The New Testament Gospels and History

[anvi]

I've decided to post the following within its own thread, since a discussion revolving around the historical accuracy of the Gospel narratives had interrupted the subject of another thread.  In that thread, I claimed, in a regrettably contentious exchange, that the New Testament contained some historical fabrications.  I am taking this opportunity to detail some of the reasons, though I will be far from exhaustive, why I made this claim.  It should be noted that I do not intend this post as impuning the faith of Christians in the Gospel accounts of Jesus, for I do not believe that religious faith depends on factual corroboration of every historical claim made by any set of religious scriptures.  If it did, it would not be worthy of the name faith.  Neither do I mean to suggest that the New Testament authors I will refer to below wrote their documents in "bad faith,"or with any intent to deceive; quite the contrary, I believe they made their narratives in the hopes of giving what they believed to be more or less accurate renditions of Jesus' life and, to them more importantly, an explanation of the salvific meaning of Jesus' words and deeds.  

How valuable are the New Testament Gospels as historical documents, how reliable should the be considered as recordings of actual historical events?   Clearly, the Gospels contain much valuable historical information about their time and share general agreement about the important events and teachings associated with Jesus' life.  There are, nonetheless, problems with many facets of the account they propose to give.  Professional scholars and historians have researched this period of history zealously for the last several hundred years, and below are summaries of only some of their findings regarding the Gospels and history.

The Gosepls purport to record a number of momentus events that occured in the Roman empire and in Roman-occupied Israel in the first half of the first century, a time during which hundreds of documents survive written by both Jewish and Roman authors.  Because Jesus of Nazareth was such a seminal figure and the instigator of nothing less than a social and political crisis of epic perportions in his time, one would expect to find at least some documents from the same period or a period immediately following that corroborates some of the events recorded in the New Testament.  However, the first documents that even refers to the name Jesus or Christ come from a second century Roman provincial governor (Pliny) and two historians of the same period, Suetonius and the famous Tacitus), who give us no information about Jesus beyond his name, and they attribute his lifespan to different imperial reigns.  The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, does mention Jesus and his "brother James" in one passage along with the belief of some Jews that Jesus was the messiah.  There is one passage in Josephus' Antiquities (18:3:3) that witnesses to Jesus, his mission, his following among "Jews and Greeks," his execution under Pilate and his resurrection, and even claims Jesus was in factthe messiah.  But given the facts that Josephus records a great deal more about the mission of John the Bapitist (including much not contained in the Gospels) and other prophets of the time, and that Josephus works were transmitted through Christian historians, as well as the fact that this passage in question is written in an entirely different style compared to the rest of Josephus' writing, historicans widely suspect the passage to be a later Christian interpolation.  This exhausts the mentions Jesus receives in non-Christian sources before approximate the second half of the second century.  This silence is remarkable given what an incredible historical figure Jesus was purported to have been by the Gospels as well as the rapid growth of the Christian movement in the first century.

While scholars agree that the New Testament Gospels are probably the earliest of all the Gospel accounts that emerged from different groups of Christians in the first three centuries of the movement's history, they were written between three and five decades after Jesus' life, and, as the well-known Synoptic Problem demonstrates, often use one another as sources of composition.  But there are, despite this mutual dependence and large agreements between the Gospels, also significant disagreements of historical detail among the narrative accouints.  A few well-known examples follow:

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke both have birth narratives of Jesus, but they disagree significatly about where Jesus' family may originally be from and what sequence of events follows the birth.  In the birth narrative of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus is born in a "house" in Bethlehem (2:11), and after fleeing to Egypt to escape King Herod's "slaughter of the innocents," Joseph plans to return to Bethlehem, but he changes his mind and decides to relocate the family to Galilee when he hears that Herod's successor, Archaleus, is even more dastardly than Herod, and so he relocates the family to Nazareth (Matthew 2:22-23).  Matthew gives us the impression then that Jesus' hometown is Bethlehem and the family relocates to Galilee after returning from Egypt.  In the Gospel of Luke, the family of Jesus is said to come from Nazareth, and winds up in Bethlehem while on a trip to register for the imperial census ordered by Augustus (Luke 2:1-5).  Mary gives birth to Jesus and lays him in a stable "manger" because no room is avialable at the "inn," the child is visited by shephards (not wise men as in Matthew's account), circumcized and presented in Jerusalem, the family returns to Nazareth where Jesus is raised ((Luke 2:22-23; 39-40).   Apart from the diiferences in their accounts of the events of Jesus' birth, Luke clearly says that the hometown of Jesus' family is Nazareth (Luke 1:27) , while Matthew never gives us any reason to believe that Jesus family came from anywhere but Bethlehem, and after returning from Egypt, the family "settles" in Nazareth (Luke 2:23).  

continued in next post:



 

[anvi]

There are discrepancies among the Gospels regarding the day and time of Jesus' trial and death.  Mark 14:12: Jesus instructs his disciples to prepare for the Passover on the day before it occured, and Jesus and the disciples celebrate the Passover meal that evening, which is for them a new day, the day after the Passover preparation (14:17-25).  After the meal, Jesus and the disciples go to the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is betrayed and arrested, immediately put on trial by the Jewish Sanhedren, is convicted and spends the night in jail (Mark 14:32, 43, 53).  Jesus is brought before Pilate (15:1), condemned after a short trial and is crucified at 9:00 am that morning, the morning after the Passover meal had been eaten.  This has him celebrating the Passover on Thursday evening and executed on Friday morning.  The account in John gives us a different timeframe.  John 18:28 tells us that the Jewish priests refuse to go to Pilate's residence for Jesus trial, for this would defile them and render them unable to eat the Passovver meal, which would, it seems, take place that night.  Pilate then conducts an elaborate trial that forces him to go back and forth between Jesus and his Jewish accusers (John 18:28-19:16), and after Pilate renders his verdict "on the day of preparation for the Passover" at 12:00 noon, after which Jesus is sent off to be excuted.  This account has the Jewish priests axious to get the matter over with before the Passover meal takes place, and the execution therefore takes place at a diiferent time of day than Mark's account, and on a different day, Thursday instead of Friday.

Finally, there are some factual problems with a number of events recorded in the Gospels, some connected to major episodes in the life of Jesus, and some more minor but which have literary significance.  A few examples follow.

In Luke 1:5, we are told that Jesus was born "in the days of King Herod," the Roman hand-picked king of Judea.  From the Roman histories of Tacitus and the histories of Flavius Josephus as well as other sources, Herod died in 4 BCE.  Jesus is born in Bethlehem, as seen above, because Luke tells us an empire-wide census is ordered while Quirinius was the Governor of Syria (Luke 2:2).  But the same historians, Tacitus and Joesphus as well as other inscriptions from the time, all agree that Quirinius only first became the governor of Syria in the year 6 CE.  This means that Quirinius was not the governor of Syria until ten years after Herod's death, and so this gospel contains a basic historical error and raises a great ambiguity about the year of Jesus' birth.  In addition, absolutely no historical record from either Roman or Jewish sources records the taking of a massive empire-wide census, which would have caused incredible social dislocation beccause it mandated that all the inhabitants of the empire return to their ancestral homes to register.  Neither does any Roman or Jewish source record the slaughter of ever make Judean child under the age of two that the Gospels record.  The complete lack of any mention of either of these two momentus events, the census and the slaughter, in any other historical record of the period renders the Gospels' accounts of these events, from a historian's point of view, at best implausible.

One of Jesus' miracles, reported in Luke 7:11-16, portraying him as raising a child from the dead in a town called Nain, and opens with Jesus meeting the funeral procession near the "gate of the town."  There was indeed a village called Nain in Galilee in Jesus' time, but archeological excavations of the place revealed that no wall or gate ever stood at the village entrance or periphery.  it seems that this miacle story is written with these details not to reflect a historical event, but to mirror a similar miracle story about Elijah's raising of a dead child at the "gate" of the town of Sarepta (1 Kings 17:8-23).

I have already gone on to long on these matters, so I will leave out a discussion of what many scholars and historians find to be highly problematic features of the Gospel accounts surrounding Jesus trial before the Jewish high court and the Roman governor Pilate.

To sum up, the facts that no extra-biblical corroboration of the detailed events of the Gospels can be found in any other historical document of the 1st century BCE, that the Gospels offer different historical accounts of many significant events in Jesus' life and that the Gospels make some significant historical claims that are either false or highly implausible, makes their value as historical documents sometimes problematic.  These things also show that the Gospels were written by human beings, human beings that were no doubt inspired by the life and teachings of Jesus, but who were, like the rest of us, flawed human beings who made errors and mistakes.

Once again, none of this is meant to impune Christian faith.  It certainly does suggest that literal readings of the texts might not always be the best readings, and the Christian Gospels are not primarily history books; they are not meant to be in the same genre as McPhereson's Battle Cry of Freedom, his history of the American Civil War.  They are documents of faith, which, as Paul says, is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"

[12th Doctor]

You are basically making the argument I make all the time.

The explanation is quite simple:

None of the Gospels was ever written to be an historical account.  The writers (sans John) tried their best to get it as accurate as possible, but I am sure they made some mistakes.  Does that change the fact that the text is inspired in its meaning?  No.

But as I have always said, and jmfcst has yet to come up with an effective counter for, lets not forget that the Church Fathers predated the New Testament itself.  Inspired men had to choose inspired texts.

Alot of this is also clouded by the passage of time.

Languages change, and while we can get a pretty good feel for what the exact meaning of the text was, we cannot know what every word has meant in every dialect of every language at every moment in time.

We also have to be aware of different social conventions.  As is the case with the "Brother of Jesus" and Jesus "brothers and sisters" you have to understand that Aramaic lacks any concept of a "cousin".  All children of the same generation of a family were viewed as siblings of one another.  And so, of course, they lacked a word for cousin.

Cold reading biblical texts, as you say, is not "liberating" to people's faith, as the Protestant's imagined it would be and still think it is.  It is, in fact, the surest path to error.

[afleitch]

None of the Gospels was ever written to be an historical account.  The writers (sans John) tried their best to get it as accurate as possible, but I am sure they made some mistakes.  Does that change the fact that the text is inspired in its meaning?  No.

Bingo.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

anvikshiki,

That was a long introduction, and I didn’t make it through all of it because I just started skimming and came upon the following argument:

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke both have birth narratives of Jesus, but they disagree significatly about where Jesus' family may originally be from and what sequence of events follows the birth.  In the birth narrative of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus is born in a "house" in Bethlehem (2:11), and after fleeing to Egypt to escape King Herod's "slaughter of the innocents," Joseph plans to return to Bethlehem, but he changes his mind and decides to relocate the family to Galilee when he hears that Herod's successor, Archaleus, is even more dastardly than Herod, and so he relocates the family to Nazareth (Matthew 2:22-23).  Matthew gives us the impression then that Jesus' hometown is Bethlehem and the family relocates to Galilee after returning from Egypt.  In the Gospel of Luke, the family of Jesus is said to come from Nazareth, and winds up in Bethlehem while on a trip to register for the imperial census ordered by Augustus (Luke 2:1-5).  Mary gives birth to Jesus and lays him in a stable "manger" because no room is avialable at the "inn," the child is visited by shephards (not wise men as in Matthew's account), circumcized and presented in Jerusalem, the family returns to Nazareth where Jesus is raised ((Luke 2:22-23; 39-40).   Apart from the diiferences in their accounts of the events of Jesus' birth, Luke clearly says that the hometown of Jesus' family is Nazareth (Luke 1:27) , while Matthew never gives us any reason to believe that Jesus family came from anywhere but Bethlehem, and after returning from Egypt, the family "settles" in Nazareth (Luke 2:23).

There is not a single contradiction within these different accounts.  You’re simply disconnecting your common sense that you use everyday and are assuming each account is exhaustive.  But, if you assume each account is not exhaustive, an assumption your common sense makes everyday when you pick up a newspaper, then it is obvious the accounts are complimentary. 

In addition, your facts are wrong:

In the birth narrative of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus is born in a "house" in Bethlehem (2:11)

Wrong.  Matthew does NOT state that Jesus was born in a house, it only states that he was born in Bethlehem.

Mat 2:1 “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem…”

The only statement regarding the “house”, Matthew states that it was location of Magi visit to Jesus.  Matthew does NOT say Jesus was born in the house:

Mat 2:10” the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.  11On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.”

And here is your error:  You’re assuming this visitation occurred shortly after Jesus’ birth, but the chronology of Matthew allows for the visitation to have taken place up to two years after the birth of Jesus:

Mat 2:16 “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.”

So, obviously, Joseph and Mary would not have been still living in the stable for up to two years after Jesus’ birth.  The only reason they were in the stable to begin with is because there was no room in the inn at the time of Jesus’ birth.  And, obviously, the Magi’s journey took up to two years.  Therefore, it should be no surprise that Joseph obtained a house in the two years following Jesus’ birth.

So, the chronology of Matthew is as follows:
1)   Jesus is born in Bethlehem (Mat 2:1)
2)   then, Magi from the east come to Herod in Jerusalem (Mat 2:1)
3)   Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. (Mat 2:7)
4)   Herod send Magi to Bethlehem (a short distance from Jerusalem) to search of the Chrsit and gives instructions to report back (Mat 2:8 )
5)   Magi visit Jesus at a house in Bethlehem (Mat 2:11)
6)   Magi leave to return to their own countries without reporting back to Herod (Mat 2:12)
7)   Herod, seeing the Magi did not report back, orders every two year old boy and under to be killed in accordance with the time of the appearance of the star he had learned from the Magi (2:16)

So, common sense states the timeline went something like:

1)   Jesus is born in Bethlehem (Mat 2:1a), and at the same time (Mat 2:7, Mat 2:16), Magi see a star announcing the birth of the King of the Jews (Mat 2:2)
2)   then, the Magi who saw the star at the time of Jesus' birth (Mat 2:7, Mat 2:16),  journey to Jerusalem and present themselves to Herod (Mat 2:1-2)
3)   Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared (Mat 2:7)...which was up to two years ago (Mat 2:16)
4)   Herod sends Magi to Bethlehem (a short distance from Jerusalem) to search of the Chrsit and gives instructions to report back (Mat 2:8 )
5)   Magi visit Jesus at a house in Bethlehem (Mat 2:11)
6)   Magi leave to return to their own countries without reporting back to Herod (Mat 2:12)
7)   Herod, seeing the Magi did not report back, orders every two year old boy and under to be killed in accordance with the time of the appearance of the star he had learned from the Magi (2:16)

---

As you can see from the above example, debunking your arguments is a trivial exercise for any novice reader of the bible – all it takes is a quick reading of the text to show that your arguments are filled with assumptions, distortions, and factual errors.

So, since I lack the patience to go through each one of your arguments, pick what you believe is your best and strongest argument and present it in concise way without a long flowery introduction.  And skip all the whining about how you are treated – just concisely state the points of your strongest argument.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

None of the Gospels was ever written to be an historical account.  The writers (sans John) tried their best to get it as accurate as possible, but I am sure they made some mistakes.  Does that change the fact that the text is inspired in its meaning?  No.

Bingo.

[slams head into wall]

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...sounds historical to me

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...sounds historical to me

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...sounds historical to me

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...sounds historical to me

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...sounds historical to me

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Didn’t see this little tidbit:

But as I have always said, and jmfcst has yet to come up with an effective counter for, lets not forget that the Church Fathers predated the New Testament itself.  Inspired men had to choose inspired texts.

You mean the “Church Fathers” predated the canonization of the New Testament, but not the material itself.  And, as I have repeated mentioned, this is no different than in Old Testament days where there was no “official” canonization, yet God still placed the burden on the individual to recognize what was scripture and to obey it or be condemned.

Your whole argument that the canonization guidance of the Church Father’s was absolutely necessary for your salvation completely ignores the fact that:
1) in the days of the Old Testament, there was no “infallible leadership” and no “canonized scripture”, yet God still held the Israelites accountable and people still found salvation
2) the early Church, as recorded in the New Testament, there was no canonized New Testament, yet they had no trouble at all preaching the gospel from an NON-canonized Old Testament to which they held their teaching accountable.

You’re basically saying that the word of God held no authority until it was canonized by men, which is obviously not the case.

Maybe you should start a thread on the doctrine of church infallibility, then we can start at the beginning and trace the doctrine all the way through the bible.

[anvi]

jmfcst,

When I said at the beginning of my post in this thread that our previous conversation was regrettably contentious, I was not, as you intimate, "whining," I was describing a conversation in which I contributed a good bit to the contention.  But, since you enjoy giving me stylistic criticisms, I'll be concise here.  First of all, the purpose of the long intro was to assure whatever Christians would be reading it that I did not intend my interpretation to malign their faith despite the historical skepticism about many of the Gospel narratives it expressed.  Second, I'll write my posts however I damn well please.  Third, nice job putting together the chronology in Mattew.  Never mind that in sequence or detail its birth narrative doesn't agree with the one in Luke, and never mind that there isn't any other textual evidence outside the New Testament Gospels to corroborate what is claimed to have occurred in them. No matter how many times you repeat the phrase that an assertion in the Gospels "sounds historical," that doesn't mean there is enough corroborating evidence to make it plausible to a historian, who makes historical judgments based on the weight of agreeing evidence, not on the basis of the testimony of one set of religious texts, no matter how holy they happen to be to any particular person.  That's the difference between history and faith.  Historical study does not permit us to take the New Testament as error-free, literal historical fact.  But that need not necessarily impinge on people's faith, which is supposed to be...faith.  That's my argument.  It's also my argument, per the original discussion, that in terms of historical corroboration, Christianty is no better off than Islam, or any other major religious tradition, for that matter.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Third, nice job putting together the chronology in Mattew.  Never mind that in sequence or detail its birth narrative doesn't agree with the one in Luke

state your strongest example of a sequence or detail that is contradicted between Matthew and Luke

---

, and never mind that there isn't any other textual evidence outside the New Testament Gospels to corroborate what is claimed to have occurred in them.

actually, there is a lot of external evidence, from the rulers that were mentioned to fact that tax registration required the presence of all family members, even very pregnant women. 

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Third, nice job putting together the chronology in Mattew.  Never mind that in sequence or detail its birth narrative doesn't agree with the one in Luke

state your strongest example of a sequence or detail that is contradicted between Matthew and Luke

while you're formulate your response, maybe you should consider the following example:


Account 1: After blowing a 20-7 lead, the Steelers rallied late for a comeback win over the Cardinals to win SB43 by a score of 27-23.

Account 2: After trailing by as much as 20-7, a last minute comeback attempt by the Cardinals was snuffed out as the Steelers captured their 6th super bowl title 27-23.

Notice that both accounts have the same beginning (Steelers led 20-7) and the same ending (Steelers won 27-23), but the details in between are different.

Are both accounts relating to the same game?  Yep!

Is either account exhaustive?  Nope!

Do both accounts list differing details?  Yep!

Do the accounts contradict each other?  Nope!

Are both accounts 100% accurate?  Yep!!!

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Second, I'll write my posts however I damn well please.

kinda reminds me of the movie Raising Arizona:

HI: Wanna keep your voice down, Glen?

GLEN:   I'll pitch my voice wherever I please! His name ain't HI Jr.! His name ain't Ed Jr.! But it's junior an right! Yes sir, it's Nathan Jr.!

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Second, I'll write my posts however I damn well please.

kinda reminds me of the movie Raising Arizona:

HI: Wanna keep your voice down, Glen?

GLEN:   I'll pitch my voice wherever I please! His name ain't HI Jr.! His name ain't Ed Jr.! But it's junior an right! Yes sir, it's Nathan Jr.!

check it out at the 2:40 mark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe-JLKRDBAU&feature=related

[12th Doctor]

None of the Gospels was ever written to be an historical account.  The writers (sans John) tried their best to get it as accurate as possible, but I am sure they made some mistakes.  Does that change the fact that the text is inspired in its meaning?  No.

Bingo.

[slams head into wall]

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...sounds historical to me

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...sounds historical to me

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...sounds historical to me

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...sounds historical to me

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...sounds historical to me

You knew exactly what I meant, once again.  Yes, they are an account of events, but they are not written specifically as history.  Their aim is not to get every single little detail absolutely 100% correct and in sequence.  What matters most to the writters is the message being conveyed.

[12th Doctor]

Of course, look who I am talking to.  The person who thinks that every tiny, little, obscure detail in the Bible is 100% historically accurate, regardless of the context, the writers intentions, or any other proof to the contrary.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Luke 1:1  "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught

You knew exactly what I meant, once again.  Yes, they are an account of events, but they are not written specifically as history.  Their aim is not to get every single little detail absolutely 100% correct and in sequence.  What matters most to the writters is the message being conveyed.

Of course the message being conveyed is the utmost importance.  Which is why they felt the responsibility to get all of it right, right down to the historical details.  Any reading of Luke's opening statement proves that.

You have your head buried in the sand if you can read the Gospel and the book of Acts and not come away with the impression they were written as historical accounts.

---

Of course, look who I am talking to.  The person who thinks that every tiny, little, obscure detail in the Bible is 100% historically accurate, regardless of the context, the writers intentions, or any other proof to the contrary.

Supersoulty,

I going to tell you the same thing I told Anvikshiki...I don't need long flowery introductions as if I'm about to wilt, I don't want namecalling, and I don't want baseless innuendo....Rather I want concise statements of fact so that the facts can be the center of the discussion.

If you know of a contradiction, then state it and we'll discuss it.  Otherwise, you're just adding static.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Third, nice job putting together the chronology in Mattew.  Never mind that in sequence or detail its birth narrative doesn't agree with the one in Luke

state your strongest example of a sequence or detail that is contradicted between Matthew and Luke

still waiting....