Here is a summation of problems with and signals from Acharya S' The Christ

,Conspiracy:
It is published by "Adventures Unlimited," which also puts out material on time travel
and Atlantis.
I would recommend to the reader Glenn Miller's work in progress on copycat myths as
well as our series on pagan comparisons.
Despite claims to do so, the author doesn't bother with much showing a cause-and-effect
or logical relationship between religion and disaster. One may ask, what about the fact
that atheistic communism has caused more deaths than all religious crusades of any sort
combined? Her answer: "..(F)ew realize or acknowledge that the originators of
Communism were Jewish (Marx, Lenin, Hess, Trotsky) and that the most overtly violent
leaders were Roman Catholic (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco) or Eastern Orthodox Christian
(Stalin), despotic and intolerant ideologies that breed fascistic dictators. In other words,
these movements were not 'atheistic,' as religionists maintain." (2)
That none of the named heroes of Communism/Catholicism practiced their
Judaism/Catholicism is not mentioned and/or proved (much less is it shown that Judaism
provided the support for their ideologies and actions); that Stalin was merely a seminary
student, hardly a professing believer in Orthodox religion, is not mentioned.
Merely trying to establish "guilt by association" doesn't do the job. We must demand a
demonstrated, logical connection between some religious belief and some atrocity.
Beyond that, to say that the ideologies "bred" dictators is to ignore the simple fact that the
odds are overwhelming, given the religious nature of man, that wherever a dictator came
from, he was bound to have had some religious upbringing of some sort; and that only 4
supposed Jews out of literally billions in history can be named, and only 3 supposed
Roman Catholics out of billions, far from suggests that these religions are "breeding
grounds" for dictators...there have not been enough dictators in history to create a truly
scientific sample.

We refer the reader here for relevant material on martyrdoms and their relevance.
An editor of Eusebius' History of the Church is quoted as saying that until 250 AD, "there
had been no persecution of Christians ordered by the Emperor on an imperial scale" --
which is true, but there were persecutions ordered on a sub-imperial scale, as history
shows.)
On multiple views of Jesus (Ch. 2): First, it is clear that many of these "views" are simply
cases of scholars who needed something new to say emphasizing one aspect of a complex
person over all other aspects. The real Jesus, I daresay, would qualify as a rabbi, a
marginal Jew, and a number of other things that are hardly incompatible with one
another.
Some of these biographies have true insights; others are of little worth. All these prove is
that authors need to say something new or radical to get published. All the rest proves is
that everyone wants the authority of Jesus on their side.
To simply list these views uncritically--to place Meier's magesterial, highly technical,
detailed, and scholarly Marginal Jew side-by-side with Schaberg's speculation piece
proposing that Jesus was the product of a rape is off base.
I recommend Glenn Miller's essay on pseudox as a reply to charges of forgery in the
church, and matters on authorship and dates of the gospels we have answered elsewhere.
Likewise on the subject of the canon.
Luke is dated to 170 AD based first, on a quote borrowed uncritically from an author of
no known qualification named Waite who claims that Jerome "admits" that Luke was
written after the Gospel of Basilides, which was written in 125 AD. No actual quote from
Jerome is offered, so I'll just put this down as false and ask that the author produce an
actual quote.
Luke is also dated late based on a quote from Lloyd M. Graham (!) stating that the
Catholic Encyclopedia identifies Luke's Theophilus as the bishop of Antioch from 169-
177 AD.
This is an argument that I doubt can actually be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia: it is
unlikely that Luke would address a bishop as one who needs to "know the certainty of
those things, wherein thou hast been instructed," and Theophilus (meaning "one who
loves God") was a relatively common name.
Marcion's version of Luke is regarded as more original than our Luke (which is dismissed
as "a compilation of dozens of older manuscripts," [37] an assertion without the least bit
of textual-critical support), and examples are given of supposed interpolations:
Luke's genealogy (something Marcion, wishing to disconnect Jesus from the God of
Judaism, would be likely to remove--Lk. 3:38)
Jesus' childhood and most of Luke 3 (which we are told, again without any textual or
linguistic evidence, was "interpolated into Luke to give Jesus a historical
background and Jewish heritage")
Luke 9:22 ("Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the
elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day."),
which Marcion offered without the bit about the priests and the scribes, again
dismissed without a shred of evidence as a historicizing interpolation.
Mark is dated to 175 AD based on the assumption that Mark is the same person as
Marcion. Here's the reasoning: "...legend held that Mark wrote his gospel in Rome
and brought it to Alexandria, where he established churches, while Marcion
purportedly published his gospel in Rome and no doubt went to Alexandria at
some point." (38)
I think such "reasoning" speaks for itself and needs no refutation: This is
conspiracy-mongering, not scholarship.
Regarding Mark 1:16 ("Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon
and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers."), Wells
is quoted as saying that "Almost all commentators agree that the words 'by the sea
of Galilee' were added by Mark. They are placed quite ungrammatically in the
Greek syntax..." From this Wells concludes that a place name was inserted.
I have seen no such claim in any commentary on Mark. Beyond that, how does
this prove inauthenticity? It may prove that Mark had bad grammatical skills, and
that is something that commentaries I have read have noted.
Also, since these men were fishing, and thereafter went into Capernaum, which
was right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (1:21), and since Jesus had been said
to come into Galilee just before (1:14), just where does Wells think all of this
might have occurred?
John is dated to 178 AD, based on all the standard charges of anti-Semitism and
unknown place names we have covered elsewhere, but apparently the author has
never heard of the John Rylands papyrus...a piece of John dated to 125 AD.
Matthew is dated to 180, based only on a quote from an authority that says so.
The author uses the standard commentary about there being over 150,000 variant
readings in the textual history of the NT, a point we have covered elsewhere; the
conflicting genealogies and Lukan census issues; differences in reportage in the
gospels; an author of unknown credentials named Dujardin is quoted as noting "a
total lack of historical verity" in that Jesus preached in Galilee during the time
when Tiberias was being built, and since the city would not have been finished
yet, the preaching would then be set "in a countryside overturned by demolition
and rebuilding" (! - Really? the WHOLE of Galilee was a mess and was covered
in construction workers?)
Acts is dated to 177 AD, and it is said sarcastically that "the first 'Christians' are
found at Antioch, even though there was no canonical gospel there until after 200
CE." (46)
I do not know when Acharya went from house to house in Antioch every day
between 33 AD and 200 AD and proved that there was no canonical gospel there.
Not that it would be needed in an age when oral transmission was far more
important...assuming one could actually prove such an assertion in the first place.
A couple of outdated sources are also quoted as saying that Acts is unreliable;
scholarship since the 18th century has proven otherwise.
Josephus' cites are dismissed as mere forgeries (including the one with John the
Baptist) merely because "scholars and Christian apologists alike" have regarded
them as such, though we are given no names of such scholars, only two other
Christ-mythers, two 19th-century writers, and a writer from the 18th century--
much less are any critical evaluations of arguments offered.
Pliny is dismissed with the 19th-century claim that Pliny's letters are forgeries, a
position held by no reputable scholar of Greco-Roman history today. We are also
told that conspirators may have changed Pliny's reference, which may have
originally been to the Essenes...although what that rural, antagonistically-Jewish
Dead Sea community was doing with members in the middle of an urban, Gentile
nation several hundred miles from home, we are not told.
Tacitus is also dismissed as a forgery, based on the work of yet another scholar of
the 19th century whose work has long been dismissed by Tacitean and Greco-
Roman scholars.
Also thrown in the mix is a quote we've seen before from Pope Leo X. The author
tries to certify Leo as a specialist, saying that he was "privy to the truth because of
his high rank," (58) but I believe we know by know that this conspiracy-
mongering speculation of a vast secret being kept quiet for 1500+ years but
nevertheless revealed publicly by a supposed key leader doesn't deserve a
moment's credence. (For more on this, check here.)
The author's next section is on the Gnostics, and while she is right to say that the
ideas that were part of Gnosticism are indeed old, older indeed quite often than
NT Christianity, she takes the overtaxed position that "Gnosticism was proto-
Christianity." (60) The evidence for this?

• That critics of Christianity like Porphyry and Plotinus attacked Gnostics

whom they considered to be Christians--which means about as much as
the modern media attacking the groups of Jim Jones and David Koresh as
"Christian." The inadequate knowledge of others, and their inability to
offer precise classifications of religious groups they hate intensely, offers
no proof of anything.

• That three church Fathers were either sympathetic to Gnostic views

(Clement of Alexandria, and Ireneaus, so we are told, who "had a zodiac
on the floor of his church at Lyons" [60]) or once were (Augustine)--
which also means absolutely nothing; that a small number of church
Fathers some 200 years after the fact and in an entirely different social-
cultural milieu had any sort of involvement in a contrary movement no
more adds proof to the thesis that "Gnosticism was proto-Christianity"
than pointing to a group of modern Christian youth who play Dungeons
and Dragons proves that "fantasy gaming is proto-Christianity."
It is claimed that Christianity shares Gnosticism's "disdain for the flesh and for
matter in general," (60) although the cites offered prove no such thing, especially
when examined in their literary-historical context.

• John 7:7 ("The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of
it, that the works thereof are evil.") is cited as proof of Jesus' supposed
Gnosticism, but this only says that the works of the world are evil, not
matter or the world itself.

• Πα υ λ ι σ χ α λ λ ε δ α Γνο σ τ ι χ based on his

supposed "abhorrence of the flesh" (though no cite is given showing this;
actually, Paul, like all Jews, believed that the flesh was weak and in need
of a better replacement, the physical and material resurrection body--1
Cor. 15, 2 Cor. 5)

• 2 Cor. 4:4 ("In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them
which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the
image of God, should shine unto them."), where Paul is said to "speak
gnostically" about the "god of this world" being evil, although how this is
specially "Gnostic" is far from clear.

• We are also told that Paul "reveals" here that "the scriptures were
tampered with," when he indicates that others have been "handling the
word of God deceitfully"; even if applicable, this could hardly prove that
any such tampering survived the textual-copying process and was no more
than an aberration; beyond that, there is nothing specifically associated
with the Greek here that indicates textual tampering [as opposed to, say,
oral preaching].

• Gal. 3:27 ("For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put
on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.") is said
to prove that "the Christ in this human phase could be female as well as
male" and was therefore an androgynous concept; how this is so is not
explained at all, especially since the passage is applied to believers and
their current state in Christ...and we have little evidence that conversion to
Christianity caused immediate androgynization.
There is a repeat of the "Trypho error" we have dealt with elsewhere.
Appeal is made to Higgins, who claims that a medal of "the Savior," with a
depiction of a bearded man with long hair and a Hebrew inscription, was found in
pre-Christian ruins. I'd say don't believe it: such a find would have made Biblical
Archaeological Review; that it is found cited in a book written in the early 1800s,
before scientific archaeological dating was possible, tells us enough about how
likely it is that Higgins was actually on to something
By the way, Higgins also wrote a book claiming that the Celtic druids were
emigrants from India.
It is said that Serapis, a god of the Egyptian state religion from the 3rd century BC
onward, was depicted as "a white man with long, dark hair and a beard" (which
describes a rather significant portion of the Ancient Near Eastern male population
during the period in question as well); a complaint about the lack of coins
depicting Jesus (why would a religion founded from Judaism and with a distaste
for graven images put Jesus' portrait on a coin?)
A repeat of Earl Doherty's "why no sacred sites" argument, which we answered
here
See here on Elohim as a plural; the proclamation that "the various biblical names
for 'God' " [89] (like Elohim, Adonai, etc.) are evidence of polytheism is without
information on the ancient Near Eastern practice of multiple naming of
individuals and even pagan deities, and also needs a reminder that multiple titles
like "God Above" and "God Most High" are hardly evidence of numerous
personages, unless our "President" and "Commander in Chief" titles today are
evidence of such.
Support of the JEDP theory may be countermanded by essays found by myself
and Glenn Miller here and here.)
Offered is Potter's assertion that "El Shaddai" was a being "later demonized in
Psalms 106:37, condemned as one of the 'devils'--the Canaanite Shedim, to whom
the Israelites sacrificed their sons and daughters." [92]
The word in Psalms 106:37 comes from a root meaning to devastate or waste;
Shaddai, however, comes from a slightly different root that implies power,
including that to devastate. The words are related, as is appropriate since that are
both used of supernatural and powerful beings, but it means no more than that the
word "energy" might be applied both to natural gas and also to bicycle pedal
power.
We are also told: "Baal is in reality the earlier name of the character later known
as Yahweh, as is stated in Hosea 2:16" [93]:
And it shall be at that day, saith the LORD, that thou shalt call me
Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baali.
Biblical scholars, however, do not regard this verse as evidence that Yahweh was
once Baal; rather, they take the recognized fact that "Baal" also means "husband"
(as even the author knows), and within the poetic context of Hosea as depicting
Israel's relationship to God as a marriage, know that "Baal" as presented in this
verse (actually, "ba'aliy" rather than "ba'al," as the name of the pagan god) is a
sterner form of "husband" with more of a service connotation of a master or an
owner, versus the earlier word translated "husband," 'iysh, which has a plainer
connotation of a man without any implication of servanthood.
It is quite clear in the context of Hosea as a whole that the point is a change of
relationship with Israel in the eschatological future..and it has nothing to do with
any change of identity in the true God. Merely having Blavatsky (an occultist, not
a scholar) claim that the "Ba'al" of the Israelites was the same as the sun does not
do the job.
Keep in mind that to call any divine being, even the true God, a "ba'al" means no
more than calling people of varying rank "sir." The term is often used as a mere
proper name for a pagan deity without realization that it had a generalized use,
much like "Lord" did in NT times.
Fanciful word games, not presented evidence, stand behind such claims as that
"Jehovah" is the same as a Chinese deity named Yao or Iao and the Egyptian Huhi
and the Latin Jove; also "Israel" is said to be a combination of "three different
reigning deities," Isis, Ra, and El (with no proving of an etymolgical connection
or using anything but an English coincidence of letters; never mind also the
known Hebrew roots, as encapsulated in Gen. 32:28 and accepted by Hebrew
linguists).
There's also an allusion to the idea that Mt. Sinai was a volcano, and Yahweh a
volcano god (where this volcano is, isn't specified; the mountains of the Sinai
region and in Palestine are not geologically active); there's even a good story
worth quoting in detail:
As Jordan Maxwell points out, the benediction or blessing sign of
the Feast (of the giving of the law) is the same as the split-
fingered, "live long and prosper" salutation of the Vulcan
character Spock on "Star Trek." Vulcan, of course, is the same
word as volcano, and the Roman god Vulcan was also a lightning
and volcano god.
News from an old Trekkie: Leonard Nimoy grew up in a Jewish home, and he
was using the split-finger symbol long before Roddenberry conceived of the guy
with the pointed ears.
The story of Hezekiah finding the book of the Law as "obviously fictitious"
[101]...why? Because:
"...(I)t cannot be explained why, if Moses had been real and had such a
dramatic and impactful life, his Law would have been "lost" in the first
place." [101]
What? Didn't we just get through acknowledging how the people went
whoring after other gods? Isn't that reason enough for the Law of Moses to
have been lost? And how does Moses' "dramatic and impactful life" have
any effect on those living tens or hundreds of years later?
Finally, given that the overwhelming majority of all ancient literature is
lost -- even that written by people who had "dramatic and impactful" lives
 -- how is this a worthwhile argument in the first place?
If it had been lost, we are asked, "how did Hezekiah know to follow it when
he made his purges and reforms?"
You don't need explicit instructions to tell you to get rid of idols, priests,
and altars to false gods when you are trying to please the true god(s); that's
just the standard religio-historical paradigm in action.

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes

Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?
The author tells us that since the Galatians were presumably not in Jerusalem for
the crucifixion, the only way Jesus could have been "publicly portrayed" as
crucified before their eyes would be if it happened locally -- and she thinks this
"suggests the recurring passion of the cult of Attis."
I don't know what version is quoted here, but the Greek behind "publicly
portrayed" is the word prographo, meaning, "to write previously, announce,
prescribe, evidently set forth." The word does not indicate the enacting of an
event but the proclamation of one.
Here are samples of "wildcard" analogies that are part of an attempt to read the
Bible "astrologically". Sometimes it seems to make sense (i.e., when Reuben is
called "unstable as water" [Gen. 49:4], this is said to correspond to Aquarius; but
there is far more to Reuben's description that doesn't fit, and one could associate
"water" with other astrological signs as well, like Cancer the Crab); other times,
and more often, it seems to be a long stretch (i.e., Joseph is identified as
Sagittarius because he was "fiercely attacked by archers" -- isn't Saggy the archer?
-- and Naphtali as a "hind let loose" is said to correspond to Capricorn the goat;
never mind that hinds are female deer, not goats).
With these and other comments (i.e., John 14:2, Jesus' reference to God's house
having "many mansions," this refers to the "houses of the moon" or the zodiacal
constellations!), we need say little at all.
On the thesis that "the Son of God is the Sun of God," and has the pretense that
the story of Christ is paralleled by sun mythology, some of the parallels drawn are
badly misinformed; thus:
"The sun 'dies' for three days at the winter solstice, to be born again or resurrected
on December 25th." Is this meant to parallel something? If so, somebody is
missing the target: Aside from the fact that 12/25 was a later choice of the church
based on pagan thought rather than on Biblical data, the story is that Christ was
born 12/25 -- not born again or resurrected.
"The sun at its zenith, or 12 noon, is in the house or heavenly temple of the 'Most
High'; thus, 'he' begins 'his Father's work' at 'age' 12."
First of all, the Hebrews reckoned what we call noon as the "sixth hour" of the
day.
Second, the sun hardly "begins" it's work at noon; it begins it's work at dawn.
Third, related to that, noon isn't even "age" 12 for the sun; at that point the sun is
around five to six hours "old," depending on the time of year. Perhaps it is more
likely that this story of Jesus alluded to has something to do with the fact that at
12, Jewish boys were considered to be taking steps into manhood and
independence.
"The sun enters into each sign of the zodiac at 30 [degrees]; hence, the 'Sun of
God' begins his ministry at 'age' 30."
Luke 3:23 tells us that Jesus was about 30, not actually 30.
"The sun is the 'Lion' when in Leo, the hottest time of the year, called the 'throne
of the Lord.' "
What? The hottest time of the year is called the "throne of the Lord"? By whom?
Or is it Leo that is called that, and again, by whom?
"The sun is 'betrayed' by the constellation of the Scorpion, the backbiter, the time
of the year when the solar hero loses his strength."
It fits well to put that "betrayed" in quotes. Using that word to describe what
happens is a crime against language.
"The sun is hung on a cross, which represents its passing through the equinoxes,
the vernal equinox being Easter."
For this analogy to work, wouldn't the sun at least have to go east to west part of
the year, and north and south some other part of the year? Where does a cross fit
in, other than in the imagination?
"The sun does a 'stutter-step' at the winter solstice, unsure whether to return to life
or 'resurrect,' doubted by this 'twin' Thomas."
How did Jesus do a "stutter-step" at the winter solstice? How was he "unsure"
whether to resurrect? Thomas wasn't his twin, and he didn't doubt until after the
resurrection.
Other parallels drawn are also stretches of the imagination, thus:
"The sun of god is 'born of a virgin,' which refers to both the new or 'virgin'
moon and the constellation of Virgo." hm. How is the sun "born" of the
moon or of this specific constellation? Simply attempting to draw an illicit
synonym (new = virgin?!?) and citing an astronomical arrangement
without connection will not do the job.
 "The sun is the 'Carpenter' who builds his daily 'houses' or 12 two-hour
divisions." The sun does no such thing: The "houses" remain there at all
times, and it is an incredible stretch to draw the conception of carpentry in
here. Nothing is being "built" except the foundation for a fertile
imagination.
"The sun's 'followers' or 'disciples' are the 12 signs of the zodiac, through
which the sun must pass." Say again? How did Jesus "pass" through his
disciples? How do the zodiac signs "follow" the sun? They don't.
"The sun is 'anointed' when its rays dip into the sea." And:
"The sun 'changes water into wine' by creating rain, ripening the grape on
the vine and fermenting the grape juice." ! So where do all the little
microbes that cause fermentation find their analogy in the miracle at
Cana? Maybe someone wants to compare this to typological exegesis; if
they do, they might bear in mind the warning we made when answering A.
J. Mattill: One can indeed run wild with typology, but as with analogies
that one can likewise run wild with in daily life, so it is that some
type/antitype equations make more sense than others.
"When the sun is annually and monthly re-born, he brings life to the 'solar
mummy,' his previous self, raising it from the dead." How is the sun
"monthly re-born"?
"The sun is 'crucified' between the two thieves of Sagittarius and Capricorn."
Maybe I'm ignorant of such vital sciences as astrology when I ask this, but
aside from more illicit synonyminzing (the sun is "crucified"? who nails it
down and how?), since when are Sagittarius and Capricorn referred to as
thieves? How does a goat steal anything? Since when are archers ever
thieves by profession? (The bow and arrow is not exactly a well-known
robbery weapon.)
The sun is the 'Light of the World,' and 'comes on clouds, and every eye shall
see him.' " Light is a good metaphor for inspiration and truth, so it is used
in contexts ranging from the religious (as here) to the ridiculous (as when
a lightbulb appears over Dagwood Bumstead's head when he gets an idea
for a new kind of sandwich). As for riding on clouds, the sun does no such
thing; it "rides" behind the clouds; Jesus' statement is better informed by
the Jewish theme of holy beings riding on clouds.
"The sun is the Word or Logos of God." This requires only one
response: ???????
To relate the life of Jesus to the signs of the zodiac, the same pattern of mixing
synonym-stretching with bad data and analogies, as these samples show [161]:
"According to legend, Jesus was born in a stable between a horse and a goat,
symbols of Sagittarius and Capricorn." Is this from the Bible (it's not) or a
 later church creation that might have indeed been influenced by
astrological syncretism? Either way, it doesn't matter: Horses in this
period could only be afforded by royalty, governments, and the very rich,
and they wouldn't be kept in a stable with a goat. Also, wasn't the archer
the symbol for Sagittarius before? If we can keep switching symbols
around like this, we can make anything mean anything we want.
"He was baptized in Aquarius, the Water-Bearer." So were the thousands of
Jewish proselyte baptisms also done "in Aquarius"? This is merely an
attempt to create an astrological allegory upon a historical reality.
"(Jesus) became the Good Shepherd and the Lamb in Aries, the Ram." A ram
or lamb is not a shepherd. Stretching the symbolism to accommodate our
thesis is not going to work.
"Jesus told the parables of the sowing and tilling of the fields in Taurus, the
Bull." Jesus also told parables of other things; what sign are they told in?
This is simply stretching another historical reality (the use of agricultural
metaphors, natural in an agrarian society like rural Palestine) for the sake
of a thesis.
"In Cancer, 'the celestial Sea of Galilee,' he calmed the storm and waters,
spoke of backsliders (the Crab), and rode the ass and foal in triumph into
the City of Peace, Jerusalem." Four questions: 1) This "celestial Sea of
Galilee" quote comes from Hazelrigg, and not a scrap of evidence is given
that this phrase was any sort of accepted name for Cancer or has any
relevance to the matter at hand. Let's hear it directly from an archaeologist
working in the field, a sociologist, or even a historian of religion. 2) How
did Cancer the Crab calm storms and waters? Crabs don't have much
power to do that. 3) They are also "sidesliders," not backsliders, and what
Scripture is this alluding to? 4) What do crabs have to do with riding
donkeys into the City of Peace?
"In Libra, Christ was the true vine in the Garden of Gethsemane, the 'wine
press,' as this is the time of the grape harvest." That has nothing to do with
the sign of Libra, which is scales. A stretch, which would not have been
too hard anyway: The astrological signs (the constellations, that is) were
designed based upon common objects available in the ancient period in
which they were designed. If there had been an astrological sign called
Tiller shaped like a plow, the author could have said that Jesus "picked
grains of wheat in Tiller." If there had been a sign shaped like a king's
crown, thr author could say that Jesus had been made King of Kings in
that sign.
"Jesus was betrayed by Judas, the 'backbiter,' or Scorpio." So scorpions go
biting people on the back?
"In Sagittarius, Jesus was wounded in the side by the Centaur, or centurion."
 There's one big problem with that, and that's that the Greek word for
"centurion" is hekatontarches, which doesn't look or sound like the
English "centurion" or "centaur."
"He was crucified at the winter solstice between the 'two thieves' of
Sagittarius and Capricorn, who sapped his strength." Aside from the same
"thieves" question above, we may point out that Easter is not at the winter
solstice (Dec. 22nd), and the thieves on the cross in no sense "sapped"
Jesus' strength.
Wells is quoted as saying that "Nothing is known of such a place" as the Garden
of Gethsemane [162]. If this means, "We have no other record of it in other
sources," that is probably true, but tell me where else you might expect someone's
private garden to be mentioned in a major work of history, unless some event of
concern to them personally happened there.
It is also said, "...Jesus is the Piscean fish god, who, at Luke 24:11-2, upon his
resurrection is made to ask, 'Do you have any fish?' " [164] Actually, that's Luke
24:41, and the request was for brosimos, or meat, which was a synecdoche for
anything that was edible, and contrary to Achy, this did not "establish the choice
of communion food of the new age." There is no evidence of fish being used in
early Christian communal meals, and the Catholic custom of eating fish on
Fridays is a much later, and very much irrelevant, matter of concern.
Barbara Walker, who is not a scholar or serious researcher, is quoted as saying
that "Antichrist was the Christian equivalent of the Chaldean Aciel, lord of the
nether world, counterbalancing the solar god of heaven." And added: "In other
words, it was the night sky." [216]
Naturally, not a shred of etymological, linguistic, archaeological, literary, or
historical evidence is given for these wild assertions.
The author makes much of saying that the "descent into hell by the savior is a
common occurrence within many mythologies," and provides a list [222], but did
not check to see if Christ really did that.
It is claimed that "a number of Jesus' parables were derived from Buddhism and
the very ancient sect of Jainism," [227] but no literary, historical, textual, etc.
evidence for this is provided.
It is said that the Logos or Word concept is found "in mythologies from the
Mediterranean to China," but the only example given is of "a Word of God,
written in starry characters, by the planetary Divinities..." [228] This is like saying
Western Union stole the word "message" from ancient medieval scribes.
We are told that the church steeple is a sexual symbol, as is the church nave [285].
Allegro's "sacred mushroom" thesis, an idea so irresponsible that a cartel of
scholars of all persuasions took out an ad in a major publication calling it a
 fantasy, is described as "not implausible." [294]
Rounding off the author's reworking of first-century Judaism: a claim that the
Pharisees were "luni-stellar cult people" while the Saducees were "mainly solar
cultists." [312]
Christianity as we know it, we are told, was the creation of the
Jewish/Alexandrian Therapeuts, who "had at their disposal the university and
library at Alexandria..." [330] Interesting to hear that Christian faith began as
someone's term paper.
Next time you see a Masonic Lodge member, ask him about this one: "The
Mithraists were also Masons, and the Kabbalists and Chaldeans were Master
Masons...the fortress at Qumran was a Masonic enclave, since masons built it,
particularly its large tower, a strong Masonic symbol." [344] I guess non-Masons
only build squatty buildings like public restrooms? What we end up being told, at
any rate, is that everyone and his brother was a Mason and was in on this
conspiracy. In fact: "Unbeknownst to the masses, the pope is the Grand Master-
Mason of the Masonic branches of the world." [348]
We are told that the story of Apollonius of Tyana was a source for the NT -- to
which we say, this.
These are just a few problems with The Christ Conspiracy. Is this a trustworthy
source? Not in any sense.
-JPH

It's a most basic set of questions to ask: Who wrote the Gospels?
When were they written? And generally, is there any reason to suspect
that they are full of fabrications?

The usual Skeptical/critical view asserts in answer:

• The Gospels are anonymous documents; we cannot know who

wrote then.

• The Gospels are all late documents, written between 70-100 AD,
or some say even in the 2nd century AD.

• The Gospels are the product, in various places, of their authors'

imaginations.

We shall find in our investigation to follow that these assertions are

unwarranted, and are counter to the evidence available. We assert in
turn that:

• There are excellent reasons for maintaining the traditional

ascriptions of Gospel authorship, when standard tests for such
 determinations are applied;

• There is no reason to date ANY of the Gospels later than 70 AD,

although such dating may be permissible in the case of John;

• There is no reason to suppose that the Gospel authors took

creative liberties with the events they recorded, to the point of
fabrication.

We will examine and dispose of the common arguments for dating the
Gospels late, and for rejecting their traditional authorship. With this, I
will also offer two caveats:

Authorship and date are important; but equally important, if

not more so, is whether what is in the Gospels is true.

Regardless of who wrote the Gospels and when, if they reflect

reality correctly, then it points to their being written by
eyewitnesses, or having eyewitnesses as their source. Thus,
even if the traditional authorship and earliest dates are
disproved - and it is my contention that the arguments against
them are inadequate - it matters very little, we may surmise,
who wrote them and when. (Hengel [Heng.4G, 6] notes that we
have only one biography of Muhammed, written 212 years after
his death, which used a source from about 100 years after his
death, and yet "the historical scepticism of critical European
scholarship is substantially less" where Muhammed is
concerned.)

Critical arguments about authorship and date of the Gospels

revolve around the same data, and have revolved around
it, for a long time.

With very, VERY few exceptions, critics and Skeptics have used
the same arguments against the traditional data over and over
and over. In my survey of the literature, I have found that the
standard critical arguments have been overused by Skeptics and
sufficiently answered by traditionalists; yet the critics have not
deigned to answer the counter-arguments, except rarely and
then only with bald dismissals.

Also of relevance, Glenn Miller has contributed two excellent responses

to James Still here and here.

Gospel Authors: General Considerations

The "anonymity" of the Gospels authors is something that many
Skeptics claim. Yet I have noted that in making this argument, critics
never explain to us how their arguments would work if applied equally
to secular ancient documents whose authenticity and authorship is
never (or is no longer) questioned, but are every bit as "anonymous"
in the same sense that the Gospels are.

If it is objected that the Gospel authors nowhere name themselves in

their texts -- and this is a very common point to be made, even among
traditionalists -- then this applies equally to numerous other ancient
documents, such as Tacitus' Annals. Authorial attributions are found
not in the text proper, but in titles, just like the Gospels.

Critics may claim that these were added later to the Gospels, but they
need to provide textual evidence of this (i.e., an obvious copy of
Matthew with no title attribution to Matthew, and dated earlier or early
enough to suggest that it was not simply a late, accidental
ommission), and at any rate, why is it not supposed that the titles
were added later to the secular works as well?

In order for readers to appreciate the magnitude of this situation, I

would like to present here a listing of external evidences for the
authorship of the works of Tacitus. I wish to thank Roger Pearse for
helpfully sending me copies of relevant pages from the works of the
Tacitean scholar Mendell, from Tacitus: The Man and His Work.
Mendell surveys evidence for knowledge of Tacitus throughout history;
we will only look at evidence up to the sixth century (for reasons noted
in Mendell below).

In doing this we would challenge potential respondents to compare

this record to that of the Gospels. We will present Mendell's comments
and intersperse our own.

THE Annals were probably "published" in 116, the last of the works of
Tacitus to appear. Only Pliny of Tacitus' contemporaries mentions him,
and his writings and the evidence of subsequent use up to the time of
Boccaccio is slight. It is not true, however, that Tacitus and his
writings were practically unknown. They were neglected----possibly, in
part at least, because of his strong republican bias on the one hand
and because, on the other, the church fathers felt him to be unfair to
Christianity. Vopiscus in his life of the emperor Tacitus (chapter 10)
indicates the state of affairs in the third century: "Cornelium Tacitum,
scriptorem historiae Augustae, quod parentem suum eundem diceret,
in omnibus bibliothecis conlocari iussit neve lectorum incuria deperiret,
librum per an-nos singulos decies scribi publicitus evicos archiis iussit
et in bibliothecis poni" (the text is obviously corrupt in the reading
evicos archiis).

Nevertheless, Tacitus is mentioned or quoted in each century down to

and including the sixth. In fact, the seventh and eighth are the only
centuries that have as yet furnished no evidence of knowing him. The
following are the known references to Tacitus or use of Tacitean
material after the day of Tacitus and Pliny until the time of Boccaccio.
The material was well collected in 1888 and published at Wetzler by
Emmerich Cornelius, but a considerable amount of new material has
turned up from time to time since.

About the middle of the second century Ptolemy published his

Gewgrafikh& 'Ufh&ghsij. In 2. 11. 12 (ed. C. Muller, Paris, 1883) he
lists in succession along the northern shore of Germany the towns of
Flhou&m, and Siatouta&nda. The latter name occurs nowhere else and
has a dubious sound. The explanation is to be found in Tacitus, Ann. 4.
72, 73: "Rapti qui tributo aderant milites et patibulo adfixi; Olennius
infensos fuga prae-venit, receptus castello, cui nomen Flevum; et
haud spernenda illic civium sociorumque manus litora Oceani
praesidebat." The governor of lower Germany takes prompt action, the
account of which winds up: "utrumque exercitum Rheno devectum
Frisiis intulit, soluto iam castelli obsidio et ad sua tutanda degressis
rebellibus." The source of Ptolemy's mistake is obvious.

Note here that Ptolemy's obvious use of Tacitus is taken as a signal of

the Annals existing. This is in stark contrast to how quotes in patristic
writers from the Gospels are excused asway as "floating, independent
tradition" rather than evidence of the Gospels. Note as well that
Ptolemy does not name Tacitus. We still do not have an attribution of
authorship to work with some 40-50 years after the writing.

It is hard to believe that Cassius Dio (who published shortly after A.D.
200) did not know at least the Agricola. In 38. 50 and 66. 20 he
mentions Gnaeus Julius Agricola as having proved Britain to be an
island and in the later instance tells the story of the fugitive Usipi. If
we make allowance for the method of Tacitus, which leaves his
account far from clear, and for the use of a different language by Dio,
there can be little if any doubt that Tacitus is the source for Dio. We
know also of no other possible source today. The last part of the
section, dealing with Agricola's return and death, confirms the
conclusion that Dio drew from Tacitus, and it sounds as though Tacitus
had left the impression he desired.

Notice we still do not have an attribution, and we are now 80 and

more years past the publication of these works by Tacitus. We are
already at or past the number of years Papias was from the Gospels.

In the third century Tertullian cites Tacitus with a hostile tone. He had
spoken without respect of the Jews and had implied that the Christians
were an undesirable sect of the Jews. It is not a surprise, therefore, to
have Tertullian (early third century) refer to him as ille mendaciorum
loquacissimus. The Apologist is defending the Christians against the
charge that they worshiped an ass. The origin of this scandal he
ascribes to Tacitus, Hist. 5. 3, 9. Apologeticus 16...

This is the first direct attribution of something to Tacitus -- apparently

over 100 years later. Tertullian also cited Tacitus in two other places.

Lactantius, in the time of Diocletian, is at least once (Div. inst. 1. 18.

8) somewhat reminiscent of Tacitean style but that is as far as it is
safe to go in claiming him as a reader of Tacitus, in spite of something
of a resemblance between Lactantius 1. 11, 12 and Germ. 40.

At about the same date, Eumenius of Autun, in his Panegyricus ad

Constantinum 9, quite clearly has Agric. 12 before him. He follows
Tacitus in the error of thinking that the nights are always short, and
he assigns as reasons the same that the Roman had...Not only the
actual quotation from Tacitus is of interest but the careful substitution
of synonyms.

Vopiscus, still in the fourth century, cites Tacitus with Livy, Sallust,
and Trogus as the greatest of Roman historians...Ammianus
Marcellinus, about 400, published his history, which began where
Tacitus left off, indicating a knowledge at least of what Tacitus had
written. At about the same time Sulpicius Severus of Aquitaine wrote
his Chronicorum libri and, in 2. 28. 2 and 2. 29. 2, used Tacitus, Ann.
15. 37 and 44 as his source. On the detailed matter of Nero's marriage
with Pythagoras and the punishment of the Christians the verbal
resemblances make it impossible to think that he was drawing on any
other source....Jerome in his commentary on Zacchariah 14. 1, 2 (3,
p. 914) cites Tacitus: "Cornelius quoque [i.e. as well as Josephus]
Tacitus, qui post Augustum usque ad mortem Domitiani vitas
Caesarum triginta voluminibus exaravit." He gives no proof of having
read Tacitus----he may not even have seen his works at all----but he
did know of a tradition in which the thirty books were numbered
consecutively. Claudian cannot be safely claimed as a reader of Tacitus
in spite of his suggestive references to Tiberius and Nero. 8, Fourth
Consulship of Honorius...Servius, on the other hand, at the end of the
fourth century, while his reference is to a lost part of Tacitus, evidently
had read the text. Hegesippus made a free Latin version of Josephus'
Jewish War with independent additions, many of which seem to come
from Tacitus' Histories. An example is 4. 8: "denique neque pisces
neque adsuetas aquis et laetas mergendi usu aves." Compare Hist.
5.6: "neque vento impellitur neque pisces aut suetas aquis volucres
patitur." There is a certain studied attempt at variation of wording
without concealment of the source. Of the fifth-century writers, two,
Sidonius Apollinaris and Orosius, have left evidence of considerable
familiarity with Tacitus as well as respect for him as a writer. In Ep. 4.
22. 2 Sidonius makes a pun on the name Tacitus. After comparing
himself and Leo to Pliny and Tacitus he says that should the latter
return to life and see how eloquent Leo was in the field of narrative,
he would become wholly Tacitus. The name as he gives it is Gaius
Cornelius Tacitus. Again in Ep. 4. 14. 1 he quotes Gaius Tacitus as an
ancestor of his friend Polemius. He was, says Sidonius, a consular in
the time of the Ulpians: "Sub verbis cuiuspiam Germanici ducis in
historia sua rettulit dicens : cum Vespasiano mihi vetus amicitia"
etc...The citations in Orosius are naturally quite different from these
casual references and general estimates. Orosius is always after
material for argument, and it is the content rather than the style that
interests him. He refers to Tacitus explicitly and at length. He
compares critically the statements of Cornelius Tacitus and Pompeius
Trogus and again of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus. The quotations
and citations from Tacitus are all in the Adversus paganos and all from
the Histories. In 1. 5. 1 Orosius says: "Ante annos urbis conditae
MCLX confinem Arabiae regionem quae tune Pentapolis vocabatur
arsisse penitus igne caeleste inter alios etiam Cornelius Tacitus refert,
qui sic ait: Haud procul inde campi . . . vim frugiferam perdidisse. Et
cum hoc loco nihil de incensis propter peccata hominum civitatibus
quasi ignarus expresserit, paulo post velut oblitus consilii subicit et
dicit: Ego sicut inclitas . . . cor-rumpi reor." The quotation is from Hist.
5.7 and, in spite of some interesting variants, it is reasonably exact.
The same is true of his quotation of Hist. 5. 3 in Adv. pag. 1. 10. 1...

Cassiodorus is a sixth-century writer who seems to have used Tacitus

as source material. He does not, however, seem to know much about
his source, for he speaks of "a certain Cornelius"; but he draws on
Germania 45...Perhaps a hundred years or less after Cassiodorus,
Jordanes wrote his De origine actibusque getarum which he took
largely from Cassiodorus' history of the Goths. That one or the other
of these two must have known Agric. 10 is shown by the following
passage in Jordanes (2. 12, 13): "Mari tardo circumfluam quod nec
remis facile impellentibus cedat, nec ventorum flatibus intumescat,
credo quia remotae longius terrae causas motibus negant. Quippe illic
latius quam usquam aequor extenditur . . . Noctem quoque clariorem
in extrema eius parte menima quam Cornelius etiam annalium scriptor
enarrat. . . Labi vero per earn multa quam maxima relabique flumina
gemmas margaritasque volventia." The textual confusion memma
quam is usually taken to come from minimamque but we should
expect brevemque. The very last item is probably from Mela. The
Scholiast to Juvenal 2. 99 and 14. 102 refers to the Histories,
ascribing them in the one case to Cornelius, in the other to Cornelius
Tacitus. The first note is as follows: "Hunc incomparabilis vitae bello
civili Vitellius vicit apud Bebriacum campum. Horum bellum scripsit
Cornelius, scripsit et Pompeius Planta, qui sit Bebriacum vicum a
Cremona vicesimo lapide." The second is a twofold description of
Moses: (a) "sacerdos vel rex eius gentis"; (b) "aut ipsius quidem
religionis inventor, cuius Cornelius etiam Tacitus meminit" (cf. Hist. 5.
3).

Comparably speaking, this evidence is vanishingly small compared to

the incredible number of attestations and attributions by patristic
writers, some few earlier than (but many as late as) those listed for
Tacitus above. How can someone dealing with the evidence fairly claim
to be sure of Tacitus' authorship of his various works (where such
external evidence is concerned) and dismiss the Gospels, which have
far better external evidence?

I have checked a book titled Texts and Tranmission (Clarendon Press,

1993) which records similar data for other ancient works. Throughout
the book classic works from around the time of the NT whose
authorship and date no one questions (though some have textual
issues, just like the NT) are recorded as having the earliest copy
between 5th and 9th century, earliest attributions at the same period
(for example, Celsus' De medicina is attested no earlier than 990 AD,
and then not again until 1300), and having so little textual support
that if they were treated as the NT is, all of antiquity would be reduced
to a blank walls. If the Gospels are treated consistenly, there will be no
question at all about their provenance, but that is clearly the last thing
critics want to do.

Not that lack of a name on a text automatically equates with

anonymous authorship anyway: In this era prior to publishing, and
just prior to the advent of the codex, the equivalent to a spine or dust
jacket was a tag on the outside of a scroll identifying the work in
question -- since there would be no other concrete way to discern
what was inside a scroll and differentiate it from other scrolls (other
than external appearance). Whenever and by whomever the Gospels
were written, it would not be left "unauthorized" or "unidentified" if for
no other reasons than practical ones: It would need a title/descriptor
at the very least, especially if it was intended to be read by more than
one person or small group of people. Hengel notes [Heng.4G, 48]:

Anonymous works were relatively rare and must have been

given a title in libraries. They were often given the name of a
pseudepigraphical author....Works without titles easily got
double or multiple titles when names were given to them in
different libraries.

Since even critics admit that the Gospels were intended for a wide
audience (at the very least, a "community" of believers) they must
explain why these practical factors would be irrelevant and allow a
Gospel to remain "anonymous" and then later not be attributed to
multiple authors. Skeptics and critics might have a better case if they
could find a copy of Matthew that is instead attributed to, say, Andrew,
or to no one at all; or a copy of what is obviously Mark that is
attributed to Barnabas. But the titles are unanimous and unequivocal
-- there is no variation in them at all, and critics have also not
provided any examples of Gospel texts with no title, and (with one
exception) cannot: "There is no trace of such anonymity [concerning
the Gospels]," and the testimony to their authorship is unanimous
across broad geographic and chronological lines [Heng.4G, 54]. It is
hard to see why this evidence is not enough for the Gospels when far,
far less is accepted for secular works and their attribution.

Notwithstanding such titular subscriptions: How do secular historians

determine authorship (and date) of an ancient document? Since we
have started with Tacitus' Annals, we'll work with that example where
we can.

Interior corroborative evidence. If a work of Tacitus tells us that

Nero opened a refrigerator, took out a burrito, and stuck it in the
microwave oven, we have some cause to doubt a second-century
author like Tacitus was responsible for that material. On the other
hand, one would also expect that Tacitus would write his works like a
government official of Rome would write; he would have a high level of
education, decent grammar, and a sophisticated tone suitable to the
Roman upper-crust. He would not have a work full of spelling errors
and country-bumpkin mistakes; he would get governmental terms
right (but maybe not, say, farming terms); he would exhibit a certain
attitude common to a member of high-class Roman society.

We will see that some of the individual objections to the Gospels

center upon supposed words and/or concepts that are supposed not
have existed when the authors wrote their work. We will also see that
some objections argue that a certain individual would not write a
certain way.

Of course, if there are no word- or concept-anachronisms, and if the

work shows signs of having been written in a style that the named
author would write, then this is positive evidence for that person's
authorship. A number of NT commentators (even in the traditionalist
camp) tend to treat such evidence as less than definitive; I would ask,
if it is good enough for secular scholars to use as confirmation, why
not here also?

External corroborative evidence. If Tacitus is referred to by other

people, or if he is found in other records, and if others attribute a work
to him, then this is clear testimony that he wrote the document in
question (see above). On the other hand, if some writer at some point
(the closer to the time of Tacitus, the "better") either denies that
Tacitus wrote a given work attributed to him, or else attributes
(without reference to Tacitus) the work to another, we may have
reason to suspect Tacitus' authorship.

At the same time, if the works of Tacitus are found referred to in other
documents, this may be taken as evidence for the date of Tacitus'
works, in accordance with the dates of the works quoted, again as
noted above. Absence of such quotes would not necessarily prove a
later date, but it would add suspicions if other reasons to be suspicious
were present.

In light of these considerations -- which offer nothing radical or new --

we may now ask these general questions:

If the Gospels are anonymous, why is there no other

surviving tradition of another author for the Gospels?

Second-century testimony is unanimous in attributing the four

Gospels to the persons that now carry their name. This suggests
that they received their titles early; for if they had not, there
would have been a great deal of speculation as to who had
written them - "a variation of titles would have inevitably risen,"
as had happened with the apocryphal gospels. [Thie.EvJ, 15];
see also [Heng.Mark, 82] It is rather harder to believe that the
Gospels circulated anonymously for 60 or more years and then
someone finally thought to put authors on them -- and managed
to get the whole church across the Roman Empire to agree.

Why then were such unlikely characters chosen as authors?

 Luke is mentioned a few times by name in the NT, a very
obscure personage. Mark was a rotten kid; he abandoned Paul
(Acts 15). Matthew was an apostle, but he was also a tax
collector - would you pick the IRS man, and an obscure apostle,
to author your Gospel? [Wilk.JUF, 28] Only John is a logical
choice for a pseudonymous author.

The strength of this point is demonstrated in that some will use

the rationale that obscure persons were deliberately chosen as
authors in order to fool us into thinking that this would mean
they were authentic.

How could the early Christian community honor the Gospels

as authoritative unless they knew who had written them?

Even granting such a late date as some critics surmise, it is

doubtful that the Gospels could have gotten anywhere unless
they were certainly attributable to someone who was recognized
as knowing what they were writing about. On the other hand, I
must say that some critics assume a high degree of gullibility in
the first-century church.

To this end, Hengel [CarMoo.Int, 66] has argued that the

Gospels must have received their titles immediately - not in the
second century. For an anonymous author to have penned a
Gospel, and have it accepted as from the hand of one of the
Quartet or any authoritative person, would have required them
to first produce the Gospel, then present it as the work of
another; they would have to concoct some story as to how it
came peculiarly to be in their possession; get around the
problem of why a work by such a person disappeared or was
previously unknown; then get the church at large, first in his
area and then throughout the Roman Empire (and would not the
claimed discovery of such a document cause a sensation, and
controversy?), to accept this work as genuine.

Can any critic explain how these logistic difficulties were

overcome? I have noted that they do well in offering
generalities, but never get down to the specifics of how Joe
Gentile could have managed to pull off such a hoax on the
church as a whole. Is there any parallel to this in secular history,
where an enormous group at large was bamboozled by (and
continued to be bamboozled by) not just one forgery, but four,
attributed in a couple of cases to members of an inner circle, in
widely separated places and times?
 I'll add that under the "Q/Marcan priority" hypothesis, how is it
they suppose that "Matthew" and "Luke" would choose to use an
anonymous document as a source? Mark could not be recognized
as authoritative until it was known what source it came from;
yet if the critics are right, "Mark" was considered authoritative
enough to use not by just one, but by two others working
independently of one another. (One way around this scenario is
to hypothesize Christian "prophets" through whom these works
might have been received and recognized; for a response to this,
see below.)

At the beginning of the second century, there would have

been first-generation Christians alive who recalled the
apostles and their teaching, and many more second-
generation Christians who would have had information
passed directly to them.

We have early witnesses to the authorship of some of the

Gospels. Papias wrote around 110-130, and he surely did not
design the authorship of Matthew and Mark on the spur of the
moment. That being so, how could anyone have dared to
attribute the Gospels to anyone other than the genuine authors
with these first- and second-generation witnesses still alive?
Believers in the 70s-90s, when critics suppose that the Gospels
were authored anonymously, would have known of no works of
Matthew and the others; believers after the 90s who descended
from this generation and lived into the lifetime of Papias would
have had no tradition of such documents.

With these general considerations, we now offer these mini-essays:

• Matthew -- this is the version from our resource Trusting the

New Testament, featured above.

• Μα ρ κ -- older web version

• Luke -- please see Trusting the New Testament -- older web

version

• ϑοη ν

Gospel Freedoms

[Questions Against] [Non-Community Material] [Eyewitnesses and a

Feedback Loop] [Burton Mack's Idea of Speech Production and
Fabrication] [Material Irrelevance/Oral Tradition and Selection]
[Allegation of "Prophets" Creating Words of Jesus]

Did the church create "gospel fictions"? Are parts or the whole of the
NT products of the Church's faith rather than recorded historical
events?

This is an issue that we touch upon in several places, but generally

speaking, we may ask in reply:

Why would the church have created such a difficult faith to

follow?

Certainly they could have made things much easier on

themselves by, for example, permitting sacrifices to the Emperor
of Rome as the Jews did - or perhaps making the difficult
passages easier to understand.

Why are there no passages relevant to later church issues

like circumcision? We will discuss this in more detail shortly.

Some of the material critics understand as late, simply is

not.

A favorite cite of critics, for example, is from Matthew 16:18 and

18:17, where the word "church" is used. [Perr.NTI, 175] This is
meant to show that this selection from Matthew is post-Jesus.

But the word used here is ekklesia, and it was used to refer to
"official meetings of the people of Israel" [Kiste.GCS, 83] - in
other words, any worship assembly, including the synagogue.
Furthermore, a late date is also only assumed upon the circular
assumption that Jesus wasn't trying to found a new movement --
something that is assumed rather than proved. Thus, these
verses cannot be used as evidence of lateness or cited as ad hoc
creations.

Material in the Gospels does not reflect the creativity of a

"community." Davies [Davi.INP, 115] expresses it well:

The New Testament witnesses to virile, expanding

Christian communities, it is true, but also to
confused and immature ones. It is more likely that
the thrust, the creativity, the originality which lies
behind the Gospel tradition of the works and words
of Jesus should be credited to him rather than to the
body of Christians. The kind of penetrating insight
 preserved in the Gospels points not to communities -
mired and often muddled in their thinking - but to a
supreme source in a single person, Jesus...

Most importantly, eyewitnesses would not permit such

creation. This point is made by several authors. We begin with
John P. Meier:

One would think get the impression (from such

theories) that throughout the first Christian
generation there were no eyewitnesses to act as a
check on fertile imaginations, no original-disciples-
now-become-leaders who might exercise some
control over the developing tradition, and no striking
deeds and sayings of Jesus that stuck willy-nilly in
people's memories. [Meie.MarJ, 169-70]

And Thomas and Gundry add [Thom.HG, 282-3]:

Form critics call into question the integrity of the

disciples. The disciples had seen and heard Jesus.
They had even been a part of his ministry. Yet, if the
form critics are correct, they did not control the
accuracy of the tradition...Is it conceivable that in its
own discussions and disputes the early church would
not have examined doubtful statements concerning
Jesus' ministry? If the church, in fact, did not
scrutinize such statements, why is there such close
agreement as to the nature and details of that
minsitry? A community that was purely imaginative
and lacking in discrimination would have found it
impossible to form a consistent tradition.

F. C. Grant said of the New Testament [Gran.GOG, 1-2]:

...its basic trustworthiness is beyond doubt; for it

rests, not upon one man's recollections - say Peter's
- or those of two or three persons, but upon the
whole group of earliest disciples whose numbers are
reflected in the hundreds referred to by Paul and the
thousands described in Acts. The early church did
not grow up in isolation, in some corner, but in the
full glare of publicity in the great cities of the Roman
Empire.
And finally, Glenn Miller notes:

It should also be pointed out that even the earliest

church had 'controls' in place, that would naturally
'keep the tradition in line'. There are several
indications that the early church had a surprising
amount of information exchange and 'feedback
loops'. Consider:

1.The early church had a center (Jerusalem) and

leaders (apostles)

2.When the church expanded into Samaria, there

was interaction with the leaders of the founding
church (Acts 8.14): "When the apostles in Jerusalem
heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God,
they sent Peter and John to them". [By all accounts,
Peter and John would have been closest to ANY
information about Jesus' acts/words.]

3.When the church expanded into Antioch, we see

the same pattern occur (Act 11:22): "News of this
reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and
they sent Barnabas to Antioch."

4.When the issue of circumcision came up, the

church in Antioch appointed Paul and Barnabas "to
go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about
this question" (Acts 15.2)

5.The first church council was held at Jerusalem (Act

15:23-29)

6.Paul accepted the importance of the Jerusalem

center (Gal 2.1-2): "Fourteen years later I went up
again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took
Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation
and set before them the gospel that I preach among
the Gentiles. But I did this privately to those who
seemed to be leaders, for fear that I was running or
had run my race in vain."

7.At Jrs. Paul was welcomed and sent to the Gentiles

(Gal 2.9f): "James, Peter and John, those reputed to
be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of
fellowship when they recognized the grace given to
 me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles,
and they to the Jews. All they asked was that we
should continue to remember the poor, the very
thing I was eager to do."

8.Paul (a native of Tarsus!) returned to Jerusalem

after EACH missionary journey.

9.The leading apostles and evangelists had traveling

ministries, bringing them into contact with churches
and believers everywhere.

10.The early churches did NOT live in a vacuum.

They corresponded with each other (cf. I Clement, a
letter from Rome to Corinth, a.d. 95, see ATNT:48-
49) and exchanged NT documents (cf. Col. 4.16).

The point should be clear--the early church had a

significant amount of information exchange, among
the leadership, and therefore had major 'feedback
controls' which would have corrected significant
aberrations early.

Vincent Taylor notes in the same light [Tayl.FGT, 41], in terms

that apply as much to the Jesus Seminar today as they did to
Bultmann in his time:

If the Form Critics are right, the disciples must have

been translated to heaven immediately after the
Resurrection. As Bultmann sees it, the primitive
community existed in vacuo, cut off from its
founders by the walls of an inexplicable
ignorance...Unable to turn to anyone for information,
it must invent situations for the words of Jesus, and,
put onto his lips sayings which personal memory
cannot check. All this is absurd; but there is a
reason for this unwillingness to take into account the
existence of leaders and eyewitnesses...

By the very nature of his studies the Form Critic is

not predisposed in favor of eyewitnesses; he deals
with oral forms shaped by nameless individuals, and
the recognition of persons who could enrich the
tradition by their actual recollections comes as a
disturbing element to the smooth working of the
theory. He is faced by an unknown quantity just
 where he has to operate with precise 'laws of the
tradition.'

And Boyd adds:

One especially wonders how the surviving

eyewitnesses to Jesus who were undoubtedly still
around, eyewitnesses who must have exercised
some influence within these communities, responded
to Mark's supposed rewriting of history. One must
ask how Mark could have thought that he could get
his piece of historical fiction past these
eyewitnesses. And, finally, how could this fabrication
not only be accepted, but serve to motivate the
followers of Jesus to the point where they quickly
took this "new" Gospel and risked their lives
evangelizing the entire Mediterranean world?
[Boyd.CSSG, 216]

Such a presupposition, as we have said before and elsewhere,

requires a "high threshold of gullibility" in the early Christian
circles.

Indeed, upon what basis is it said that the church simply created
things for Jesus to say? Mack [Mack.Q, 193-200], for one, appeals to
the Hellenistic practice of attributing "speech-in-character" to people
who did not necessarily say the things attributed to them, but "would
have" in the opinion of the attributers, because such things were
within the quoted person's character to say.

We may answer briefly by noting:

Mack (along with the Jesus Seminar) greatly

overemphasizes the influence of Hellenism on Jesus and
the Gospels.

Mack, who sees Jesus in the mode of a Greek cynic sage, must
hypotheize that Matthew and the other Gospel writers "actually
buried Q in the fiction of Jesus as a Jewish sage." [ibid, 183] The
mistake here is ignoring the essential Jewishness of Jesus, His
mission, and His teachings. Much of critical NT scholarship is now
returning to this point of view. (For a brief, but thorough,
refutation of the idea of Jesus as a Cynic sage, see [Boyd.CSSG,
153-62].)
Mack's theory is implicated by his constant appeals to the
community imagination, and that of the early church.

Mack's book is full of phrases such as "one needs to

imagine...one can easily imagine..." ([Mack.Q, 201-2], and
elsewhere), "a lengthy period of creative, intellectual labor,"
"explosion of intellectual energy," "an astonishing interpretation
of the Christ myth for Macedonians to have managed by the year
50 CE," "astounding imagination," "an early achievement in
Christian mythmaking," "Matthew's gospel appeared in the late
80s and comes as a complete surprise," etc., etc. [Mack.WhoNT,
80, 90, 109, 111, 154, 161] Everywhere in Mack's book, we are
surprised, shocked, confused, or bewildered by the development
of early Christianity.

Mack's theory requires so much imagination because, quite

frankly, it has so little proof behind it. Mack's and similar
theories require, as Blomberg puts it:

...the assumption that someone, about a generation

removed from the events in question, radically
transformed the authentic information about Jesus
that was circulating at that time, superimposed a
body of material four times as large, fabricated
almost entirely out of whole cloth, while the church
suffered sufficient collective amnesia to accept the
transformation as legitimate.

Blomberg further notes that there is no parallel in the history of

religion to such a radical transformation of a famous teacher or
leader in such a short time, "and no identifiable stimulus among
the followers of Jesus sufficient to create such a change."
[Wilk.JUF, 22] Indeed, though he wrote many years before
Mack, Kistemaker rightly describes Mack's methods: "In terms of
the form-critical approach, the formation of the individual Gospel
units must be understood as a telescoped project with
accelerated course of action." [Kiste.GCS, 48]

And just as properly, Wright [Wrig.PG, 106] describes the

methods of Mack and other critics of his persuasion:

A good deal of New Testament scholarship, in fact,

and within that a good deal of study of Jesus, has
proceeded on the assumption that the gospels
cannot possibly make sense as they stand, so that
some alternative hypothesis must be proposed to
 take the place of the view of Jesus they seem to
offer. It has been assumed that we know, more or
less, what Jesus' life, ministry and self-
understanding were like, and that they are unlike the
picture we find in the gospels. But hypotheses of this
sort are always short on simplicity, since they
demand an explanation not only of what happened in
the ministry of Jesus, but also of why the early
church said something different, and actually wrote
up stories as founding 'myths' which bore little
relation to the historical events.

And thus it is that we have Mack's fictional "Q community" to

explain everything; thus it is that the matter of eyewitness
testimony (friendly and hostile) is ignored; thus is it assumed
that there were no restraints to this creativity in the early
church.

We are obliged to ask: Was it just luck that no texts, no

histories, and no evidence from these other communties of
Mack's survived?

You can believe that if you want - and if you have the requisite
faith.

Even beyond Mack's specific "speech in character" theory,

however, there are many critics who presume that the church
created sayings of Jesus to fit certain occassions. Most appeal to
the idea that there were Christian "prophets" who spoke the
word of the Lord, and that these words were taken to be the
words of the living Jesus.

In general, we may reply that:

Much of what is in the Gospels is not relevant to the early

church.

If there are passages that were created and put on Jesus' lips,
and were therefore products of the early church, why are they
absent teachings of Jesus on subjects critical to the early
church? For example, Jesus says not a word on circumcision, nor
on speaking in tongues, church policy, Jewish/Gentile unity,
divorce of non-Christian spouses, and women in the ministry. If
the church felt free to invent Jesus' sayings, why not some
 sayings on these issues? Even Mark (7:19) had to add his own
interpretive comment; he did not put his words in Jesus' mouth.

Strong oral tradition guards against such fabrication.

If the oral tradition in the church was solid as indicated above

(and this is even stronger if Jesus' sayings were also written
somewhere), how did anyone get away with creating new
sayings of Jesus? Anything not in accord with what Jesus said on
earth would have been rejected. (See here for an introduction.)

Such sayings should be seen as recollection and selection,

not creation. Much of what critics assign to the post-Easter
church is just as easily interpreted as arising from Jesus Himself
- making the material a recollection for the occassion, rather
than a creation. As Patzia expresses it: "The sayings that were
retained and transmitted were those that met the missionary,
preaching, apologetic and pastoral needs of the early church."
[Patz.MNT, 44]

And Nickle, while allowing for creation by the church, also writes
that [Nick.SGI, 15]:

The interpretive purposes for which the early church

used stories about Jesus affected the selective
process. Those stories which spoke most directly to
questions that were being asked, those narratives
which seemed to call forth the clearest
understanding, were the stories used most
frequently.

Stories less relevant, Nickle asserts, were retold less, and were
thus forgotten. Price [Pric.INP, 171-2]) adds:

It is much more probable that the interests of the

early Christians led them to select, interpret, and
apply stories of Jesus, than that the same interests
led them to create stories...if a large part of that
(Gospel) tradition was created by communities
lacking historical perspective and only giving
expression to their own interests, how does one
account for the presence in the Gospels of stories
derogatory to revered leaders of the early church?
Or what of sayings in the same Gospels which
seemingly compromise the conceptions of Christ's
person which prevailed when the Gospels were
 written?

While we may suppose that the sayings of Jesus were applied in

settings that were different from the original - as would happen
anyway, since no two situations are exactly alike! - we may NOT
presume that sayings were created out of the whole cloth -
especially because:

The idea of "prophets" in the church has no historical

evidence.

This idea was proposed by Bultmann, who said that the church
drew "no disctinction" between utterances by Christian prophets
(supposedly from the ascended Christ) and the earthly Jesus.
Bultmann took recognizance of statements that were indeed
attributed to the Risen Jesus (1 Thess. 4:15, Rev, 2-3) and
made much of it, though in neither case is a saying attributed to
Jesus when he was on earth. The Montanists in the 2nd century
especially were noted from producing sayinsg from Jesus in a
prophectic ecstasy [Dunn.CS2, 145].

There can be no question that the church assumed itself capable

of authoritative prophetic utterances. But did that authority
extend to assuming the ability to put words in Jesus' mouth
while on earth? Our answers [see also Dunn.CS2, 148ff]:

• Most of the candidates for such utterances merely

assume what they must prove: That the earthly Jesus
was not a divine character or was not aware of his divinity
or mission (Matt 11:28-30; Luke 11:49-51 -- here I
disagree with Dunn, who does suppose that such words
were transferred over to Jesus on earth, albeit rarely).

• There is no parallel for attributing the words of a

prophet to divinity: No OT books names Yahweh as its
author; in Judaism prophetic literature was passed down
under the name of the prophet.

The evidence is that the church continued this paradigm.

Luke always names prophets who receive utterances (Acts
11:27, 13:1-2, 21:9-14); Revelation is said to be from
Christ, but to John (1:1). This implies that the churches
"were as suspicious of anonymous prophetic oracles as
their Jewish forebears..."
• There were "hostile" witnesses who could recognize
sayings that didn't square with what Jesus would
say or ever said: If the church broke with Judaism on
this point, it is difficult to believe that this would not have
been a point of contention that would have echoed down
the halls of accusation.

Celsus' Jew accuses the Christians of altering the Gospels

to harmonize them, but does not say that they invented
words for Jesus based on prophetic oracles, and Diaspora
Jews who travelled to Palestine regularly for feasts and
would have heard, or heard about, Jesus' teachings were
everywhere to give reports or to make accusations.

Moreover, even within the church itself prophetic

utterances were tested as they were in Judaism, for truth
and accuracy, and false prophecies were warned against (1
Thess. 5:19-22, 2 Thess. 2:2). Prophets were tested in a
variety of ways -- by their behavior (with the Didache
offering several "tests" and guidelines for conduct, such as
living off the community for more than three days), and by
their adherence to orthodoxy (see esp. 1 John 4:1-3).

This is specially relevant as popular Jewish opinion held

that the prophetic spirit had ceased with Malachi. If there
was a claim that the spirit of prophecy was now doing
business again, it would have to pass some serious tests to
survive in Palestine and among the Diaspora.

• The testimony of Paul (1 Cor. 7:10, 12) indicates

that a difference was recognized between the words
of Jesus and his own: if Paul could just drop into a
creative ecstasy, why would he not "dive in" and bring out
a word from the risen Jesus? [Boyd.CSSG, 122-4] He
regards his opinion as inspired, to be sure, but does not
put it in the mouth of Jesus on earth. (The idea that 1 Cor.
7:10 refers to a "spiritual revelation" received directly by
Paul has nothing to commend it and merely begs the
question against the natural form of the verbiage.)

On the other hand, Revelation is directly attributed to the

exalted Christ. If this was approved by the early church,
why the need to switch it all over to the earthly Jesus?
Even the Gnostics preferred a "heavenly" attribution to an
earthly one.
 As Dunn asks, "whence came the sort of (unconscious)
pressue which Bultmann must presuppose to incorporate
prophetic sayings into the Jesus-tradition?" And note that
none of these sayings from Revelation appear as attributed
to the earthly Jesus in the Gospels.

Conclusion

The traditional view of the Gospels in terms of their authorship, date,

and historicity, is supported by the weight of the evidence, and
rejected only by those whose own theological agenda forbids them
from accepting it.

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