Arguments Against Christianity

An excerpt from the online hypertext Human Knowledge: Foundations and Limits by Brian Holtz



Since Feb 2003 I have posted a standing challenge for any Christian apologist to present an argument for Christianity that is as succinct and as self-contained and as powerful as the argument below. As of Apr 2004, none have accepted this challenge.





Evidence For Christianity

Since Christianity is the most prevalent belief system among humans, it deserves special attention. The best evidence for the Christian doctrine of a divine Jesus is:

Epistles c.50-60CE

Paul's letters broadly confirm the teachings and miracles of Jesus, and specifically his resurrection [1 Cor 15].

Gospels c.60-90CE

The veracity of the gospel accounts is supported by their mutual aggreement and their inclusion of embarrassing and vivid details.



The gospels are unanimously persuasive that Jesus died, and report many vivid accounts of encounters with the risen Jesus.



The gospels describe in vivid detail Jesus' miracles (many healings, three reanimations, etc.) and their acceptance throughout Judea and Galilee.

Extra-biblical evidence

The 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus confirms the historicity of Jesus by mentioning him as the brother of the martyred James.



Non-Christian writers like Josephus and Celsus agree that Jesus was known for his "feats" and "wonders".



Christianity as a movement survived even in Palestine among the people who would have had the best available opportunity for refuting its claims.

Arguments Against Christianity

There are at least eight insurmountable problems within the extant evidence that each independently refute the

Christian doctrine of a divine Jesus

:

Jesus' endorsement of the murderous immorality of Yahweh in the Torah;

Jesus' doctrine of "eternal punishment" in the "eternal fire" of Hell;

Jesus' failure to claim actual divinity;

Jesus' failed prophecy of his imminent return;

Jesus' failure to competently reveal his doctrines (concerning e.g. salvation, hell, divorce, circumcision, and diet) in his own written account or that of an eyewitness;



Jesus' failure to perform miracles the accounts of which cannot be so easily explained as faith-healing, misinterpretation, exaggeration, and embellishment;

Jesus' failure to attract significant notice (much less endorsement) in the only detailed contemporaneous history of first-century Palestine;

Jesus' failure to recruit

anyone from his family,



any acquaintance from before his baptism,



a majority of Palestinian Jews, and even



some of those who heard his words and witnessed his alleged miracles.

An omnipotent omniscience benevolent deity competently attempting a revelation would have foreseen and corrected all of these problems. The existence of any one of them implies that Christian doctrine is false.

The reasons

not to believe the Christian doctrine of a divine Jesus can be divided into four categories:

the alternative naturalistic explanations of the existing evidence;

the missing evidence needed to prove such divinity;

the implausibility of such divine activity; and

the cascading implications of accepting such evidence.

In addition, the Christian gospels themselves are suspect because of their sources, contradictions, and apologetics.

Naturalistic explanations. Jesus of Nazareth was a faith healer and self-proclaimed divinely-special savior who tried to reform his native Jewish religion. However, the evidence about Jesus is less likely to have resulted from divinity than from misinterpretation, exaggeration, rationalization, delusion, deception, and mythologizing. Indeed, perhaps the greatest weakness of the claims for Jesus' divinity is the gospels' reliance on and vouching for the Old Testament, a patchwork of folklore, legends and myths about a tribe whose patriarch Abraham turned to monotheism because of fertility problems. Jesus was a Jewish prophet who affirmed Jewish law [Mt 5:17-18; Lk 2:27,39; Jn 10:35], observed the Jewish calendar [Lk 4:16, Mt 24:20], and preached about the God of Israel [e.g. Mk 12:29] in Jewish synagogues [Mk 1:21, 1:39, 6:2; Mt 4:23, 9:35, 13:54; Lk 4:15, 4:44, 6:6, 13:10, 19:47; Jn 6:59, 18:20] exclusively for Jews [Mt 10:5, Mt 15:24]. Jesus no doubt echoed the Torah theme that "all nations" would witness the majesty of Israel's God, but his only command to actually convert and baptize "all nations" is in a post-Easter speech alleged only in one gospel [Mt 28:19] (and in an appendix later added to Mark [16:15]).

Miracles. In the gospels Jesus heals the sick (possession, blindness, skin disorder, bleeding, fever, paralysis, withered hand), revives the recently deceased, calms a storm, multiplies food, and walks on water. The miracles ascribed to Jesus seem not to have been very convincing [Mt 11:20, Lk 10:13, Jn 6:66, 10:32, 12:37, 15:24], and seem explainable by a combination of conventional faith healing, exaggeration, and mythologizing. The three people Jesus allegedly reanimates [Mk 5/Lk 8; Lk 7; Jn 11] might not actually have been clinically dead, and the gospels report not a single indication supporting such a diagnosis. Any cases of blindness, paralysis, or demonic possession cured by Jesus could have been psychogenic. Jesus apparently admits [Lk 11:24-26] that his cures for demonic possession are often not permanent, and in the synoptic gospels there is only one mention [Mt 21:14] of a cure being performed in Jerusalem. The one case of congenital blindness is recorded as disputed, and only in the latest gospel [Jn 9].

God? The Christian doctrine of the "trinity", attempting to reconcile Jewish monotheism with Jesus' self-revelation, holds that Jesus 1) is both fully human and fully divine, and 2) is God (in a different "person"). The former is a contradiction, and the latter has no scriptural basis. In the gospels Jesus never claims identity with God or even explicit divinity, but rather a divinely special status as "the Son of God" and the "Anointed One" (Hebrew: messiah; Greek: christos). Jesus repeatedly distinguishes himself from God:

Why do you call me good? No one is good--except God alone. [Mk 10:18, Lk 18:17, Mt 19:17]

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. [Mk 13:32]

And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. [Lk 12:10]

Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done. [Lk 22:42-43]

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. [Lk 23:46]

the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son [Jn 5:22]

By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. [Jn 5:30]

I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. [Jn 8:28]

I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. [Jn 8:42]

If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who is glorifying me, of whom ye say that He is your God. [Jn 8:54]

I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. [Jn 12:49]

The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work [Jn 14:10]

If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. [Jn 14:28]

I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me. [Jn 14:31]

Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. [Jn 16:25]

I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father himself loves you [Jn 16:26-27]

I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. [Jn 20:17]

As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. [Jn 20:21]

When Jesus' opponents say his assumption of authority could be interpreted as a claim of divinity, all three synoptics agree [Mk 2:10, Mt 9:6, Lk 5:24] that Jesus merely asserted "authority on earth", and none intimates that his accusers concluded he was affirming their accusation. In the one instance in the gospels [Jn 10:33ff] in which Jesus' identity with God is explicitly discussed, Jesus cites a Psalm [82:6] as a precedent for his metaphor, and hastily retreats to his formulation of being "God's Son", adding vaguely that "the Father is in me, and I in the Father". However, 1 Jn 2:15 says this is true of anyone who acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, and Jesus used the same mutual inclusion poetry about him and his disciples [Jn 14:20]. When at another time [Jn 5:18ff] the Jews characterized the "Son of Man" title as "making himself equal with God", Jesus answered not by claiming identity but by drawing distinctions:

the Son can do nothing by himself

the Father loves the Son

the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son

the Father sent the Son

the Father has granted the Son to have life in him

the Father has given him authority to judge

I seek not to please myself but him who sent me

Thus Jesus retreats the only two times he is accused of claiming identity or equality with God. In the Passion story, Jesus was mocked or accused as a faith healer, prophet, king of the Jews, Messiah, and "Son of God" [Jn 19:7] -- but never as divine or as a god. When Jesus died, onlookers are said to have exclaimed not that Jesus was God, but rather the "Son of God" [Mat 27:54].

The title of 'God' is never reliably applied to Jesus anywhere in the New Testament. (In many translations of 2 Pet 1:1 and Titus 2:13, the description "God and Saviour" is seemingly applied to Jesus, but the scholarly consensus regards these two letters as late and pseudoepigraphic.) Acts quotes [2:22, 2:36, 3:13, 10:38, 17:31] Peter and Paul describing Jesus in terms of a man appointed to an office, but never calling him God. The gospel authors never explicitly claim Jesus to be God, and the closest they come is the vague language of Jn 1: "the Word was God" and "became flesh". John quotes Thomas exclaiming [Jn 20] "my Lord and my God", but immediately states [20:31] as a creed merely "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God". The "mystery" of Jesus' nature was hardly clarified by the Apostles [e.g. Phil 2:6, Rom 1:4, Col 1:15, Col 2:9], whose epistles never claim Jesus has any kind of identity with God. (Christian scribes tried to change that; cf. the differing manuscripts for Rom 9:5, Acts 20:28, and 1 Tim 3:16.) Even the alleged angelic annunciation of Jesus to his parents ommitted [Lk 1:32, Mt 1:20, Mt 2:13, Mt 2:20] the claim that Jesus was Yahweh incarnate.

Thus, just as Jesus failed to leave clear teachings about salvation, hell, divorce, circumcision, and diet, he also did not effect a competent revelation of who precisely he was. Depending on e.g. various 4th-century Roman emperors, there waxed and waned such christological heresies as Ebionism, Docetism, Adoptionism, Dynamic Monarchianism, Sabellianism, Arianism, Marcionism, Apollonarianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, and Monothelitism. The doublethink of the "trinity" is not found in the Bible, but instead was invented to reconcile Jewish monotheism with Jesus' idiosyncratic Sonship claims.

"Son of God". Jesus seems to have been illegitmate, and to have been known to be such in his community [Mt 1:18-24, Jn 8:41]. His only recorded words before his ministry concern his disobedience [Lk 2:48,51] at age 12 to his mother and stepfather, whom he denied [cf. Mt 23:9] by calling the Temple "my Father's house". He spurned his stepfather's trade of carpentry to take up a ministry proclaiming himself the son not of Joseph but of God. Despite angelic revelations [Lk 1:32, Mt 1:20, Mt 2:13, Mt 2:20] to Mary and Joseph, Mary's knowledge [Lk 1:34] of the virgin conception, and Mary's witness of at least one miracle [Mk 2], they (and Jesus' siblings) did not believe in him [Jn 7:5, Mt 13:57] and thought him "out of his mind" [Mk 3:21], leading Jesus to repeatedly stress [Mk 3:33, 10:29; Mt 10:37, 12:48, 19:29; Lk 11:27-28, 14:26] that one should choose God over one's biological family. Only on the day of his death do the gospels record a single friendly word [Jn 19:26] from Jesus to his family.

Delusional Schizophrenic? Jesus began his (apparently one-year) ministry as a follower of John the Baptist (whose embarrassing baptism of Jesus is played down or not mentioned in the later gospels). In the earliest gospel (Mark), Jesus never calls himself Christ/Messiah, is reluctant for his special nature to be known, and (as he does in Matthew) despairs on the cross. (By contrast, in the later Luke and John, Jesus asserts he is Christ, and confidently assures a co-crucified convict of their impending ascension.) Jesus "could not do many miracles" in his hometown [Mk 6:5, Mt 13:58, Lk 4:24], and he at times was considered mad by other Jews [Jn 8:48, 10:20]. Jesus' movement seems not to have been joined in his lifetime by a single family member or prior acquaintance, but only by strangers. Jesus satisifed the diagnostic criteria of paranoid schizophrenia:

hallucinations: hearing or seeing God, Satan, demons, and angels;

delusions of grandiosity: belief that he is the salvific Christ/Messiah with miraculous powers and apocalyptic foreknowledge;

delusions of persecution: temptation by Satan; opposition by demons;

an insidious reduction in external relations and interests: nomadic asceticism; estrangement from his family.

However, Jesus was not so mentally ill as to believe he was omnipotent. The gospels say repeatedly [Jn 7:1, 8:59, 11:53-54, 12:36; Mt 12:14-15, Mk 3:6-7, Lk 13:31,33] that Jesus retreated from or avoided danger. He was secretive and evasive about his special nature [Mk 3:12, 8:30, 4:41; Lk 9:21, 10:22-24; Mt 16:20; Jn 2:24, 8:25-29, 10:24-38, 12:34], and reluctant to have his powers tested [Mk 8:12; Lk 11:29, 23:8; Mt 4:7, 12:39, 16:4; Jn 2:18]. He was likely neither liar nor lunatic, but rather a preacher, faith-healer, and apocalyptic prophet who in the months leading up to his anticipated execution came to believe he was the Jewish Messiah and even the divinely-special savior of mankind.

Resurrection. At his death the apostles abandoned Jesus in panic, even though they should have been expecting his resurrection if they had indeed witnessed his miracles, heard his divinity claims, and heard him say at least four times [Mk 8:31, 10:34; Mat 16:21, 17:23, 20:19; Lk 9:22, 18:33, 24:7, 24:46] that he would "rise from the dead" or be "raised to life" "on the third day". The New Testament accounts of the resurrection appearances develop over time from silent to vague to contradictory to fantastic. The Empty Tomb story could have resulted from a discreet reburial or removal -- perhaps by a disciple, as in a rumor reported in Mt 28. Possible conspirators were Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene, a longtime disciple [Lk 8:2] "out of whom [Jesus] had driven seven demons" [Mk 16:9, Lk 8:2] and who (unlike any apostle) attended both the crucifixion and entombment. She was the first to visit the tomb on Easter [Mt 28:1, Jn 20:1], and the possibility of removal [Jn 20:2,14,15] was not unimaginable to her. She weepingly lingered [Jn 20:11] after the apostles left the empty tomb, and thereupon was the first [Mk 16:9, Mt 28:9, Jn 20:14] to claim seeing an appearance. The appearances were suspiciously exclusive: "He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen" [Acts 10:40-41] "Why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?" [Jn 14:22]. Many of the "appearances" seem to have been unimpressive to the disciples who heard about them (and should have been expecting them) and even to those who witnessed them:

But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like idle tales. [Lk 24:11]

When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it. Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them [Mk 16:11-12]

These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either. [Mk 16:13]

When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. [Mt 28:17]

Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. [Lk 24:15-16]

she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. Thinking he was the gardener, she said ... [Jn 20:14-15]

Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. [Jn 21:4]

What probably happened is that some disciples began having epiphanies, perhaps involving the occasional dream, ecstatic vision, encounter with a stranger, case of mistaken identity, or outright hallucination (or fabrication). The disciples in their desperation and zeal initially interpreted these experiences as manifestations of a triumphant and vindicated (but not necessarily reanimated) Jesus, who had apparently predicted that he would in some sense return or at least that his ministry would require but survive his death. If a tomb had in fact been found empty, that doesn't necessarily imply that these early manifestations were initially interpreted as experiences of a physically reanimated corpse. The disciples might have just believed that Yahweh had “raised” Jesus' body to heaven so as to not “abandon [it] to the grave” and to “decay” [Ps 16:10, cited in Acts 13:35-37]. An empty tomb belief would greatly have helped the early epiphanic experiences be misinterpreted, exaggerated, and embellished over the subsequent half century into the reanimated corpse stories that appear only in the two latest gospels (Luke and John).

The gospels themselves give precedent for the idea of a dead person being “raised from the dead” [Mk 16:14] by inhabiting the body of some other person currently living. When some [Mk 6:14, Mk 8:28, Mt 16:14, Lk 9:19] -- including Herod [Mk 6:16, Mt 14:2] -- thought that John the Baptist had been "raised from the dead", at least a few of these people would have known that Jesus' body had (like the Easter gardener's) been animate before the Baptist's death. There is no record that anyone ever considered checking the Baptist's body (the grave of which was known his disciples [Mk 6:29, Mt 14:13]), and there is no record that anyone wondered why Jesus' neck did not show signs of John's earlier beheading.



Missing evidence. A divine Jesus could trivially create new miracles to unambiguously vouch for some modern school of Christianity. For the gospel accounts of Jesus to be believable, two kinds of evidence would have to surface:

Textual discoveries that Jesus did not believe in the literal truth of the entire Old Testament, and that the unjust Christian notion of eternal damnation is a misunderstanding.

Compelling corroboration of gospel miracles through physical artifacts (e.g. the Shroud of Turin) or historical records (e.g. of the three-hour darkness on Good Friday).

However, available extra-scriptural records do not corroborate the gospel miracles. Christian apologists often claim that if false, the gospel traditions would have been refuted and discredited by skeptics in 1st-century Palestine. However, there is no indication that the Jesus movement was important enough then to merit the sort of early written debunking that would have been preserved despite skeptical apathy and Christian hostility. Except for the stolen-body rumor denied in Mat 28, the earliest records of anti-Christian skepticism date after the first century and are preserved mainly as excerpts in Christian rebuttals. Celsus (quoted by Origen) dismissed the miracles as the "tricks of jugglers" that he said are "feats performed by those who have been taught by Egyptians", and the Jewish slander reported by Tertullian claimed the empty tomb was faked.

The 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus is hard to count as anti-Christian, even after discounting his affirmation (unnoticed by all of his earliest Christian commentators) of the resurrection as an interpolation. Josephus may have written that Jesus "performed surprising works" and even that Jesus was believed to have been resurrected, but the (possibly interpolated) mention is only in passing. Josephus devotes more space each to John the Baptist and James, and while reporting much minutiae over the entire period during which Jesus lived, does not mention:

the Christmas Star that disturbed Herod and "all Jerusalem" [Mt 2:3], Herod's massacre [Mt 2:16], Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem [Mt 21:8-11], the Good Friday earthquake [Mt 27:51], the Good Friday resurrectees that "appeared to many people" in Jerusalem [Mt 27:53], or the Good Friday 3-hour darkness "over all the land" [Mk 15:33, Lk 23:44, Mt 27:45].

These events in fact went unnoticed by every non-Christian writer, including the historians Seneca and Pliny the Elder. Contrast this with the supernova of 1006CE that was noted in China, Egypt, Iraq, Italy, Japan, and Switzerland.

(Syncellus quotes a lost text of the Christian historian Julius Africanus which itself cites a lost text by Thallus: "Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse". The identification of Thallus' eclipse with "this darkness" might just be in the mind of Julius Africanus, and Thallus at any rate cannot be reliably dated as writing independently of the gospels.) The Alexandrian philosopher and commentator Philo outlived Jesus by 15 or 20 years, and as a visitor to Jerusalem should have met witnesses to the Easter miracles. His silence suggests that Jesus and his followers did not make the early impression that they should have if the gospels were true.

Implausibility. The gospel story of a secretive unpublished family-resenting bastard faith healer in the rural outback of a peripheral province of a regional empire seems an unlikely self-revelation for the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Creator of the universe:

Why such ambiguous and picayune miracles? Why not raise a new mountain in the desert, or install a new star in the heavens?

Why such vague and equivocal claims of divinity?

Why after his resurrection appear so ambiguously, so briefly, and to only his disciples? Why not -- after perhaps a more convincing execution, e.g. beheading -- march back to Pilate and Herod and ascend in front of Jerusalem assembled?

Why not write his revelation himself, and ensure that it survive in perfect copies? Why not include in it indisputible authentication, e.g. by predicting a fundamental physical constant?

The God of the Torah's holy scrolls is far too pedestrian in his works, parochial in his concerns, petty in his decisions, and primitive in his policies.

Works. In the gospels Jesus heals the sick, revives the recently deceased, calms a storm, walks on water, and multiplies food. The god of the Torah makes appearances, speeches, promises, and predictions; raises the dead; and takes credit for various plagues, fires, floods, astronomical events, victories, healings, and deaths. It is implausible that the Creator's works would be so confined to ancient times and so apparently constrained by ancient imaginations.

Concerns. After creating billions of galaxies in Genesis, the god of the Torah is implausibly obsessed with the family of Abraham and the Jordan valley where they live. It seems implausible that an omnibenevolent, omniscient, infallible deity would entrust a few fallible men in a backward corner of the world with such paltry evidence and then demand that everyone else either hear and believe them or suffer eternal damnation.

Decisions. In the gospels Jesus damns entire towns [Mt 11:23], compares non-Israelites to dogs [Mt 15:26], and affirms even "the smallest letter" [Mt 5:18, Jn 10:35] of the Torah. The god of the Torah tests and torments his followers, commits mass murders of e.g. Noah's flood victims [Gen 6:7, 7:21] and the firstborn sons of Egypt [Ex 12:29], creates linguistic division for fear of an ancient construction project [Gen 11:6], and curses mankind because Adam dared to "become like one of us, knowing good and evil" [Gen 3:22]. It is implausible that the Creator of the universe would be so petty and wicked.

Policies. The god of the Torah promotes or demands extravagant worship, dietary taboos, animal sacrifice, repressive sexual codes, human mutilation, monarchy, subjugation of women, slavery, human sacrifice [Lev 27:29, Jud 11:30-39, cf. Heb 11:17, Jam 2:21], and mass murder of even infants [Gen 6:7, 7:21, Ex 11:5, 12:29, 1 Sam 15:3, cf. Heb 11:7,28]. In the gospels Jesus affirms the Torah [Mt 5:18, Jn 10:35], endorses the murderous flood of Noah [Mt 24:38, Lk 17:27], and promises sinners not a thousand years' unrelenting torture, nor a million or a billion, but an eternity of excruciating torture by fire [Mk 9:43, Mt 18:8, 25:41, 25:46]. It is implausible that a competent and benevolent deity would in his revelation allow the endorsement of such heinous crimes and evil policies.

Cascading implications. If the existing evidence about Jesus of Nazareth is considered a convincing proof of his divinity, then many other things can be proven with similar evidence.

Miracles were reported commonly in ancient times and are attested in many other religions. Christians might argue that competing miracles were wrought by demons, but those very miracles could be used by a competing religion to justify the same claim about Jesus' miracles.

were reported commonly in ancient times and are attested in many other religions. Christians might argue that competing miracles were wrought by demons, but those very miracles could be used by a competing religion to justify the same claim about Jesus' miracles. Martyrs have been common throughout human history. If dying for a belief can show the belief is true, then the kamikazes of Japan showed that Emperor Hirohito was divine. Note that Peter and James are the only alleged resurrection witnesses who the New Testament names (John 21:18,19, Acts 12:2) as martyrs, but there is no evidence that recanting their alleged belief in physical resurrection could have saved them. They probably just died for their very sincere belief in some Easter-related experiences that they interpreted as evidence of a triumphant and vindicated Jesus. All other Christian martyrs died for what they were told about the alleged resurrection and not for what they witnessed about it.

have been common throughout human history. If dying for a belief can show the belief is true, then the kamikazes of Japan showed that Emperor Hirohito was divine. Note that Peter and James are the only alleged resurrection witnesses who the New Testament names (John 21:18,19, Acts 12:2) as martyrs, but there is no evidence that recanting their alleged belief in physical resurrection could have saved them. They probably just died for their very sincere belief in some Easter-related experiences that they interpreted as evidence of a triumphant and vindicated Jesus. All other Christian martyrs died for what they were told about the alleged resurrection and not for what they witnessed about it. Prophecies. No non-trivial prophecy in the Bible has both a) been documented as having been made before the predicted event and b) had its fulfillment documented independently of the Bible itself. If self-fulfilling prophecy is considered valid, then for example the Book of Mormon is a valid prophetic text.

Gospel sources. The gospels were stitched together decades after the crucifixion by non-eyewitness zealots freely borrowing from oral traditions and now-lost earlier texts.

Other gospels . At least a dozen other gospels (e.g. of Thomas and Peter) are known from whole texts, fragments, and ancient references, but were not deemed by the early Christians to be divinely inspired.

At least a dozen other gospels (e.g. of Thomas and Peter) are known from whole texts, fragments, and ancient references, but were not deemed by the early Christians to be divinely inspired. Differing manuscripts show that the gospels have undergone insertions, deletions, additions, and revisions.

show that the gospels have undergone insertions, deletions, additions, and revisions. Copying . Matthew and Luke are based in part on copying from Mark and in part apparently on a now-lost earlier compilation of Jesus sayings.

. Matthew and Luke are based in part on copying from Mark and in part apparently on a now-lost earlier compilation of Jesus sayings. Anonymity, Contemporaneity . The gospels were written 35-60 years after Jesus' death, and (unlike every other intact work of classical nonfiction) no authors are identified in the earliest copies. Only about a century later did the gospels become associated with the names of their alleged authors. Writing extensively twenty years after Jesus' death, Paul gives no hint that any gospel had yet been written down.

. The gospels were written 35-60 years after Jesus' death, and (unlike every other intact work of classical nonfiction) no authors are identified in the earliest copies. Only about a century later did the gospels become associated with the names of their alleged authors. Writing extensively twenty years after Jesus' death, Paul gives no hint that any gospel had yet been written down. Mark was written c.65-70 by an unknown author who later church tradition said was an associate of the apostle Peter. The earliest copies of this gospel end abruptly at 16:8 before any visions of the risen Jesus, which were added later in various differing endings.

was written c.65-70 by an unknown author who later church tradition said was an associate of the apostle Peter. The earliest copies of this gospel end abruptly at 16:8 before any visions of the risen Jesus, which were added later in various differing endings. Matthew was written c.70-80 by an unknown author who later church tradition identified with the apostle Matthew, but the text heavily quotes the non-eyewitness Mark rather than providing an independent eyewitness account. Matthew changes (21:5 vs. Mk 11:7) or embellishes (2:15, 2:23) its narrative to make it fulfill Old Testament prophecies.

was written c.70-80 by an unknown author who later church tradition identified with the apostle Matthew, but the text heavily quotes the non-eyewitness Mark rather than providing an independent eyewitness account. Matthew changes (21:5 vs. Mk 11:7) or embellishes (2:15, 2:23) its narrative to make it fulfill Old Testament prophecies. Luke is a second-hand [1:2] account written c.80 by a supposed companion of Paul. Luke is confused (4:23, 31, 44; 24:12) about Palestinian geography. Writing after the fall of Jerusalem, Luke in 21:8 modifies Mark 13:6 to say the end is not necessarily near.

is a second-hand [1:2] account written c.80 by a supposed companion of Paul. Luke is confused (4:23, 31, 44; 24:12) about Palestinian geography. Writing after the fall of Jerusalem, Luke in 21:8 modifies Mark 13:6 to say the end is not necessarily near. John was written c.90 by an unknown author who is ambiguously identified (in the third person: 21:24) with the apostle John only in the final chapter, which is itself an apparent addendum.

Gospel contradictions. Among the many minor contradictions and inconsistencies in the gospels are several that cast significant doubt on the gospels' central message of a divine messiah foretold by the prophets.

Genealogy . Wildly contradictory genealogies for Jesus are given in Mt 1 and Lk 3, which cannot even agree on the father of Joseph.

. Wildly contradictory genealogies for Jesus are given in Mt 1 and Lk 3, which cannot even agree on the father of Joseph. Birthplace . Lk 2:4 and 2:39 say Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth before Jesus' birth, but Mt 2:23 says Joseph only later moved his family to "a town called Nazareth".

. Lk 2:4 and 2:39 say Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth before Jesus' birth, but Mt 2:23 says Joseph only later moved his family to "a town called Nazareth". Birthdate . Luke says Jesus was born during [2:2] the census of Quirinius and before [1:5] the death of Herod. The census was in 6 CE, but Herod died in 4 BCE.

. Luke says Jesus was born during [2:2] the census of Quirinius and before [1:5] the death of Herod. The census was in 6 CE, but Herod died in 4 BCE. Chronology . John indicates Jesus' ministry lasted two or three years, while the earlier Synoptic gospels indicate one. John says Jesus cast out the money changers at the beginning of his ministry, while the Synoptics say it was right before his crucifixion.

. John indicates Jesus' ministry lasted two or three years, while the earlier Synoptic gospels indicate one. John says Jesus cast out the money changers at the beginning of his ministry, while the Synoptics say it was right before his crucifixion. Second coming . Jesus said [Mt 16:28, Lk 9:27] some "standing here" would live to see "the kingdom of God". Jesus also said [Mk 13:30, Lk 21:32, Mt 24:34] that "this generation" would not pass away before the "see[ing] the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory" as well as a "distress" "never to be equalled". Jesus' audience of course saw no such "kingdom" or "coming", and no "distress" like e.g. the Black Death or Holocaust.

. Jesus said [Mt 16:28, Lk 9:27] some "standing here" would live to see "the kingdom of God". Jesus also said [Mk 13:30, Lk 21:32, Mt 24:34] that "this generation" would not pass away before the "see[ing] the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory" as well as a "distress" "never to be equalled". Jesus' audience of course saw no such "kingdom" or "coming", and no "distress" like e.g. the Black Death or Holocaust. Appearances. The poor geographer Luke places resurrection appearances only around Jerusalem [Lk 24:33,49], while the other three gospels [Mk 16:7, Mt 28:10-16, Jn 21:1] report Galilee appearances.

Gospel apologetics. Certain assertions and omissions in the gospels seem to either suspiciously deny or unwittingly create embarrassing alternative explanations for the claims therein.