There are too many dubious passages in the gospels to take them seriously as history. First, they were all written long after Jesus’ death, by persons unknown; at least Luke was frank enough to point out that his gospel was not an eye-witness account. And there were many crude amendments introduced into the Bible. They rejiggered the story of Jesus’ life to fit earlier prophecies regarding the Messiah, thus bolstering his claim to be the savior and making it easier to convert Jews who remembered those prophecies; Jesus himself claimed that Moses had written about him. They purported that Jesus said he was going off to his own arrest and execution so he could redeem sinners , even though at other times he is clearly trying to stay alive and safe. They referred in the gospels to people “taking up the cross”, which would have been meaningless before Jesus’ execution. They cobbled together a completely unbelievable tale of Jesus ascending into heaven from Jerusalem, which the local Jews would have noticed (flying up into outer space above the earth, which as we know from NASA does not contain heaven); the Gospel of Mark has a crudely added postscript which tacks on Jesus’ ascension and other miracles.
They
inserted a number of supernatural instructions in self-proclaimed “visions”.
They added obvious inaccuracies about the Emperor Augustus demanding that
everyone return to their birthplace for the census. They purported that Judas’
fall from grace was preordained. They concocted King Herod’s massacre of the
innocents, which never happened, one of several key Biblical tales disproved by
history. If these people were operating in our century, they undoubtedly would
have Photoshopped Jesus too.
