The Biggest Threat to Christianity Is the New Testament

The feel-good quotes are overwhelmed by contradictions and superstitions

Some scholars have suggested that the earliest document in the New Testament is Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. Paul makes this claim in chapter 4:16-17:

“For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever.”

I wonder how many devout Christians today are aware of this text, since reading the letters of Paul isn’t all that popular. And among those who are aware of Paul’s statement here, how many take it seriously? When they drive by cemeteries, do they hope that the day isn’t far off when their dead relatives will join them in the clouds to meet Jesus? Those who have sufficient common sense and deal with reality every day, know that Paul was totally wrong. He was confident that his lord would arrive soon, to welcome himself and the recently revived dead who had believed in Christ. Devout folks who are still hoping for The Rapture may be encouraged by this text—while totally ignoring the timing that Paul suggested.
 

Paul was detached from reality, big time. 

In his letter to the Galatians (1:11-12), he makes it quite clear that he received all of his information about Christ through visions: “For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin, for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”

How does this differ from the claims of thousands of other religious fanatics, who over the millennia of human history, have insisted that their certainties about divine truth came from privileged access to their gods? Why should we assume that Paul had such access, especially since he was so wrong in 1 Thessalonians 4?

 

It’s really no surprise that, in all his letters, Paul does not refer to the ministry, teachings, miracles that we find in the gospels. Scholars are pretty sure that Paul’s letters were written well before the gospels were created. He was unaware of the fantasies that would end up in these stories about Jesus. Paul seems to have been certain that Jesus was lord in the spiritual realm that existed above the earth. 

I recently finished rereading—for the second time—Richard Carrier’s book, Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed About Christ. That may strike you as a weird title: Jesus from Outer Space. But ancient mythologies in general assumed that the vast space above the earth, stretching to the moon, and even beyond, was the realm in which divine dramas took place. This book by Carrier deserves to be read and studied carefully, to grasp Paul’s role/place in early Christian thought. 

But where did the gospels come from? Their authors were not historians: they were following the common pattern of locating holy heroes on earth—since it was easier for cult followers to identify with them—and be more inclined to follow and obey. 

This reality is captured especially in Richard Carrier’s 2018 essay, Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan Guys. Get Over It. This is no surprise since the gospels were written in Greek, and their authors were very likely schooled in the vast literature on gods that they had access to. Carrier describes in detail nine other gods that were believed to have died and risen again. For a long time, devout scholars have been stumped: where did the gospels authors get their supposed information about Jesus: they never name their sources. 

In my essay posted here on 25 September 2026, I included a long quote from scholar Richard C. Miller, about the stunning similarities between the gospels and so many mythologies about other gods in the ancient world. The gospel authors were very skilled at plagiarizing. The magical thinking and miracles we find in the Jesus stories derive from the vast literature that was available to the gospel authors. 

These realities are not noticed by devout folks who see the splendid copies of the Bible on the altars at their churches. They’ve been sold on the idea that the Bible is a holy book, inspired by their god himself. It’s hardly a surprise that the Bible is used for oath-taking—hands on the Bible—to assure that the person taking the oath will tell the truth. 

The major problem, of course, is that the devout may read selected parts of the Bible, but show little interest in thorough, careful study of it. They are hugely unaware of the vast world of Bible scholarship: thousands of scholars have devoted their careers to careful analysis of every chapter and verse of the Bible. They struggle with the many contradictions and superstitions—and apologists do their very best to make excuses for these embarrassments. They end up making excuses, deflecting attention, and suggesting that the most grievous texts should be taken as metaphors.  

Moreover, there has been increasing pressure from secular scholars to face the reality that Jesus may not have existed as a real person. They suggest Jesus existed only in outer space—in the realm of the divine drama, according to religious zealots like Paul—and was given a phony earthly biography when the early Christian cult decided that was a good idea, to help win converts and enhance obedience and devotion. Devout Christians may be insulted at this suggestion, which is understandable since they don’t bother to engage in serious study of the issues involved. They decline to admit that so much of the Jesus-script, so many of the episodes depicted in the gospels, qualify fully as unbelievable. They prefer to “take it all on faith”—which fails totally as methodology for determining what is history and what is not. 

Engage in careful, critical study of it—eyes and mind wide open—and the major problems become obvious. Taking its truth on faith is a symptom of laziness…and cowardice. 

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 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:

• Guessing About God (2023)

• Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also available. 

• Everything You Need to Know About Prayer But May Not Want to Admit (2025)

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.