In The Name Of Allah The Merciful The Compassionate

This is an answer to the article, taken from the source page. The original material is in black while my answers are in blue; spelling mistakes of the original article were left uncorrected in order to maintain accurate quoting from the source.

 

The Unreliability Of The Christian Gospels

By: Yi Shan Jufu – 10th August 2003

 

 

 

• Source page - click here •

Written by Gary am 13 Oct 2002 11:19:30:

THE RELIABILITY OF THE GOSPELS

Material taken from: The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, Craig Blomberg, IVP, 1987

Handbook of Christian Apologetics, P. Kreeft and R. Tacelli, IVP, 1994

Why Gospel accounts are accurately preserved

  • Jewish students and Greco-Roman students heavily emphasized accurate memorization
  • Comparison of earliest manuscripts with later ones show only a few, very minor differences. Since these manuscripts are scattered geographically and across time, it is highly unlikely someone would have corrupted all the manuscripts.
  • The notion that the current Gospels are corrupted depends on the existence of an original "uncorrupted" version and transitional versions in between. No such version has ever been discovered, which should be strongly expected by that notion. There is no evidence of any inauthentic gospel's existence in the first century. With a single exception, no apocryphal Gosepl is ever even quoted by any known author the first 300 years after Christ.
  • Memory of the correct authorship would have been strongly preserved with the text, since the author is what gave authority to the Gospel accounts.

Why Gospel accounts are NOT accurately preserved?

1.     Jewish & Greco-Roman students are not known to “heavily” emphasize accurate memorization! The authors of confusion are trying to fit the Islamic “memorization” of the Quran to their Gospels! One cannot even attribute the Jewish tradition of counting words by scribes when making copies to the gospel copyists.

2.     Comparison of earliest manuscripts (MSS) with later ones shows THOUSANDS of both minor & major variations; this is not true only for the claimed “geographically scattered” ones, this is true even for those of same countries. If one can show any evidence to the contrary of the false claim pertaining to “minor variations with no theological/doctrinal implications”, the theory falls; to illustrate this we refer the reader to C. I. Scolfield’s footnote for Mark 16:9-20 in his ‘Scolfield Reference Bible’: “Verses 9-20 are not found in the two most ancient mss., the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus; others have them with partial omissions and variations.  But the passage is quoted by Irenaeus and Hippolytus in the second or third century.” (1998 ed.). If the reader knows what Mark 16:9-20 is all about, the reader would reject the falsehoods of the authors about the “few, minor variations”!

3.     I find it rather amusing that in order for us to prove the alterations of the NT books, we must present the authors with an “uncorrupted” ones! If this was readily available, there would be no need to present them because there will be no need to criticise “uncorrupted” books! One is also forced to laugh at the notion that there is no evidence of any inauthentic gospels’ existence in the 1st Century; this is refuted easily by the FACT that the early church persecuted, killed and burnt anyone preaching any “different” gospel along with such gospels; for more proofs you only need to read the church history and learn the truth, which the authors try to hide so well.

4.     The four gospels were written anonymously. Their authors did not sign their names to them. The titles ‘according to Mark’ etc. were added to the gospels in the second half of the second century.

Internal Evidence within the Gospel for its Reliability

  • Most scholars now place certainly before 80AD, some place Mark as early as 65 AD.

What about the other gospels, specially the fourth gospel of John?

  • There would have been plenty of eyewitnesses for authors to collect material from. Moreover, those eyewitnesses would have prevented from any account that was fabricated from gaining acceptance.

What eyewitnesses is the author talking about? I would suggest that he reads the earliest materials of the New Testament, the epistles of Paul, in order to know for certainty that myths were already in full swing at least according to the father of current Christianity, Paul of Tarsus! We will let the deceptive authors feast their eyes on NT evidence against their deceptive and false claims:

Galatians 1: 6 -  I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: 7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

2 Corinthians 11:4 - For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.

According to Paul, there were no other gospels from God and anyone preaching any other gospel other than what Paul was preaching, even an angel from heaven, is ACCURSED! I suggest that the authors re-evaluate their NT books based on the above alone and reject every single word that was not preached and written by the father of modern Christianity, Paul of Tarsus.

  • Myths require enough time to pass after the original event. But Gospels were all written within 30 to at most 50 years after the event. There is no example in history of any myth arising that soon after the original event. (Compare with the myths that arose hundreds of years after Muhammed, Buddha, and Lao Tzu.)

The author(s) are very funny! They are trying to hide their dilemmas and the myths that plague their NT books by accusing Islam of having myths! We may remind them that the myth makers, or should we say the myth copiers, are none other than these Christians and their holy books:

1.     Dying saviours: read the book The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours Christianity Before Christ

2.     Trinities & Triads: read The Pagan Influence Upon the Development of the Doctrine of the Trinity

3.     Resurrected saints: the bodies of the saints arising from their tombs and walking the streets of Jerusalem (Matthew 27:52-53)! Any historical references to this event? Notice that no other gospel author recorded this wondrous event that must have caught the eyes of the loved disciple, John, who was supposedly near the cross! Who were those saints, Gary?

If the above aren’t enough proofs to the fables of your NT books, then nothing is, Gary!

  • The style of the Gospels are of eyewitness account, totally unlike myth or any other genre known to the ancient world (see Kreeft, p. 189).

Don’t make me laugh, Gary! What eyewitnesses? Let me quote you some real eyewitness account: Read Luke 1:1-4

1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, 2 just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent The-oph'ilus, 4 that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.

We all have to agree that Luke was no companion of Jesus nor did he (eye)witness anything; furthermore, he seems to have written this book as some sort of letter to someone called “Theophilus” and not an inspired gospel! Really, Gary! I am very disappointed in your blind copy and paste without employing your God-given faculty of brains to scrutinize things before deceiving others into believing a lie like you do.

  • The Gospel get a myraid of details (geographical, political facts, etc.) correct that only an eyewitness would have gotten. There are no anachronisms present as one would expect if they were written hundreds of years later.

Oh, really?! Let us consider some of the Gospels’ bloopers & blunders shall we?

1.     The genealogies of Matthew and Luke contradict each other;

2.      Matthew incorrectly attributes a prophecy by Zechariah to Jeremiah; read Matthew 27:9 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value... and then read Zechariah 11:12-13 And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord.

3.     Matthew confuses two Old Testament characters if you compare Matthew 23:35 “That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.” to II Chronicles 24:20-21 And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you. And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the Lord.

4.     Matthew refers to an unknown prophecy when he states in Matthew 2:23 And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.

5.     "Geographical Errors Within The New Testament" - From Bismikaallahuma.org. CLICK ME!

The list is too long to be accommodated here, the reader may search the web under “biblical errors” and enjoy.

  • Luke and Matthew both show careful attention to their souce material (Mark). You would expect wider divergence had they been fabrications.

I think the author(s) are starting to believe their deception and want the reader to do the same! Nothing is more absurd than the notion of “keeping faithful to the source material”!! It is proven beyond any shadow of doubt that both Matthew and Luke “enhanced” the texts of Mark, each according to his agenda! Please read Matthew's editing of Mark's gospel #1, Matthew's editing of Mark's gospel #2, Matthew's editing of Mark's gospel #3, etc. Luke can be compared to Mark also and the same editing would be noticed, therefore, the author(s) claims are baseless and plain deceptive in line with Christian apologists’ tactics to misguide people and prove what they cannot prove if matters were approached with sincerity!

  • If the Gospels were invented, the most likely culprits would be the early church (as most liberal scholars hypothesize). Yet, the Gospels include many unflattering details about the disciples, who would have been revered founders in these early churches.

First of all, the notion of Gospel invention is not what I am dealing with in this article; however, if the inclusion of “unflattering” details about anyone was evidence for the truth of the belief system, then why is not the critic a follower of Islam, knowing that –to the critic- the quran and the prophetic sunnah (sayings and traditions) contain what he terms as “unflattering details” and has built up all of his one way forum (you cannot post there or rebut his postings) on these “unflattering details!

External Evidence For Gospel's Reliability

  • There are more copies of the text dated closer to Jesus' life than we have for any other ancient event. Scholars dismiss the Bible because it contains accounts of miracles, but if not for this bias against miracles, the biblical history would be regarded as more firmly established than most of the history of classical Greece and Rome.

1.     This is plain nonsense as well as outright lies! What more COPIES of texts dated closer to Jesus’ life? Do you consider fragments and scraps as evidence?

2.     When we deal with the New Testament; one would expect the authors to talk about evidence for the collective books of the NT in its current format not on scattered scraps! A question springs to mind: “when did the canonical books of the NT –as they are known today- become canon?” The answer is: it was in 367 that a man named Athanasius first gave a list of canonical books identical with the 27 books of today.

3.     The next question that pops up is: “what are the most ancient complete codices of the Christian bible?” I shall limit the answer to the most popular ones - Codex Sinaititus (Aleph) (4th Century), Codex Vaticanus (B) (4th Century) & Codex Bezae Graeco-Latinus (D) (5th or 6th Century). One might wonder at the dates of such codices with the earliest extant codex dating to the fourth century CE! But are these codices reliable? Let us read some views by Dr. Scrivener:

Codex Sinaititus (Aleph) (4th Century) "From the number of errors, one cannot affirm that it is very carefully written. The whole manuscript is disfigured by corrections, a few by the original scribe, very many by an ancient and elegant hand of the 6th Century whose emendations are of great importance, some again by a hand a little later, for the greatest number by a scholar of the 7th Century who often cancels the changes by the 6th Century amender, others by as many as eight (8) different later writers. " Scrivener, Page 93, Vol. I.

Codex Vaticanus (B) (4th Century) "One marked feature is the great number of omissions which induced Dr. Dobbin to speak of it as an abbreviated text of the New Testament. He calculates that whole words or clauses are left out no less than 2556 times." Scrivener, Page 120, Volume I.

Codex Bezae Graeco-Latinus (D) (5th or 6th Century) "The manuscript has been corrected, first by the original penman and later by 8 or 9 different revisors." And again: "No known manuscript contains so many bold and extensive interpolations (600 in ACTS alone) countenanced, where they are not absolutely unsupported, chiefly by the Old Latin and Curetonian Syriac Version." Scrivener, Pages 128 and 130, Volume I.

One cannot help but wonder how such error & corruption-ridden codices can represent any reliable history of the gospels or the bible for that matter? Needless to say, the thousands of MSS evidence that the authors cling to as proofs of the authenticity of their NT books is actually nothing more than wishful thinking since such thousands of MSS are infested with thousands of variations, errors and corrections of later dates.

  • No serious scholar denies that Paul's letters were written in the first century, most probably within a few decades of Christ. Those letters attest to the same events (i.e. Resurrection) and person of Christ as the Gospels. Moreover, there is a strong link between the dating of Paul's letters (obviously written before his death) and the dating of Acts (which describes Paul in great detail and ends before Paul's death) and the dating of Luke (which was written before Acts).

Actually the authors have failed to notice the full history of Paul and his relations with the Jerusalem (so-called) Church! Paul has never met Jesus in person; he called the disciples of Jesus names and did not attribute any of his (strange) teachings to any knowledge gathered from those who were with Jesus day and night. It is rather shocking to hear Trinitarians cling to the straw of Paul and his epistles, which influenced some of the Gospel contents later, and to ignore the confusion of Paul’s literature.

Furthermore, Paul has called anyone preaching anything other than his gospel “accursed” as he stated plainly in:

Galatians 1: 1 Paul an apostle--not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead-- 2 and all the brethren who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: 3 Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father; 5 to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. 6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel-- 7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again, If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed. 10 Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ. 11 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not man's gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it; 14 and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, 16 was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with flesh and blood, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned to Damascus. 18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days. 19 But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord's brother. 20 (In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!) 21 Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cili'cia. 22 And I was still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea; 23 they only heard it said, "He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy." 24 And they glorified God because of me.

Not only did Paul reject the true disciples of Jesus, he was in confrontations with them and they did not approve of his teachings, which show that he corrupted the message of Jesus. But strangely enough, and in spite of the confusion in his epistles, one can find very serious passages in Paul’s letters that topple the Christian doctrines of Jesus’ divinity! Let us read together one sample and wonder why Christians still believe Jesus to be God?

1 Corinthians 15: 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. 12 Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14 if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 "For God has put all things in subjection under his feet." But when it says, "All things are put in subjection under him," it is plain that he is excepted who put all things under him. 28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to every one.

How can the son, a god to Trinitarians, be subjected to God? This is the “farce” of Trinitarians but –strangely enough- they do not mind it!!

  • Ancient writers up to 315AD completely accepted the authorship of the Gospel to their traditional authors (see Kreeft, 194). Even Christianity's early opponents - Celsus, Emperor Julian, etc. - conceded this. (For Matthew, a early first century author, Papias attributes the Gospel to Matthew). 

One should never accept what Christian apologists say at face value because they have been caught many times to be fabricating and making things up to protect their hides from the inevitable, being EXPOSED! One needs to read the writings of early Christian historians to notice the amount of corruption that their holy books went through and this is not Muslim propaganda; for more details on the corruption and ongoing “restoration” (?!) of the NT texts, one is advised to read The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, by Bruce Manning Metzger.

Although the Old Testament is not the subject of this article, however and since it is considered part of the Christian Bible, I advise you to read The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts - by  Neil Silberman (Author) & Israel Finkelstein (Author); it will shock you to learn how the bible is inaccurate, made up of stories added later than the events and unreliable historically.