The New Testament Deconstructed

I think I may have written on this topic earlier, but this treatment of the topic will be wildly different from the former aspects of said topic. People have been devotedly reading the New Testament before the invention of the printing press, since the manuscripts were passed around. But a little history is in order. As regards the Hebrew bible, the first complete manuscript was the Masoretic Text, produced in the 10th Century CE (AD-college professors are now using initials that mean current era or common era, so the rest of us follow blindly along). The first unified collection of New Testament books came about in the 4th Century CE, called the Codex Sinaiticus. A codex is a book with pages as opposed to a scroll. The Codex is in Greek and is the oldest complete copy of the NT, although there were others. Early Christians were fighting heresies, and it was not until 1546 during the Council of Trent that the Latin Vulgate was affirmed as the authoritative version of scripture. It had been translated from Greek to Latin by St. Jerome in 382 CE. The Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures is called the Septuagint, and gentiles who converted to Christianity were able to read this version of the OT.

As I said, people have been reading the Bible devotedly for centuries without seeing the awesome number of discrepancies, contradictions and irreconcilable “facts” in the four Gospels. They may have taken little notice of how different the Gospel of John is from the so-called three Synoptic Gospels. And did the readers notice how much alike those Gospels are? That’s why they’re called “Synoptic.” They contain largely the same stories. Mark was written first, and Matthew/Luke copied his stories, although they felt free to add material from other sources. They also changed the emphasis of the stories they copied from Mark. Luke also wrote Acts, so some of his material is in Acts.

Of the four Gospels, only Matthew and Luke give an account of Jesus’ birth, but their stories are very different. At Christmas all the details in Matthew’s story and all the details in Luke’s story are smushed in together, and when you have the Christmas tree and other pagan motifs, it is a truly world class holiday. Despite the differences between Matthew and Luke (we’ll get to those), they were both fixated on two ideas: 1. Mary had to be a virgin and 2. Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem. Mary had to be a virgin because there was Isaiah’s prophecy that there would be a famous virgin. Isaiah’s virgin, though didn’t really fortell Mary; the prophecy was about something else (Isaiah is a prophet in the OT). Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem because King David was from Bethlehem and Jesus as Messiah was in the geneological line of David. Luke got Jesus to Bethlehem by inventing a census decreed by the Emperor. Since Joseph was from Bethlehem, he had to go to Bethlehem to be counted. There is no record of a census, but it seems, as we will see later, that there really was a census. Matthew (I checked my Bible) gives no reason for Jesus to be in Bethlehem, so it’s logical to assume the family lives there.

Here I am utilyzing the analysis of Professor Bart Erhman in his book “Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the hidden Contradictions in the Bible.” He uses the historical-critical method of analyzing the Bible. Most people who enjoy reading the Bible and teachers like Joyce Meyer use the devotional method. This method is used for guidance in life’s journey and the priests and preachers use it to inspire their listeners. Such readers go vertical: they start at the top of the first column and proceed down and begin again at the top of the second column. In the historical-critical method the analyst goes horizontal: studies the same story in each Gospel, listing the data points in each story as a means of finding differences and discrepancies. But there’s usually a reason for the differences and contradictions. Matthew might want to emphasize a point or create an idea that is not at all on Mark’s radar. Mark may have a different point to make. Back to Luke, angels tell shepherds that the Messiah is born and I don’t necessarily doubt this because the Urantia Book says that angels recorded all of Jesus’ life. The UB said angels were singing but humans wouldn’t be able to hear them. In Luke they had to stay in a stable because Bethlehem was so busy, and they returned to Nazareth after Jesus was circumcized and presented to God in the temple. Two devout people recognized Jesus as the Messiah. In Matthew the family already lives in Bethlehem. Erhman says the wise men came to “his house.” My Catholic Bible says they came to “the house,” which is more ambiguous. As Erhman says, “Even more obvious, though, is the discrepancy involved with the events after Jesus’ birth. If Matthew is right that the family escaped to Egypt, how can Luke be right that they returned directly to Nazareth?” Yes, I checked my copy, and in Matthew, the family did flee to Egypt because Herod was looking for the Messiah. Herod subsequently had all the boys under two years old killed. This brings up a question, though. Jesus had just been born. Why did Herod kill boys so much older?

The Urantia Book has the true information on the life of Jesus, but intellectual Jesus scholars wouldn’t be seen dead with a copy, much less take the information from it as the basis of their scholarship. This is because the book has a very mysterious origin. Back in the 20s in Chicago a psychiatrist named William Saddler and his wife, who was also a physician, were called to the bedside of a man who had a sleep disorder. The man’s wife, who was very concerned about her husband, had come to them saying that the man was saying strange things in his sleep. Dr. Saddler and his wife examined the man while he was sleeping and found that he was making coherent sense. He was actually giving out information. They arranged for someone to sit by the man and record his words. And thus the Urantia Book was born. The man by day was a hard nosed business man; he worked at the Chicago Board of Trade. Anyway, according to the UB Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth, and they did go to Bethlehem for Joseph to register for the census. Bethlehem was so busy that they did find it necessary to stay in a stable, a grain storage room cleaned and with canvas dividers for privacy. Mary was in labor all night, and Jesus was born at noon (sun god?), August 21, 7 BC. The legend of the Star of Bethlehem was a fairytale dreamed up because there were three astrological conjuctions in the year Jesus was born (May 29, September 29 and December 5). The Church took December 25 as Jesus birthday because it was the feastday of Saturn. Other pagan feastdays were co-opted in this way, too. Passover and Easter are good examples. I don’t know why this was done, but I can guess based on my past reading. I think it would have been a way of getting pagans to convert faster and more smoothly than they would have otherwise.