Searching for Jesus in the Gospels : The New Yorker

It drives me bonkers when people treat Jesus as a historical fact. Anyone who has studied the gospels knows they were pieced together at different times after the man is supposed to have lived and died. In fact the more you look at them, the more inconsistencies and contradictions you find.

I’m not saying the man wasn’t a historical fact because who the hell can tell for sure. I can be dead on sure that the Bible was pieced together and revised over several centuries by people with their own political agenda and it contradicts itself all the time. If it contradicts itself, then both versions of a story can not be taken to be the literal truth at the same time. It just doesn’t work that way folks.

With that in mind, how the hell can anyone who is referring to various versions and addition pick out any one thing and treat it is factual is beyond me.

If you read the Bible as an exercise in religious faith and you want to believe one part or another as the “gospel truth” that is fine. That’s religion.

…but if you are attempting to portray yourself as someone who studies the text with an academic eye it is completely ridiculous to assume anything is factual without proof to support it. It goes against the whole idea of looking at the documents with the eye of a historical observer.

This article isn’t the most flagrant offense I’ve seen but still…

Grrrr.