Historical Errors in the Gospels
The Bible contains historical errors, which cannot be explained or
answered but in the voice of mythology. The New Testament is filled with events that never
actually happened, they are episodes of mythology that get played over and over in the
lives of sun-gods like Mithras, Horus,
and Bacchus, etc. The early Gnostic Christians regarded the Gospel story as purely
symbolic; they rejected the Literalist movement of Christianity which prevailed over them,
and corrupted the Gospel of Jesus. I suggest reading The
Jesus Mysteries by Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy.
The darkness at the crucifixion, the rising saints of Matthew, the
earthquake, resurrection, and the “crucifixion” itself are mythological events,
they were NOT recorded by historians who lived during that period of time. Philo Judaes
lived around 50 CE and never mentions the Gospel events; the Roman records of Pilate DO
NOT mention Jesus. Thousands of criminals were crucified by the Romans, but no record
exists of Jesus, simply because the Pilate did not crucify him. He was saved by God
according to Psalms 20:6, Hebrews 5:7, and Al-Quran 4:157.
Regarding the alleged “darkness and earthquake in Matthew”, there is not a shred
of evidence to support the Gospel story.
Matthew is the only Gospel
in the New Testament that records “Herod’s slaughter of the innocents”. We
have explicit quotations from scholars to substantiate that “Herod’s slaughter
of the innocents” is just another recapture of pagan mythology. The sun-gods of
ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt were threatened at birth, and the order was made to kill
all the “new-born infants”. The same episode was replayed in the life of Jesus,
who is considered a ‘sun-god’ by modern Secular scholars.
Jesus was not the Son of God but the ‘Sun of God’. Amazing
isn’t it? God would never defy His own creatures, even to the slightest extant.
Hence, the titles of “Lamb of God” and “God the Son” are reversions to
paganism. The “God the Son” implies the pagan trinity. The title “Lamb of
God” is also not unique; it was applied to Krishna as well, the Hindu savior who
lived hundreds of years before Christ was born.
These titles were probably derived from Augustine, who was the first
to conjecture that Luke’s genealogy belonged to Mary.
Nevertheless, here are those historical errors. We hope you enjoy
reading them as much as WE enjoyed collecting them:
Did
Herod slaughter the innocents?
Another prophecy related to the birth of
Jesus is the claim that the Messiah would be born at a time when King Herod was killing
children. Only the gospel of Matthew (2:16-18) makes this claim, quoting a prophecy of Jeremiah (31:15) which states that "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and
great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; and she refused to be comforted, because
they were no more." There are two problems with this alleged messianic prophecy: it
is not a prophecy about children being killed and it is quite doubtful that there ever was
such a slaughter of innocents by Herod. "Rachel weeping for her children" refers
to the mother of Joseph and Benjamin (and wife of Jacob) weeping about her children taken
captive to Egypt. In context, the verse is about the Babylonian captivity, which its
author witnessed. Subsequent verses speak of the children being returned, and thus it
refers to captivity rather than murder. The slaughter by Herod is also in doubt because
the writer of Matthew is the only person who has noted such an event. Flavius Josephus, who carefully chronicled Herod's
abuses, makes no mention of it.
(www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_lippard/fabulous-prophecies.html)
His cruelty was reflected in the biblical
account of the Massacre of the Innocents. At the same time as Jesus was born, he was said to have ordered the
slaughter of all children (boys) in Bethlehem under two years old. Herod was supposedly
fearful of prophecies that said that a "King of the Jews" would be born in Bethlehem.
This challenged his authority, and thus he ordered the crackdown to protect himself. This massacre is not mentioned in any non-biblical
sources, however, and is very probably apocryphal. (http://www.answers.com/Herod)
“As we have already seen, the stories
of the angels and the shepherds, in Luke, and of the wise men, in Matthew, are rewrites of
Egyptian mythical themes from at least two thousand years earlier. They are portrayed in
the art at Luxor. There
is no historical evidence of Herod’s “slaughter of the innocents” either.
Common sense tells us that such an order was impossibility in any case. Did Herod intend
to kill the children of his friends, his soldiers, his civil servants, tourists passing
through, and so on? You know for certain the
whole matter is symbolic once you realize that an attempt to slaughter a holy child
appears in all the ancient hero myths, from Moses to Horus to
Sargon to Hercules. As noted earlier, the threat to the newly born Horus,
the Egyptian Christ, came from Herut, the serpent. (Tom Harper, The Pagan Christ, p. 126)
Geographical
Errors
Commenting in his (Harold Liedner) 1999 book The
Fabrication of the Christ Myth on the well-known Gospel story of the Gadarene swine, which rushed down a steep cliff and were drowned in
the Sea of Galilee, the Jewish scholar Joseph Leidner points
out that because Gadera is actually several kilometers away
from the sea, the whole incident is evidence of either ignorance or total lack of concern
with veridical history. Citing other similar examples, he writes, “From the evidence…the blunt conclusion
emerges that the Gospel writers did not know the geography and customs of the Holy Land, and
did not know Judaism itself. They were working with source material having nothing to do
with historical data of any kind. (ibid, p. 163)
Mark makes serious
mistakes in his geographical references to Palestine. He knows the Galilean place
names
and the general relative positions of the localities, but not specific details. Hence he
"represents Jesus as travelling back
and forth in Galilee and adjacent territories in a puzzling fashion" (Kee, 117, pp 102 - 3). To go (as Jesus is said to in Mk. 7:31) from
the territory of Tyre by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee "is like travelling from Cornwall
to London via Manchester" (Anderson, 2, p 192). Again, Mark’s references to
movements across the Sea of Galilee are impossible to trace sequentially. Mention of
specific location near the sea are either unknown sites, such as Dalmanutha (8:10), or are
patently inaccurate, as in the designation of the eastern shore of the lake as the country
of the Gerasenes (5:1)" (Kee, loc cit). Gerasa is more than thirty miles southeast of
the lake, too far away for the setting of the story which demands a city in its vicinity,
with a precipitous slope down to the water. Probably all that concerned Mark, collecting
and adapting pre-existing stories about Jesus, was that the lake and its surrounding
territories, some Jewish and some mainly Gentile, was an ideal setting for journey's of
Jesus and his disciples, showing how both Jews and Gentiles responded to him with faith.
That place names in Mark caused perplexity among early readers is shown by the wide range
of variants in the textual tradition where names occur in the gospel. Perplexity is also
evidenced by Matthew, who changed Mark’s Gerasenes to Gadarenes (Mt. 8:28), Gadara
being a well-known spa only eight miles from the lake.
(G. A. Wells, The Historical
Evidence for Jesus (Prometheus Books, 1982), p. 230
Many other examples of improbable reconciliations could be
offered. Since Matt has a Sermon on the Mount and Luke has a similar Sermon on the Plain
(Matt 5:1; Luke 6:7), there must have been a plain on the side of the mountain. Since Matt
has the Lord's Prayer taught in that sermon and Luke has it later on the road to Jerusalem
(Matt 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4), the disciples must have forgotten it, causing Jesus to repeat
it. Mark 10:46 places the healing of the blind man after Jesus left Jericho, while Luke
18:35; 19:1 places it before Jesus entered Jericho. Perhaps
Jesus was leaving the site of the OT Jericho and entering the site of the NT Jericho!
Raymond E. Brown, S.S., An Introduction To The New
Testament, The Anchor Bible Reference Library (Doubleday, 1997) pp. 109-110
What about the
darkness and earthquake?
“… We have here a good example of
the credulity of Western man. For two thousand years he has been reading about this
convulsion and “darkness over all the earth” without ever questioning it or
demanding proof of it. Yet had it happened, would not some of those able historians
have recorded it? Why did they not?” (Deceptions
& Myths of the Bible, Lloyd Graham p. 349)
"In regard to the miraculous events
which took place at the death of Jesus, the Gospel of St. John says nothing, and those of
St. Mark and St. Luke speak only of the rending of the veil of the temple and of the
darkness or overcastting of the sky for three hours. The story of the earthquake, the
upheaval of the rocks, the bursting open of the graves, and the appearance of the dead, is
alone related in St. Matthew's Gospel, written nearly eighty years after the event, and is therefore not certainly authentic. Of
course there is no reason why an earthquake should not have occurred on that day, but if
it had really taken place it is almost inconceivable that none of the three earlier
Gospels should have mentioned it." (The
Paganism in Our Christianity, Arthur Weigall, 1928, p62)
There
was no Roman census!
When was Jesus born? According to Luke, it
was during the reign of the Roman governor Quirinius, during a
census ordered by Augustus throughout the whole world.(9) According to both Luke and Matthew it was also during the reign of
king Herod "the Great."(10) The problem is that Herod died in 4 B.C.E., and this was fully
ten years before Quirinius' census. Furthermore, during
Herod's reign, no Roman census could have been held in his territory, which included both Judaea and Galilee, the locations of both Bethlehem and Nazareth.(11) Herod would have collected his own taxes, and given tribute to
the Romans. Lastly, the existence of a census
throughout the whole empire is contrary to the practice of the Romans, who collected
taxes province by province, often subcontracting the process to "publicans."
(http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/larry_taylor/messiahgate.html)
Though Luke 1:5 dates the birth of Jesus in
the "days of Herod, King of Judea," who died in 4
B.C., he wants the journey from Galilee to Bethlehem to have occurred in response to a
census called when "Quirinius was governor of Syria."
As historians know, "the one and only census conducted while Quirinius
was legate in Syria affected only Judaea, not Galilee, and
took place in A.D. 6-7, a good ten years after the
death of Herod the Great." In his anxiety to relate the Galilean upbringing with
the supposed Bethlehem birth, Luke confused his facts. Indeed, Luke's anxiety has involved
him in some real absurdities, like the needless ninety mile journey of a woman in her last
days of pregnancy - for it was the Davidic Joseph who supposedly had to be registered in
the ancestral village, not the Levitical Mary. Worse yet, Luke
has been forced to contrive a universal dislocation for a simple tax registration: who
could imagine the efficient Romans requiring millions in the empire to journey scores of
hundreds of miles to the villages of millennium-old ancestors merely to sign a tax from!
Needless to say, no such event ever happened in the history of the Roman empire, but Micah 5:2 must be fulfilled. (Randel Helms, Gospel
Fictions, pp. 59-60)
The error, so far, might seem rather
marginal. The third Gospel has confused a local
census in Judaea with a worldwide decree from Augustus; it
has tried to date the story by an obscure Quirinius, whereas
elsewhere, like Matthew's, its story takes place under Herod the Great. In fact, the
trouble goes very much deeper. There is a contradiction in Luke's story: if Quirinius was governor, the Roman census is credible but Herod is a
mistake. There is also a contradiction with Matthew's story: if Quirinius
or the Roman census is correct, Herod was not king and Matthew's stories of the Wise Men,
the Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt are all chronologically
impossible. If Herod was king, there could have been no census according to Caeser
Augustus. Even if there had been such a census, the third Gospel's view of it runs into
further problems.
(Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized
Version: Truth and Fiction In The Bible (Penguin Books Ltd, 1991), pp. 30-31)
Although universal registrations of Roman
citizens are attested in 28 B.C., 8 B.C., and A.D. 14 and enrollments in individual
provinces of those who are not Roman citizens are also attested, such a universal census of the Roman world under
Caesar Augustus is unknown outside the New Testament. Moreover, there are notorious
historical problems connected with Luke's dating the census when Quirinius
was governor of Syria, and the various attempts to resolve the difficulties have proved
unsuccessful. P. Sulpicius Quirinius
became legate of the province of Syria in A.D. 6-7 when Judea was annexed to the province
of Syria. At that time, a provincial census of Judea was taken up. If Quirinius
had been legate of Syria previously, it would have to have been before 10 B.C. because the
various legates of Syria from 10 B.C. to 4 B.C. (the death of Herod) are known, and such a
dating for an earlier census under Quirinius would create
additional problems for dating the beginning of Jesus' ministry (Luke 3:1, 23). A
previous legateship after 4 B.C. (and before A.D. 6) would not fit with the dating of
Jesus' birth in the days of Herod (Luke 1:5; Matthew
2:1). Luke may simply be combining Jesus' birth in Bethlehem with his vague
recollection of a census under Quirinius (see also Acts 5:37)
to underline the significance of this birth for the whole Roman world: through this child
born in Bethlehem peace and salvation come to the empire.
http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/luke/luke2.htm
“…Luke tells how a decree went
out from Augustus that “all the world should be registered”. The trouble is that there is absolutely no
trace—in a well document period—of such a decree. It’s simply a means
of getting Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem for theological reasons. The messiah had to be of
Davidic descent, and thus from Bethlehem. Luke says the birth occurred while Quirinius was governor of Syria. That means it could not have
happened before 6 C.E., the year we know he took office. At the same time, Matthew says
Jesus was conceived while Herod the Great was in power in Judea. But Herod died in 4
B.C.E.! The authors of The Jesus Mysteries point
out that Mary’s real miracle, if both references are taken genuinely, was “a
10-year pregnancy”. For Matthew, Jesus’ hometown was Bethlehem. For Luke, it was
Nazareth. (Tom Harper, The Pagan Christ, pp.
125-126)
Even the birth narratives in Matthew and
Luke gave tacit agreement to that Nazareth tradition. Matthew had to develop a reason to
get the holy family back into Nazareth from
its Bethlehem home and its Egyptian
rendezvous, because Matthew could not deny Jesus' Nazareth
origins (Matt. 2:21ff). Luke, who assumed the truth of a Nazareth home for Jesus even in
his infancy, had to develop a narrative to get Jesus' mother out of Nazareth at least for
the actual moment of his birth. So in the Gospel we read of a taxation or enrollment that
took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Today the
literalness of that census is almost universally rejected for many reasons, not the least
of which is that Quirinius did not
become governor of Syria, according to secular records,
until 6 to 7 C.E., by which time Jesus
would have been some ten years old. Second, there
is no record in any secular source that would suggest
that a return to the place of origin of one's
ancestors was required in any census or for any form of taxation.
(John Shelby Spong,
Resurrection: Myth of Reality? p. 172)
Was
Jesus tempted by the devil?
The retirement to the wilderness may well
be an 'historical fact, but the story of the temptation is an obvious allegory to be
understood in a spiritual sense, though the
source of some of the details may be traced. The hoofed god Pan is the prototype of Satan,
and there is a pagan legend which relates how the young Jupiter was led by Pan to the top
of a mountain from which he could see the countries of the world. This mountain was called
the 'Pillar of Heaven.’ which perhaps explains the introduction of the pinnacle of
the temple into the story. Zoroaster, the founder of the Persian religion, went into the
wilderness, and was tempted by the Devil; Buddha did likewise, and was tempted; Moses and
Elijah had both dwelt in the wilderness, and the former fasted on Sinai forty days, while
the latter fasted on Horeb forty days; Ezekiel had to bear the
iniquity of the house of Tudah for forty days; the destruction
of mankind in the Deluge lasted forty clays; there were forty nights of mourning in the
mysteries of the pagan Proserpine; there were forty days of sacrifice in the old Persian
'Salutation of Mithra'; and so forth." (The Paganism in Our Christianity, Arthur Weigall, p61)
When Buddha was about to go forth "to adopt a religious
life," Mara' appeared before him, to tempt him, Mara said unto Buddha: Go not forth
to adopt a religious life, and in seven days thou shalt become
an emperor of the world."' Buddha would not heed the words of the Evil One, and said
to him: Get thee away from me. After Mara had left Buddha, "the skies rained
flowers, and delicious odors pervaded the air."" Buddha fasted for a long
period." Buddha, the Saviour, was baptized, and at
this recorded water, baptism the Spirit of God was present; that is, not only the highest
God, but also the "Holy Ghost," through whom the incarnation of Gautama Buddha is recorded to have been brought about by the descent
of that Divine power. (T.W. Doane, Bible Myths and their
Parallels in other Religions, p. 292)
Did
the trial of Jesus take place?
The Jews said unto him: "Thou art not
yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham'' If Jesus
was then but about thirty years of age,
the Jews would evidently have said :
"thou art not yet forty years
old," and would not have been likely to say: "thou art not yet fifty years
old," ... ;' therefore, if Jesus was crucified at that time he must
have been about
fifty years of age; but, as we re-marked elsewhere, there
exists, outside of the New Testament, no evidence
whatever, in book, inscription, or monument, that Jesus of
Nazareth was either scourged or crucified under Pontius Pilate. Josephus, Tacitus,
Pliny, Philo, nor any of their contemporaries, ever refer to the fact of this crucifixion,
or express any belief thereon. (T.W. Doane, Bible Myths and
their Parallels in other Religions, p. 516)
In
the nineteenth century an eminent scholar, Rabbi Wise, searched the records of
Pilate’s court, still extant, for evidence of this trial. He found nothing. (Lloyd Graham, Deceptions and
Myths of the Bible, p. 343)
There is no verification of a significant
crucifixion in the writings of historians such as Philo, Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius,
Epictectus, Cluvius Rufus, Quintus, Curtis Rufus, Josephus, nor the Roman Consul, Publius
Petronius. The crucifixion also was unknown to
early Christians until as late as the Second Century. http://www.thegrimoire.com/real_history.htm
Did
the crucifixion take place?
"The worship of suffering gods was to
be found on all sides, and the belief in the torture of the victims in the rites of human
sacrifice for the redemption from sin was very general. The gods Osiris,
Attis, Adonis, Dionysos, Herakles, Prometheus, and others, had all suffered for mankind; and thus the Servant of
Yahweh was also conceived as having to be wounded for' men's transgressions. But as I
say, this conception had passed into the background in the days of Jesus" (The Paganism in Our Christianity, Arthur Weigall, 1928, p106)
There are many similarities between stories
about Jesus and contemporary myths of Pagan godmen such as Mithras, Apollo, Attis, Horus and Osiris-Dionysus, leading to conjectures that the Pagan myths
were adopted by some authors of early accounts of Jesus to form a syncretism
with Christianity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus cache
version)
Remember, it was all purely symbolic, and
so it was no problem to allocate to that night any number of representations of the
soul’s experience as it ends its earthly history. This is why in the Gospel accounts
of the Passion, the various trials (before the high priest, Herod, and then Pilate) the
Last Supper, Jesus’ bloody sweat in the garden, his betrayal, his bearing the cross,
his procession through the old city, his mockery and suffering, his crucifixion, his death
and burial—and much else—could all be “staged” on this night. But it was not, and could not be, actual history. (Tom Harper, The Pagan Christ, p. 146)
Now I know that the LORD saves his Christ; he answers him from his holy heaven with the
saving power of his right hand. (Psalms 20:6)
During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he
offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him
from death, and he was heard because of
his reverent submission. (Hebrews 5:7)
The Gospels are copied from the Midrash!
It is widely accepted that the Gospel
accounts were influenced by the Old Testament. Advocates of the Jesus Myth believe that
the gospels are not history but a type of Midrash;
creative narratives based on the stories and prophecies in the Hebrew Bible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus-Myth
Examining Peter's Christ-confession at Caesarea Philippi and the way it
was presented by each Gospel writer enables
us to see immediately that the Gospels are not biographies
meant to be read as linear history. They are midrashic
interpretations. Midrash is a way to incorporate timelessness
into a sacred narrative.
(John
Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? p. 133)
I
began to see midrash in the Gospels without
quite realizing what it was. Was Jesus' feeding of the five thousand
in the wilderness related to the story of God's providing bread for Israel through
Moses while they wandered in the wilderness?
Was the story of Jesus' ascension
but the retelling of the story of Elijah's ascension? Was the story of Jesus' raising
of the widow's son at Nain related
to Elijah's raising of the widow's son
in the Book of Kings (1 Kings 17:17ff)? Did
Jesus preach the Sermon on the Mount, or was it an attempt to portray Jesus as the new Moses? After all,
much of what constitutes
Matthew's Sermon on the Mount is in Luke taught
by Jesus on the plains of Galilee. (ibid, p. 14)
Did the Jews violate the Passover?
Now
is it not strange that the crucifixion should take place during the Passover? Among the
Jews, this was a most sacred occasion. For them to crucify anyone at this time, they would
have to break at least seven of their religious laws. Why then did they profane it with
murder? (Lloyd Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, p. 345)
According
to the Gospels, the Jews did not mind committing murder during the Passover, but they were
greatly worried about profaning their Sabbath, and so they requested Pilate to have the
legs of the three broken that they may die sooner. (ibid, p. 351)
Did Jesus actually die on the cross?
Crucifixion was a slow death. It usually lasted several days. Death followed from exhaustion, inability to respire
property as a result of being in an upright position or attacks by wild animals. Why did Jesus, who was a fit and healthy
man used to walking the countryside for long distances, die so quickly in only a matter of a few hours?
http://www.answering-christianity.com/101q.htm
Crucifixion was resorted to in order to
provide a cruel and lingering punishment, the
victim sometimes not dying for several days. There was considerable sentiment against
crucifixion in Jerusalem, and there existed a society of Jewish women who always sent a
representative to crucifixions for the purpose of offering drugged wine to the victim in
order to lessen his suffering. But when Jesus tasted this narcotized wine, as thirsty as
he was, he refused to drink it.
http://www.urantia.org/papers/paper187.html
In the year A.D. 297, by the order of Emperor Maximian, seven Christians at Samosata
were subjected to various tortures and then crucified. According to Alban Butler, (5) in
Hipparchus [one of them], a
venerable old man, died on the cross in a short time. James, Romanus,
and Lollianus, expired the next day being stabbed by the
soldiers while they hung on their crosses. Philotheus, Habibus and Paragrus, were taken down from their crosses while they were
still alive. The emperor being informed that they were alive, commanded large
nails to be driven into heads--by which they were at length dispatched.
There are a number of cases in which men were cruelly
tortured, and then crucifed head down, yet surviving for 24
hours or more. http://custance.org/old/incarnation/7ch2.html
Jesus died from vinegar?
Vinegar is often considered to have a stimulating effect, rather similar to smelling salts. Why, in Jesus's case, did it suddenly
lead to his death? (John 19:29)
Was Jesus transfigured?
The
Gospels are perverted cosmology…This is the Transfiguration, an event in the life of
the Creative Principle, and therefore of Jesus only as this personified. It’s nothing
new in occult cosmology: Buddha was transfigured
on a mountain in Ceylon; Noah and Moses were also transfigured, at birth, their light
filled the whole house—not man’s but God’s solar temple. Describing Noah,
the Apocryphal Book of Enoch says, “A body white as snow, hair white as wool and eyes
that are like the rays of the sun (ibid, p. 333)
The False Pilate of the Gospels
Pontius Pilate, as he is depicted in the
Gospels, appears to be a decent person who consents only reluctantly to the crucifixion of
Jesus. History paints a different picture of him. He was a procurator of Judea from A.D.
26 to 36, and he was a cruel and corrupt man.
Why is there no criticism of him in the Gospels? http://www.thegrimoire.com/real_history.htm
By contrast, as shown by Philo and
Josephus, Pilate "was the subject of more negative tradition than many other prefects
and procurators," and so the creators of the original passion narrative had no reason
not to mention Pilate by name and to place blame upon him. This situation is changed in
the period after the First Jewish Revolt in the writings of Matthew and Luke, in which Pilate is exonerated and the high priest is
named without hesitation. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/passion.html
"Moreover, I have it in my power to
relate one act of ambition on his part, though
I suffered an infinite number of evils when he was alive; but nevertheless the
truth is considered dear, and much to be honoured by you.
Pilate was one of the emperor's lieutenants, having been appointed governor of Judaea. He, not more with the object of doing honour
to Tiberius than with that of vexing the multitude, dedicated some gilt shields in the
palace of Herod, in the holy city; which had no form nor any other forbidden thing
represented on them except some necessary inscription, which mentioned these two facts,
the name of the person who had placed them there, and the person in whose honour they were so placed there. (300) But when the multitude heard
what had been done, and when the circumstance became notorious, then the people, putting
forward the four sons of the king, who were in no respect inferior to the kings
themselves, in fortune or in rank, and his other descendants, and those magistrates who
were among them at the time, entreated him to alter and to rectify the innovation which he
had committed in respect of the shields; and not to make any alteration in their national
customs, which had hitherto been preserved without any interruption, without being in the
least degree changed by any king of emperor. (301) "But when he steadfastly refused
this petition (for he was a man of a very
inflexible disposition, and very merciless as well as very obstinate), they cried out:
'Do not cause a sedition; do not make war upon us; do not
destroy the peace which exists. The honour of the emperor is not identical with dishonour
to the ancient laws; let it not be to you a pretence for heaping insult on our nation.
Tiberius is not desirous that any of our laws or customs shall be destroyed. And if you
yourself say that he is, show us either some command from him, or some letter, or
something of the kind, that we, who have been sent to you as ambassadors, may cease to
trouble you, and may address our supplications to your master.' (302) "But this last
sentence exasperated him in the greatest possible degree, as he feared least they might in
reality go on an embassy to the emperor, and might impeach him with respect to other
particulars of his government, in respect of his corruption, and his acts of insolence,
and his rapine, and his habit of insulting
people, and his cruelty, and his continual
murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and
most grievous inhumanity. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book40.html
(Philo of Alexandria, ON THE EMBASSY TO
GAIUS, chapter XXXVIII)
*
The Gospels are historically false because they describe the Pilate as merciful when
History
describes him as wicked and malicious. Yet the
Coptic Church in Ethiopia has turned Pilate into a saint!
THE CRIMES OF PILATE:
At another time he used the sacred
treasure of the temple, called corban (qorban), to pay for bringing water into Jerusalem by an aqueduct.
A crowd came together and clamored against him; but he had caused soldiers dressed as
civilians to mingle with the multitude, and at a given signal they fell upon the rioters
and beat them so severely with staves that the riot was quelled.
—Josephus, Jewish War 2.175-177; Antiquities 18.60-62.
Was there a Roman custom of releasing
a prisoner?
The story of Barabbas
being freed in exchange for Jesus is pure fiction. Two Gospels describe a Roman custom of
freeing a prisoner during Passover festival, but
no such policy ever existed on the part of the Romans. A Roman procurator, especially
someone as ruthless as Pilate, would likewise never consent to the pressure of a mob. http://www.thegrimoire.com/real_history.htm
A sign
of the powerlessness of the temple
priesthood was seen in the need to have the cooperation of Rome in capital cases. This was achieved quite easily, for Roman officials did
not encourage rebellious religious leaders for very long. The details of this execution
may well lack literal historicity. Surely the story about Pilate releasing a notable
prisoner named Barabbas,
which means the son of God (Bar = son, Abba = God as Father), was legendary.
(John Shelby Spong,
Resurrection: Myth or Reality? p. 240)
The Story of Barabbas
unhistorical
In all New Testament accounts, Pilate hesitates to condemn
Jesus until the crowd insists. Some have suggested that this may have been an effort by early Christian polemicists to curry favor with Rome by
placing the blame for Jesus' execution on the Jews, and that it was part of the
process by which Pauline Christians marginalized the still-observant Christian Jews of the
Levant (Ebionites).
http://www.answers.com/Pontius%20Pilate
The story of Barabbas
has special social significances, partly because it has frequently been used to lay the
blame for the Crucifixion on the Jews and justify anti-Semitism.
Equally, the social significance of the story to early hearers was that it shifted blame away from the Roman imperium, removing an impediment to Christianity's
eventual official acceptance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barabbas
* Obviously, the story of Barabbas was invented to exonerate the Romans and foist the
blame upon the Jews. The Gospel writers were probably Roman, and this explains why the
Romans were exonerated.
Not only are the Gospels anonymous, they
were not even composed by the followers of Jesus! The language is Greek, not Hebrew, and
produced in Gentile cities like Rome and Smyrna.
Other Historical Errors
The three Synoptic Gospels have Jesus being
arrested and condemned by the Sanhedrin on the night of the Passover. This could not be
real history because the Sanhedrin, by Judaic law, were forbidden to meet over Passover. The Gospels state that the
arrest and trial occurred at night, but the Sanhedrin “were forbidden to meet at
night, in private houses, or anywhere outside of the precincts of the temple” (Holy
Blood, Holy Grail 349).
Another historical impossibility in the
crucifixion story is the removal of the body of Jesus from the cross. According to Roman
law at the time, a crucified man/woman was denied
burial. The person was left to the elements, birds, and animals, which completed the
humiliation of this form of execution.
The punishment for robbery was not
crucifixion. The New Testament accounts of the crucifixion depict two thieves being
crucified along with Jesus. Crucifixion was never
the penalty for robbery. On the other hand, the Romans spoke of Zealots as 'Robbers'
in order to defame them. Zealots were crucified because of their crimes against the Roman empire.
(SOURCE: http://www.thegrimoire.com/real_history.htm)
Now
why should Jesus be born in Bethlehem? Was this also to fulfill a previous prophecy, or
due only to a tax decree? Neither; Jesus was born in Bethlehem for the same reason Joseph
and David were born there. Bethlehem is the mystic “house of bread”, the source
of planetary substance. Thus the locale is not historical but contrived. And such is the
whole story. When we look at the historical, this becomes obvious. According to the
account, Herod was king at the alleged time, 1 A.D., but according to present scholarship,
Herod died at least four years prior to this. According
to Luke, Cyrenius was then governor of Syria, but according to Syrian records, still
extant, he was not. There was, however, a Quirinus, who
ruled from 13-11 B.C. These beings so, either the calendar or the Gospels is wrong, some
say as much as twelve years. This confusion about the date implies that uncertainty of
long-subsequent authorship, which confirms our statement that the Gospels were not written
until the second and third centuries. (Lloyd Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible,
p. 306)
“The Evangelists had no
concern for historical research as we know it.” (Tom Harper, The Pagan Christ, p. 153)
* Muslims believe in the
miracles of Jesus recorded in the Holy Quran, we do not
believe the distorted Christian version of Jesus in the Gospels.
WE CHALLENGE ANSWERING ISLAM TO REFUTE THIS ARTICLE
LINE BY LINE, STATEMENT BY STATEMENT, WITHOUT GIVING LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES AND SCHOLARS.
WE ARE DEBATING ANSWERING ISLAM, NOT THEIR EXTERNAL PARTNERS.
IF ANSWERING ISLAM CANNOT REFUTE THIS ARTICLE, THEY
MUST DENOUNCE THEIR MISSION TO CORRUPT THE MINDS OF BELIEVERS.