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Catholicism came to Ceylon with the Portuguese, but it was nothing
new; the apostle Thomas is remembered in Jaffna, my ancestral homeland, where he
visited before he was martyred in South India. The oldest Christian rite, Syriac
but still with original elements, is practiced in Kerala. Christianity is one of
the Indian religions. - Amirthanayagam David, ancient Greek scholar
non-pareil
Are the Gospel Documents Forged?
01/17/2020
It has sometimes been legitimately noted that
Christianity is a religion not just founded on ancient mythology or
tradition, a clever book,
insightful writings, or
even along with a charismatic leader but upon stupendous supra-normal
and/or supernatural events. Take away the crucifixion and especially
the resurrection and what you have left is a Jesus that is no more
than just one more in a long line of itinerant, self-appointed
peddlers of strange religious convictions and teachings. Just an
unusual and probably unhinged man who made some waves, and then just
died like everybody else. The thinking would be that his disciples
somehow cultivated the growth of the religion and eventually it
turned into the mess that it is today. The very spiritual chaos that
we find today in Christianity would seem to lend some credence to this explanation.
None of us were around to see Jesus and these paradigm
changing events for ourselves, and we have to rely upon ancient writings
with very shaky documentation as to their origins and technical
authenticity. There are NO original
manuscripts of the Gospels extant today. There are only two or so somewhat
tenuous mentions of a man called Jesus in historical writings from the time, and
these are not really definitive in proving his historicity as the
significant figure that Christianity demands. Right up front we MUST admit
that we are going to have to operate on choosing to believe what is the
most reasonable scenario, and not hard historical facts nor documentation.
Some people would have you believe that it is the wisdom
or teaching content of Jesus that validates him as an iconic symbol, but that they do not need
him to be literal or historical. Just being a glorious composite archetype is all
that is required. Yet his claim went far beyond that of being a wise
teacher, and we need something far more significant than another wise
teacher or inspirational metaphorical avatar. Besides, the Golden Rule was not
original with him, nor his doctrine of forgiveness, nor his railing
against hypocrisy, etc., and maybe not even many of his parables.
Furthermore, his statements and promises of faith empowerment
and not dying are not born out so far in my experience. The latter not
only do not authenticate him as these people claim but clearly
tend to disconfirm him as being what they hold him up to be. For me, if there
was no literal,
historical Jesus, there is no reason to pay any undue heed or attention to what
is in the Gospels. If we cannot see that he settled the ultimate issues
that would arise with humans in this universe, we cannot understand all
that he said and appreciate what he really did.
Today, Christianity and its very founder and the
momentous events ARE being seriously denied by certain scholars as
having been real and historical, and the documents that Christians hold dear and base
their faith in are being fundamentally challenged as to their
authenticity by two alternative scenarios proposing their contrived or
fabricated origins.
However, I quote:
"The disciples were not predisposed to the Easter event.
The theory that the disciples were predisposed to hallucinate that Jesus
appeared to them alive might be plausible if despite his crucifixion
they had remained unshakeable followers of his cause. But the NT
Gospels depict the disciples as dim-witted jerks and wimps who in fear
for their own safety abandoned Jesus at his arrest, trial and
crucifixion; the leader of the bunch emphatically denied ever knowing
the man (Mark 14:66-72). Apparently, only women and some peripheral followers were
loyal enough to be present at Jesus' crucifixion and attend to his
burial (Mark 15:40-16:1). Meanwhile, his disciples were hiding in fear
for their own lives (John 20:19). The two followers en route to Emmaus
confessed that with Jesus' crucifixion their hopes died for Israel's
liberation from Roman oppression (Luke 24:21). The Gospels attest that
the disciples initially disbelieved even the resurrection appearances
(Matt 28:17; Luke 24:36-43; John 20:24-29).
The witnesses were predisposed to not
expect the resurrection of this crucified man.
"The admissions of confusion and cowardice in
these accounts are marks of authenticity. It is unimaginable that the
propaganda literature of this fledgling movement (the Gospels) would
portray its founders in such a bad light unless their abandonment and
disbelief of Jesus were indeed factual. Such candor about a sect's
origins is unparalleled." -
Alexander Lebrecque, The Credibility of the Testimony to the Resurrection of
Jesus.
In this page we will deal with the first of these
challenges. While the author goes too far in his claims, the article
below is one of the strongest attacks on the foundations of
Christianity. See:
The
Forged Origins of the New Testament
The author of the article unjustly overstates his conclusion
thusly,“Simply put, there was no Christian religion at
Constantine's time, and the Church acknowledges that the
tale of his "conversion" and "baptism" are "entirely
legendary.".
But that is precisely the point in contention.
Although the process of settling on the 27 books of the NT
canon was generally not complete until the fifth century, the candidate
documents numbered over 2000. If only 1% of these were genuine, not forgeries nor
contrived fabrications, that is far more than enough for it
to be possible that the
Gospels are not such total fabrications. And genuine doesn’t mean that
they were dictated nor even instigated by God. The claim of
this site is
that probably only two were eyewitness accounts of Jesus, these
being the Gospels of John and Thomas, but that the balance were genuine
along the lines of their being compilations engendered by early
Christian congregations. The early church letters included in the New
Testament are probably genuine as well, but who cares about this
non-germane aspect when it comes to
sorting out the meaningful spiritual issues? Of course. we shouldn’t take ANY statements
or proclamations as
authoritative except when they are an eyewitness account of
what Jesus did and said.
The issue here is whether
Christianity is a new religion entirely concocted by
Constantine and associates or whether it pre-existed him and he
just put his imprimatur on it one way or another. I find the idea that some scheming
Serbia-born Roman leader could fabricate and carry off such
a grand conspiracy to be preposterous. Here is why:
- The Council of Trent, held in twenty five sessions ostensibly
between 1545 and 1563, among other things was the Roman
Catholic church's attempt to set the New Testament canon. This was a
contentious issue long before Constantine, because the list was
largely set by 150 AD. How can we posit that these thousands of
documents and the issues culminating in the selection of 27 would even have existed if Christianity didn't have a
literal foundation and wasn’t
already flourishing? And there would have been no need
for having the Council if there weren’t major divergences and
controversies. You can’t have it both ways!
- As most Biblical scholars would agree, the Synoptic Gospels are obviously compilations from
previous sources and stories from people being
interviewed, and have very little structure beyond being
a jumbled collection of stories of events, statements, and
parables, ostensibly done and spoken by Jesus. The chronologies
are not correct and the
order of the events are significantly different in these
documents. These
discrepancies would represent an AMAZING, incredible level of noteworthy
and nefarious detail in a
fabricated conspiracy, and that would seem to be
counterintuitive.
- The various Gospels have obviously different styles
and reflect different agendas, which bespeaks different
authors/compilers.
- The Synoptics have different embellishments and are riddles with
discrepancies of fact between them, and all three differ from
the Gospel of John in important accounts and facts.
- The above is exactly what you would expect to find in
the natural process of a disorganized, growing religion
based upon earlier literal events and teachings, a time
when the dissemination of written material, travel and communication
over distance was problematic. This
level of “authenticity” would be very difficult to
fabricate in an all out conspiracy to start a new
religion that had legs. I do admit that a new religion
can be started just by ideas–witness Urantia and
Dianetics–but these religions show no promise of
incorporating a third of the world, and they, unlike
Christianity, are not grounded upon events but upon
the ideas of charismatic leaders, clever psychological techniques, and
published material or books.
- There are a handful of very old cultural Christian
factions, like the Coptics, Greek Orthodox, Syriacs, etc., in
some of which there is no reason to suspect that they
are offshoots from the posited Roman fabrication by
Constantine. And I
think that some others that are based upon the teachings
and events of Jesus don’t call themselves “Christian”, which
after all was a pejorative term applied to the Jewish
ones by other non-believing Jews.
- The substance of the Synoptic Gospels differs from
that of John in just the way you would expect between
compilations of stories by people that didn’t understand
the ultimate issues and didn’t understand the import of
Jesus' life and message versus the structured and pointed
material related by John that is spot-on relevant to a
resolution of the human condition.
People that don’t understand what is being demonstrated
and said are going to remember a different type and
level of things than someone that writes about it after
they get an overall understanding of it.
- Never in a million years could a crafty Roman
politician and a committee come up with some of the
wonderful wisdom, insight and content that is in the
Gospels of John and Thomas, some of which had never entered into the mind
of Man previously. The position of this site is that some of this is
STILL not understood by Christendom.
- Finally, we can find reason to accept the Gospels of John and Thomas taken
together to be self-authenticating eyewitness accounts
for the following reasons:
- John is not a cheerleader for the Christianity of
his time, and every sensible student of the Gospels sees
that he is writing to correct and redirect the thinking
of then existing Christians.
He gives four or five laments early in his writing,
decrying how the message and understanding of Jesus had not
taken root and borne effective fruit in the Christian community.
- John writes to show that Jesus was the Original
being, the creator,
not just some marvelous but lesser representative,
the latter of which
is what the Jewish people at the time expected.
- John writes a very structured document that shows
Jesus' life and message to be the answer for the ultimate
issues and the dilemma of the human condition. It deals with
the crucial issues of truth and aspects of the Jesus-delivered
paradigm.
- John pulls no punches in showing that Jesus meant that
we should have present, imminent immortality by
following his instructions.
- This Gospel document of John is the most spiritual and
inspiring of the lot by being focused on the purpose,
values, plan and character of God, not on his sovereignty,
power and control.
- John is not just impressed by the miracles of Jesus, but
shows them to be relevant and meaningful in a larger way
than just solving a specific problem.
- John makes an early offhand statement that, “Jesus and
his disciples went into the land of Judea; there he
remained with them and baptized.” Later he corrects
himself when he says, “Jesus was making and baptizing
more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not
baptize, but only his disciples).” We could not
reasonably expect this kind and level of development in
a fabrication, and it has the flavor of authenticity.
- John does not indulge in self-aggrandizement nor
make himself into a central character, and only refers
to himself as “the disciple that Jesus kept on loving.”
- Even the author Hyam Maccoby, a devout Jewish enemy
of Christianity whose stance is like that of a
prosecutor who never misses a trick in casting
doubt and aspersions on it, admits in his book
Revolution in Judea that both the Roman and Jewish
background political, cultural, structural setting in
John are historically authentic.
- The Gospel of Thomas not only has been authenticated
to a greater degree scholastically and historically than
the other writings, but it contains many of the sayings
that are found in the other Gospels, and its message
reflects the same good news that is found in the Gospel
of John. It can be considered as the second witness
needed to
validate the authenticity of any testimony.
- Of course, the final piece of evidence is that when
the message of the good news is properly understood as represented
on this site, the package being offered by God deals
with the real issues and is the sum total of
what we as human beings really want and need. As I have
often stated when challenged as to its ultimate reality,
“If I go for it and it isn’t real, call me foolish. If
it IS real and I don’t go for it, call me really
stupid.”
As anybody can see that is familiar with ancient mythologies, writings, and archaeology, the truth of what happened in the
ancient times is almost hopelessly buried beneath a mountain
of misconception, confusion and falsity. It is the position
of this site
that the truth of Jesus has likewise been buried in the same way
by the same syndrome of mankind. The further premise here is
that it is more reasonable to accept the reality of the
rise of Christianity in the first century rather than to not
accept it.
Bottom line: the above referenced article does NOT destroy the
authenticity of the Gospel of John nor the gospel of Thomas and the
message of Jesus therein. All of this actually gives plenty of reason to give the message
another, deeper look.
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