Who Wrote The Books Of The New Testament? Part 1

Debunking Christianity is an interesting thing to attempt to do. On one hand, it's kind of easy because there is so much information out there. If there were only a few discrepancies contained in the Bible, or a few inconsistencies, it would take some time to dig them out. But that's not the case. The Bible is filled with errors. On the other hand, it's difficult because as I continue to research and see for myself some of these discrepancies, I find myself having to stop and reflect. This is due to a couple of reasons:

1. Some of what I'm researching and learning are things I really should have known. I was involved in a program when I was in high school, where we learned whole books of the Bible and quizzed over them. I have memorized tons of Scripture. You would think that in doing so I would have caught on to some of the differences between the Gospels, for example. But most of this stuff I had no idea.

2. As I look through this information, I wonder why this stuff wasn't taught in college, and why we gloss over the inconsistencies and errors when we preach and teach the Bible. I can only think of it in two ways: either, like me, church leaders just don't know that the things we preach about are coming from passages and books of the Bible that are not accurate; or most leaders, preachers and professors are willfully deceiving people. After all, if word gets out that there is no way that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, people are going to panic and freak out and lose their faith. Which means those who are in powerful positions in churches will lose power and prestige. And there won't be anyone around to pay for their salaries.

It's kind of like how I see Mormonism. I have studied this cult rather extensively. If you research the history of how Mormonism started; if you look at the life of its founder, Joseph Smith; and if you actually discover what they truly believe, you find out that what the people in the pews know about Mormonism, and what the overall leaders know about Mormonism, are completely different. When I talk to the average Mormon, what they say they believe sounds very similar to what I would have considered as Christianity. Except for the polygamy and not having caffeine, minor issues. But when you find out that their "god" was on another planet, and that there are millions of gods, and that we were all spirit babies born on earth, and that our goal is to populate our own planet with other spirit babies - well, it starts to sound like horseshit, doesn't it?

Anyway, today I want to briefly look at the New Testament. In fact, I think that most of this blog will be directed at the NT, although I may reference the Old Testament and if I continue on down the road, perhaps there will be time to do the OT as well. 

Ready for some shocking information? Ok, here we start.

The New Testament contains 27 different books. The first four books are what we call the Gospels, or "good news" about Jesus. These were allegedly written by two disciples (Matthew and John), a friend of Peter (Mark), and a traveling companion of Paul (Luke). The next book tells the story about the disciples after Jesus left earth, and it's called the Acts of the Apostles (or Acts for short). Then you have a bunch of collected letters. Most of them are claimed to be written by the apostle Paul, who was not an original disciple of Jesus but became an apostle after Jesus left the earth through a vision on the road to Damascus. Some of these letters are written to churches, some are written to friends. You also have letters supposedly written by the apostle Peter, by James the brother of Jesus, by Jude, also the brother of Jesus, and by someone named John. At the end of the NT is the book of Revelation, also written by someone named John, which is a letter to churches in Asia Minor and deals mostly with persecution and although some people would say differently, was supposed to encourage the Christians of that day that God wins in the end. (As opposed to those who pore over this book and apply modern technology to the things that John was writing about to show that the world is ending soon.)

Ready for the shocker? Out of the 27 books in the NT, there are only 8 of them that most biblical scholars believe were actually written by either who the book said within who it was written by, or who other people ascribe the authorship to. That's less than a third of them! Here are the books that except for some fringe scholars, the consensus is that they were written by the actual authors:

Romans (Paul)

1 Corinthians (Paul)

2 Corinthians (Paul)

Galatians (Paul)

Philippians (Paul)

1 Thessalonians (Paul)

Philemon (Paul)

Revelation (John, although some question if it was John the brother of James)

This means that most scholars would say that none of the gospels were written by those who they are ascribed to.

This means that some of these books were written later than what was thought and by people who claimed to be the author but weren't.

I don't know about you, but the implications are HUGE. Those who would rather shut their brain off might not necessarily be affected by this news, because they might think (or feel) that it doesn't matter that these books weren't written by the people they thought they were written by; they still had a lot of good things to say.

However, I can't accept that. I hope you can't either. There are major implications that you just have to start sorting through. Things like:

- how can we trust that we have anything correct when it comes to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, since the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses to these events, nor even friends of eyewitnesses?

- how can we apply some of the theology and orthopraxy contained within the letters of the NT, when most of them are written by unknown sources, and who definitely had other agendas besides "writing down what God said to them."

- how can we continue to ignore the differences in gospel accounts when we now have good reasons to understand why they are so different?

- how can one accept the entire Bible, or even just the entire NT, as the "Word of God?" Should we do what Thomas Jefferson did (although he did his with cutting out anything that talked about miraculous events in the gospels) and only pay attention to the books of the NT that we mostly know were written by the right people at the time they said they did?

We have a lot to go through, my friend. Let me close this blog post with something from Bart Ehrman. Although I am using research from many different sources, I like Ehrman a lot because he writes in a way that is easy to understand, and although he is an agnostic, he was a Christian for most of his life and is at least sympathetic towards the Bible and Christians in general. He says that the nineteen books that aren't written by the authors ascribed to them fall under three groups:

1. Misattributed writings

These are the books of the New Testament that tradition has said were written by an author that clearly did not write it. An example would be the book of Hebrews. There is unsurmountable evidence that even though Paul has been associated as the author of this book, there is no way he was the one who wrote it. Because within Hebrews itself there is no reference to the author, Paul was misattributed as the author.

2. Homonymous writings

This just means that the author of a certain book of the New Testament has the same name as someone who we would normally think of as the author. For example, James was a very common name back in those times; therefore a man named James could have written the book, however most scholars believe it was not the James who was Jesus' brother and a leader in the church of Jerusalem.

3. Pseudepigraphic writings

This means that some of the books of the New Testament were written in the names of people who didn't write them. Basically, these books are forgeries.

In my next blog post, I will talk about Ehrman's ten reasons as to why ancient writers would produce forgeries and then we will start getting into specific authorship of the questioned books of the New Testament.

Thanks For The Analogy, Rob.

This blog is taking a longer to update than I thought, I apologize for leaving you hanging.

I'm a huge Rob Bell fan. Even right now as I find myself drifting away from religion and faith. Rob was one of the few "famous" Christians who I felt really kind of understood that god couldn't be boxed in, couldn't be sold in a nice, neat package with easily digestible answers. He made me think about the Bible and faith in a way that no one, except perhaps for Brian McLaren, ever did.

For example, in his book Velvet Elvis, Rob talks about Jesus and his earliest disciples. He talks about how every Jewish boy aspired to be a rabbi, and their goal was to get into temple training so that they could learn under a famous rabbi and become on themselves one day. However, most Jewish boys failed at doing so; therefore, after "flunking" Jewish school, they would return to their home and do the other thing they were trained to do: follow in the footsteps of their father, learn his trade, and ultimately take over his business. When Jesus meets James and John, Andrew and Peter, guess what? They're fishermen. They have failed. And now they're doing their father's trade. And then here comes a rabbi who tells them to follow him. It says they "immediately" followed him. I always thought that it was just because the command of Jesus was so strong, that they felt compelled to go. Rob explains that Jesus was basically giving them another chance, that even though they flunked, they were being invited to fall under the teaching and training of a rabbi, the ultimate rabbi.

I thought that was amazing and really cool back then. I still kind of do now, even though my thinking has changed on the reliability of the gospels and the stories about Jesus.

It was Rob Bell that started me down the path of wondering about heaven and hell and was heaven reserved for only a few while the vast majority was going to a place of eternal torment and suffering for crimes committed in a very finite amount of time.

Rob got a lot of flack for the content of his book "Love Wins." People accused him of being a heretic, of being a universalist. His church came under fire, and I believe if I remember correctly, he felt compelled to leave because of all the controversy. I thought it was ridiculous for two reasons: one, Rob was only theorizing. He was asking "what if" questions. He wasn't making factual claims. His main premise was "If God loves everyone, shouldn't love win in the end? For everyone?" Two, I get tired of seeing Christians jump on the "he's a heretic, burn all heretics" bandwagon. I appreciate that Rob Bell is willing to look at all sides of belief, not just the sides we are comfortable with or grew up with or make for a nice and neat package.

I remember reading a scathing review of Love Wins where the author of the review admitted that he hadn't even read the book yet. He was relying on what he heard from other people about it. Ridiculous.

Although this was probably the pinnacle of controversy, he has always had some modicum of contention with "traditional" Christian way of thinking. Even his first book "Velvet Elvis" had some points of conflict with people.

I'm thankful for Rob, because he has paved the way for rational thought and looking at christianity with a different, new lens.

I'm also thankful because his book Velvet Elvis gave me the idea for this blog.

He equates belief in Jesus like a trampoline. That the springs are the certain beliefs that people have about Christianity. His point was a good one - if one of those beliefs was proven to be true, and one of the springs was removed, would your faith be able to stand? For example, if someone proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth didn't happen, would your faith completely collapse or would it just be one spring that would be removed but the trampoline would still work?

I look at it a little differently.

I will agree with his metaphor about Christianity being like a trampoline. Only I would change what each part of the trampoline would represent.

I would say that the frame of the trampoline would be the beliefs within Christianity that there is no evidence for, that you have to just accept it by faith.

But the actual mat that you stand on (and hopefully jump on, I mean we are talking about a trampoline) isn't faith, it's the Bible itself. After all, isn't that where Christians get their faith? Isn't it the Bible that is the guide to the Christian life?

I don't know how many times when someone asked me about the churches I was a minister at, they would also ask if it was a "Bible believing" church. The Bible is everything to a Christian.

So what happens if we start removing the springs that hold up the Bible as the authority in a Christian's life, as the instruction book for how to live a good Christian life? What if we don't worry about the stuff that Christians believe that can't be proven, the stuff that a Christian can say you have to have faith in for it to be possible, and worry about what can be disproven?

The Bible is full of contradictions, of inconsistencies. It is full of confusion and of errors. Christians claim that it is the "inspired" word of God and that the writers of the books within it were divinely controlled. However, when four Gospel writers can't even agree on what happened when it comes to events involving Jesus, how can this be true?

One example (which I will talk about at great length when we start examining things): both Matthew and Luke give a genealogy of Jesus. Yet the genealogies differ. I've known this for a long time. But the explanation that has always been given is that Matthew is the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph (which doesn't make sense in the first place because Joseph isn't technically the father of Jesus according to Christians) and that Luke is his genealogy through Mary. I've heard preachers say that several times. Guess what? It isn't true. IT ISN'T TRUE. They are both going through Joseph. So why is that preachers say something that isn't true?

Is it intentional? Do most preachers know that what they are saying is B.S. but they know that the facts may cause doubt in the mind of their flock, and so they give this incorrect information?

Is it unintentional? Is it in an apologetics book that every minister has read, and so they are just passing on this fallacy without actually looking into it?

I'm hoping it's the latter, but I also know way too many preachers. And religion is often used to control others' thoughts and beliefs. To keep everyone in line.

More to that example at a later time.

The goal of this blog is to examine the springs of this trampoline. I may be accused of having a bias now that I doubt Christianity is the "one true religion." Believe me, I want it to be true! I was a Christian for 35 years. I was a minister for over 20 years. However, I don't think the Bible can hold up under the weight of scrutiny. To examine what the Bible says, who wrote it - hopefully from a non-biased perspective - is what I want to do.

Because I don't want this blog to be seen as a constant attack on Christianity and the Bible, I will make sure to give the Bible credit where it is due. I won't just bring up everything I research that is wrong with it, I will also give examples of where it is correct.

But I believe that taking out the springs that hold the Bible up in a Christian's mind (and heart I guess), we will be left with an unusable trampoline. The framework may still be there (unprovable doctrine and beliefs that there is no evidence of and have to be accepted in faith), but the "love letter" (full of verses that talk about killing man, woman and children and of eternal punishment) that was supposedly given to us by a divine being, the jumping mat of the trampoline, the very reason why a trampoline exists, will be unusable.

I hope you join me on this journey. Let's start removing the springs together.