To re-emphasize, none, NONE, of the gospels were written by eye-witnesses but rather were written at least a generation later and as much as century (!) later then the reported events. (Kind of like if the story of your grandfather’s brother was written by a non-family member 50 years later without ever interviewing any of the surviving family members or consulting newspapers or public accounts and your grand-uncle worked miracles.)
Folderol, hogwash and balderdash.
One question asked among Believers is, ‘Why would Paul of Tarsus and the ‘Evangelists’ make it all up?’ ‘Why would they give their lives as martyrs to a lie?’
Decent questions but ones which ignore facts such as those presented here. To restate: none were eye-witnesses and most of the Bible was NOT written by the purported authors of same. Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Moses, are traditionally cited as the authors but there is no consensus among Biblical scholars or specialists in ancient texts as to how much was actually written (or transmitted orally) by actual participants in any of the Biblical stories in either the Old or the New Testament.
(Caveat: Paul/Saul of Tarsus actually did write a couple of the letters which were included in the New Testament, however, Paul/Saul never met Jesus in the flesh. Additionally, his view of Jesus, as a celestial being without human form or existence, led to a heretical faction called Paulines.)
To answer the first question: Paul and the Evangelists didn’t simply make anything up because they didn’t actually write anything but a small portion of the Jesus story. Most of the ‘Good News’ is a fabrication in which no eye-witnesses or participants took any part.
Keep that in mind.
The second question follows the same route; accounts of martyrdom are largely unverified and unsubstantiated by anything other than by accounts in the Bible and likely falsified to enhance the story.
Even so, had early Christians, like Stephen and Peter, been martyred for their faith, that in no way whatsoever verifies the Jesus story of redemption, the professed divinity of the ‘Man from Galilee’, the miracles he supposedly performed, or the bromides he espoused. The martyrs of early Christianity no more verify the Bible than the slain fighters of the Islamic State or Al Queda or the Taliban verify the Koran.
Taking this a balanced step further, the martyrdom of Jan Hus, Giordano Bruno, and Jerome of Prague for heresy, though noteworthy and emotionally evocative do not verify that their own beliefs were true, though many were; Bruno’s concept of a heliocentric solar system, for instance.
Listening to a Christian criticize criticism about the accuracy of the Bible, his argument will tap-dance all over the place; a regular Gene Kelly. He’ll even argue that he wasn’t arguing about the historicity of the Gospels, but simply criticizing those who claim that since the first Gospel wasn’t written until half a century after the crucifixion, the Gospels weren’t accurate.
Talk about a hopeless case, but apologists like the aforementioned are insistent – adamant, even - claiming that the ‘Telephone Game (or Chinese Whispers) is a flawed analogy for the oral transmission of the Jesus stories because oral transmission was rigorous and for more accurate than oral transmissions are today.
Right.
The story of Noah was transmitted perfectly with all the animals of the earth marching two-by-two onto Noah’s boat and landing on Mount Ararat 40 days later.
Right.
Or the Garden of Eden story; certainly, every word uttered by the talking snake was faithfully and accurately transmitted in the oral tradition for several thousand years amongst the uneducated goat-herders of Bronze Age Palestine.
Right.
Not to mention that the Torah, itself, was written down and memorized to deliver with no error at the average Judean boy’s bar mitzvah.
Are we sure that the Hebrews didn’t do peyote or something? Who could write this balderdash down or memorize it and relate it to someone who was literate?
According to Professor John Crossan of Biblical Studies at DePaul University, the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (274-337 CE), who was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, needed a single canon to be agreed upon by the Christian leaders to help him unify the remains of the Roman Empire. Until this time the various Christian leaders could not decide which books would be considered “holy” and thus “the word of God” and which ones would be excluded and not considered the word of God.
Emperor Constantine, who was Roman Emperor from 306 CE until his death in 337 CE, used what motivates many to action – MONEY! He offered the various Church leaders money to agree upon a single canon that would be used by all Christians as the word of God. The Church leaders gathered together at the Council of Nicaea and voted the “word of God” into existence. Church leaders didn’t finish editing the “holy” scriptures until the Council of Trent when the Catholic Church pronounced the Canon closed. However, it seems the real approving editor of the Bible was not God but Constantine! It can therefore be reasonably argued that the first Christian Bible was commissioned, paid for, inspected and approved by a pagan/born again Christian emperor for church use.
That the Gospel of Mark wasn’t written by ‘Mark’ but was the first of the Gospels written is well-established by historians. Who actually wrote the Gospels is totally unknown to us. When the Book of Mark was written is a point of contention however, it is generally thought to date from about 60 years - two generations! - after the purported events of Jesus’ life.
(It is quite difficult to write about the Gospels as if they were historic and actually related real and true events wherein real and true people participated. It’s akin to relearning a language after a severe stroke. To be clear; none of what is reported in the Gospels is historic – none of it actually happened so far as can be discerned by recent scholarship.)
If one were to take the early Christian sect as a mystery cult as has been suggested, then the gospels must be viewed differently; their historicity must be discounted at the least. If early Christianity was a mystery cult and all its writings viewed as cryptic parables meant only for the uninitiated, ignorant masses, then the written word was only meant to disguise the ‘hidden truth’ of the mystery cult.
That means that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the Acts and Paul’s letters must be taken as extended parables without historicity and intentionally written to mislead the uninitiated reader. They were lies put to paper to disguise the ‘mystery’, the hidden truth of the cult. They were never intended to be an historic record of the life of Yeshua of Nazareth, his ministry or anything else. They were meant as a deception; written in a codified, mythic style which alluded to ‘deeper, celestial meaning’ which could be deciphered by the adept who understood the mythic references and literary features such as ‘chiasmus’, ‘echoing’ and ‘mirroring’.
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