Category Archives: Christianity

What Did the Original Books of the Bible Say?

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Is there really a God who created everything?Remember the 2011 film Anonymous that questioned the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays?  It argued that William Shakespeare was just a front man for the true author, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.  Modern historians have proposed several candidates besides Shakespeare himself, who some have argued was illiterate.

So we don’t know who was perhaps the most famous and influential author in the English language?  Shakespeare only died in 1616, we have a good understanding of the times, and he wrote in Early Modern English, and yet there remains a gulf of understanding that we can’t reliably cross.

And we flatter ourselves that we can cross the far more daunting gulf that separates us from the place and times of Jesus so we can accept the far more incredible claims of the gospel story.

Let’s see how reliable our modern New Testament is.  We’ll follow it back in time to track the tortuous journey on which it has come.  This post will go back to the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, and later posts will explore the hurdles between that point and the life of Jesus.

Our first step is to get past the translations.  In English, we have dozens of versions—New International Version, American Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, and so on.  Some Christians prefer the more archaic King James Version even to the point of arguing that it alone is divinely inspired.  Proponents of different versions find plenty to argue about.

Translation is especially difficult with a dead language like New Testament Greek since text examples are limited and there are no living speakers to consult.  Consider an English example: the idiom “have your cake and eat it too” interpreted 2000 years in the future.  Or “saving face” or “kick the bucket” or “throw in the towel” or “get your comeuppance.”  If given only a handful of examples, future interpreters would have to guess at the meanings.

Let’s look at similar problems in the Bible.  Consider the Hebrew word reem, translated nine times in the King James Version as “unicorn.”  For example, “Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the reem.”  It’s now translated as “wild ox,” so perhaps we’ve got this one resolved.  But what other rarely used words and phrases have been misunderstood?  With no authority, we have nothing more than our best guesses to rely on.

A bigger question is: what is “the Bible”?  That is, what is canonical, the books accepted as scripture?  The Christian church is not unified on this question.  For example, Protestants accept the fewest books.  The Roman Catholics add two books of Maccabees and Tobit (and others), the Greek Orthodox church accepts those and adds the Prayer of Manasseh and Esdras (and others), and the Ethiopian Orthodox church accepts those and adds Enoch and Jubilees (and others).  In other words, Christian churches themselves can’t agree on what books contain the inspired word of God.

Our next challenge is to find the best original-language copies.  The King James version was based on the 16th-century Textus Receptus (“received text”), which was a printed version of the best Greek New Testament texts known at the time.  More Greek manuscripts have come to light since then, and modern scholars rely on a broader set, so let’s discard the Textus Receptus and focus on those instead.

Many apologists point proudly to the thousands of New Testament manuscript copies we have today—roughly 5000 Greek manuscripts and lectionaries (collections of scripture used during church services) and close to 20,000 manuscripts in other languages (mostly Latin, but also Ethiopic, Slavic, Syriac, and more).  This compares with just 600 copies of the Iliad, our second-most well-represented ancient book.

These are impressive numbers, but too much is made of them.  Many of these are incomplete fragments—especially the oldest and most important—and almost all are far removed from the early church period.  Suppose scholars discovered a library with 1000 previously unknown Latin Bible manuscripts from the 12th century.  This would be quite a find, but these late manuscripts wouldn’t override the content from the best and oldest handful.  Today’s 25,000 copies tell us little more about the originals than would having only the most reliable and complete 25 copies.

While there are fragments of gospels going back to the second century, for complete copies we go to manuscripts such as the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus.  These are our oldest copies of the New Testament, and each was written in roughly 350 CE, perhaps as part of the newly approved canon from the Council of Nicaea.

We’ve still got a long way to go before the events in the life of Jesus.  It’s like we’re looking the wrong way through a telescope.

See all posts in this series here:

We see through a glass, darkly
(That is: we dimly see in a mirror)
— 1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Jesus: Just One More Dying and Rising Savior

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It’s a week after Easter, so here is one final post on the theme of resurrection.

History records many dying-and-rising saviors.  Examples from the Ancient Near East that preceded the Jesus story include Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, and Baal.  Here is a brief introduction.

Tammuz was the Sumerian god of food and vegetation and dates from c. 2000 BCE.  His death was celebrated every spring.  One version of the story has him living in the underworld for six months each year, alternating with his sister.

Osirus was killed by his brother Set and cut into many pieces and scattered.  His wife Isis gathered the pieces together, and he was reincarnated as the Egyptian god of the underworld and judge of the dead.  He was worshipped well before 2000 BCE.

Dionysus (known as Bacchus in Roman mythology) was the Greek god of wine and dates to the 1200s BCE.  The son of Zeus and a mortal woman, Dionysus was killed and then brought back to life.

Adonis (from 600 BCE) is a Greek god who was killed and then returned to life by Zeus.

Attis (from 1200 BCE) is a vegetation god from central Asia Minor, brought back to life by his lover Cybele.

In Canaanite religion, Baal (Baʿal) was part of a cycle of life and death.  Baal and Mot are sons of the supreme god El (yes, one of the names of the Jewish god).  When El favored the death god Mot over Baal, the heat of the summer took over and Baal died.  He was resurrected when his sister-wife kills Mot.

All these gods:

  • came from regions that were close enough to the crossroads of Israel (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Asia Minor) for the ideas to have plausibly made it there,
  • were worshipped well before the time of Jesus, and
  • were of the dying-and-rising sort.

This is strong evidence that the gospel writers knew of (and could have been influenced by) resurrecting god stories from other cultures.

Is it possible that Judea at this time was a backwater, and the people were unaware of the ideas from the wider world?  That seems unlikely.  The book of 2 Maccabees, written in c. 124 BCE, laments at how Hellenized the country was becoming.  It says that the new high priest installed by Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes “at once shifted his countrymen over to the Greek way of life.”  He “introduced new customs contrary to the Law” and “induced the noblest of the young men to wear the Greek hat.”  The book complains about “an extreme of Hellenization and increase in the adoption of foreign ways” and the youth “putting the highest value upon Greek forms of prestige.”

In fact, the gospels themselves report that the idea of dying and rising again was a familiar concept.  Jesus in the early days of his ministry was thought to be a risen prophet.

King Herod heard of [the ministry of Jesus], for His name had become well known; and people were saying, “John the Baptist has risen from the dead, and that is why these miraculous powers are at work in Him.” But others were saying, “He is Elijah.” And others were saying, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” But when Herod heard of it, he kept saying, “John, whom I beheaded, has risen!” (Mark 6:14–16)

One Christian website does a thorough job attacking poorly evidenced parallels between Jesus and these prior gods.  For example, was Dionysus really born to a virgin on December 25?  Did Mithras really have 12 disciples?  Was Krishna’s birth heralded by a star in the east?  The author offers $1000 to anyone who can prove that any of these gods’ lists of parallels are actually true.

I’ll agree that there are strained parallels.  One early work that has been criticized for too many claims and too little evidence is The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors by Kersey Graves (1875).  The recent “Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ” by Acharya S also seems to be reaching, in my opinion.

I don’t have the expertise to weigh in on these many issues, so let’s grant the complaints and dismiss the many unsupportable specific parallels.  What’s left is what really matters: that the Jesus story arose in a culture suffused with the idea of dying and rising saviors.

Apologists raise other objections.

Many of these gods actually came after Jesus.  That’s why the list above only includes dying-and-rising gods who are well-known to have preceded Jesus.  There are many more such gods—Mithras, Horus, Krishna, Persephone, and others—that don’t seem to fit as well.  In fact, Wikipedia lists life-death-rebirth deities from twenty religions worldwide, but I’ve tried to list above the six most relevant examples.

But Jesus really existed!  He’s a figure from history, unlike those other gods.  Strip away any supernatural claims from the story of Alexander the Great, and you’ve still got cities throughout Asia named Alexandria and coins with Alexander’s likeness.  Strip away any supernatural claims from the Caesar Augustus story, and you’re left with the Caesar Augustus from history.  But strip away the supernatural claims from the Jesus story, and you’re left with a fairly ordinary rabbi.  The Jesus story is nothing but the supernatural elements.

Most of those gods were used to explain the cycles of the seasons.  Jesus isn’t like them.  Christianity is different from all the other religions, just like any religion.  If Christianity weren’t different from one of the earlier religions, you’d call it by the name of that religion.

In another post I explore the Dionysus myth more fully to show the parallels with the Jesus story.  That post also notes how Justin Martyr (100–165 CE) not only admitted to the similarities but argued that the devil put them in history to fool us.

Okay, they’re all myths, but the Jesus story is true myth.  This was the approach of C.S. Lewis, who said, “The story of Christ is simply a true myth; a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference, that it really happened, and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s Myth where the others are men’s myths.”

So you admit that the Jesus story indeed has many characteristics of mythology but demand that I just trust you that it’s true?  Sorry, I need more evidence than that.

And the throw-in-the-towel argument:

Just because Christianity developed in a culture that knew of other resurrecting gods doesn’t mean that Jesus wasn’t the real thing.  Granted.  But “you haven’t proven the gospel story false” isn’t much of an argument.  Those who seek the truth know that proof is impossible and try instead to find where the evidence points.

And here’s where the evidence doesn’t point: that humans worldwide invent dying-and-rising saviors (except in the Jesus case, ’cause that one was real!).

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Is Christian Heaven More Real than any Other?

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Christian apologetics, novel, and blogThe 1990s BBC sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf is about the crew on an enormous space ship, lost in empty space.  A radiation leak has killed all the crew except Dave Lister, a low-level crewman who had been safely in suspended animation.  He is released 3 million years after the accident when the radiation danger has passed.  His only companions are the ship’s computer, a hologram of another crewmate, an evolved form of his housecat, and a robot named Kryten.

In the episode “The Last Day,” Kryten’s replacement has finally caught up with the ship.  Kryten is packing up his spare heads in preparation for being replaced and is talking with Lister.

LISTER (crewman): How can you just lie back and accept it?

KRYTEN (robot): Oh, it’s not the end for me, sir, it’s just the beginning. I have served my human masters, and now I can look forward to my reward in silicon heaven.

LISTER: Silicon what?

KRYTEN: Surely you’ve heard of silicon heaven. It’s the electronic afterlife. It’s the gathering place for the souls of all electronic equipment. Robots, calculators, toasters, hairdryers—it’s our final resting place.

LISTER: There is no such thing as silicon heaven.

KRYTEN: Then where do all the calculators go?

LISTER: They don’t go anywhere! They just die.

KRYTEN: It’s just common sense, sir. If there were no afterlife to look forward to, why on earth would machines spend the whole of their lives serving mankind? Now that would really be dumb!

LISTER: Just out of interest, is silicon heaven the same place as human heaven?

KRYTEN: Human heaven? Goodness me! Humans don’t go to heaven! No, someone made that up to prevent you all from going nuts!

Kryten’s explanation of his heaven is what I get from many Christians.  The existence of their heaven is obvious and indisputable, and the alternative is empty and inconceivable.  They’ve read about it, after all, and they’ve heard about it all their lives.  No heaven?  Who could imagine such a thing?

Christians can easily see through someone else’s nutty idea of an afterlife.  (“Hindu reincarnation?  Where’s the evidence of that?!”)  What they have a harder time with is holding a mirror to their own beliefs.  If they did, perhaps they’d find no more evidence for their concept of heaven than for Kryten’s.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

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  • Screenplay found at: “RED DWARF Series 3 Episode 6, ‘The Last Day’” PlanetSmeg.

Contradictions in the Resurrection Account

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A Swiss Army knife with dozens of crazy "blades"Since Easter was yesterday, I’d like to rerun a post about the resurrection story.

How many days did Jesus teach after his resurrection?  Most Christians know that “He appeared to them over a period of forty days” (Acts 1:3).  But the supposed author of that book wrote elsewhere that he ascended into heaven the same day as the resurrection (Luke 24:51).

When Jesus died, did an earthquake open the graves of many people, who walked around Jerusalem and were seen by many?  Only Matthew reports this remarkable event.  It’s hard to imagine any reliable version of the story omitting this zombie apocalypse.

The different accounts of the resurrection are full of contradictions like this.  They can’t even agree on whether Jesus was crucified on the day before Passover (John) or the day after (the other three).

  • What were the last words of Jesus?  Three gospels give three different versions.
  • Who buried Jesus?  Matthew says that it was Joseph of Arimathea.  No, apparently it was the Jews and their rulers, all strangers to Jesus (Acts).
  • How many women came to the tomb Easter morning?  Was it one, as told in John?  Two (Matthew)?  Three (Mark)?  Or more (Luke)?
  • Did an angel cause a great earthquake that rolled back the stone in front of the tomb?  Yes, according to Matthew.  The other gospels are silent on this extraordinary detail.
  • Who did the women see at the tomb?  One person (Matthew and Mark) or two (Luke and John)?
  • Was the tomb already open when they got there?  Matthew says no; the other three say yes.
  • Did the women tell the disciples?  Matthew and Luke make clear that they did so immediately.  But Mark says, “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb.  They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”  And that’s where the book ends, which makes it a mystery how Mark thinks that the resurrection story ever got out.
  • Did Mary Magdalene cry at the tomb?  That makes sense—the tomb was empty and Jesus’s body was gone.  At least, that’s the story according to John.  But wait a minute—in Matthew’s account, the women were “filled with joy.”
  • Did Mary Magdalene recognize Jesus?  Of course!  She’d known him for years.  At least, Matthew says that she did.  But John and Luke make clear that she didn’t.
  • Could Jesus’s followers touch him?  John says no; the other gospels say yes.
  • Where did Jesus tell the disciples to meet him?  In Galilee (Matthew and Mark) or Jerusalem (Luke and Acts)?
  • Who saw Jesus resurrected?  Paul says that a group of over 500 people saw him (1 Cor. 15:6).  Sounds like crucial evidence, but why don’t any of the gospels record it?
  • Should the gospel be preached to everyone?  In Matthew 28:19, Jesus says to “teach all nations.”  But hold on—in the same book he says, “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans” (Matt. 10:5).  Which is it?

Many Christians cite the resurrection as the most important historical claim that the Bible makes.  If the resurrection is true, they argue, the gospel message must be taken seriously.  I’ll agree with that.  But how reliable is an account riddled with these contradictions?

I’ve seen Christians respond in three ways.

(1) They’ll nitpick the definition of “contradiction.”  Contradictions, they’ll say, are two sentences of the form “A” and “not-A.”  For example: “Jesus was born in Bethlehem” and “Jesus was not born in Bethlehem.”  Being precise helps make sure we communicate clearly, but this can also be a caltrop argument, a way of dodging the issue.  These sure sound like contradictions to me, but if you’d prefer to imagine that we’re talking about “incongruities” or “inconsistencies,” feel free.

(2) They’ll respond to these “inconsistencies” by harmonizing the gospels.  That is, instead of following the facts where they lead and considering that the gospels might be legend instead of history, they insist on their Christian presupposition, reject any alternatives, and bludgeon all the gospels together like a misshapen Swiss Army knife.

  • How many women were at the tomb?  Obviously, five or more, our apologist will say.  When John only says that Mary Magdalene came to the tomb, he’s not saying that others didn’t come, right?  Checkmate, atheists!
  • Why didn’t all the gospels note that a group of 500 people saw Jesus (instead of only Paul)?  Why didn’t they all record the earthquakes and the zombie apocalypse (instead of only Matthew)?  Our apologist will argue that each author is entitled to make editorial adjustments as he sees fit.
  • Was the tomb already open or not?  Did Mary Magdalene recognize Jesus or not?  Did Jesus remain for 40 days or not?  Should the gospel be preached to everyone or not?  Did the women tell the disciples or not?  Was Jesus crucified the day after Passover or not?  Who knows what he’ll come up with, but our apologist will have some sort of harmonization for these, too.

Yep, the ol’ kindergarten try.

(3) They’ll try to turn this weakness into a strength by arguing that four independent stories (the gospels aren’t, but never mind) shouldn’t agree on every detail.  If they did, one would imagine collusion rather than accurate biography.  Yes, biography and collusion are two possibilities, but another is that this could be legend.

Let’s drop any preconceptions and find the best explanation.

Photo credit: ThinkGeek

Acknowledgement: This list was inspired by one composed by Richard Russell.

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Women at the Tomb? Weak Evidence for the Resurrection.

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The women at the empty tomb isn't much evidence that Jesus was divineLet’s consider an incident from that first supposed Easter.  All four gospels say that women were the first to discover the empty tomb.  (Of course, who was actually at the tomb varies by the gospels, as do many other important details about the resurrection, which makes the gospels unreliable as history.  But let’s ignore that for now.)

Many apologists point to the women as an important fact arguing that the gospels are reliable.  Greg Koukl says:

Women, disrespected in the ancient world, are the first to witness the risen Christ.  Why include these unflattering details if the Gospels are works of fiction?

I don’t know who argues that the gospels are fiction.  I don’t think they’re history, but I certainly don’t think that they were deliberately invented.  But let’s set that aside as well.

William Lane Craig says:

The discovery of the tomb by women is highly probable.  Given the low status of women in Jewish society and their lack of qualification to serve as legal witnesses, the most plausible explanation … why women and not the male disciples were made discoverers of the empty tomb is that the women were in fact the ones who made this discovery.

That is, having women make this momentous discovery is embarrassing.

This is an application of the Criterion of Embarrassment, which argues that you’re likelier to delete something embarrassing than add it to your story.  And if a story element is embarrassing, that points to its being historical fact.

But what’s embarrassing?  Things that look embarrassing to us may not have been so to the author.  For example, all four gospels show Peter denying Jesus three times.  That’s pretty embarrassing … or is it?

Paul’s relaxed approach in converting Gentiles conflicted with the more traditional approach of Peter and James (the conflict is shown in Galatians 2:11–21, where Peter is called “Cephas”).  Maybe supporters of Paul built their case by circulating a story in which Peter looks foolish, and this story became part of the canon.

So our question becomes: is it embarrassing to have women discover the empty tomb?  These apologists certainly think so, and historical records agree on women’s unreliability.  Josephus, a first-century historian, stated, “Let not the testimony of women be admitted because of the levity and boldness of their sex,” and the Mishnah (a Jewish legal text written in 220 CE) concurs.

However, this flimsy argument is much more popular than it deserves to be.  I’ll respond in several ways.

Give the original authors credit for being good storytellers.  As plot twists go, having women make the discovery instead of men isn’t particularly shocking.  But if you find it a powerful argument for the truth of the story, then you can imagine why that element might have become attached to the story.

The gospel story wasn’t made up.  The point that women were unreliable witnesses is relevant only in rebutting the charge that the story was deliberately invented, a claim I don’t make.  I’ve never heard this hypothesis except by apologists.  Instead, what best fits the facts for me is that the story documented in the gospels (in incompatible versions, but that’s another story) is the result of forty or more years of oral history.  Each gospel is a snapshot of the tradition of a different church community in widely different places (perhaps Alexandria, Damascus, or Rome?) and over decades of time.

Believers might demand, “Well, how do you explain the empty tomb?”  But of course, that assumes the accuracy of the gospel story to that point.  It’s like saying, “How do you explain Jack’s cutting down the beanstalk any other way than that there really was a giant climbing down after him?”

Who cares about women’s “unreliability”?  Women discover the empty tomb, they tell men, the men verify the story, and then the men spread the word.  If you don’t like women as witnesses, you’ve got the men.

That women were less reliable as witnesses in court doesn’t matter because there is no court in the story!  The women were trustworthy where it mattered—in conveying the story to people who knew and trusted them.

Tending to the dead was women’s work in this culture.  Instead of women discovering that Jesus had risen, imagine this incident:

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, Simon Peter and James entered the kitchen to prepare bread for the community.  In the darkness of the kitchen, a voice called out to them saying, “Why do you tend to minor matters when there is the LORD’s work to be done?”  And they took hold of His feet and worshiped Him.

What’s wrong with this story?  It’s that preparing bread is women’s work in this culture.  It makes no sense to have men come across Jesus in the kitchen.  And the same is true for men dealing with the dead.  According to the Women in the Bible web site:

It was the women’s task to prepare a dead body for burial. … Tombs were visited and watched for three days by family members. On the third day after death, the body was examined. … On these occasions, the body would be treated by the women of the family with oils and perfumes. The women’s visit to the tombs of Jesus and Lazarus are connected with this ritual.

The Bible also gives clues to women’s role in mourning in Jer. 9:17–20 and 2 Sam. 14:2.

Mark focuses on reversals, and the other gospels followed Mark’s lead.  Richard Carrier gives a detailed discussion of this topic and argues that a the-last-shall-be-first philosophy led Mark to add this touch.

Given Mark’s narrative agenda, regardless of the actual facts, the tomb has to be empty, in order to confound the expectations of the reader, just as a foreign Simon must carry the cross instead of Peter, a Gentile must acknowledge Christ’s divinity instead of the Jews, a Sanhedrist must bury the body, and women must be the first to hear the Good News.

He continues with a fascinating hypothesis about the relevance of the names of the three women that Mark places at the empty tomb.  You can read the argument and decide for yourself if it’s well founded.

Seeing the gospel story as no more supernatural than any other myth from the past best explains the facts.

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10 Reasons the Crucifixion Story Makes No Sense

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Does God exist? You wouldn't think so given the bizarre crucifixion story.It’s Good Friday, and I’d like to rerun one of my most popular posts, about the crucifixion. 

I’m afraid that the crucifixion story doesn’t strike me as that big a deal.

The Christian will say that death by crucifixion was a horrible, humiliating way to die.  That the death of Jesus was a tremendous sacrifice, more noble and selfless than a person sacrificing himself for the benefit of a butterfly.  And isn’t it worth praising something that gets us into heaven?

Here are ten reasons why I’m unimpressed.

1. Sure, death sucks, but why single out this one?  Lots of people die.  In fact, lots died from crucifixion.  The death of one man doesn’t make all the others insignificant.  Was Jesus not a man but actually a god?  If so, that fact has yet to be shown.

It’s not like this death is dramatically worse than death today.  Crucifixion may no longer be a worry, but cancer is.  Six hours of agony on the cross is pretty bad, but so is six months of agony from cancer.

2. What about that whole hell thing?  An eternity of torment for even a single person makes Jesus’s agony insignificant by comparison, and it counts for nothing when you consider the billions that are apparently going to hell.

3. Jesus didn’t even die.  The absurdity of the story, of course, is the resurrection.  If Jesus died, there’s no miraculous resurrection, and if there’s a resurrection, there’s no sacrifice through death.  Miracle or sacrifice—you can’t have it both ways.  The gospels don’t say that he died for our sins but that he had a rough couple of days for our sins.

4. Taking on the sin vs. removal of sin aren’t symmetric.  We didn’t do anything to get original sin.  We just inherited it from Adam.  So why do we have to do anything to get the redemption?  If God demands a sacrifice, he got it.  That’s enough.  Why the requirement to believe to access the solution?

5. The reason behind the sacrifice—mankind’s original sin—makes no sense.  Why blame Adam for a moral lapse that he couldn’t even understand?  Remember that he hadn’t yet eaten the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, so who could blame him when he made a moral mistake?

And how can we inherit original sin from Adam?  Why blame us for something we didn’t do?  That’s not justice, and the Bible agrees:

Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents; each will die for their own sin (Deut. 24:16)

6. Jesus made a sacrifice—big deal.  Jesus is perfect, so his doing something noble is like water flowing downhill.  It’s unremarkable since he’s only acting out his nature.  What else would you expect from a perfect being?

But imagine if I sacrificed myself for someone.  In the right circumstance, I’d risk my life for a stranger—or at least I hope I would.  That kind of sacrifice is very different.  A selfish, imperfect man acting against his nature to make the ultimate unselfish sacrifice is far more remarkable than a perfect being acting according to his nature, and yet people make sacrifices for others all the time.  So why single out the actions of Jesus?  Aren’t everyday noble actions by ordinary people more remarkable and laudable?

7. What is left for God to forgive?  The Jesus story says that we’ve sinned against God (a debt).  Let’s look at two resolutions to this debt.

(1) God could forgive the debt of sin.  You and I are asked to forgive wrongs done against us, so why can’t God?  Some Christians say that to forgive would violate God’s sense of justice, but when one person forgives another’s debt, there’s no violation of justice.  For unspecified reasons, God doesn’t like this route.

And that leaves (2) where Jesus pays for our sin.  But we need to pick 1 or 2, not both.  If Jesus paid the debt, there’s no need for God’s forgiveness.  There’s no longer anything for God to forgive, since there’s no outstanding debt.

Here’s an everyday example: when I pay off my mortgage, the bank doesn’t in addition forgive my debt.  There’s no longer a debt to forgive!  Why imagine that God must forgive us after he’s already gotten his payment?

8. The Jesus story isn’t even remarkable within mythology.  Jesus’s sacrifice was small compared to the Greek god Prometheus, who stole fire from Olympus and gave it to humanity.  Zeus discovered the crime and punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock so that a vulture could eat his liver.  Each night, his liver grew back and the next day the vulture would return, day after agonizing day.  The gospel story, where Jesus is crucified once and then pops back into existence several days later, is unimpressive by comparison.

9. The Bible itself rejects God’s savage “justice.”  This is the 21st century.  Must Iron Age customs persist so that we need a human sacrifice?  If God loves us deeply and he wants to forgive us, couldn’t he just … forgive us?  That’s how we do it, and that’s the lesson we get from the parable of the Prodigal Son where the father forgives the son even after being wronged by him.  If that’s the standard of mercy, why can’t God follow it?  Since God is so much greater a being than a human, wouldn’t he be that much more understanding and willing to forgive?

If we were to twist the Prodigal Son parable to match the crucifixion story, the father might demand that the innocent son be flogged to pay for the crime of the prodigal son.  Where’s the logic in that?

10. The entire story is incoherent.  Let’s try to stumble through the drunken logic behind the Jesus story.

God made mankind imperfect and inherently vulnerable to sin.  Living a sinless life is impossible, so hell becomes unavoidable.  That is, God creates people knowing for certain that they’re going to deserve eternity in hell when they die.  Why create people that he knew would be destined for eternal torment?

But don’t worry—God sacrificed Jesus, one of the persons of God, so mankind could go to heaven instead.

So God sacrificed himself to himself so we could bypass a rule that God made himself and that God deliberately designed us to never be able to meet?  I can’t even understand that; I certainly feel no need to praise God for something so nonsensical.  It’s like an abused wife thanking her abuser.  We can just as logically curse God for consigning us to hell from birth.

Perhaps I can be forgiven for being unimpressed by the crucifixion story.

Photo credit: Wikimedia