The Most Confusing Story Ever Told (Part 3 of 3)

The Gospel of John is the Most Confusing Gospel Ever Written

Christian: So are you tired of hearing the sound of your own voice yet?

Atheist: I let you tell me the entire story of Easter before I explained why it didn’t make sense. It’s not my fault that it contained errors, and sadly, it wasn’t your fault, either. Those stories are meant to be reconciled, especially John’s. In fact, the entire gospel resists meshing into the gospel narratives.

For the nth time, it’s just a different perspective. All of the stories happened, but each author chose to tell the stories that best fit their theme. John merely has much different preferences than the other gospel writers.

That’s undoubtedly true. The Jesus of the first 3 gospels is a liberal hippie, especially in Luke, but the Jesus of John is a conservative Republican. You won’t hear his Sermon on the Mount or Sermon on the Plain in John. There is no “blessed are the meek” or “feed the homeless” or “Christians are the sheep who take care of the needs of others“. He doesn’t speak in parables nor stay humble or private about his identity, telling everyone within earshot that he is the Messiah. And man, is he racist. His enemies that challenge him in the other gospels are the Pharisees, but in John it’s always “the Jews“.

I’m annoyed by your false implication that conservatives are racist.

Sorry, but facts don’t care about your feelings. Conservatism is racist. I’m sure you don’t feel racist — I doubt that anyone does, even among KKK members — but racists still exist even if they don’t self-identify that way. Take a look at the homepage of the KKK’s political party (or better yet, just take my word for it) and note how every part of their platform is also a part of the Republican platform (minus white supremacy, which I’m pretty sure the Republicans don’t advertise explicitly).

I’ll bet it makes you feel much better to think that your political enemies are the racist ones.

I’d rather that no one was, and I wish that the gospel of John didn’t fuel it. Anyway, among Christians you’ll find that John is by far the most liked. If I had to guess why, I’d say that it’s because liberals have 3 gospels to choose from while conservatives have just one.

Or maybe it’s just the best gospel. It does contain the most well-known and widely recognized verse, John 3:16, a true summation of what we love and believe about God.

It’s a good verse. It’s weird, though, for Jesus to argue for salvation only through the Son of God. After all, in the other 3 gospels there is only one mention of eternal life, and that’s in response to a rich young ruler who explicitly asks “what must I do to gain eternal life?” And this same Jesus who throughout John tells people over and over again that eternal life is only through the Son doesn’t bring up the Son even once. He mentions commandments and he mentions giving away his possessions, and even after the guy leaves Jesus still doesn’t mention to those around him that the Son would have anything to do with the answer to his question. It’s not a different viewpoint — it’s a different person. Can you really picture the Jesus of John telling a rich person about how difficult it is for a rich person to enter heaven?

Yes, because he did. And you’ve already explained why these 3 liberal authors would choose a story that sounds liberal to you while John would tell it like it is.

Wow. Okay. It’s not just the political slant, either. The author of John went out of his way to mock the other gospels, as if to spite those of you who think it’s the same Jesus. Remember Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane?

Yes, of course. He gave a tearful, anguished prayer asking God the Father “to take the cup from him”, stressed to the point of sweating blood.

I knew you’d remember that metaphor. It’s a clever turn of phrase. I’ll bet you don’t remember it from the gospel of John, though. When Jesus is about to be arrested and Peter pulls out his sword, he rebukes Peter by telling him “Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” It’s clear in this context that he’s talking about death on the cross, given that’s what Peter was trying to prevent, and uses that same metaphor for death. Are we to believe that he begged God to the point of sweating blood to “take away the cup” and then minutes later rebuked Peter for trying to stop the same thing that he himself had tried to stop through praying for help?

Of course. He clearly came to an answer in the Garden and accepted his fate.

That would be a lot more believable if John had included such a prayer. Instead, we have a chapter-length prayer that reads like a sermon. There’s no anguish or distress, and certainly no sweating blood. There’s no mention of the Garden of Gethsemane by name, but the following text makes it clear that this is the last thing to happen before he gets arrested.

After that prayer he went into a garden. It just leaves out the part about his anguished prayer.

The prayer of anguish follows just after that other prayer??? I guess that explains it after all, why there’s two different versions of Jesus — he must have been schizophrenic. Or perhaps the gospel of John is just that different. Anyways, I have to agree with the gospel of John here in how silly it is for Jesus — allegedly the only person who could die for sin and the person sent for the main purpose of dying for sin — asking if he could get out of it.

It’s not silly. He was merely conflicted about it.

Yeah, until he wasn’t. Look, I could go on all day about the differences between John and the other gospels, and perhaps another time I will. But let me leave you with perhaps the biggest contradiction of them all — his last words. Even if he had both asked God why he’d been forsaken and also declared “it is finished”, that’s an even bigger personality change in a shorter amount of time than his declaration about “the cup”.

The Most Confusing Story Ever Told (Part 2 of 3)

Can Four Stories Really Become One?

Christian: So, you’re going to claim that this story — the resurrection story — examined by Christians everywhere at least once a year, contains a bunch of contradictions that somehow escaped all of our notice?

Atheist: That’s a good way to sum it up. And let me explain why you never notice.

First of all, it is typical for churches to read merely one gospel story every year and not compare or contrast that to the other gospels. Second, you don’t remember only the vague details so that reading a contradiction doesn’t set off any alarms. And third, even if confronted with an obvious and genuine contradiction, your defense mechanisms will go up to protect you from ever recognizing it.

That might be true if there were contradictions, but there aren’t, so I guess that’s a moot point.

Well, the Easter story is a great place to start. Why don’t you try telling me “the story” — not one of them, but all of them as one single narrative. I expect that the contradictions are so numerous and so mutually-exclusive that, even given your best shot, it will still contradict the bible in several places.

Gladly. [Tells story] That’s it. Didn’t think I could do it, did you?

[Please click and read the link above. The following critique won’t make any sense unless you do, and I don’t want to copy and paste someone else’s work here].

That’s impressive. This does look like a good-faith attempt to make sense of the 4 gospels as well as possible. While I’m going to point out the many ways that this still fails to make sense (because these stories are irreconcilable), I’m still genuinely shocked that someone did it this well.

Before we get to the contradictions, let’s talk a little bit about plot convenience. In the individual stories as well as this combined narrative, Mary and the other women arrive at a tomb that’s sealed by a giant rock. The gospel of Mark lampshades the fact that the women know this before they arrive and they also know that they don’t have a way to move it. The gospel of Matthew adds an obstacle in the form of guards, presumably there to prevent anyone (like the women) from getting into the tomb. It’s a pretty lucky coincidence that when they arrive an angel shows up to remove both obstacles, neither of which they were prepared to deal with.

But the “full narrative” makes this worse. By adding the account in John that’s so radically different that it requires its own visit by Mary alone, the stone once again needs removal and the guards existence’ needs to be ignored (or, as done here, assumed not a problem because they’re perhaps sleeping). So it’s a lucky coincidence times two, double the plot convenience. In the single narrative, it isn’t pointed out why Mary is there the first time, but one may rightly assume that she wasn’t just “passing through” but had also gone the first time knowing that the tomb was sealed with a rock that she couldn’t move and guards that she couldn’t get past.

None of these points are contradictions, but it should be noted that plot convenience doesn’t exist in real life. It implies that these narratives are made-up stories.

Now, let’s discuss the contradictions. Mary arrives once and finds the tomb unsealed, enough so that the disciples can enter and find a folded linen. She leaves and returns with other women, and then find the tomb is sealed again in the meantime because reasons. An angel shows up and scares off the guards, who we’re told gave a “false report” that they were sleeping, though according to this narrative that’s not false because they were sleeping through the first visit. They had literally one job and failed it twice in the same morning. Seems like if there was some story circulating that the disciples showed up and stole the body, one might point to a gospel narrative about disciples going inside the tomb and leaving and never getting stopped by guards. Even the bible’s telling makes this “false report” pretty plausible.

And then we have the best attempt at making sense of the angels. In this narrative, the women are told by the angel sitting on the rock outside that Jesus is gone. And then they meet another angel inside who “confirms” the story by telling them the same thing. And then after the other women leave, Mary stays behind to cry and when the angels ask “why are you crying?” she repeats back to them the same story they just told her twice, as if somehow they hadn’t heard it yet. And despite all this repetition, this single narrative still cut out the details from Luke where two angels suddenly appear in the tomb and tell them the exact same story once again, because of course it did! It already doesn’t make sense that the women learn about Jesus’ disappearance twice over from two different angels, and at least this way the author can just keep it down to two angels instead of a redundant set appearing to join them, too.

The women run off “afraid and full of joy” to go tell the disciples about this event. The gospel of Luke makes it explicit that these women included Mary Magdalene, despite this story leaving her to meet Jesus to fulfill the story found in John. I understand why the narrative puts it here — for one thing, the angels have done their telling and they’re still hanging around the tomb, so we don’t have to conjure another redundant set of angels. For another thing, it’s incredibly silly to think that Mary met Jesus outside the tomb, then went and got other women to embalm him and is surprised to find that he isn’t in the tomb.

Peter apparently doesn’t believe the women and goes back to investigate himself, as per the gospel of Luke. Did he not already do this once in the story? How could he possibly not believe it given that he literally had already done the identical investigation once before???

I should also note that while this narrative notes that the women were afraid to tell anyone, and then went ahead and did it anyway, that’s not what the bible says. In Mark, the women were so afraid that they said “nothing to anyone.” You might find that a weird contradiction because even in the same gospel it goes on to say that Mary Magdalene did go on to tell others, but despite being the same gospel we’re talking about a story told by a different author. As you can see noted in that same citation, Mark 16:9-20 don’t exist in the earliest, most reliable manuscripts and were pretty clearly added later.

In summary, this story still contradicts the bible. And now you can see why churches just stick with one story at a time. The stories make much more sense on their own. The gospel of John has only Mary Magdalene telling the disciples about the tomb, because in that story she’s the only woman who visited the tomb. Nicodemus shows up in the gospel of John to entomb Jesus, and since only John mentions the earlier story of Nicodemus meeting Jesus at night, it won’t surprise you to learn that the other gospels don’t mention him here, either. Only Matthew tells us how the guards were removed from the tomb because it’s the only story that even tells us that guards are at the tomb. These gospels were never meant to be put together, each believing itself to be the definitive story and replacing the others.

While this was a fairly good attempt to make sense out of mutually-exclusive stories, the real problem here is John. The gospel of John is so different from the other texts that it really sticks out like a sore thumb, as will become more apparent as we discuss the other aspects of the crucifixion stories and how much the gospel of John changes them…

The Most Confusing Story Ever Told (Part 1 of 3)

Jesus’ Rather Short Stay

Christian: Christ is risen!

Atheist: Umm… yeah. Happy Easter.

Your line is “He is Risen, indeed”.

Look, despite being an atheist, I’ll celebrate any holiday involving candy, but you do know that I don’t believe in the resurrection, right?

As if. You just don’t want to admit to one of the most well-attested and proven events in history because then you’d have to stop sinning.

Are you still pressing on with your belief that atheists don’t believe in your God because they want to sin? You should know better by now. And let’s drop the exaggeration about the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. It is and always was the gospels, 4 different stories that wildly contradict each other.

They’re 4 different viewpoints of the same story, not 4 different stories. And the Bible contains no contradictions.

Of course it does. And let’s start with one that you already know of and recognize as a contradiction, but have tried to rationalize away with a weak argument and “not thinking about it”. How many hours was Jonah in the belly of the fish?

Whoa. That gave me some tonal whiplash. Why are we talking about Jonah? I thought the subject was Easter. And also I’m pretty sure there are no contradictions in that story, even according to atheists. I’ll be happy to deal with any of your so-called “contradictions” to prove that they don’t exist, but you’re just desperate to be embarrassed here, aren’t you?

You’re right that we’re talking about Easter. I know this is a weird subject shift, but I have to take this route in order to get a sincere answer from you later. Experience has taught me that Christians will say just about anything to avoid a conclusion they don’t like, even if it means saying something they very obviously don’t believe. So could you please bear with me and answer the question?

The answer is that I don’t know. The bible doesn’t give it in hours, as I imagine you know… or at least ought to know.

I do know that. But give me an estimate. Does 1000 hours work? Is that possible?

That’s too many.

Right! So we know some estimates don’t work. Give me a range that fits every possible answer.

The Bible says 3 days and 3 nights, right? I’m going to be mad if this is some trick question.

It’s not a trick, and I want your genuine answer. How many hours does that translate to?

I don’t know. Three full days is 72 hours, but that’s too specific when the bible only describes it in days. Let’s go with a broader range of 2 full days to 4 full days… it definitely was between 48 and 96 hours. I feel pretty confident about that. Does that work for you, Captain Obvious?

Perfect. I’m glad to hear that you know what “3 days means”. Now how many hours was Jesus in the tomb? As a reminder, Friday afternoon to Sunday morning is about 1 and a half days.

Well, you have to understand that we’re talking about the Jewish concept of days…

And here comes the insincerity. The book of Jonah was also written by a Jew, but strangely this concept of “Jewish days” only comes up when we’re talking about Jesus’ death and resurrection. A minute ago you understood 3 days to mean 3 days.

I still do. These aren’t analogous concepts, though. It’s different because the Bible says he would rise “on the third day”, not that he was dead for 3 whole days.

Yes, if you cherry-pick. I didn’t pick the story of Jonah at random — Jesus himself used it as an analogy for how long he’d be dead.

No, he didn’t. It was an analogy, but not to the length of his death.

Then it was analogous to…

The fact that he’d be gone and then return, just like Jonah.

Jesus’ quote specifically pointed out the length of 3 days as being like Jonah. You are again wandering into the territory of “insincere”, nihilistically making any argument to defend your position no matter how many previous beliefs you have to torch to get there.

But, let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and say that the prediction was the Jesus would rise “on the third day”. Why do you believe that?

Are you deliberately stupid? The Bible says so. Friday is the first day, Saturday is the second, and Sunday is the third.

Jesus rose on Sunday??? Why do you believe that?

Now I know you’re being deliberately stupid. The bible says so.

Citation needed.

Here. “And very early in the morning on the first day of the week (that’s Sunday), the women approached the tomb…”

I didn’t ask when the women came to the tomb. I asked for a citation for when Jesus rose from the dead.

Stop interrupting. I was getting to that part. Speaking of insincere, you know full well that they arrived at an empty tomb. Jesus was gone on Sunday morning!

Yes, gone by that point. If Jesus had risen 5 minutes after being entombed, how would that Easter story have played out differently?

…

The bible doesn’t say that this is when Jesus rose. It only implies that this is the maximum amount of time that he could’ve been dead, but he could’ve left any time in between.

How? The tomb was sealed!

I’m sorry, are you suggesting that Jesus, the same one that the gospel of John says walked through walls, was trapped until the stone rolled away? We have one gospel that tells of the women being present when the stone was moved, and it doesn’t say that they saw Jesus leave right then. In fact, they had to be told by an angel or angels that he was gone because they didn’t see him leave.

No, of course I’m not saying that they saw him leave. But… maybe he was invisible.

More insincerity. You’ve never believed or claimed to believe that before but as soon as you became aware that the bible doesn’t say what you think it says, you start making stuff up. You made a definite assertion that Jesus rose on Sunday morning and now you’re merely claiming that the bible doesn’t necessarily contradict the idea that this is when it happened. It’s entirely possible that Jesus was long gone by Sunday morning.

The gospel of John says that Mary ran into him outside of the tomb, so “long gone” doesn’t fit, either.

He could have returned, if we even grant that story from John to be true. It’s so radically different it is from the other 3 tales. And let’s stop dancing around the obvious — it’s really hard to say what happened on Sunday morning given 4 very conflicting stories, which is why it’s difficult to say “this is what happened once the women arrived”. So let’s see if we can clear this story up…

Jesus is Not the Messiah (Part 5 of 5)

Jesus is the Messiah if Christians Really Want Him to Be

Christian: You want to try to convince me that Jesus isn’t the Messiah in the New Testament? Aren’t we already agreed that the gospel of John announces that practically every other chapter???

Atheist: Totally agreed.

Then, I don’t really see how you can even begin to have a case.

Well, you’re looking at the New Testament with hindsight bias. What do you think determined whether something got into the Bible or not?

Whether or not it was inspired by God. Duh.

What determines divine inspiration?

The fact that they are in the Bible.

That’s an unbelievably circular argument. I started by asking what determines whether something or not gets into the Bible, and the answer is that it’s due to something that gets determined by the fact that it’s in the Bible?

Fine. They’re inerrant.

That obviously doesn’t make sense, either. Because we don’t have the original copies of any piece of the Bible, what we have are copies of copies, and copying errors are something we both agree exist in the Bible.

Yes, we agree. But the original is inerrant.

But you don’t have the originals! No one does. So this inerrancy in the original is simply assumed from the fact that it’s in the Bible. The common Christian beliefs, which I think you’ve done your best job to respond with, are a fallacy of circular logic. I’ve scoured the internet, and to the best of my ability to search, have not found a single Christian that has come up with a model for how one would determine that an eligible work could be found inerrant and then added to the Bible. Many Christians argue for why nothing can or should be added to the canon *now*, but thanks to hindsight bias, they’ve forgotten that there was a time and place that this question was extremely relevant and needed an answer.

If it contains errors, then it’s not inerrant and thus can’t be added.

Wow, you have such a lack of self-awareness. You know, as we’ve already agreed, that any book of the Bible is prone to errors over time, and you don’t use this as an excuse to reject any of them. Instead, you evaluate this alleged “original autograph” that is inaccessible and only ask whether it had errors. But when evaluating any piece of work that isn’t already in the Bible, you only look for the errors in the copy you have and reject it in that basis. What an obvious double-standard! You don’t apply these rules about inerrancy or contradictions and errors in the bible to texts currently found outside the bible.

Well, what would you suggest? Have a better idea?

No! That’s why I would never argue that any piece of literature is infallible or inerrant. That’s irrational. At best, one can only know whether any errors have been found yet. There’s always the possibility that a piece of work still contains errors that haven’t yet been noticed.

You’d think that if a piece of work had been around for 2,000 years and read by millions, then the errors would’ve been found.

I do like that argument. It’s inductive logic rather than deductive, but fallacy-free are far as I can tell. And my response about the Bible is of course plenty of errors have been found. It’s just hard to convince people who don’t want to be convinced. Surely you don’t think the Qur’an is a perfect work, either, but try convincing a Muslim that it contains errors.

So… the question isn’t “what’s the best method for figuring out what to include in the canon of the Bible” but rather “what did Christians use to determine the canon?”

Are we planning to get around to whether the New Testament says that Jesus is the Messiah?

We are, but this is the far more constructive conversation. What I’m positing is that the only reason that you even believe that Jesus is the Messiah is because other Christians who believed it purposely chose gospels and letters that would make that case. Those gospels and letters weren’t chosen because they were true but rather because it said what Christians wanted to believe.

Whatever. I knew you’d just end up dismissing the bible’s contents to make your argument.

I’m not. What I’m arguing is that the Bible isn’t the reason for Christian’s belief in Jesus as the Messiah, but rather their belief in Jesus as the Messiah is what made the Bible what it is.

The Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet rather than the son of God. Why is that?

I don’t know. I’m not a Muslim.

And like many Christians, you probably know very little about their beliefs. It’s because they read a different Bible, and a different set of scriptures.

So the Qur’an says “Jesus is just a prophet” and that’s what they believe. Not exactly surprising. And they reject the gospels.

They don’t reject all of the bible. They believe in the Torah, because they are also an Abrahamic faith. They accept the Psalms. And they believe in the gospel of Barnabus, one that you’ve probably never even heard of, but which forms their ideas about Jesus.  And given that they rejected the canonical gospels and instead chose that one, it led to them believing he’s a prophet rather than the Messiah.  And while Muslims claim that Allah wrote the Qur’an himself through Muhammad, it was actually a far less supernatural process of sifting through claimed words of Muhammad and compiling them. And can you guess what determined whether some alleged words of Muhammad made it into the Qur’an or not?

Whether they sounded like they were something he’d say?

You could say that. And what determined whether something sounded like Muhammad or not was based on whether they confirmed to the beliefs that Muslims already held. They would claim that their beliefs are based on their holy book, but rather their holy book is based on their beliefs. All very circular.

That’s not how Christians did it! They chose the gospels because they were written by Jesus’ disciples, because they were already being read in churches, and because of their consistency with other bible texts.

Those are all circular arguments. First of all, the gospels were written anonymously. Matthew was said to be the most Jewish of the disciples, and his alleged gospel is the most Jewish. Mark is the name of Peter’s scribe (since he was illiterate) and assumed to be written by him because of how Peter-centric it is. Luke only coincidentally shares the name of a disciple just like Mark does, but was actually believed to be written by Luke the Evangelist who traveled with Paul, because it’s clearly written by the same author as Acts which is also ascribed to Luke based on occasional first-person references. And John is assumed from comparing the list of disciples in that book to other gospels to find out who the “disciple whom Jesus loved” was, and also assuming that this same disciple must be the author. So one was definitely not even named for a disciple and the other 3 started with the presumption that it must be a disciple and trying to pair it with the closest match.

As for consistency, they’re not, especially John. I’m not going to spend today going over the various contradictions in the gospels and why they’re contradictions, but a comparison of nearly any two gospels telling the same story will turn up a contradiction. I’ll be happy to explain these contradictions later. And when it comes to “inconsistent” gospels, as I already mentioned, we’re dealing with Christians using a double-standard when it comes to evaluating their contradictions.

As for being read in churches, that’s what made those gospels eligible, along with the gospel of Peter, the infancy gospel of Thomas, the gospel of James, and even that aforementioned gospel of Barnabus. But that’s not why they chosen for canonicity and the others were deemed heretical.

So Jesus is the Messiah because some Christians wrote that he was and then other Christians chose those books that said he was?

You’ve got it.

Whatever. You just believe whatever helps you sleep at night, because you don’t want to believe you’re going to hell.

Well, I can only lead a horse to water. I can’t make him drink. I imagine the average Christian finds it much easier to just not think about this topic than to engage with it. Nor do they want to deal with those many contradictions, but I do, and will next time we talk…

Jesus is Not the Messiah (Part 4 of 5)

Why a Savior is Completely Unnecessary

Christian: Jesus Christ’ coming was telegraphed throughout the Old Testament in the form of sacrifice. The perfect lamb represented him, and served the same purpose — it took away the sins of an individual. But Jesus took away the sins of the world, and washed us clean so that we could go to heaven.

Atheist: So no one went to heaven before Jesus died?

Not right away. They went to a place called Abraham’s bosom to rest and relax until Jesus made a way for them to go to heaven.

Why? Were people suffering in Abraham’s bosom? What was so bad about it that they needed heaven?

I don’t think it was bad per se, but it just wasn’t as great as heaven. Plus, it was only for the Jews.

Doesn’t that concept seem a bit strange to you, that for the first alleged 8,000 years of human existence that all non-Jews went to Hell?

It’s what they deserved. They were sinners, and they did nothing to redeem their sins.

Wow. Just wow. And there’s no reason that Jesus couldn’t have come… I don’t know, maybe right after the Garden of Eden… to prevent millions? Billions?… from going to Hell unnecessarily?

God has a plan, even if we don’t understand it.

Gotcha. I often hear the “God is mysterious” argument every time someone brings up how “mysteriously” evil he is compared to something far more loving or forgiving that he could’ve been. But I still don’t see the point. Why does anything, a lamb or a “perfect human”, have to die for sins?

Because the wages of sin is death. Someone has to pay it!

And even if it’s supposedly “paid”, you still have to die, so it gets paid more than once.

Don’t equivocate “death”. Your spiritual death — going to hell — is paid. Your physical death is also a penalty for sin, and that can’t be covered.

I don’t think I’m the one equivocating here. It feels like Christians like to use these terms interchangeably. But let’s get to what I’m really digging at here. I’m going to disagree with you that “someone has to pay” for your death in blood, and my source is the Old Testament passage, staring in Leviticus 4, on sin offerings. Are you familiar with it?

Of course. I’ve already referenced it. A perfect male lamb, one without blemish, had to die every time a Jew commit a sin. And I assume that we both agree that lambs bleed? Because only blood can atone for sin.

Are you sure about that? Because Leviticus 4 isn’t the end of the passage, just the beginning. If you’re following along in your own bible, you’ll notice this isn’t where the “sin offering” heading ends. Continuing into chapter 5, verse 7 you’ll see that someone too poor to afford a lamb can sacrifice 2 turtledoves instead.

I hate to tell you, but doves bleed, too.

They aren’t exactly an analogy for a coming savior, but we do agree that they also bleed. But that’s still not the end of the passage. Continuing on, if someone is too poor to afford a couple of doves then they can sacrifice an ephah of fine flour. Does fine flour bleed?

It still has to be perfect and without blemish, just like Jesus.

I see you’re trying to dodge the question really hard. If fine flour can cover sins, then blood atonement was never necessary. Some of us atheists joke about how Christians love to carry around the symbol of the cross, and how perhaps it was the sacrifice, a perfect and unblemished tree before it was made into a cross, and it just happens to have some dude nailed to it. Given this passage, I don’t see why that wouldn’t have worked.

That’s not funny and also incredibly blasphemous.

We’ll definitely talk about blasphemy sometime, but not today. Let’s discuss how this idea of “the savior” came about. I doubt you noticed, but these Old Testament ideas didn’t exactly carry on through the entirety of the Old Testament. There was a “new covenant” long before Jesus came along. Tell me, what was King David put to death for, adultery or murder?

Wait, what??? I don’t follow.

You’re familiar with the story of David as king, right? You’re aware that he commit adultery, which under the Old Testament was a capital punishment. And he also commit murder, which was a capital punishment. The Old Testament says twice over that he should have been stoned to death. Which one of these was he stoned to death for?

He wasn’t. You know he wasn’t.

Of course not. It would seem that the Old Testament laws weren’t exactly being enforced already at that point.

Or maybe he wasn’t punished because there weren’t enough witnesses.

Is that really the argument that you want to make, that no one saw this crime, this crime that was recorded in posterity in more than one Old Testament book? If that’s the case, how can we be sure that the Old Testament writers were even certain that it happened? And where in the bible does it mention David sacrificing a lamb to cover his sin? You’ll find a complete lack of “sin offerings” long before this point in the bible already.

It’s far more likely that the Old Testament laws just weren’t being followed anymore. If you’ve read them, I imagine you’re aware of just how many only make sense in the case of roving nomads rather than a city-living population. After all, you don’t have to kill people for every offense when you have jails or prisons. The prophet Jeremiah said that sin offerings were never intended or preferred by God. And I can’t help but notice the complete lack of burnt offerings in the gospels, even in the cases where Jesus points out sin — he doesn’t say “burn a lamb”.

That was under the new covenant.

Which started… when Jesus was born rather than at the last supper? Because there are no mentions of burnt offerings through the gospels, most of which is said to take place before the alleged start of a “new covenant”. Instead, we have mention of the yearly sacrifice in Jerusalem of a single lamb — the Passover — which was meant to take away the sins of the entire Jewish population. It’s the same sacrificial Passover lamb that was killed at the time that Jesus died in the gospel of John, a single lamb in the temple on a single day.

And this was probably the point of the whole ritual involving Jesus. The Jews had moved from that point from a sacrifice for every sin every time they sinned to a yearly sacrifice for all. (Despite the protests of modern Jews that this isn’t meant to be a sin offering, these same Jews do not offer sin offerings, nor have since over 1,000 years before Jesus allegedly arrived). And apparently for some Jews, that was still too much — they wanted a one-time sacrifice forever, and so they invented a story about a man who was worthy to be that sacrifice.

“Invented a story?” Four separate gospels by four separate authors is confirmation that it was true.

Perhaps, if they were actually independent and not full of contradictions. My point here is that some Jews wanted a once-and-done solution to the expensive and time-consuming rituals prescribed by the bible for dealing with sin. They didn’t appear to notice that a little burnt flour could’ve done the trick, so they made up this story. And to get the rest of the Jews on board, they had to make someone significant into that once-and-for-all sacrifice, someone the others Jews would be impressed by, so it became the Messiah and/or the son of God.

It would have to be! Man can’t be redeemed by just “some guy”.

According to whom? Who do you think set down these rules, even within your theology? And why could a lamb, or two birds, or some fine flour do the job but not just “some guy”? Anyway, I already explained why Jesus isn’t the Messiah according to the Old Testament, nor is he a savior. The Jews didn’t need one because they already had various rituals to deal with that prescribed by the bible, not that they were even following them, and if you think “this was for the Gentiles”, that’s more hindsight bias given that Jesus’ own disciples in Jerusalem, according to the New Testament, weren’t even sure that Gentiles should be a part of it.

The only way you can make this case is by cutting out the New Testament completely, because we both agree that it would shut down your case.

Would it? Let’s discuss how Jesus isn’t the Messiah even considering the books of the New Testament.

Jesus is Not the Messiah (Part 3 of 5)

Did the Bible Predict that the Messiah Would be a Savior?

Christian: Jesus’ importance to us is as the savior of the world, preventing us from going to Hell through His personal sacrifice. The fact that He will rule some day is of far less importance. The ultimate price that He paid is why He’s the Messiah, and it’s why we worship Him.

Atheist: Putting aside (for now) the fact that this isn’t what it means to be “the Messiah”, why do you believe any of this is true?

Are you going to feign ignorance again? There are countless examples in the New Testament explaining how Jesus is The Savior.

I’m not feigning ignorance — I merely don’t want to straw-man you when I say that these examples come only from the New Testament, more “post-dictions” rather than “pre-dictions”. The Old Testament doesn’t prophesy about a savior, which is why the Jews rejected that idea when Christians presented it.

Are you going to pretend that you’ve never heard of Isaiah’s “suffering servant“? Anyone who has read the New Testament will recognize that this perfectly describes Jesus. And I know you’ve read the New Testament, so surely you agree.

First of all, I’ve mentioned how Jesus isn’t necessarily “silent” as Isaiah 53:7 claims, given that the gospel of John has him speaking when confronted by Caesar. Verse 3 claims that he was “despised and rejected of men”, which is true only if you cherry-pick, given that there are plenty of examples of him being not despised or rejected but rather worshiped. Verse 9 claims he had done no violence, etc.

The consensus among bible scholars is that this passage refers to the nation of Israel, such as it does analogously in numerous cases from Isaiah 41-49 in referencing “my servant”. It makes sense, for example, to talk about their “seed” or “offspring” in Isaiah 53:10 but not in discussing Jesus, who was childless.

That’s obviously a metaphor, referring to His disciples, His “spiritual offspring“.

I can’t help but notice how often Christians claim that something is metaphorical when it wouldn’t make sense literally, but literal as long as it doesn’t create a contradiction. There doesn’t appear to be any standard to this application except “Can I claim it’s literal?” with the claim of metaphor only coming when the answer is “no”. Is any of the rest of this passage in Isaiah 53 metaphorical?

Sure. The claim that Jesus was silent was metaphor. It doesn’t mean that He literally never said anything throughout his ordeal.

I rest my case. Anyway, despite this claim that Isaiah 53 is about Jesus, there’s nothing in the text to suggest that this “silent lamb” was also a ruler, or in any other way “the Messiah”, which is why Jews don’t simply accept that it was just because Christians believe it is. Is that literally the only reference in the Old Testament to Jesus being a savior?

Genesis 3:15 quite clearly prophesied that Jesus someday crush Satan.

Wow. This is fractally wrong, in that it’s wrong no matter how you zoom in. And I would absolutely love to take you through the wrongness piece by piece, since (thanks to Answers in Genesis) I keep hearing this argument so often.

First of all, I see no mention of either Jesus or Satan. Why do you think it’s about them?

Satan was the snake, you see, because he was the deceiver. You don’t think a literal snake talked to Eve and tempted her, do you? Snakes don’t talk. And Jesus was the offspring of the woman who bruised the snake’s head, using the same language we see in Isaiah 53:5 and 10.

Yeah… I’m looking at those two verses and they both refers to “the servant” getting bruised. Neither of them even imply that “Satan” was bruised. Where do you really get this idea of “Satan’s head getting bruised” from?

If you’re aware of the New Testament story of Jesus’ crucifixion, you know that Jesus was victorious over Satan in many ways, such as when He rose from the dead, and especially in the second coming when Satan will be bound and cast into the pit.

Mm-hmm. I’m guessing you haven’t thought this through very much. Exactly how did he defeat Satan?

He was victorious over death when he came back to life.

According to the bible, quite a few people came back to life. Do you think they “defeated Satan” when they did so?

No, because they didn’t carry the sins of the world.

Why do you believe that Jesus did?

Because he was a perfect sacrifice. He was sinless, yet paid the penalty for sin.

Don’t countless babies die? Surely there’s more to it than just dying even though you don’t deserve it.

He was born of a virgin, so he wasn’t born with the “sin nature” passed on by fathers.

I’d love to see a reference from the Old Testament that explains how there’s a “sin nature” passed on biologically only from fathers and not mothers. I’m pretty sure that a circular argument made up by Christians based on the idea that Jesus was allegedly born of a virgin. Secondly, even if this were true, why wouldn’t the first kid born of a virgin also be capable of being “the savior”?

What “first kid”? Jesus was the only one.

Ah. I see you’re unaware of the context of the prophecy from Isaiah about this “virgin birth”. It comes from Isaiah 7:14, and true to the general theme here, there’s no mention of this being a “Messiah prophecy”. Instead, it’s meant to be a sign to King Ahaz that he would prevail against an alliance of Judah and Syria. If you look at the entire context, in verse 7 he’s told that if he tries to beat them again, he’ll be successful. And when Ahaz refuses to ask for a sign that this is true (verse 11), he’s instead given a sign in verse 14. And it doesn’t end there… the prophecy continues through the rest of the chapter, declaring many things that weren’t true of Jesus such as “Butter and honey shall he eat” (verse 15) and that the king of Assyria will be shaven from head to toe (verse 20). But even just verse 14 says that he shall be called “Immanuel”, something that literally never happened to Jesus, who was called “Jesus”. (To be fair, neither was the child that this verse was actually about, either.)

If you think that this verse was also about Jesus even though clearly about young Mahershalalhashbaz in context, then you still have to accept that he was born of a virgin. You can’t translate the word as “young woman” just for this kid and then “virgin” for Jesus — that’s worse than cherry-picking, because you’re not even keeping the exact same word the same in two different contexts — but instead you’re telling the bible what it means rather than actually trying to understand what it claims.

But please, let’s get back to the story from Genesis and what it means to “bruise Satan’s head”. First of all, the Genesis story only ever refers to “the snake”. It never uses the word Satan or even “deceiver” or any other euphemisms for Satan, because it’s quite obviously not talking about him. In Genesis 3:14 we’re given the other punishments for the snake, and they don’t make sense when applied to Satan.

They don’t make sense applied to a snake. They don’t “eat dust”, and they’ve always crawled on their bellies.

I personally understand this as being written by pre-scientific people who didn’t understand what snakes eat. The writer seems to think they eat dust. And when it comes to crawling on bellies, something certainly true of snakes, it’s a “how the leopard got its spots” sort of tale explaining how it came to be that snakes crawl. Verse 15 makes sense given this context — that would be how snakes are bruised on the head and how they bruise a human’s heel, because of their new position as belly-crawlers. And certainly none of this makes sense applied to Satan. He isn’t “among the beasts of the field”, nor does he eat dust or crawl on his belly.

Again, metaphors! It just means that he’s the lowest of the low.

But in context, this is a punishment for what he did in the Garden of Eden. In what way was he not “the lowest of the low” before this point? And verse 15 not only mentions the woman’s offspring but the snake’s. I assume you again take this to be metaphor.

Yes. Plenty of Christians agree with me.

Right. So, according to you, the offspring of the woman is literal but the offspring of the snake is metaphorical. Once again it seems that you’re starting with the conclusion and reading the evidence in a way that conforms to your conclusion. I don’t want to belabor just how stupid this conclusion is, but could we discuss Satan being a snake. Do you realize that a snake and an angel are two different creatures?

Satan was just shape-shifting as a snake.

Where does that belief come from, that angels can shape-shift? Can you give me even one other example, or a passage that discusses the ability of angels?

Sure, there are plenty.

Ummm… actually, I still see zero. Not a single reference mentions shapeshifting. We have the Nephilim, giants born from sex between women and angels, which maybe implies shapeshifting for the angels to make it work but doesn’t actually say that. Then we have metaphorical creatures as seen in visions, not changing from one shape to another — but given that they’re visions, would it even matter if they did? None of the other verses are even about angels. So… zero. The bible never says that angels can shapeshift — instead, you took the conclusion that this snake was Satan and worked backwards to make the evidence fit, including the assumption that he could shapeshift.

So we’re left with another passage that Christians have interpreted to mean something other than its obvious meaning in context. Given that this is the “real” meaning of the Messiah prophecies according to Christians, are these really all there is?

Not quite. The sacrificial lamb was always a type for Jesus Christ, as seen in the gospel of John.

Yeah. I guess it’s finally time to discuss the nonsensical the idea of needing a savior…

Jesus Is Not the Messiah (Part 2 of 5)

What Messiah Prophecies Actually Say About the Messiah

Atheist: Let’s start with a couple passages that are cited in the New Testament as prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, so we can easily agree that they are Messiah prophecies.

Christian: Weren’t you just telling me that you were going to show me Messiah prophecies that Jesus didn’t fulfill? I see — you’re just going to claim that the New Testament is inaccurate about how Jesus fulfilled them. I should’ve known, coming from an atheist.

I doubt the New Testament is accurate on these points, but it doesn’t matter; the premise is that Jesus is still not the Messiah even if we grant the events of his life as described in the New Testament. I want you to look at Micah 5:2. Do you accept that this is a Messiah prophesy?

Of course. The New Testament definitely describes that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and says how Jesus was born there, not in just one but rather in two of the gospels. It cited Micah 5:2, which Jesus fulfilled.

Great! Now, you’ll notice that Micah 5:2 doesn’t talk about an “anointed” or “Christ” or “Messiah” here but rather a “ruler in Israel”. If that wasn’t clear, the whole chapter is about this ruler. Verses 6-10 describes that ruler as a military leader who will wipe out the Assyrians, which Jesus very obviously did not do.

This is obviously talking about when Jesus returns.

So… it hasn’t happened yet?

No. But it will. Jesus will return to that same location and conquer the people there.

It would be weird if he was actually conquering the Assyrians, given that the oldest church in the world is Assyrian. The Assyrian people are still Christians to this day. But let’s leave this passage for now and examine another. Check out Zechariah 9:9. Messiah prophecy?

Yes, agreed. Again, it’s one cited in the New Testament as fulfilled by Jesus.

And again, this verse doesn’t say “Messiah” or “Christ” but very specifically a king of Israel. The next verse says that his kingdom will extend from sea to sea. When did Jesus fulfill that part of the prophecy?

He hasn’t yet. That’s going to come true in the Millennial Kingdom after Jesus returns.

I want you to remember what you were meant to prove from these passages. You said that Jesus did fulfill every Messiah prophecy, otherwise he wouldn’t be the Messiah. And as Jews would argue, Jesus isn’t the Messiah because he didn’t fulfill those prophecies. You say he hasn’t “yet”, which means that you ought to acknowledge that (as I said before) even Christians don’t believe that Jesus fulfilled prophecy — they merely believe he will.

According to Jewish belief, the Messiah is going to rule over the world as the king of Israel (which is the importance of his being in David’s ruling line) and bring about world peace. They don’t think it’ll happen during some “second coming” because the Old Testament doesn’t mention one! The reason that Christians want to believe in a second coming is because they need to give Jesus an opportunity to actually fulfill the Messiah prophecies, because he didn’t the first time.

Jesus isn’t “the anointed” because he isn’t even “an anointed”. Tracing his roots back to David is pointless because he didn’t continue the royal line. This is why the apostle Paul called a suffering Jesus “a stumbling block to the Jews”, because a “Christ crucified” was never a part of their prophecies.

Of course he was. You want to focus on the “king” part that definitely will be true someday and ignore the “savior” part that already did happen and was far more important to everyone.

Alright. Let’s focus on Jesus’ role as “savior” and prove how that’s made-up nonsense as well…

Jesus is Not the Messiah (Part 1 of 5)

The Messiah Must be the Son of God, Right?

Christian: You atheists just want to be able to disobey the bible. It’s not that you genuinely don’t think that it’s true — you know it’s true — but that you don’t want it to be true. You want to be your own master, and you hate the idea of bending the knee to Jesus Christ.

Atheist: Is that why you don’t believe in the Qur’an — you don’t genuinely disbelieve but rather you just don’t want to “bend the knee” to Allah? I don’t think this is a sincere argument. And what about the Jews? They also don’t “bend the knee” to Jesus Christ, but clearly they aren’t rebelling against the bible, either.

Sure they are! They’ve been presented with the truth and they rejected it because they also don’t want to call Jesus Christ their lord after what they did to him.

Wow! There’s a lot to unpack there, but let’s just discuss why those who practice Judaism reject Jesus as their Messiah. I’m guessing you’ve never actually talked to a Jew about why this is, but it’s simple… if we accept as a premise that the Old Testament is true and that the stories told about Jesus are true, then Jesus is very clearly not the promised Messiah.

See? Here we go again. There’s no way that you actually believe that Jesus isn’t the Messiah. You just want to fight every single point, and we Christians just have to drag you kicking and screaming to the truth. But everyone knows that Jesus is the Christ.

Again, Jews don’t “know” that. Nor do the 1 billion Muslims that believe that Jesus was merely a prophet. What you’re doing here is hinting at an argument from popularity, and since you agree with me that 1 billion Muslims totally can be and are wrong, then we both agree that this is a logically fallacious argument. So please, stop with it already. Let’s have a serious discussion about why you believe that Jesus is the Christ and why Jews don’t. Why do you personally believe in Jesus Christ?

Very obviously, he’s the only person who fulfilled all of the Messiah prophecies. After all, he’s the Son of God. You think that God’s son isn’t the Messiah? Really???

Where was it prophesied that the Messiah would be God’s son? It seems like, if that were true, you wouldn’t even need other prophecies to establish who the Messiah is.

Ignorant atheist, as usual. Why not just Google it? Psalm 2. Verse 2 makes it clear that this is a Messiah prophecy (after all, both Messiah and Christ literally mean “anointed”). Verse 7 has God saying that this Messiah is “his son”. Verse 10 reinforces that this son is the judge above all judges of the Earth.

Before we discuss this passage, is that the only one? Is there exactly one reference to the Messiah being God’s son in the Old Testament?

There are also several in the New Testament.

The New Testament is full of what we could call “post-dictions” rather than “pre-dictions”. It’s not impressive if the Jesus character in this story fulfills his own prophecies, given that the entire story wasn’t published until after all of the events were in the past. And we have literally no evidence from during Jesus’ lifetime supporting any of these statements as prophecy before it was fulfilled. It’s like calling the predictions of the witches in Macbeth “prophecy” and then marveling that it came true within the same play.

You’re just cherry-picking. You don’t like what the New Testament has to say and so you don’t accept it.

Let me re-iterate the premise. We’re discussing why the Jews, who believed and accepted the Old Testament, didn’t think Jesus was the Messiah from the events of his life as detailed by the New Testament. Prophecies made within the New Testament, from their point-of-view and mine, are propaganda made to establish Jesus as Messiah after the fact. So is that literally the only such prophecy that the Messiah would be the Son of God? I have Googled this quite extensively and haven’t found any other references to a “son of God” among listed prophecies allegedly fulfilled by Jesus.

“Allegedly”. No, I don’t know any others.

Great. The term “the anointed” is ambiguous. After all, every king of Israel is “anointed”, because that’s part of the ritual in becoming king. Jews believe this Psalm to be about David, given that he is probably the writer of this Psalm and we all agree that he was anointed. And the term “son” is probably metaphorical, such as it is by analogy in Psalm 89:27, which is clearly not about a real genetic “son” given that it states that the son is “appointed” to be a son. Given this elevation or “appointment”, this is what makes him greater than the “judges of the Earth”.

Believe it or not, even this idea that Jesus is the “Son of God” isn’t as solid in the New Testament as you think it is. If you search for the term, it comes almost exclusively in the gospel of John. And as for “Christ”, you’ll never find Jesus calling himself that except again in John. This makes sense in the larger narrative. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is accused of blasphemy before Pilate and the only witnesses they can find for him claiming to be God’s son or the Messiah are false witnesses. And so Pilate “marveled” at Jesus’ silence. However, in the book of John where Jesus told people that he was the son of God in nearly every other chapter, there’s no mention of false witnesses and Jesus actually has to defend himself.

It’s very solid, even in the other gospels. Mark, the earliest gospel, starts right out with recognition of Jesus being God’s son. And Peter recognized Jesus as the Messiah in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

As I said, Jesus himself recognizes it in John. The other gospels give him plausible deniability. The Peter passage is a great example, as Jesus’ response to it is “keep it to yourself“. In the first three gospels, Jesus never refers to himself as either God’s son or the Messiah.

In looking at the Old Testament, the many, many listed prophecies that Christians say Jesus allegedly fulfilled are typically made up of non-prophecies made into prophecies, or metaphorical language taken as literal (such as Psalm 2). But I think it’s more productive to look at what both the Jews and Christians accept as Messiah prophecy and see if Jesus fulfills those. After all, he has to fulfill all Messiah prophecy to be the Messiah. Plenty of people have been born in Bethlehem. To be the Messiah, even one prophecy unfulfilled by him would make it untrue.

He did fulfill all Messiah prophecy.

As I’ll show you momentarily, even you don’t believe that. Don’t believe me? Keep listening…