is not found in our oldest surviving manuscripts. Bart D. Ehrman, arguably the world’s current leading New Testament scholar, writes:
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(this story in John) includes a large number of words and phrases that are otherwise alien to the Gospel. The conclusion is unavoidable: this passage was not originally part of the Gospel.”