The
Genealogies of Jesus Christ
Written by Abdullah Smith
The logical reason to doubt the Gospels is that they contradict each
other; the genealogies also disagree and contradict each other.
"Actually, the fact that we have four gospels lies
at the very heart of our problem. Because we read particular parables or sayings or
stories in several different versions, we can't miss the disagreements between them" (John Dominic Crossan, Who is Jesus? pp. 3-4) quote
“Acts of Jesus”, Mark’s omission
The history of Jesus Christ is contained in
the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first chapter of Matthew
begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke, there is
also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did those two agree, it would not prove the
genealogy to be true, because it might, nevertheless, be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every
particular, it proves falsehood absolutely. (Thomas
Paine, The Age of Reason, Part Two, Section Four)
The truth
of these matters must lie in that which is seen by the mind. If the discrepancy between
the Gospels is not solved, we must give up our
trust in the Gospels, as being true and written by a divine spirit, or as records worthy of credence, for both
these characters are held to belong to these works.
(Origen, Commentary on John,
Book X)
“Both Matthew and
Luke added birth narratives to their revisions of Mark, basing them on legends quite
irreconcilable with each other” (Randal
Helms, Gospel Fictions, 41)
Matthew records the fallacy of attributing fourteen generations from
Abraham to David:
There were thus fourteen
generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David until the deportation to Babylon,
and fourteen from the deportation until the Messiah. (1:17)
Randal Helms elaborates this verse on page
46
“He had counted
fourteen names from Abraham to David and thought he counted fourteen from Jechoniah to
Jesus, and decided that this coincidence of numbers must indicate a prophetic pattern. But
in fact he found not fourteen names from David to
Jechoniah, but eighteen; so Matthew took the simple expedient of changing Joram into the father of Azariah (though
he was, in fact, the great-great grandfather) and Josiah into the father of Jechoniah
(though he was, in fact, his grandfather). But the pattern was illusory in the first
place, and Matthew could have spared his trouble had he more carefully counted the names
in the third group when proposing the pattern; for
it contains not fourteen names but only thirteen”
The Gospel of Mark was written first, yet omits the genealogy
required to prove that Jesus was foretold in Deuteronomy 18:18.
“Mark, the earliest
Gospel, omits everything before Jesus’ appearance as an adult at the Jordon River to
be baptized by John. It contains no birth narratives, no genealogies, no traces of
childhood or youth whatever. This is a strange way to begin any attempt at a
“life” of a person clearly regarded as spectacular. Mark’s Gospel is so
lean and spare, so lacking in details about
Jesus’ life that Jesus’ ministry could only have lasted a little over one
year, as we have seen. It is only from John that the case can be built for a three-year
time span” (Tom Harper, The Pagan Christ, p.
144)
The most striking
feature of the early documents is that they do not set Jesus’ life in a specific
historical situation. There is no Galilean ministry, and there are no parables, no
miracles, no Passion in Jerusalem, no indication of time, place of attendant circumstances
at all. The words Calvary, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and
Galilee never appear in the early epistles, and the word Jerusalem is never used there
in connection with Jesus (Doherty, pp. 68, 73). Instead,
Jesus figures as a basically supernatural personage who took the “likeness” of
man, “emptied” then of his supernatural powers (Phil 2:7).
(G.A. Wells, Can We Trust the New Testament? p. 3)
The gospels included in the New Testament
(NT) are widely agreed to have been written between A.D. 70 and 100. In these four
gospels, it is claimed that Jesus taught in Galilee in the opening decades of the first
century, worked miracles there, or what at an y rate were taken for miracles, and died in Jerusalem
at the behest of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. And yet, as I have reiterated in The
Jesus Legend (1996) and The Jesus Myth (1999), none
of these things are claimed, or even mentioned, in the earliest surviving Christian
documents. In other words, none of these supposed historical events are touched upon
in extant Christian documents which are either earlier than the gospels or early enough to
have been written independently of them (that is, before those gospels or the traditions
underlying them had become generally known in Christian circles). ibid, G.A. Wells, p. 1
The reason why Mark omitted the birth of Jesus was the Gnostic
influence, who contended Jesus was only spiritual, he was not physically born in the
flesh, yet lived inside the phantom body of non-physical nature.
The Gnostics denied the resurrection of Jesus; they agreed that Jesus
had no physical body.
The earliest Gospel could easily play into
the hands of those heretical Gnostic Christians who were teaching a Christology and notion
of Jesus’ sonship quite unacceptable to the orthodox tradition” (ibid, Gospel Fictions p. 41)
The book of Acts teaches that Mark was a Jew; the son of
Barnabas’s sister, he did not know the language of Greek.
Barnabas took the help of Paul because he knew the language of Greece,
the official spoken language of Tarsus, where Paul was born. He was a Roman citizen who
plotted to destroy the Church. (see Acts)
The Gospel of Mark was written in Greek, a language foreign to Jesus
and his followers. It must be noted that Mark never saw Jesus during his life. Jesus had
spoken Aramaic, a dialect of Arabic which was not commonly written. Yet the book of Daniel
was originally composed in Aramaic, the rest of
the Jewish scriptures exist in Hebrew.
Mark was indeed a Jew, but there is no evidence to confirm that he
had learned Greek to preach to the Gentiles. For this reason only, the followers of Jesus
were forbidden to preach among the non-Jews:
These twelve Jesus sent forth, and
commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into [any] city of the
Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel. (Matthew 10:5-6)
But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house
of Israel. (Matthew
15:24)
In comparison, Jesus was only sent for the Jews. Muhammad was sent
for the whole of mankind.
We have not sent you (Muhammad) except as a
mercy to mankind
(Al-Quran
21:107)
"He must be called the Savior of Humanity. I believe that if a man like
him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its
problems in a way that would bring it much-needed peace
and happiness".
(George Bernard Shaw, The Genuine Islam,
Singapore, Vol. 1, No.8, 1936)
"My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential persons may surprise some
readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was
supremely successful on both the religious and secular level." (Michael
H. Hart, THE 100: A RANKING OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY, p. 33)
The reader must note that Matthew 28:20 was a later addition, a complete interpolation
to justify the Pauline cause. This forgery was inserted by a Gentile convert.
It was Paul who corrupted the Gospel of Jesus and invented a new
religion called “Christianity” which offended the Nazarenes, the original
followers of Jesus.
The book of Acts, written decades after the events which it records, teaches how
the Pharisee rabbi Gamaliel supported the followers of Jesus while Paul was breathing out
insults.
Paul did not know anything
about Jesus except that he described him very mythically, indeed a personal experience,
and not a real person. Paul fails to provide any significant details
about Jesus, his life and teachings are omitted, he rejected the teachings of Jesus in
favor of his own (Hebrews 5:17, Galatians 3:13)
Paul the anti-Christ was obviously seeking worldly power in his
hatred against the Jews and the Mosaic Law.
"If my falsehood enhances God's
truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?"
(Romans 3:7)
Amazingly, the Church bishop Eusebius of Caesarea took this verse
seriously:
“It is an act of virtue to deceive and
lie, when by such means the interest of the Church might be promoted”. (Eusebius of Caesarea, History of the Church)
The interpretation of this verse is clear and simple; it parallels
other verses which speak about the Bible’s corruption. For example, the Bible was
corrupted during the reign of Jeremiah.
'How can you say, "We are wise, for we
have the law of the LORD,"
when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?
(Jeremiah
8:8)
This may explain why Ezra had to re-write the Torah in 458 BC after
the Babylon Captivity.
A remarkable apocryphal tale relating to the Hebrew Scriptures is enshrined by pseudo-inspiration in chapter 14 of this
Fourth of Esdras, regarding the miraculous restoration of Hebrew Holy Writ after its total perishment. In the calamity of the
capture and destruction of the Holy City by Nebuchadnezzar, 586 B.C., the Temple of Solomon was destroyed, together
with the entire collection of the sacred Rolls of Scriptures, so that not a scratch of inspired pen remained to tell the
tale of theocratic Hebrew history and its "revealed" religion. This inconsolable and apparently irreparable loss affected the
holy People all the time of the of the Babylonian captivity. But upon their return to the restored City of God, and over a
century after their loss, God, we are told in Fourth Esdras, inspired Ezra and commissioned him to
reproduce the sacred lost Books, which, judging from the result, of his inspired labors, were many more than the supposed
twenty and five scribes, dictated to them (from inspired memory) the textual contents of the lost sacred books, and in just
forty days and nights reproduced a total of 94 sacred books, of which he designated 24 as the sacred canon, the remaining
70 being termed esoteric and reserved fir the use of only the wisest. (Joseph Wheless, Forgery in Christianity)
We have damning confessions
to support our allegation of widespread corruption and fabrication in the early Church.
The 27 New Testament booklets, attributed to eight individual"Apostolic" writers, and culled from some 200 admitted
forgeries called Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, constitute the present "Canonical" or acceptably inspired compendium of the
primitive history of Christianity. (Joseph Wheless, Forgery in Christianity)
Before looking into the forgery of the New Testament Books, we shall first draw, from their own words, cameo
pen-sketches of those great men of God and of Holy Church, who under the fond name of Fathers, but with the minds and
devious ways of little children, forged the sacred documents of the Faith, and by their pious labors
of fraud and forgery founded what is credulously called the Church of Christ and the Most Holy Christian Faith. (ibid,
Joseph Wheless)
In addition, the theme of future judgment
is inherent in many of Jesus’ most significant parables; see, for example, the
adversary (Matt. 5:25-26; Luke 12:57-59), the two houses (Matt. 7:24-27; Luke 6:47-49),
the seed growing secretly (Mark 4:26-29), the laborers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-16),
the friend at midnight (Luke 11:5-8), the rich fool (Luke 12:16-21), the rich man and
Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), and the importunate widow (Luke 18:1-6). While it may be the case
that all or part of some of these parables were
created in the light of conditions in the early church—and such judgments can
never achieve certainty—methodologically, it cannot be too strongly emphasized that
such ‘inauthentic’ materials often represent some degree of continuity with the
teaching and situation of Jesus. (http://www.bibletexts.com/glossary/Jesus.htm)
The Church acknowledged the
forgeries that were circulating in the 2nd century.
Tertullian notes that a Christian sect of
his day "does not receive certain Scriptures; and whichever of them it does receive, it perverts by means of additions and diminutions,
for the accomplishment of it[s] own purpose; and such as it does receive, it receives not
in their entirety; but even when it does receive any up to a certain point as entire, it
nevertheless perverts even these by the contrivance of diverse Interpretations." Tertullian, De
Praescriptione Haereticorum 17, in Ante-Nicean
Fathers, 3:251.
Among
those who seek power and gain from their religion, there will never be wanting an
inclination to forge and lie for it. Lucius Coelius
Firmianes Lactantius, Third--Century Church Father
"Enterprising spirits responded to
this natural craving by pretended gospels full of romantic fables, and fantastic
and striking details; their fabrications were eagerly read and accepted as true
by common folk who were devoid of any critical faculty and who were
predisposed to believe what so luxuriously fed their pious curiosity. Both Catholics
and Gnostics were concerned in writing these fictions. The former had no motive
other than that of a PIOUS FRAUD." (www.newadvent.org/cathen/01601a.htm)
"The canonical gospels can be shown to
be a collection of sayings from the Egyptian Mythos and Eschatology." (The
Origin and Evolution of Religion by Albert
Churchward)
For we, brethren, receive both Peter and
the rest of the apostles as Christ Himself. But those writings which are falsely
inscribed with their name, we as experienced persons reject, knowing that no such writings
have been handed down to us. (St.Serapion,bishop of Antioch, 190-211)
"There's
hardly a word of Jesus that is not to be found in a parallel saying of the rabbis." (Mark
Tully, Lives of Jesus, p80)
The kind of exploration we have taken so
far has shown that there is no question that the four Gospels contain material
derived originally from ancient Egyptian sources. We have already seen plenty of
evidence for this in the chapters on Horus and the Lazarus “miracle”. But we
must not think the borrowing was direct. Much of the material had undoubtedly been used
and reused in the dramas and plays of the Greco-Roman Mystery Religions, and a great deal
comes by way of what Christians call the Old Testament. (Tom Harper, The Pagan Christ, p. 138)
"Most of his [Jesus'] teachings, most
of the words ascribed to him, conform to the tenets of Pharisaic thinking. Indeed, some of
his most famous pronouncements are paraphrases, even on occasion almost direct quotations, from Hillel."
(Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy)
"Orthodox theologians were tempted, by
the assurance of impunity, to compose fictions, which must be stigmatized with the
epithets of fraud and forgery. They ascribed their own polemical works to the most
venerable names of Christian antiquity." (Edward
Gibbon, History of Christianity, p. 598)
When, therefore, enterprising spirits
responded to this natural craving by pretended Gospels full of romantic fables and fantastic
and striking details, their
fabrications were eagerly read and largely accepted as true by common folk who were devoid
of any critical faculty and who were predisposed to believe what so luxuriously fed their
pious curiosity. Both Catholics and Gnostics were concerned in writing these fictions. The
former had no other motive than that of a pious fraud. . . . But the heretical apocryphists, while
gratifying curiosity, composed spurious Gospels in order to trace backward their
beliefs and peculiarities to Christ Himself.
The Church and the Fathers were hostile
even towards the narratives of orthodox authorship. It was not until the Middle Ages, when
their true origin was forgotten even by most of the learned, that these apocryphal stories
began to enter largely into sacred legends, such as the "Aurea Sacra," into
miracle plays, Christian art, and poetry. A comparison of the least extravagant of these
productions with the real [sic] Gospels reveals the chasm separating them. Though worthless historically, the
apocryphal Gospels help us to better understand the religious conditions of the second and
third centuries, and they are also of no little value as early witnesses of the canonicity
of the writings of the four Evangelists. (www.newadvent.org/cathen/01601a.htm)
Now, let us now
examine the genealogies of Jesus.
The first two chapters of Matthew and the
first three chapters of Luke were added in the
second century by Hellenizers who would accept only a divinely born savior-god like
those of the pagan mystery-cults. . . ." (Dr.
Martin A. Larson, The Essene-Christian Faith, p. 175)
“Both Matthew and Luke added birth
narratives to their revisions of Mark, basing them on legends quite irreconcilable with
each other” (Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions, p.
41)
The order of development is betrayed in
part by the fact that agreement among the synoptic Gospels ceases with the end of the
Gospel of Mark. When Mark is no longer the common source for Matthew and Luke, they go
their separate ways in reporting appearances. Similarly, Mark’s lack of birth and
infancy story is the primary reason for the widely diverging accounts in Matthew and Luke.
Furthermore, some early editions of Matthew and
Luke may have existed without those tales of Jesus’ conception. (The Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus, p. 39)
The history of Jesus Christ is contained in
the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first chapter of Matthew
begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke, there is
also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did those two agree, it would not prove the
genealogy to be true, because it might, nevertheless, be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every
particular, it proves falsehood absolutely. (Thomas
Paine, The Age of Reason, Part Two, Section Four)
It is certain that the New Testament (as
the Gospels) was not written by Christ himself, nor by his apostles, but a long while
after them, by some unknown persons, who, lest they should not be credited when they wrote
of affairs they were little acquainted with…” (Reverend Taylor, Diegesis, Boston, 1872, p. 114)
According to modern scholarship, Matthew
was written ten years before Luke, but the exact
date of composition is not known. In fact, the New Testament events cannot be ascertained!
“It is impossible to give definite dates for all the
events of the New Testament” (The World Book
Encyclopedia, by World Book editors, p. 235)
It is universally agreed that the Sayings
of Jesus passed orally from generation to generation before they were written down. But
the problem is that there is no historical evidence for ‘M’ and ‘L’, the independent sources
for Matthew and Luke, or the material that is not
recorded by Mark.
The Organization called the Jesus
Seminar doubts the sayings of Jesus.
"Eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in
the gospels were not actually spoken by him."
(The Five Gospels, p. 3)
There was little
hesitation in reshaping materials to exclude whatever did not suit the particular
editor’s point of view, or in substituting other formulae of his own composition and
expanding or abridging after his own pleasure. The proof of this, for contemporary New
Testament scholars and even the attentive lay student, can be seen in the somewhat
cavalier way in which both Matthew and Luke treat the Gospel of Mark (which both, quite
obviously, had before them as they compiled their own); they leave material out, make changes, and add to
it at will. Elaine Pagels, author of Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, reminds
us that “what survived as orthodox
Christianity did so by suppressing and forcibly eliminating a lot of other material”.
(Tom Harper, The Pagan Christ, p. 142)
"The concept of plagiarism was unknown
in the ancient world. Authors freely copied from
predecessors without acknowledgment. Sages became the repository of free-floating
proverbs and witticisms. For the first Christians, Jesus was a legendary sage: it
was proper to attribute the world’s wisdom to him. The proverb in Mark 2:17, for
example, is attested in secular sources (Plutarch and Diogenes for example)...in the
parallel to the Markan passage, Matthew adds a sentence taken from the prophet Hosea (Matt
9:13)." ("The Five Gospels)
The ‘oral tradition’ lasted until
the 3rd century. It was too late for the Gospels to rely upon it. Luke himself
admits that he used written material to forge
his Gospel (Luke 1:3) John admits that he wrote his Gospel ‘for the faith’ (John
20:31) giving the implication that his work is not based on historical events, but he was
only writing to embellish the beliefs of the Christian community.
"Most of the material in our Gospels
existed for a considerable time in an oral stage before it was given the written form with
which we are familiar." (New Bible
Dictionary - Second Edition, p.436. Inter-Varsity Press: 1982)
The four Gospels were composed decades
after Jesus’ departure. There is no reference to the Gospels in the writings of the
Church Fathers.
Clement of Rome (d. 97) fails to mention
the Gospels by name; he makes not a single reference to them:
"The Four Gospels were unknown to the
early Christian Fathers. Justin Martyr, the most eminent of the early Fathers, wrote about
the middle of the second century. His writings in proof of the divinity of Christ demanded
the use of these Gospels had they existed in his time. He makes more than 300 quotations
from the books of the Old Testament, and nearly one hundred from the Apocryphal books of
the New Testament; but none from the four Gospels. (John Remsburg, The
Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read)
John is acknowledged to be the most
unreliable Gospel because it attempts to depict Jesus as “divine”, he was
obviously writing for the Hellenistic community.
Matthew and Luke borrowed extensively from
Mark, who himself was not an eye-witness. Papias testifies that Mark was not an
eye-witness:
For
he neither heard the Lord nor had been a follower of His. . .(Expositions
of Oracles of the Lord)
Mark accompanied Barnabas on missionary
trips. Barnabas is believed to be the first Christian missionary, but he was a strict
follower of the Jewish Law whereas the missionaries today reject the Law
Nevertheless, Mark did not write Mark, nor
did Matthew and Luke or John write their gospels. The four Gospels are anonymous
documents; the names attached to them were inserted in the late 2nd century.
In fact, the Church bishop Irenaeus of
Lyons was the first to mention Luke by name! Whoever composed the Gospels were not
eye-witnesses, since they were all dead by that time!
The early Christians did not write a
‘gospel’ about Jesus because they assumed his return would be in their
lifetimes. They remembered the saying of Jesus in Matthew 16:28, Mark 9:1, and Luke 9:27
where Jesus allegedly promises that he would return during the first generation of his
people. (Revelations 3:11, 22:7, 12).
This may explain why the four Gospels were
written so late; modern research in scholarship has shown they were composed in the 2nd
century.
The ruin of the Temple
was thus interpreted as the beginning of the end-of-days; other signs, these to occur in
the heavens, would appear (Mark 13.24-26, pars.), and the descent of the glorified Jesus
in his capacity as judge of the unbelievers, the unrepentant, and the persecutors would
immediately ensue.
Jesus did not come, at least not in the way or at the
time expected. Not surprisingly, therefore, the early opponents of the Christian
cultus, doubtless beginning even before the expulsion of the Christians from the
synagogues, teased and finally harangued the believers for what was originally the
cardinal tenet of the new religion: Jesus had been the Son of Man; unrecognized by his
foes and misunderstood, now and again, by his closest associates…” (Celsus, on
True Doctrine: a Discourse against the Christians, pp. 8-9, translated by Joseph Hoffman)
In reality, the four gospels selected for
inclusion in the New Testament do not make any appearance in the literary and
archaeological record until the last quarter of the 2nd century, between 170 and 180 C.E., and even then they are
not much mentioned for a couple of decades. In this regard, Church Fathers and archbishop
of Constantinople John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) stated that the names traditionally
attached to the canonical gospels were first designated at the end of the second
century” (The Suns of God, Acharya S.)
The first substantial physical evidence for the four Gospels comes from
near the end of the second century C.E., about 170 years after Jesus’ demise.” (Tom Harper, The Pagan Christ,
p. 139)
The scriptures became translations of what
the Prophets may have said; the original copies were lost.
The followers of Moses and Jesus made no
considerable efforts to preserve these Revelations during the life of their
Prophets”. (Islam at
a Glance, By World Assembly of Muslim Youth, p. 22)
The Church Father Tertullian of Carthage
(d. 220) demonstrated:
"proof
of the Gospel having become meanwhile adulterated."
(Tertullian, Contra Marcionem IV.2, in Ante-Nicean Fathers,
3:347)
And account that the longsuffering of our
Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given
unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these
things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as
they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction (2 Peter 3:15-16).
"It is well known that the primitive
Christian Gospel was initially transmitted by word of mouth and that this oral tradition
resulted in variant reporting of word and deed. It is equally true that when the Christian
record was committed to writing it continued to be the subject of verbal variation. Involuntary and intentional, at the hands of scribes
and editors" [Peake's Commentary on
the Bible, p. 633] quote Mawdudi, originals lost
The early Christian sects altered the Gospels to suit their own
purposes; they changed the scriptures to make them conform to their doctrines, thus
fabricating the genealogy of Jesus to establish a point.