The crazy things some Christians believe.

The foundation of modern Christian fundamentalism is a set of pamphlets called The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth (generally referred to simply as The Fundamentals). They contain a set of ninety essays published between 1910 and 1915 by the Testimony Publishing Company of Chicago. According to Wikipedia, “It was designed to be a new statement of the fundamentals of Christianity. However, its contents reflect a concern with certain theological innovations related to liberal Christianity, especially biblical criticism.” The gist of the pamphlets is that the Bible is inerrant (it has no errors or inaccuracies and contains no contradictions) and is the literal word of God merely written down by the Bible’s various authors.

Science has in innumerable ways shown many of the Bible’s claims to be wrong. From the Creation stories in the book of Genesis, to archeological findings about the Israelites leaving Egypt in Exodus, to the resurrection of the dead in the Gospels, to the impossible predictions of Revelation, we find far more mythmaking than we do fact-based truth.

And the notion that the Bible, as we receive it, is the literal Word of God has many problems. To believe that, one has to believe that not only were the many authors completely controlled by God in what they wrote, but also the bishops that chose which books were in and which were out of what we call The Bible. And also the many scribes that hand copied the books — there are many instances of variation from one copy to the next. (For instance, the Gospel of Mark has three different endings.) And then there is the problem of translations. Which translator is the one who was controlled by God so that his or her translation reflects God’s exact meaning. Various translations shift the meaning of various verses completely. Many problems. If one is actually God’s Word, are all the other translations (some based on ancient manuscripts that vary one to another) heresy? Which is the right one?

That’s the overview. Now, some nuts and bolts.

Debating Christian Fundamentalists, I like to start with their first gospel, the book called Matthew. (It was named centuries after it was written by a bishop who just decided without much justification that it was written by one of Jesus’s disciples by that name.) Its second chapter starts off “In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem…” asking about Jesus. If Jesus was born in the time of King Herod who died in 4 B.C.E. there is an immediate contradiction with the Gospel of Luke who says that Jesus was born when “Quirinius was governor of Syria” which would have to been some ten years or more later because Quirinius did not obtain that post until 6 C.E.

Matthew goes on to tell how the wise men (or Magi) told King Herod of a prophecy that this baby Jesus would become King of the Jews and that news prompts Herod to order the slaughter all the babies of Bethlehem (not just the boys, apparently) to prevent a rival from growing up and challenging him. As it happens, we have a very good Jewish historian who lived in and wrote about the First Century named Josephus who hated all the Herodian kings and delighted in listing all their crimes against the Jewish people. The slaughter of the Bethlehem babies is not one of them. There is simply no way he would have been ignorant of this crime if it had actually happened. The Jews of the time were constantly traveling to Jerusalem for the many festivals to perform obligatory sacrifices at the temple there. On the road, around campfires at night, they would have encountered people from all over and the news of such a horrendous crime would have spread like wildfire and probably would have prompted a rebellion. The Judeans routinely rebelled for far less in those days. But none of that happened. The simple fact is that Matthew’s story about the “Slaughter of the Innocents” is a perfect example of breaking God’s Ninth Commandment against bearing false witness against one’s neighbor — in this case, King Herod. Not that he was such a great guy, but he’s innocent of Matthew’s charge.

And let’s not forget that ancient hero stories from the Mediterranean cultures often included a prophecy, a jealous, murderous power figure who feels threatened and tries to kill off the hero at birth — Hercules, Perseus, Oedipus, and Moses, for that matter.

Also make note of the fact that none of the other gospel authors mention the slaughter in Bethlehem. Was it deemed unimportant? Did they simply forget about it? But wait, Fundamentalists believe that God is the true author of the gospels. Did he forget about it for the other gospels? To take this line further, neither the gospels of Mark nor John even mention the virgin birth. How did God forget to throw that into those books? If he thought the ground was covered by Matthew and Luke (both of which most scholars believe were written after Mark), did God not realize that not including them in Mark and John would look like those authors were either ignorant of or gravely doubtful regarding the virgin birth?

But even before he writes of Jesus’ birth, the author of Matthew had already pulled a fast one. A few lines before King Herod appears in his story, he says Jesus’ virgin birth fulfills a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah (7:14). But when you actually read Isaiah, you see the verse Matthew quotes has nothing to do with predicting a First Century Messiah born of a virgin, but one that centuries earlier would supposedly solved some crazy dispute with Assyria. Matthew got away with his outlandish claim because early Christians had very little access to Hebrew scripture or the Greek translations of it. You had to be rich to be able to own a copy of hand-written scrolls or codexes. Early Christians would not have been welcome to peruse scrolls in Jewish synagogues and few would have been able to read Hebrew anyway. So until translations and printing made copies of the Bible widely available sixteen centuries later, the lie stood unquestioned in Christendom and became an established “fact” in Christian theology.

Whenever I bring up these and many other problems with the factuality of the Bible, Fundamentalists usually have some elaborate, contorted explanation for them. But then I ask them, if God literally wrote the Bible by putting its words into the minds of the its authors, why didn’t he include your elaborate, contorted explanation, too, or better yet, convey a story that did not contain so many obvious contradictions? Surely, your God is a god who says what he means and means what he says and has the ability to say it clearly. Why does he have to have people like you cleaning up his confusing statements with your explanations? Does God mean to confuse us? Does he deliberately hide the truth behind this veil of absurdities? Why would he do that? To test our faith? If we don’t or can’t believe something ridiculous on its face, are we not worthy of salvation? Is that the loving God you worship?

And this brings up the ultimate Christian Bible verse, the one you see on signs at football games, etc. — John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Let’s unpack that. First, God loves the world, meaning each of us in the world. Secondly, he allowed his only son (put aside what science or the false Isaiah prophecy has to say about the virgin birth) to live on earth and then be killed so that those who believe (against pretty good evidence) that (1.) Jesus was divine and (2.) resurrected after being dead three days and (3.) was killed so that each believer might be saved — if you believe all that, then you don’t go to Hell when you die.

Okay… How loving is a God who is willing to damn anyone who has trouble believing the confusing and error-ridden text in the Bible? How loving is he if he sends his son to the world to be tortured to death? How loving is he if he sets this whole equation up — the I’ll kill my son and you get saved only if you believe that he is my son and he died for your salvation — no matter how ridiculous it is? And if God is the author of John 3:16, he is acting like he doesn’t have a choice. Like someone set up this rule that non-believers are damned and he (a loving god) can’t do anything about it. The rule is the rule. But isn’t God omnipotent? What rule is he forced to follow? Who lays down the rules, if not him? John 3:16 is contradictory and crazy when you look at it. But Fundamentalists believe it with a passion.

My book, “The Gospel of Thomas (the Younger)” explores more fully these issues and imagines what a truthful gospel might look like. Learn more at www.garytmcdonald.com

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