The Biggest Christian Scandal Has Its Roots in the New Testament
Chance are, no Catholic priest is going to pause in the middle of his sermon to say, “Oh, by the way, I want everyone here today to go to another church next Sunday. Pick another denomination—Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Pentecostal, whatever—and try to find out if their version of Christianity is better than ours. Is it the right one?” Nor are preachers from any of these other brands going to do this. The devout seem not at all bothered that there are many thousands of conflicting, bickering Christian divisions and sects; these reflect profound disagreements about Jesus, god, the best ways to get to heaven. If we could convene a meeting of theologians from each of the brands, they would never be able to agree—among other reasons, because the theologians who wrote the New Testament didn’t agree either. Even the very earliest Christians were arguing.
Maybe the scandal of deep Christian division has had some impact in modern times. Surveys have shown that church attendance has been declining, especially in Europe, but also in the U.S. Then too, perhaps, the fanciful stories in the Bible no longer impress people. I’ve often argued that if anyone needs a reason to abandon Christianity, reading and studying the Bible—with critical thinking fully engaged—is a good place to start. Normally, the clergy aren’t thrilled when their parishioners show up with tough questions after a bit of Bible study: “Reverend, how can we possibly take this story seriously?”
But sometimes the clergy can lead the way in honestly tackling the many problems presented by the New Testament. I’m thinking especially of Richard Hagenston’s 2014 book that recently came to my attention, Fabricating Faith: How Christianity Became a Religion Jesus Would Have Rejected. On the final page, we find this brief bio of him: “…an ordained United Methodist minister and former pastor. He holds a Master of Divinity Degree from Wesley Theological Seminary, and a master’s in journalism from Indiana University.”
I have one major criticism about his methodology, and I’ll get to that later. But his instincts as a journalist seem to have kicked in: he addresses major New Testament blunders head-on, and notes why the devout seem not to notice: “They select just what they want…[they] are often oblivious to what they’re leaving out. And some of them become extremely hostile to anyone who calls their attention to parts of the Bible that they are ignoring to make its message fit their beliefs.” (p. 5)
At the outset, Hagenston illustrates that the two Jesus birth narratives—in Matthew and Luke—fail to qualify as history, and they cannot be reconciled. These two patches of scripture are cherished by the faithful, but it would seem they are seldom read critically, with a sharp eye for contradictions.
“…having Jesus born in Bethlehem was essential for both Matthew and Luke because scripture predicted that a new ruler of Israel would come from there. However, only the Gospel of Luke says that Jesus’ parents traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be enrolled in a census. The gospel of Matthew mentions nothing about that journey or the census, because in Matthew Jesus’ parents already lived in Bethlehem. Only Luke says Jesus’ his parents arrived from Nazareth to find no room in the inn.” (p. 7)
Don’t forget that the so-called wise men were astrologers, so it’s no surprise that a star has a role in the story. But it’s just so much silliness from our perspective:
“Matthew says that the wise men found the child because a star came to rest above him… stars don’t stop in the sky to come to rest over a specific place… there are no astronomical objects that behave like the star in Matthew’s story – not stars, not planets, not comets, nothing.” (p. 10)
The common assumption among lay readers is that the gospels are historically reliable records inspired by their god. Hagenston dispels that delusion:
“… the gospel writers were not writing biographies of Jesus in the rigorous sense that we think of as a biography today. They included some historical information, but they arranged it to suit their purposes. And especially important to remember is that they added details of their own creation to say what they wanted people to believe about Jesus… the gospel writers wrote to fulfill their own agendas, and we will be encountering other biblical examples of writing intended to further specific agendas, sometimes contradicting other positions that are also found in the Bible.” (pp. 12-13)
But the Old Testament authors had agendas too, and a crucial chapter in Hagenston’s book is titled, Two Concepts of God. Here he describes one theology in the Old Testament that understands god as compassionate and merciful, but another that insists that god requires a blood sacrifice to enable forgiveness of sin—and, of course, priests who supervised the blood sacrifices stood to gain. Then in a following chapter, What Jesus Taught about Salvation, Hagenston tries to make the case that Jesus believed in a god of mercy, and had no use for the concept of blood sacrifice.
Here I must mention my criticism of Hagenston’s methodology. He assumes that some of the words and deeds of Jesus reported in the gospels can be trusted—and builds his case on these. But this is hard to justify: all of the gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus, and their authors never mention their sources. They never cite any contemporaneous documentation, that is, letters, diaries, transcripts written at the time of Jesus. There is no way whatever to verify any of the words and deeds of Jesus mentioned in the gospels.
Hagenston is quite right that the gospel writers had their agendas—and created Jesus-script to fit their purposes. To get a grasp of how far they fall short of writing history, check out any modern biography of a famous person. At the back of the book there are commonly dozens of pages listing sources: where the authors found their information, as in diaries, letters, and many other archival resources. And prepare to deal with what one of the top Jesus scholars of our time, Richard Carrier, has pointed out:
Hagenston’s misunderstanding of “the real words of Jesus” shows up at several points in the book, but we can still appreciate his analysis of Paul, and the author of John’s gospel, especially.
Paul seems to have been influenced by the Old Testament concept that blood sacrifice was needed to gain god’s forgiveness. He states this in I Corinthians 15:3-4:
“Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures…”
It is in this same text that Paul claims that the risen Christ was seen by more than 500 people. Hagenston voices a common skepticism about this claim:
“…none of the gospels mention that. Since that would have been too spectacular an event to be omitted, it appears likely that by the time the gospels were written such an account was not taken seriously. And that calls into question why the risen Jesus was not more widely seen. It seems reasonable that if God were actually to do something as impressive as raise Jesus from the dead, he would have wanted him seen by as many people as possible. For instance, an appearance witnessed by everybody at the Temple of a physically resurrected Jesus would have provided startling evidence that he had a unique nature and authority.” (pp.58-59)
Of those supposed 500 witnesses, by the way—none of them were Roman officials who could have reported what they saw to the authorities? That kind of verification is totally missing. The instinct of any serious historian is: “Let’s interview them all.”
And I have often wondered: why didn’t Jesus knock on Pilate’s door on that first Easter morning: “Hi, it’s me again!”
It also has to be an embarrassment that Paul bragged that he didn’t learn about Jesus through the disciples. He got his information through his visions of the heavenly Jesus. We must suspect that such a claim is not reliable at all. Hagenston does not appreciate Paul’s stubbornness:
“…Paul takes great pride in not accepting any human authority, even if they were people who had been taught first-hand by Jesus himself. Paul is so closed to any view but his own that he writes than even an angel from heaven who dares to disagree with him should be damned (see Gal 1:8).” (p. 68)
In his analysis of John’s gospel, Hagenston suggests that the author was a Gentile, who included horrible Jesus-script at John 8:44: “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.”
Anyone who reads the first three gospels, the dives into John will be shocked. The Jesus-script is so different, which is no surprise since, at the opening of the gospel he says that the Galilean peasant preacher had been present at creation—and he makes the point that Jesus and god are the same. The author’s statement that the Jews are from their father the devil, is matched by other examples of intolerance. Hagenston notes the famous John 3:16—“God so loved the world” —but points out:
“The passage goes on to say that those who do not believe in him are condemned. John 3:16 and related verses have been among those used to claim that Christians alone have a monopoly on salvation and, by extension, that the church has a monopoly on truth. Sadly, this has often led to supposed justification for great cruelty in demanding that people convert to Christianity…” (pp. 76-77)
I have often pointed out that the author of John’s gospel is guilty of egregious theology inflation. It seems that he wrote mainly to disagree with—and correct—the earlier gospels. The laity seem not to notice, in fact are quite content with it.
Despite Hagenston’s methodology blunder, his book is a great introduction to the multiple flaws that become so obvious to anyone who reads the gospels and Paul’s letters carefully: that is, anyone who is on a mission to learn.
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available.
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment