Professor Stephen L. Harris, in his book, The New Testament: A Student’s Introduction (2006 edition) described the New Testament as a “relatively modern artifact.” He goes on to explain what he meant:

A printed, bound copy of the New Testament that readers can hold in their hands is a relatively modern development. Until the fourth century CE, the New Testament did not even exist as a coherent entity—-a single volume containing the twenty-seven books in its now-familiar table of contents. Before then, believers, and even church leaders, had access to individual Gospels or sub-collections, such as compilations of Paul’s letters, but not to a comprehensive edition of the entire text.

Even after Rome made Christianity the state religion and imperial patronage encouraged the production of an official Christian scripture, New Testaments were extremely rare. Not only were manuscript copies prohibitively expensive, but the vast majority of people in the Roman Empire could neither read nor write. It was not until the printing press was invented in the fifteenth century CE, permitting the eventual mass production of Bibles, that the New Testament as we know it came into being.

Is New Testament historic? Unquestionably the answer is, yes. On simplistic terms, any ancient document can be attested as “historic” because someone wrote it once at a time in the past. Therefore the question, “Is New Testament historic?” is inappropriate for our ongoing debate. We need to ask: Is New Testament valid? Is it reliable? And so forth.

It doesn’t matter what kind of Bible you pick -- whether Catholic, Protestant, or any other -— the New Testament (NT) and its layout remains the same.

NT comprises a total of 27 “books” and these are the main scriptural documents that the Christians rely upon. NT’s organization is simple: You have four gospel accounts telling us the “biographical” data on Jesus Christ. These gospels are the most important part of NT. Then you have “Acts of the Apostles,” delineating the “history” of the early church. This is followed by a group of “letters” (called epistles) authored mainly by Apostle Paul and some by others. The last book of NT is Revelation, an account marred with nothing less than strange narratives.

Gospels	Mathew (1)	Mark (2)	Luke (3)	John (4)
Church History	Acts of the Apostles (5)
Paul’s Letters	Romans (6)	1 Corinthians (7)	2 Corinthians (8)	Galatians (9)
	Ephesians (10)	Philippians (11)	Colossians (12)	1 Thessalonians (13)
	2 Thessalonians (14)	1 Timothy (15)	2 Timothy (16)	Titus (17)
	Philemon (18)
Other Epistles & Revelation	Hebrews (19)	James (20)	1 Peter (21)	2 Peter (22)
	1 John (23)	2 John (24)	3 John (25)	Jude (26)
	Revelation (27)

On the surface, these 27 books look authentic and relevant to what the church says. However, just below the surface there are innumerable problems. Once these problems are set in your mind, you begin to question its credibility and integrity. This is exactly what has happened to me over the years.

1.  The sequence arrangement of NT books from Mathew to Revelation gives an impression as if they are arranged in a chronological order based upon their progressive dates of writings. Not so. In fact Paul’s epistles were authored before the gospel accounts were put to paper. Of lately, Paul is himself under scrutiny, and we know he had never met Jesus in the flesh -- he was sort of a latecomer in the alleged sequence of events and then called himself an apostle to the non-Jews. Today some of his epistles, undated that they all are, are described as questionable in their authorship. The authorship of Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter, Ephesians, James, 1 and 2 Timothy, Jude, and Titus is considered anonymous. So much so, the very identity of Paul is being questioned in some investigative circles.

Understandably, there are scholars who think of Paul (and not Jesus) as the real founder of Christianity. The Church history via “Acts of the Apostles” tell us about Paul’s multiple missionary journeys (three in number) thousands of miles away from Jerusalem plus in the final act Paul’s one-way travel (as much as 2,000 miles) to Rome. Judging by the realities (considering treacherous ultra rudimentary traveling environment) of times during the first century of Common Era, it is highly improbable that Paul traveled these extraordinarily long distances of the Mediterranean world. It would have been believable had the narratives restricted Paul’s missionary journeys to areas in and around Palestine. Also, Paul before being called by that name was actually named Saul. And out of nowhere and so casually his name changed to “Paul” in the middle of the text -- see Acts 13:9 -— without any explanation. The name of Saul may have served just as well without the new name of Paul. Textual analyses of Paul’s writings present significant problems in spite of the fact that there are certain good moral teachings attributed to him that I like. This is not the place to dwell upon them.

2.  Similarly we find arrangement of the four gospels from Mathew to John flawed. Scholars now believe the gospel according to Mark as the oldest, followed by Mathew, Luke, and finally John. Gospels too are without dates and even their authorship is considered anonymous. In addition, there is nothing presented that is claimed to have been authored by Jesus himself. Rudolf Augstein in his book (1977) Jesus, Son of Man says,

None of the four evangelists is known, either by name or in any other way; all four of the Gospels have been handed down to us anonymously. It was the Phrygian bishop Papias who first named Mark, about the middle of the second century; he saw Mark as a traveling companion and interpreter of Peter. Another version says that Mark was for a time one of Paul’s companions. The contents of Mark’s Gospel makes it evident that the author was neither the one nor the other, and it is generally accepted today that Papias was trying to reinforce the credibility of this Gospel by appealing indirectly to an apostle. In early church circles-—the evidence again comes from Papias-—Mathew’s Gospel was similarly given enhanced by being ascribed to the apostle Mathew, who, if he existed at all, is quite certainly not the author.

John P. Meier, professor of NT at the Catholic University of America, in his book (1991) A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (Vol. 1) described these gospels as “1st century Greco-Roman religious propaganda.” Any serious reader can see that Gospels are indeed false propaganda literature designed to portray a salvation history; that is “history” concocted to give an impression of “salvation” to anyone who succumbs when in reality there is nothing. In addition Prof. Meier goes on to say, “Real Jesus is unknown and unknowable.” Years of scholarship have reached that conclusions. One such scholarly work is by Randel McGraw Helms (1997), titled, Who Wrote the Gospels? Helms make it clear that,

The gospels are so anonymous that their titles, all second-century guesses, are all four wrong. Christians in the second century, possessing anonymous manuscripts and eager to give names to them, fastened upon four historical figures—the Apostle Mathew and John, Luke the “beloved physician” of Paul (Col. 4:14), and John Mark of Jerusalem, the “son” of Peter (Acts 12:12; 1 peter 5:13). It’s relatively easy to show that these identifications are imaginary and based on wishful thinking.

On the surface these gospels read like biographical accounts of Jesus. But on closer inspection, they are anything but biographical. They are purely mythological and in so many ways they are no different from the mythologies enumerated in so many other religious and non-religious literatures. Many scholars now estimate that these gospels were written between 70-110 C.E., the gospel according to Mark being first written around 70 C.E. Who put the New Testament including the gospels together? Schmuel Golding, in his book, The Light of Reason (Vol. 1) stated,

First the NT was not written by any of the disciples of Jesus nor by persons who even lived in that era…. When the church fathers compiled the NT in the year 397, they collected all the writings they could find and managed them as they pleased. They decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made should be the word of God and which should not. They rejected several, they voted others to be doubtful, and those books which had a majority of votes were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all the people since calling themselves Christians would have believed otherwise. For the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other.

My understanding is that the books of NT sanctified by the voting process, won only by a razor thin margin. This suggests political maneuvering with bitter contentions that played underneath. Only in recent decades have we in our possession at least some of those other gospels that had never made it to the NT. Reading these newfound gospels gives an impression that there once existed many Christianities, with many images of Jesus that in itself is the hallmark of the “historical mythologies.”

3.  Careful readings of these gospels (in the NT) reveal a litany of inconsistencies and contradictions, fountain of errors, and the story accounts pointing to the unknown authors.

Take the case of gospel according to Mark. Upon opening (Mark 1:1-3) this is what you read:

This is the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It began just as God had said in the book written by Isaiah the prophet,

"I am sending my messenger to get the way ready for you.

In the desert someone is shouting, ‘Get the road ready for the Lord! Make a straight path for him.' " [CEV]

The problem is that when you read the book of Isaiah located in the Old Testament, you can’t find the verse that the author of gospel according to Mark, attributed to prophet Isaiah.

4.   Though still being researched and debated, a growing number of modern biblical scholars acknowledge that the gospel according to Mark was written in Rome -- an imperial enemy city, center of power, located many hundreds of miles away from Jesus’ hometown in Palestine. If that indeed is the case, it might answer why this gospel is riddled with so many errors and omissions; and it certainly dismisses the very notion of gospels being the literary products of eyewitnesses. Another mystery engulfs us upon finding that the NT was written in Greek language; this is odd considering Jews (Jesus included) spoke their own Hebrew and/or Aramaic tongue. This is tantamount to saying that Guru Granth Sahib (Sikh scripture) was written in Arabic language in the city of Baghdad by unknown people when in fact the Sikh Gurus lived in Punjab and spoke Punjabi.

5.  The magnitude of complexities takes a new shape when you find that there are roughly 3,000 versions of the Bible. Various translations into different languages are another addition on top of these many versions. Which version is accurate? Nobody seems to know. There isn’t anything available to check the authenticity of any version because the original books of NT are lost and thus unavailable. Forbiddingly, its time consuming to figure out what verses have been changed from one version to the other. While you can expect narrative changes as you begin to read one version to another, what might come as shocking is finding dramatic alterations within the two copies of the same version. Here is a good example. I have two copies of Today’s English Version, a product of the American Bible Society providing two different readings of Mathew 1: 18-19

In verse 19 of version 1, Joseph is Mary’s husband, whereas in verse 19 of version 2, Joseph is not! The phenomenon of how easy it is to play with words thereby changing the meaning of the verses in question is quite pervasive in these texts. Then there is the amazing art of deliberate interpretations through which Christian apologists can change anything; all one needs is a fertile source of imagination and a quick sense to adaptation.

6.  Is New Testament realistic? Is it believable? And is there any corroboration to its outlandish claims? Much of the NT is unbelievable and therefore unrealistic. Nor is there any contemporary corroboration. Gordon Stein in his book An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (1980) estimated that some sixty historians and chroniclers lived in the first century in the Roman world. If Jesus had had such an effect on the multitudes, as the New Testament writers proclaimed, then one would think that more historians would have noted his impact. Even in this regard, the passages often cited by apologists (for instances by Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny the Younger) are controversial and fragmentary. In other words, there is no independent evidence to corroborate the fables inside the NT.

What do we make of the New Testament? Although I enjoyed reading it, it certainly has a limited value evident from the maze of hyperbole making it appear as a standard fiction text extolling an ancient mythology, remarkably similar to that of Hinduism and other mythologies from the Near East that originated during “ancient” times.

Selected Bibliography

1.   Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy

2.   Biblical Errancy: A Reference Guide

3.   Jesus, Son of Man

4.   Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, & Morality

5.   The New Testament: A Student’s Introduction

6.   Who Wrote the Gospels?

7.   A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus

8.   The Light of Reason

9.   Unger’s Bible Dictionary

10.   Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus

11.  Good New Bible: Today’s English Version


Copyright ©2007 G.B. Singh.