A Study Of The Four Gospels

[Geezer]

 

I'd like to make a comment on this. I am in shock. Quite frankly, I am also very embarrassed that I knew nothing about this. I have a very hard time understanding apologetics coming from either side of the christian and non christian arguments, because I do not know the scriptures. This certainly wasn't what we studied in our bible classes. Because of the way you have laid this out, I actually understood what you are saying. And I am in shock.

 

Many thanks Overcame Faith. It is well appreciated.

 

 

 

All of us former believers have had a similar experience. At one time we believed all of it was true. I’m firmly convinced until a believer begins to see the flaws and inconsistencies they are unreachable because they are not teachable.

 

When the blinders come off the former believer can be reintroduced to reality and they soon begin to see the bible in a new light. It is quite common for the newly deconverted former believer to become quite bitter and angry for having been deceived. This is quite normal and should be expected. Suddenly the now former believer can see the bible as something more akin to an adult fairy tale rather than sacred scripture.

 

Then when you read a scholar who is presenting evidence that none of that stuff in the bible actually happened and the characters were fictional the pieces of the puzzle begin falling in place. When you read a scholar that presents evidence that the entire book of Acts is fictional you can easily see why that is so and you wonder why you ever thought it was true in the first place.

[RipVanWinkle]

I have read books by pastors who deconverted and who had one or more college degrees in bible studies or theology, More than one Biblical author have asked the  the question in their books why preachers, who have had the same courses as they, do not pass on this knowledge to their congregations. In other words, they knew pastors who had been in college with them and took the same courses they had on critical Bible history, but they preached the same old junk in their churches. Also I've read that many of the conflicts and other problems with the Bible have been known in academia for over 100 years but the main line churches don't pass it on to their congregations. After all, they have a financial interest in the status quo, don't they?

 

In the fundamentalist churches I've noticed there is usually a charismatic pastor leading the church. He (it's almost always a "he") has a personality like Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggert (sp?). He is an authoritative, uncompromising bully.These types appear and talk as if they have supper with Jesus every night. There is no room for doubt. But I suspect that many times these are the charlatans, the ones who are outright frauds. They are the very image of a true life Elmer Gantry. And I think there are many of these types around.    bill

 

OvercameFaith: Despite the above, I agree with you that some, maybe many, pastors feel trapped and don't want to be dishonest, yet they believe they don't have any options. And that feeling is miserable. I felt trapped

in one of my employments for years. Not good. Not good at all.     bill

[Overcame Faith]

OvercameFaith: Despite the above, I agree with you that some, maybe many, pastors feel trapped and don't want to be dishonest, yet they believe they don't have any options. And that feeling is miserable. I felt trapped

in one of my employments for years. Not good. Not good at all. bill

Feeling trapped is not good at all!

 

It's that damned religion and its social implications that's the problem. Maybe one day we'll all be free from it. We can only hope. Even some pastors are as trapped as are some of the rest of us. God may not be real, but his religion certainly has a life of its own.

[Guest Pixie]

 

I know of no such scriptural support and am personally confident that this discussion alone proves that Jesus could not have been the Messiah.  However, understanding that there is disagreement on this issue as I mentioned above, I will not stop here.

 

In my next post, I shall carry on with this discussion.  In that post, I will address the question of whether, even if we accept that Joseph did legally adopt Jesus and that Jesus’ adoption entitled him to whatever qualifications he allegedly legally inherited from Joseph, would Jesus be qualified to be the Messiah based on Joseph’s ancestry?  That discussion will focus on something that the vast majority of Christians ignore completely - the genealogies found in both Matthew and Luke.  If you have never focused any attention on them, you may be in for a surprise at what you will discover.

 

Your eagerness is praise worthy, but there are many many other factors here. As these created genaelogies do not prove that Jesus is the messiah (whatever that means), so too they can't be used to disprove it either.

 

The historical context of Luke and Matthew's genaelogy is the attempt to legitimate Jesus' messianic pedigree from the OT against the larger Jewish religion that has by now clearly come to see the claim is extremely problematic, and well, unsupported.

 

Second, these are complete literary fabrications modeled after OT genealogies. They are not, in orther words, records of history and fact. And it's safe to assume that ourwriters were well aware of this.

 

Third, the issue of whether Jesus was (claimed to be) the messiah or not is one that needs to be answered with other sources. The gospels are all late, and their use of the term christos (messiah) is already different than it would have been used and understood by 1st century Aramaic speaking Palestinian Jews. Modern Christians never get this right. ANy messianic claimants must be understood in this 1st century context. What did messiah mean in this context in other words? Were there other messianic claimants (YES!)? and how do they compare to that of Jesus?

 

Lastly, the idea of the messiah is also a literary fiction -- created as a pious expression of hope that Yahweh would restore Israel and its kings in the wake of the Babylonian exile. Additionally, messiah was a term used for the highpriest -- the one consecrated to serve Yahweh and his cult.

 

Just some further food for thought....

 

 

I like the way Overcame Faith is using the bible itself as the means to disprove the messianic prophecies about Jesus, without getting into all the ancient history of the past. It keeps it so simple for me. I know the past plays a huge part and is important (the history outside of the bible) and I want to learn about all of it eventually, but I am so interested in looking at what is in this Holy Bible itself -  the book that I was taught from birth is the only truth. I am beginning to see, through much investigation on the internet (and reading these posts) that I may have been brainwashed. I'm looking forward to hearing more about these four gospels .

 

[Overcame Faith]

 

I know of no such scriptural support and am personally confident that this discussion alone proves that Jesus could not have been the Messiah.  However, understanding that there is disagreement on this issue as I mentioned above, I will not stop here.

 

In my next post, I shall carry on with this discussion.  In that post, I will address the question of whether, even if we accept that Joseph did legally adopt Jesus and that Jesus’ adoption entitled him to whatever qualifications he allegedly legally inherited from Joseph, would Jesus be qualified to be the Messiah based on Joseph’s ancestry?  That discussion will focus on something that the vast majority of Christians ignore completely - the genealogies found in both Matthew and Luke.  If you have never focused any attention on them, you may be in for a surprise at what you will discover.

 

Your eagerness is praise worthy, but there are many many other factors here. As these created genaelogies do not prove that Jesus is the messiah (whatever that means), so too they can't be used to disprove it either.

 

The historical context of Luke and Matthew's genaelogy is the attempt to legitimate Jesus' messianic pedigree from the OT against the larger Jewish religion that has by now clearly come to see the claim is extremely problematic, and well, unsupported.

 

Second, these are complete literary fabrications modeled after OT genealogies. They are not, in orther words, records of history and fact. And it's safe to assume that ourwriters were well aware of this.

 

Third, the issue of whether Jesus was (claimed to be) the messiah or not is one that needs to be answered with other sources. The gospels are all late, and their use of the term christos (messiah) is already different than it would have been used and understood by 1st century Aramaic speaking Palestinian Jews. Modern Christians never get this right. ANy messianic claimants must be understood in this 1st century context. What did messiah mean in this context in other words? Were there other messianic claimants (YES!)? and how do they compare to that of Jesus?

 

Lastly, the idea of the messiah is also a literary fiction -- created as a pious expression of hope that Yahweh would restore Israel and its kings in the wake of the Babylonian exile. Additionally, messiah was a term used for the highpriest -- the one consecrated to serve Yahweh and his cult.

 

Just some further food for thought....

 

You make excellent points, srd.  If I understand what you are saying, because the genealogies are, themselves, fabrications, they cannot be used to disprove that Jesus was the Messiah since they do not truly speak of Jesus' pedigree.  I also agree that, for the same reason, they do not prove he was the Messiah.  But as Pixie pounted out, I am simply using the Bible, as written, to demonstrate the flaws which are inherent in it.  Many Christians accept that the genealogies are accurate and do reflect Jesus' true pedigree.  So, if we begin there and examine what the Gospels say, those of us who formerly accepted them as "God's truth" and who are now questioning it all in a serious way can learn a lot.  In other words, what I am examining is are the Gospels self-proving as one would expect God's words to be.  My answer, of course, is no.

[Overcame Faith]

King David and the Genealogies of Matthew and Luke (Part 2)

 

I wrote this last week but put it away for a while to let it simmer before I posted it. Since the simmering is complete, I thought I would go ahead and post it tonight before I sign off.

 

There was something about the genealogies of Matthew (Matthew 1:1-17) and Luke (Luke 3:23-34) that I had noticed while I was a Christian but had brushed aside. However, when I began having serious doubts about Christianity, what I had noticed as a Christian and had blithely brushed aside came back to my mind with full force. And that something was that, according to the two genealogies, Joseph, the alleged step-father of Jesus, was said to have two different fathers.

 

According to the author of Matthew, Joseph’s father was Jacob.

 

¹⁶ and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.

 

Matthew 1:16

However, according to Luke, Joseph’s father was Heli.

 

²³ Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli,

 

Luke 3:23

With my mind having been set free of the fog of faith, I saw this discrepancy as something that merited serious thought. As a Christian, I knew the pat answer to this problem and that answer was that Matthew’s was Joseph’s genealogy and Luke’s was Mary’s genealogy. I can recall sermons when this was said so casually and with such assurance that the preacher made it sound like he was speaking with God’s own authority and there was no room for any doubt at all. One of the sermons I recall went something like this:

 

 

And we know that Jesus was the Messiah because, among other reasons, he was a descendant of King David. Just look at the genealogies. Matthew shows Joseph’s descendancy from King David and then, for good measure, Luke shows Mary’s descendancy from King David, too. So whichever way you want to look at it, Jesus was from the line of King David.

This portion of the sermon was followed by what was traditional in that church when the Pastor made a particularly pleasing statement with many in the congregation showing their approval by their shouts of “Amen!”. Not only was the pastor sure of this pronouncement but so was the congregation. There you have it. It’s a done deal. Or was it? With my mind cleared, I pondered and sought to answer the question for myself whether, according to the words used, Luke’s (or Matthew’s) genealogy really referred to anyone other than Joseph. My answer was and remains that they both refer to Joseph which creates a major problem since Joseph could not have two fathers.

 

I pulled out my Bible and simply read the words I quoted above from both Matthew and Luke. It was plain to me that both genealogies were Joseph’s and neither of them was Mary’s. I knew then that there was a scam of sorts which had been perpetrated on me and so many others. I also knew the reason for the falsehood and that reason was that unless the faithful could be convinced that one of the genealogies was for Joseph and the other was for Mary, too many embarrassing questions may be asked for which there were no satisfactory answers.

 

I tried thinking through why one could claim that Luke’s genealogy was of Mary. The best I could figure was that if one looks at the wording carefully, perhaps one could read them to mean that it was Jesus who was the son of Heli and since Matthew already told us that Joseph’s father was Jacob, Luke had to mean that Jesus was the grandson of Heli through his mother, Mary.

 

I did not and do not find that reasoning at all convincing. If the author of Luke wanted to tell us that his genealogy was for Mary, all he had to do was simply use words to the effect that Jesus was the son of Mary, the daughter of Heli. Those words not having been used, I do not accept the church’s reasoning in the least.

 

Having come to this conclusion, I decided to look more carefully at the two genealogies since I must confess that before then I had never read them in their entirety and certainly not in detail.

 

The first difference I noticed, besides the issue of Joseph’s father, was that they are written in opposite directions. Matthew’s genealogy goes from the past and moves forward and Luke’s begins with Joseph and goes back in time. I did not and do not place any more significance in that fact other than it made it difficult to compare the two genealogies. To solve that minor problem, I took a notepad and wrote the genealogies side by side in two columns with both going from the past and moving forward so I could compare them.

 

When both genealogies are viewed side-by-side and move in the same direction as I had them listed, it is easy to see that Matthew’s genealogy begins with Abraham while Luke’s genealogy begins with Adam. However, once Luke’s genealogy reaches Abraham where Matthew’s genealogy begins, then we see that from Abraham to David, the two genealogies are exactly the same. The break between the two genealogies comes at the point of David’s son. Matthew has the genealogy extending through David’s son, Solomon, at that point while Luke has it extending through another of David’s sons, Nathan. I will discuss the significance of this fact in a future post.

 

I found the number of generations represented by both genealogies to be quite interesting. According to Matthew, beginning with Abraham and going to Joseph there were forty generations. However, according to Luke, beginning with Abraham and going to Joseph there were fifty-four generations.

 

The anomalies are glaring. Both genealogies are for Joseph. Therefore, according to the genealogies, Joseph had two different fathers, two different family trees, and two different number of generations which preceded his birth.

 

There is also another interesting anomaly which I discovered when looking carefully at the genealogies. If we look only at that portion of Luke’s genealogy which goes from Shem to Abraham and compare that to the corresponding genealogy found in Genesis 11:10-26, we discover a discrepancy. Luke says Araphaxad’s son was Cainan and Cainan’s son was Shelah. However, Genesis says that Araphaxad’s son was Shelah. In other words, Luke adds a generation not present in Genesis. I wonder who was correct.

 

For now, I will leave you with the conclusions I made at this point in my personal studies of the genealogies. With the fog of faith lifted from my eyes, it became glaringly obvious to me that the two genealogies were both for Joseph and they are so contradictory as not to be reconcilable. That told me that they proved nothing about whether Jesus was the Messiah. I found this quite surprising since, as the portion of the representative sermon I quoted above demonstrates, Christians, including Pastors, put a lot of stock in the genealogies to prove Jesus to be the Messiah.

 

Additionally, part of Luke’s genealogy disagrees even with the corresponding genealogy in Genesis. What that told me was one of several things. First, perhaps Luke simply made a mistake. But how could there be a mistake in God’s Holy Word? Second, perhaps there was a mistake in Genesis and that also was incompatible with God’s Holy Word.

 

My doubts were growing stronger the more I read and studied.

 

More to come later.