Dating the Gospels: Looking at the Historical Framework

            From what I gather, all credible sources cite Paul’s Epistles as the oldest NT writings. Of the Gospels however, Synoptic Gospels plus the 4^th Gospel, they begin with the book of Mark, the earliest of all the Gospels. General consensus among scholars is that it was written circa 60-70 A.D. (C.E.). Both Bart D. Ehrman's seminary text book entitled The New Testament and Biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown’s International version of An Introduction to the New Testament are great resources for answering questions on dating the Synoptic Gospels, Paul's Epistles, and more. I’ll also be intermingling and weaving in some Wikipedia sources which are very heavily referenced in detail, and should help you get started investigating the crux of the matter in full.

            Browsing through the Synoptic Gospels, the first three gospels of the New Testament, we discover that the canonical order of these Gospels follows the tradition that the book of Matthew came first. This was originally proposed by the fifth century bishop Augustine of Hippo. He did so to try and explain the consistent relationships between the Synoptic Gospels by proposing that Matthew was written prior to Mark which in turn used Matthew as a source. Finally Luke was presumed to have been written using Matthew and Mark as its sources. John, often called the Fourth Gospel, seems to stand apart from the others for various textual reasons which we'll discuss later on.

            The precise nature of the relationships between the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke is known as the Synoptic Problem. The recognition of the question, and attempts to resolve it, date to antiquity. For example, Augustine of Hippo tried to explain the relationships between the synoptic gospels by proposing, as mentioned earlier, that perhaps Matthew was written first. This would explain the similarities then in Mark using Matthew as a source. Finally, following Augustine of Hippo's suggestion that Luke was written using Matthew and Mark as sources we get a theoretical chronology for the order of the Gospel texts. Although, it's worth noting that this specific solution has fallen out of favor among modern scholars. When Augustine wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi library were not yet recovered and the evidence for the Lost Gospel of Q (e.g. the Q document) was not yet readily available.

The above mentioned archeological discoveries have forced modern scholars to reject Augustine of Hippo's theory knowing that the Gospel of Mark, not Matthew, was the earliest written canonical Gospel. However, the exclusive relationship between the three texts, especially the near duplication of wording and structure in some parts of Matthew and Luke, still needed to be explained.  

            There are differing opinions as to how late Mark could have been written. Most scholars agree with the Two-source hypothesis that proposes that Mark was one of the sources for the other Synoptic Gospels, Matthew and Luke; according to this viewpoint the latest possible date for Mark depends on the dating of Matthew and Luke. A wide range of recent critical scholars believe that Mark was written at the earliest after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70.^{[22][23][24][25][26][27][28]}

            Two papyrologists, Fr. Josep O'Callaghan and Carsten Peter Thiede, have proposed that lettering on a postage-stamp-sized papyrus fragment found in a cave at Qumran, 7Q5, represents a fragment of Mark (Mark 6:52–53); thus they assert that the present gospel was written and distributed prior to 68. Computer analysis has shown that, assuming their disputed reading of the letters to be correct, and allowing for the replacement of one letter and the omission of a three word phrase "to the land", only Mark matches these twenty letters and five lines among all known Greek manuscripts.^[8] The majority of papyrologists question this identification of the fragmentary text,^[29] for several reasons. Some assume that all early papyrus Gospel manuscripts were copied as codices.^[8], and that a copy in a scroll format would not have been made for the Qumran librarians. While no other known Greek work matches 7Q5's wording, neither does Mark unless the phrase "to land", found in all other extant manuscripts of Mark, is omitted from 6:52–53.

            John A. T. Robinson in 'Redating the New Testament' proposes an even earlier date. He accepts Marcan Priority and dates Luke/Acts no later than 62. Therefore, if Mark was written before Luke/Acts, Robinson dates Mark to the mid-fifties.^[30] Whereas the dating of Mark near AD 70 is based on apparent references to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, combined with the assumption that the first readers would not have understood these references if the gospel had been written prior to the events described.

            The relationships between the three synoptic gospels go beyond mere similarity in viewpoint. The gospels often recount the same stories, usually in the same order, sometimes using the same words. Subsequently, following Mark are the Gospel books of Matthew and Luke.

            The date of Matthew is still a matter of debate among Biblical scholars. Many believe it was composed between the years 70 and 100.^[62][63] The writings of Ignatius show "a strong case ... for [his] knowledge of four Pauline epistles and the Gospel of Matthew"^[64], which gives a terminus ad quem of c. 110. The author of the Didache (c 100) probably knew it as well.^[4] Some scholars see the prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem (e.g. in Matthew 22:7) as suggesting a date of authorship after the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD:^[65] However, John A. T. Robinson argues that the lack of a passage indicating the fulfilment of the prophecy suggest a date before that^[66]. Matthew does not mention the death of James in 62 AD. It also lacks any narrative on the persecutions of the early Christians by Nero.

            Scholars note that the similarities between Mark, Matthew, and Luke are too great to be accounted for by mere coincidence.^[4] Because multiple eyewitnesses reporting the same events never relate a story using identical words, scholars and theologians have long assumed that there was some relationship between the three synoptic gospels that was based upon common literary sources.

Extensive copying between all three texts, which were written separately around 70 CE, turns out to be the result of another document referred to by scholars as Q. Stemming from the German word Quelle, which means “source” in German, historians have postulated that there is a lost textual source for the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke. This theoretical text is presumed to be a collection of Jesus’ sayings and teachings and was further given credibility with a huge find in Egypt in 1945 near the town of Nag Hammâdi. As the story goes, a local peasant named Mohammed Ali Samman discovered a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts, having stumbled upon several buried jars, all of them sealed. Upon opening the jars the man discovered twelve leather-bound papyrus codices giving birth to The Nag Hammadi library (popularly known as The Gnostic Gospels). Picknett and Prince explain better the importance of the Gnostic texts when they inform:

There are also a large number of fragments of lost works, sometimes referring to sayings or deeds of Jesus that are not in the New Testament, but of roughly the same age. In fact one of the fragments—actually four small scraps of papyrus—in the British Museum and known by the riveting title of ‘Egerton Papyrus 2’ is possibly the oldest surviving document about Jesus in existence.

What is so marvelous about this find is that many of the Gnostic Gospels were dated to roughly the same time as the Synoptic Gospels, the oldest being the Ryland’s fragment of John’s Gospel (circa 125-150 C.E.). The Egerton fragments, a Gnostic text, dated between 90-150 C.E., the same (perhaps older) than the Ryland’s fragment, and shared many of the same verses and sayings of Jesus Christ of the Synoptic Gospels (see: Source criticism and Form criticism), thus proving that a yet undiscovered third source text must exist—this being the lost Gospel of Q. (See: the Nag Hammadi Library)

Another point worth bringing up is that the majority of the Gnostic Gospels show a much more human portrayal of Jesus Christ. In fact, the Gnostic texts such as the Gospel of Mary (attributed to Mary Magdalene) we find no evidence of any miraculous resurrection, which coincides with the original Gospel Mark and its strange absence of a post resurrection Christ. This may suggest that the resurrection story was added later into the canonical scriptures as some scholars suggest.

 

            In his excellent book Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, the literary critic Harold Bloom brings up the most apparent, and regrettably the most ignored, of Biblical changes which should cause us to immediately doubt the divinity of the text as a whole. Bloom’s acute observations lead the scholar to write, “The New Testament frequently is a strong misreading of the Hebrew Bible, and certainly it has persuaded multitudes,” and goes on to inform, “The New Testament accomplishes its appropriation by means of its drastic reordering of the Tanakh.” On the following page Bloom gives a side-by-side list of the book changes of the Old Testament in comparison to the original order of the Jewish Tanakh—i.e. the original Jewish holy book before passionate Christians hijacked and newly reassembled it into what we deem the “Old Testament.”

            So regardless of when the Gospels were written, this is important for anyone who is willing to take the Gospel stories for all they're worth, since it appears that much of their composition relies on redaction, or retelling of OT stories re-written for evangelical purposes past the expiration date of Jesus. It basically shows that there is more going on between the lines than most Christians realize.

What may be more shocking to believers is that modern Christianity does not stem from Jesus Christ at all, but rather, comes from that re-envisioned theology of St. Paul. Not forgetting to mention that almost an entire third of the New Testament is Pauline, a fact we can’t afford to overlook, the discerning Harold Bloom mentions, “Between his priority, his centrality in the text, and his reinvention of much of Christianity, Paul is its crucial founder. Yeshua of Nazareth, who died still trusting in the Covenant with Yahweh, cannot be regarded as the inaugurator of a new faith.”

More than this, we cannot neglect the augmentation of Paul’s theology by early church leaders. In the Jesus Dynasty Tabor reminds us, “Although our New Testament gospels contain historical material, the theological editing is a factor that the discerning reader must constantly keep in mind.”  

Even the Gospels do not fully agree with one another all of the time, as Bart D. Ehrman puts it, “The biblical authors did not agree on everything they discussed; sometimes they had deeply rooted and significant disagreements.”

 Ultimately, this can be troubling for anyone who believes that the Bible is the literal word of God. Robert M. Price, part of the Jesus Seminar, and author of The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, has equivocated:

The controlling presupposition seems to be, “If the traditional view cannot be absolutely debunked beyond the shadow of a doubt, if it still might possibly be true, then we are within our rights to continue to believe it.” But scholarly judgments can never properly be a matter of “the will to believe.” Rather, the historian’s maxim must always be Kant’s: “Dare to know.”

And this is where I must leave off. Because either you will be contented with what evidence you are given, or you will not, but in the end I hope you follow Kant’s dictum to dare to know. It’s what I have tried to do and will continue to aspire to. As one who is deeply interested, or more precisely: enthralled, by this period of human history I can’t help but find I love to learn about all the theories, the good ones and the bad. Whatever evidence and theories stand up to scrutiny, and are quantifiable, are the ones which are the most stable, and therefore likely justifiable. Consequently, these become the ones I’ll likely settle upon as the best chance of being accurate if not akin to the truth (although as a non-believer and skeptic there is always the possibility to change my mind when better evidence is forthcoming).

I hope this helped answer any questions about when the Gospel books were supposedly written. I wish you good luck and happy researching!

Sincerely,

Tristan D. Vick

Advocatus Atheist

An Atheist's Personal Testimony

(Above: My wife Sayaka)

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“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?”
2 Corinthians 6:14-15, King James Version

Okay, so here is the sort of Christian I was, because it was who I was, it is how I thought:

I believed it when the Bible said not to marry anyone outside of the faith. I believed it would be a sin to do so. I believe it would ruin my relationship with Christ.

Then I met Sayaka.

My whole life I had been raised in a Church which taught that if I married a non-Christian, such as a Buddhist, I'd go to hell. And in my piety I believed it.

But then I met Sayaka, and suddenly, an eternity in hell seemed like a risk worth taking.

Like many fundamentalist Christians, I was raised on entirely conservative values, where my Pastor denounced premarital sex and called it lust and a temptation of the flesh, living together before marriage was shunned, and to even talk about one’s sexual identity was taboo. Abortion was seen as evil and homosexuality was a grotesque perversion of human morality. And I believed it all.

But then I met Sayaka, and she showed me there is more to people than unfounded stereotypes. She opened my eyes, and taught me compassion and empathy for others, no matter their race, gender, sexual orientation, or background.

And nothing my faith held seemed to make sense anymore. It was telling me I couldn't love the woman of my dreams because she was an outside force tempting me away from my faith. My form of Christianity taught that I couldn't be with her, that if I chose to love this woman... that if I chose love… God would punish me for it.

My fundamental, quite literal, convictions weren't compatible with a more multicultural and open-minded view of interracial relationships. I believed God was all loving, but only of his chosen flock. If she wasn’t a true Christian, then I’d be jeopardizing my very salvation by allowing myself to be led astray.

So I had to seriously start questioning my faith, and what it taught, because I found someone who I loved and who loved me with all her being back. And that’s not something I wanted to give up. Who would?

I didn't want to be a lonely bigot preaching about the power of God’s love but know nothing about love. Who is going to believe the message of Jesus Christ’s message of love for us all when the same people turn around to hypocritically denounce homosexual’s right to marry, tell people who they can and can’t have sex with, and attempt to restrict the rights of women to govern their own bodies? That’s not a religion of love, it’s a faith based ideology predicated on inequality and hate.

When it came to devotion to my faith, or devotion to my future wife, I chose my wife over the religious ideology. Granted, it wasn't the only thing... just the tipping point and the catalyst. It's what started to make me question everything. EVERYTHING. It gave me the ability to be skeptical and challenged me to seriously rethink things.

Indeed, I had to open my eyes and reread the Bible as a book again, not as the literal truth on everything. Sayaka was the catalyst that caused me to go back and re-evaluate things, everything from who I was as a person, to what I believed, to who I wanted to become.

So learning to love someone fully, regardless of who they were, what race, or cultural background was a challenge for me coming from my very radical, fundamentalist, Christian views. Even as I struggled with the belief that I would go to hell for loving, I kept thinking, how is this not sick and twisted? Jesus was supposed to be all loving, but when I went back to the Bible to confirm it, instead of support I found more outmoded, sexist, xenophobic teachings. And then I had to make a choice, either keep believing in it, because it's all I knew—It's what I was taught—or go back to square one and re-educate myself, become something new, and I’m not ashamed that I did, and that I did it all for a girl.

Sayaka changed my world in more ways than one. In fact, she is my world. She is everything to me. And I'm a hopeless romantic... but better off for it, me thinks.

In the long run, I want to help others, like homosexuals, religiously oppressed women, and unsuspecting children, who feel the same anti-humanitarian fear and hate coming from religion. I want to help liberate them from the theocratic rule which has stifled their spirits and caused them to doubt themselves. I want to show them how to shed the shackles of archaic bronzed age superstitions which still actively influence us today, and move beyond such backwards ideas. So I wanted to advocate reason and equip them with the most powerful tool they’d ever need. I want to share the enlightenment I have undergone, because it was so liberating, but not only this, it also saved me and turned my life around.

Psychologist Darrel W. Ray in The God Virus has a great chapter on how religion perverts the normal psychology of sex, distorts it into something wicked, and depicts how it tries to interrupt your life and strives to retard an otherwise healthy sex life by seeking to control one's sexuality. I found that I experienced many of the same negative influences at the hands of faith and it made me utterly miserable. A good book for anyone who wants to see the psychological scary side to religious indoctrination and belief might be interested in this book.

Are Atheists too Stubborn to Listen to Reason?

Am I a hardened atheist? Am I too inflexible? Do I always think I'm right? My Christian friend informed me:

You are challenging but just because you don't listen.

Which caused me to pause. Because I think of myself as a person who listens quite well. Many friends who I have consoled and comforted have informed me that I was the best listener they ever confided in. I still get phone calls from my high school sweetheart whenever she needs to vent, and she always tells me that I'm so easy to talk to. But then again, friends aren't exactly unbiased when it comes to doling out compliments. Maybe there is a character flaw I haven't noticed before? Or maybe, it appears that I don't listen because, in all honesty, there are just some things worth listening to more than others.

When it comes to listening to people's "truths" I have to apply caution. Am I going to listen to any old uninformed, twice-baked, nonsensical opinion or personal philosophy which has no tested or tried value? In short, no. I try to be as discerning as possible. I just don't have time for poorly constructed thoughts, and who would waste their time listening to hours of moon hoax landing propaganda, or holocaust denial, creationist conjecture. Should we seriously waste time by patiently hearing out those with no real point to make, such as religious frauds trying to sell us their thoughts on how to make us better people if we just buy (into) The Secret or some equivalent bosh, bull, or bunk? I don't think so.

I am a selective listener. I also happen to be stubborn in what I selectively listen to. I've learned how to identify the baloney and then scrutinize it, critically take it apart, and determine whether or not it has any merit to speak of or if its just more rigmarole. So no, I don't think I'm a bad listener, I just don't listen to opinions that aren't supported with evidence or based on reason, or in themselves not very reasonable. Personally, I try to be more skeptical than credulous.

But overall, I like to think of myself as a reasonable listener. And by this, the corollary follows as well, I will stop listening when the content becomes too unreasonable. It's that simple.

So maybe that does make me challenging, since if you're a Christian who is going to try and preach the gospel to me and save my immortal soul, within the first three sentences that come out of your mouth I will have been able to critique and judge whether or not you know anything about anything, or if you're simply another dime store variety propagandist working for the man in the sky. And I don't have time to listen to creationist conjecture or poorly rehearsed apologetics. There's more important things to be listening to and filling my mind with, in my opinion. Take it for what it's worth.

In the end, that may not be the open minded sit down and let someone spill their guts sort of therapeutic listening people crave when they want to be heard, but if people would only think about what it is they were saying more carefully first, I wouldn't have to defend my choice not to listen to their often times mind numbing stupidity. Let me put it this way, I'll listen to something worth listening to, so you better make it good, and that's the challenge.

Moreover, whenever I am being challenging, what I hope to get out of it, is to challenge other people to think for themselves. I hope they will see by what I am trying to do here is show them how they can base their opinions off dependable and reliable evidence, not some devotional creed or conviction which, more often than not, turns out to be unfounded and uninformed.

I am about weeding through the balderdash and picking up the gems of truth along the way. But first we must learn how to weed out the unwanted stuff that litters our philosophical landscape. And that's what I try to do here. Show how my Atheist views are sustainable, and sometimes this means doing a little weeding, so if I start hacking away at people's cherished religious beliefs, there is a rhyme and reason, and it's political. Not personal.

Christianity: The Stupid Factory: Making Bona Fide Idiots Since Year One

Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ted Haggard, Jim Jones, Jimmy Swaggart, Tammy Faye Bakker, Robert Tilton, Peter Popoff, and a truckload of boy-molesting Catholic priests... what do they all have in common? They're all BELIEVERS.

What else do they all have in common? They're all immoral, hypocritical, bigoted, charlatans and frauds.  Many of them convicted criminals. Do you  sense a pattern here? I know I do. This begs the question, can such scumbags and lowlifes be true Christians? That's debatable, but millions believed they were, and some still do! After all, Christianity is about the saving the sinner, or as the adage goes, love the sinner but hate the sin. Good, it's about second chances, about finding forgiveness. We at least deserve a second chance, right? How many chances do they need? I mean, if God will forgive them for almost anything, why not keep misbehaving? Seriously, is there no end to the credulity of the faithful? 

Speaking of the credulous, Pat Robertson's faith in the supernatural compels hims to believe stupid things, what's more it actually compels him to open his stupid mouth and share his imbecilic ideas with the world. In this new case, Robertson thinks that Haiti is paying for a pact with the Devil (yes, you heard right, a pact with an imaginary being from a book of myth and fairy tales is the literal cause for the Haitian people's suffering. And I thought it had something to do with plate tectonics). At any rate, as my Christian pal recently stated about Pat Robertsons' idiocy regarding his insensitive and libelous comments about the Haiti earthquake disaster:

"And if Christians aren't listening to these wacky nut jobs, then the same hoi polloi sheep are listening to some other nutter. Such ignorance doesn't change just because you knock off the top guy; the top guy just changes. There's really no fixing stupid. They just build a better idiot."

Well, when the faith is an idiot making factory, there's no escaping it I suppose. And believe you me, Christianity is an idiot making factory. Case in point, ever heard of Randy Demain? I mean, seriously, have you listened to this guy? Please, by all means, do: RAISING THE DEAD.

Need I say more? Because I think Randy said it all for me. Not only does he save postmortem rape victims, but he'll also revivify your dead baby! All you have to do is pay him lots of money, and have a little faith. It's ALIVE!! Mad-crackpot-witchdoctor-voodoo-priest!

Also, I love how Demain uses scripture to support his crackpot story of, what to me, sounded a lot like an attempted rape and a bit of tomfoolery. But he's the hero of course (not the power of Jesus? Silly deluded Evangelical witchdoctor). Oh my, Randy also believes in incantations, and will say  just about darn near anything in the name of Jesus, and abracadabra, presto, and poof, it's magic! Nuts like this need to keep their stupid hoodoo to themselves. Or read a different book once in a while, preferably a science book, and get a real education. Something--for Christ's sake.

 

Sheesh! I thought Pat Robertson was deluded. Where do these guys come from? Oh yeah... duh. The faith based assembly line, making bona fide idiots since year one.

And just so you don't feel like I'm stereotyping Christians, it's not their beliefs which make them into idiots, it's their gullibility to take literally a book of superstitious myths, infused with dogmatic zeal, and a belief stemming from their childhood indoctrination when they were too young to know the difference, they think it's all too real, which predisposes them to take magical fairy tales at face value, and combined with faith based doctrines, creeds, and religious observations, causes them to act in a myriad of stupid ways.

Let me share a personal story with you guys. My mother has manic depression, a bi-polar disorder in which her brains doesn't make enough of the necessary chemicals to keep her emotionally stable. Without medicine she basically turns into Angelina Jolie from the film Girl Interrupted. It's like permanent PMS magnified by a bad acid trip twenty-four seven. Not a good combination, if you catch my drift.

So one day, being a devout Christians my mother and aunt decided to attend a faith healing session at my aunt's new church, where the power of touch and speaking Jesus name will magically heal all! My mother attended several sessions, people huddled around her, prayed, spoke in tongues (as if glossolalia was going to do the trick), and use their super palm force to drive the evil spirits out of her body! My mother ended up throwing all of her meds away! Yes, that's right, she stopped taking her medicine cold turkey. And she told me Jesus had cured her. Hallelujah!

A few weeks later she suffered a mental breakdown and we had to institutionalize her so professional medical physicians could re-balance her medication and so trained counselors could help her learn to be more responsible with her illness.

Some might say that was an idiotic thing to do. But my mom is an intelligent lady. She has a masters degree in education, and she was a teacher for most of her adult carrier. So was it all that schooling and education which caused her to do something so idiotic? Not likely. Would she have stopped taking the meds that the doctor prescribed her if not for outside influences ultimately convincing her not to? Probably. So what happened? She bought into the Christian scheme, the promise of miracles and magic, all done in the name of Jesus Christ she thought she had been cured.

She wasn't.

And even as she continued to believe after the fact, as a person of faith, that Christ would be there for her he never made an appearance and his name was used in vein. She bought into all the hype and Evangelical charismatic preaching, and they bamboozled her good. She almost died because of it. The day she broke down she decided to crash her car and kill herself... when a highway patrol pulled her over. (Later, after all the dust had settled and she could think straight again, she told me this wasn't any coincidence either, that God works in mysterious ways. She stopped trusting Evangelical preachers, and voodoo priest witchdoctors of the Christian sort, but she still believed all the claptrap found in the Bible).

You know what though? It didn't even matter, because after all of their hard work, my mom finally got back onto her own two feet with a lot of help from others, and you know what she said? She said, "Praise the Lord! I'm finally healed."

As I recall, the Lord is the one who wasn't there when my mother needed him. Also, the Lord wasn't the one who fixed her illness. Trained medical staff and people who knew about the human body did. She should have been thanking them.

So this got me to thinking, are these people all idiots? Are people of faith dumb or something? Or is it more likely that the religion gains their confidence, then takes advantage of them, until they are left broken and down trodden, only for some two-time swindler to come by and take their last dime on good faith? No friends, we can be damn well sure that religion, faith no matter it's brand, produces the highest quality idiots. It brainwashes people into believing utter poppycock and claptrap, and then when it falls through and the gig is up, they send in their sensationalist preachers, like  Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ted Haggard, Jim Jones, Jimmy Swaggart, Tammy Faye Bakker, Robert Tilton, Peter Popoff, and a truckload of boy-molesting Catholic priests to keep people from thinking for themselves, retarding them whenever they might show signs of intellectual progress, and actively preaching fantasy and supplanting reason with superstitious mumbo jumbo--in Jesus name. Can I get an Amen? 

Didn't think so.

An Atheist's Journal: Thoughst on Jesus and Where Christianity is Headed

After nearly three decades of adhering to the Christian faith, only but the last five years of studying the Christian religion intensely, consequently becoming atheist as a natural effect of reaching the best rational position based on the available evidence, I am finding myself starting to move toward a post-theist position.

So basically I will have gone from Christian, to Theist, to Atheist, to Post-Theist in just as much time as it takes the average person of faith to memorize the Ten Commandments (more or less). What an odd, and brief, journey.

The neat thing is I have accomplished what I set out to do... basically, to learn intimately about Jesus Christ, Yeshua, Joshua, the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Nazarene, the Christ and anything else he has been labeled. I wanted to know his person intimately, thoroughly, deeply, and although my knowledge about him is far greater than when I was a believer, and my curiosity of his person is still profound, I have become contented in my knowledge and my journey of getting to know the Jesus of the Gospels in such a close and personal way.

The book "Masks of Christ" (which does a great job investigating the Qumran connection to Messiah veneration in both John the Baptist and Jesus, but also investigates the parallels, mimetic and otherwise, between the two key figures of proto-Christianity) and I find it is like the title suggests, or rather, there is a personalized version of Christ for everyone. He has come to mean so many things to so many people, that the fact that these things are often incomparable or contradictory doesn't so much matter. There is a Christ for every occasion. And now that I have studied how these various interpretations have come about, and traced the roots of these numerous incarnations to their origins the best I could I have less questions about just who and what Jesus of Nazareth really was.

Even so, knowing what I now know, I am forced to agree with the Biblical historian and theologian Robert M. Price when he reflects:

"...if we think there is an ongoing existence of Jesus in the experience (imagination, more likely) of the Pietist believer, this latter becomes "the rel thing" for the believer, overshadowing and outweighing the gospel Jesus, supplanting any historical Jesus."

Looking back as the historical progression of the Jesus Christ figure, a larger than life persona of mythical proportions, I can now make an educated guess on what he likely was. But this won't change the fact that most have a very personalized conception of what he is and means to them personally--regardless of whether or not there understanding is historically accurate or at all viable. It doesn't so much matter to me any more. Although, this dime store variety of Jesus Christ that has been popularized in the last sixty odd years, a retooling of the 17th century resurrection savior surge of Christianity (see Price's book Inerrant the Wind for a look at the historical roots of Evangelical Christianity), it still won't do the real historical version any justice, and in my opinion it certainly won't be as impressive as the legendary and supernatural entity that he has typically been understood by believers throughout the ages. Needless to say, the Jesus Christ of the Bible is far more enticing and fascinating than the Christ most modern Christians are praying to today. And no, they're not at all the same thing.

The Christ I have come to know is far more complicated, intricate, and incredible as he is a composition of various mythological figures combined with Jewish messianic expectations to beget a truly original figure in humanity's litterature. We can investigate the elements which are common to the Mythic Hero Archetype, found in tales all over the world and throughout history, and come to better understand the nature and purpose, the rhyme and reason, for why Jesus Christ has become such a big part of world culture. Jesus Christ is a composite of everything from Hector of Troy and mythemes from the Iliad to a reflection of Adonis, Tammuz, Osiris, Attis, Mithra all infused with elements of Oedipus, Apollonius of Tayana, Asclepius, Hercules, Romulus, Empedocles, John the Baptist, and others. Whether or not there was a historical figure underneath it all is hard to tell, but I am of the opinion that there was. But how much is myth and how much is historical is hard to tell when it all seems to be blatantly overpowered by the potency of the legend.

But who am I to split hairs? Christians who haven't investigated the issue will feel he's none of these. Although this estimation will be grossly inaccurate, since the evidence is obviously in support of Source criticism, Form criticism, Redaction criticism, and exacting exegesis gained via Higher Criticism. But who am I to tell them what to believe? I can only correct their errors when they profess them as fact, but I am starting to get weary of asking them to investigate and learn the truth, because the fact is, they allow confirmation bias and assimilation bias, fueled by dogma, to drive them to the wrong conclusions time and time again. It's vexing, to be sure, but the fact of the matter is, the real truth is readily available for anyone who seeks it.  

When I feel trivialized, I think I done with religion. But I'm not quite finished yet with my preoccupation with religion just yet, although the end is near. Even as such, I still love the history, the mythology, the sociological impact, the apparent memetic evolution and transmission of religious beliefs, and all the various facets which comprise faith, but I'm starting to get bored with the simplistic attitudes and unsophisticated views, that is to say ill informed, of the faithful. Even as I recognize the elitist tone, it's more of a sincere sentiment akin to disconcerting realization that believers care less about the authentic truth than I do, rather than a bald face form of snobbery. I wish more believers knew what I now know, but the sad part is, most believers don't even know what it is they truly believe in. They can give you a run down of their personal testimony, their personal convictions, and recite the devotional creed, but if you asked them to seriously consider what it is they espouse they either look shocked, or retreat to a rehearsed rhetoric to get around the issue of having to face the inevitable, that being, the faith they have made for themselves is nothing like the brand-name faith they have so vehemently subscribed to. That is to say, their variety of Christianity is nothing like the Christianity of fifty years ago, and that is nothing like the Christianity from a hundred and fifty years ago, which is not at all like the Christianity of yesteryear.

It seems at every juncture, Christianity has evolved along with the Christians. Price elucidates further, informing:

"Here, ironically, is the answer to our earlier question as to whether, after two thousand years of conscious human awareness, Jesus' mind would have changed, and so on. apparently so, as the pious imagination continues to attribute its fancies and judgments to the Jesus it imagines to be speaking to it, a risen Jesus who is still available. If there was a historical Jesus, he is long lost in the shuffle."

Christianity has frequently transformed and mutated, split and spread, been re-assimilated into new and different cultures, only for it to be influenced by them and the process repeats itself. Again and again, throughout the course of history, Christianity has been everything and so can't really be defined as anything in particular. With each new variety of Christian faith their has been yet another variety of Jesus to subscribe belief to.

Faith describes it well, because to be a Christian, you have to have faith that your version of Christianity is the right one. Personally, I would say Christians need to have more faith in this than in Jesus, otherwise they couldn't even profess a belief in Jesus, as the majority of Christian thought is antithetical to the very character of Jesus.

Certainly I don't expect Christians to be able to defend the most nebulous, arcane, or perplexing natures of their theology, multiply varieties of faith, and sporadically amended, mistranslated, re-translated, preselected, poetry and prose which comprises the archaic religious texts. But I am getting to the point where it seems that I've gone just about as far as I can go.

Maybe my preoccupation with advocacy for reason, rationality, skepticism, critical thinking, free thinking, free inquiry, freedom of speech, human rights, science and the like will keep me busy. Admittedly, religion isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but for me, I see the world slowly moving beyond religion. As the adage goes, if you dwell on the past too much, you'll only ever live in the past. I see humanity growing beyond their need for religion, slowly but surely, reaching new-found echelons of enlightenment. Who knows what the future holds?


I'd like to think that we're on the cusp of a dawn of a new awakening, where we have shed our dependence of superstitious beliefs and have become fully actualized humans. Maybe we will evolve into something else entirely. Homo novus, the new humanity--and maybe in this rebirth we will have a fresh start in a world in which religion is just a bit of interesting trivia marking our races infancy, a flirtation with the divine, but accompanied by the realization that we are so much more--and that the sky is the limit.

My atheism is a positive one, filled with hopes, and dreams, and goals and aspirations. It's not an empty or hopeless void of despair and nothingness, as so often misportrayed and misrepresented by religious apologists and propagandists. No, my atheism is one of inspiration and a genuine thirst for knowledge. Where I find myself in an infinite cosmos filled with wonderful things to learn about and more to discover each day, the task of learning it all impossible, the grandeur of the revelation daunting, I see a world where we can progress to a better place free from the oppressive ideologies of outmoded religious tenets.

Can you imagine it? A world where man is free to boldly go where no man has gone before--and explore the great unknown with nothing but his whits and reason to guide him! What an adventure that will be! Yes, take me to the future, but first, let's fix this world so the future will at least be enjoyable. Where is Christianity headed in the long run? The short answer, wherever it wants to take itself. Orthodoxy aside, it's not exactly a fixed idea, and today's Christians are the best proof of that. However, the way I see it is, Christianity will have to undergo several more incarnations in order to salvage its doctrines and reconcile them with our growing understanding of the world and universe we live. Indeed, I would venture to guess the Christianity in fifty years will be just as foreign to today's Christians as today's Christianity would have been to Jesus Christ himself. And if the Christian God should ever dwindle away into nothing, then we can all rest assured, Atheism will remain unchanged.

Top 10 Reasons I am an Atheist

10. Because I’m rational and fairy stories don’t do it for me anymore as I came into the age of reason and put childish things aside.

9. I grew up watching Star Trek which instilled in the depths of my subconscious Gene Roddenberry’s wonderful humanist philosophy. Spock is a better role model than Moses or the Prophet Muhammad, if you ask me.

8. I actually read the Bible. All of it. And I found it had lots of bad bits, and it contradicts itself a lot, but only in the coherent sections. Only Atheism leaves me with no cognitive dissidence.

7. Science just makes more sense to me than talking snakes, chatty internally combustible shrubbery, talking asses, magical fruit, wrestling supernatural beings in the manner of Heracles, angels having sexual escapades with women, giants, titans, leviathans, seven headed dragons, unicorns, virgin births, being turned into a pillar of salt, the undead roaming the streets, demonic pigs, clover hoofed devils, magic technicolor dream coats, and did I mention the magical talking snake?

6. There are better sources for ethical behavior, good conduct, and morality than the Bible. I call them humanist and naturalist ‘appreciations’ and I have a link to a sampling of them on my website Advocatus Atheist.

5. I love physics and cosmology with a passion; and everything in modern physics is telling us and pointing toward our universe having a natural origin.

4. The coming of the Four Horsemen, aka Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens and all the other philosophers and free thinkers, from Socrates to Spinoza, from Hobbes to Hume, from Kant to Marx, from Paine to Harris, from Ingersoll to Twain, from Freud to Dennett, from Einstein to Stenger, from Darwin to Dawkins, all have contributed to the debate and have left an enduring legacy of the utmost rationalism, and have tirelessly upheld and defended reason, free inquiry, free speech, and freedom from the oppressive shackles of religion.

3. The inadequate and illogical arguments offered as a defense of the Christian position and the lackluster, barely literate, often uninformed, unverified, unfounded, frequently unintelligible, biased polemic, and thrice regurgitated faith based apologetics in general just don’t convince me and my overwhelming need to weigh the evidence and think critically.

2. A blasphemous venomous radioactive spider bit me and I turned atheist. 

and the number one reason I’m an atheist is… 

1. Atheists are sexy as hell!

Dealing with Arrogant Christians

Sorry folks, but this one is going to have to be a bit of a rant, even though I try to avoid embittered negativity, sometimes something just gets under my collar. I mean, as an advocate for atheism I make it a habit to share my opinion with Christians, who love nothing more than to advertise theirs every chance they get. Such instances often go like this, I shall happen upon a Christian acquaintance's website or blog and will find a post containing a comment such as this:

"Listening to my new Steven Curtis Chapman CD! I love SCC! Even after all these years, he still writes awesome songs. (Who's with me on this?) "We're all broken... And we all need a Savior...""

To which I often would like to respond:

"I'm not questioning your taste in music, but SCC can keep his defeatist and abject slave talk to himself. I'm not broken anymore, thank you very much. I've recovered, I've been healed, liberated from such oppressive ideologies and I don't need that dehumanizing drivel to tell me I'm less than what I am. Granted I'm not perfect, but who is? Seriously, I cannot see how people even entertain the notion that this sort of thinking is in any way healthy--because it's NOT."

Well, that's what I felt like saying at the time, but I bit my tongue. I really don't like putting people out, unless absolutely necessary,  and since this Christian has blocked me in the past for voicing my rational considerations and corollary skepticism, simply because I didn't agree with her personal (unsustainable and unsubstantiated) convictions, I didn't want to even bother wasting my time trying to argue better reason with someone who was simply going to shut down the dialogue and turn off their brains by playing the inviolable status card and shirking the responsibility of having to answer for their incredibly unbelievable claims.

This also begs the question, how many more times will Christians try and save their faith by just claiming they've already won, and refusing to pay equal respect to others beliefs no matter how unreasonable they may seem? How many more times will they stick with this worn out tactic when in three thousand years of practice it hasn't advanced their claims once to the point of credibility? Granted, I don't think I've ever been as unreasonable as one who forfeits the match and declares themselves the winner by default. I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again, if something is worth believing, then by all means, it must stand up to scrutiny.

I'm willing to talk to people who want to have a well informed discussion. But I knew that, just like the other day, when I had left a similar response on another Christian friend's comment thread and I got this exact response:

"You need to find the Lord!"

This got me to wondering, for fifteen years I pleaded with her to come to church with me, to go to youth services, to join Christian related activities, and now after all this time she has found God. That's fine if it works for her, but how can she then forget all those times I begged her to accompany me, and then just assume I somehow lost faith in the Lord, and now tells me I need to find it all over again. I mean, if 15 years of trying to force God and the gospel down her throat didn't convince her of my sincerity as a Christian, then what else would?

Although this person means the world to me, one of the few Christians I cannot rebuke for fear of losing her due to difference in opinion. I can handle a difference of opinion just fine, I'm perfectly willing to agree to disagree, but in my experience most Christians are not prepared or even equipped to match my efforts of cordial disagreement. Sometimes though, holding one's tongue and taking the part of the sage, is the right thing to do.

Because I respect this woman, even when she might make such a comment, I don't want to belittle her opinions and thoughts. But I do want to challenge them. Yet how can one do that when they aren't even taken seriously? The sage has been delegated to the role of a fool for no other reason than he dared to take a different train of thought. Maybe it's that my new-found beliefs are too challenging for her that she resorted to doing the only thing she could, express her worry for me by advising me on what she felt would best help me, assuming that I had something wrong with me in the first place.

I fully appreciate her sentiment, and even though she means well, I resent the implied accusation that I am somehow "broken" or in need of "saving." Find the Lord? Find him? What makes you think I lost him? I know right where he is, he's in-between the pages of my Bible, and that's where he'll stay. Come now dear Christians, let's not confuse the God in our imagination for the real deal. No, I have never lost the Lord, as I've kept impeccable track of him. Simply put, I found him out for what he was: a big fat scam, a scandal of the highest order, a charlatan and a charade. What's more, I'm not just saying this because I'm some sort of angry atheist. I have nothing against Christians other than their bouts of unreasonableness and their annoying ability to find an excuse to justify nearly anything under the  umbrella of their faith, and I mean anything, should they feel the need. I'm saying this, because when all is considered, this is the rational conclusion.

If that sounds ignoble or derisive to the faithful, then so be it, it also happens to be the truth. And I'm sorry, but sometimes the truth hurts. Regardless, I don't say these things lightly, I for one can reasonably defend my atheist position, and so when I say that Christianity is all boondoggle, I don't expect anyone to simply write me off as disingenuous. Take me up on an argument, we might just learn something together!

Certainly, I don't like my opinions to be automatically disregarded as trivial and not taken at my word simply because I'm no longer in the club of the self-righteous. How come Christians feel they have the privilege to voice their opinions, such as the demeaning belief that we're all broken and helpless and in need of a savior, even as I stand as the perfect example of an enlightened, or rather rehabilitated, individual free of such superstitious solipsism, supernatural gobbledygook, gloom-ridden, disparaging, and despairing Jesus talk? The arrogance of Christians is flabbergasting. Take it from me, I know, because I used to be one.

As such, when Christians want to one up me by devaluing me personally, my ideas, and my arguments only to ignore my challenge and claim their sets of beliefs are superior, without so much as making a plausible defense... all I have to say is this: come on! Play fair, have a little self worth, and don't be so naive as to believe everything you're told. Think for yourselves! And if believers continue to refuse to play fair, then I'll be left with no other option, I'll have to go Kenesaw Mountain Landis on their discriminatory antics!