2: Critique of the Gospels and Their Authors

Apocrit. II.12-II.15

The evangelists were fiction writers -- not observers or eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. Each of the four contradicts the other in writing his account of the events of his suffering and crucifixion.

One [writer] records that on the cross someone filled a sponge with vinegar and thrust it at him [Mark 15.36]. Another [Matt. 27.33] denies this, saying, "When they had come to the place called The Skull, they gave him wine and gall mixed to drink, but when he had tasted it he would not drink."

Further he says, "About the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Eloi, Eloi- -- lama sabacthani, which is, 'My God, my God why have you forsaken me?'"

Another [John 19.29] writes, "There was a pot filled with vinegar [which they] strapped [to a rod?] with reeds and held it to his mouth. And after he had taken the vinegar [Jesus] cried out with a loud voice and said, 'It is over,' and bowing his head he gave up his spirit."

But [Luke] says "He cried out with a loud voice and said 'Father into your hands I will deliver [parathesomai] my spirit'" (Luke 23.46).

Based on these contradictory and secondhand reports, one might think this describes not the suffering of a single individual but of several! Where one says "Into your hands I will deliver my spirit," another says "It is finished" and another "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me," and another "My God, my God why do you punish me?"

It is clear that these addled legends are lifted from accounts of several crucifixions or based on the words of someone who died twice [dis thanatounta for dusthanatounta, i.e., dying a difficult death: Crafer] and did not leave a strong impression of his suffering and death to those present. [It follows that] if these men were unable to be consistent with respect to the way he died, basing [their account] simply on hearsay, then they did not fare any better with the rest of their story. [7]

[John 19.33-35]

From other sources it can be shown that the story of [the death of Jesus] was a matter of guesswork.

"And when they came to Jesus, seeing that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance, and immediately there came blood and water."

Only John says this -- none of the others. No wonder John is so anxious to swear to the truthfulness of his account, saying, "He that saw it testifies to it -- and we know his testimony is true."

This looks to me like the statement of a simpleton. How can a statement be true when it refers to nothing? A man can [only] witness to something that really happened, not to something fashioned from thin air. [8]

There is another way to refute the false opinion concerning the resurrection of [Jesus], which is spoken of everywhere these days. Why did this Jesus (after his crucifixion and rising -- as your story goes) not appear to Pilate, who had punished him saying he had done nothing worthy of execution, or to the king of the Jews, Herod, or to the high priest of the Jewish people, or to many men at the same time, as for example to people of renown among the Romans, both senators and others, whose testimony was reliable. [9]

Instead he appeared to Mary Magdalene, a prostitute who came from some horrible little village and had been possessed by seven demons, and another Mary, equally unknown, probably a peasant woman, and others who were of no account.

Still, he promised, "You will see the son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming on clouds." [Matt. 24.30] Had he shown himself to people who could be believed, then others would have believed through them -- and [Christians] would not today be punished for fabricating these ridiculous tales.

It cannot be pleasing to God that so many should suffer horrible punishment on his account. [10]

[John 12.31]

Anyone will recognize that the [gospels] are really fairy tales if he takes time to read further into this nonsense of a story, where Christ says, "Now has come the judgment of the world; now shall the world ruler he cast out."

Tell me, for heaven's sake, what sort of judgment is this supposed to be -- and just who is the "ruler" who is being cast outside? If you answer, "The emperor [is the ruler]," I say that there is no single world ruler -- as many have power in the world -- and none have been "cast down." If, on the other hand, you mean someone who is not flesh and blood but an immortal, then where would he be thrown? Where is this invisible world ruler to go outside the world he rules?

Show us from your record. If there isn't another world for this ruler to go to -- and it is impossible for there to be two such worlds -- then where other than to the world he's to be expelled from can he go?

One cannot be cast out of what he is already in. Unless of course you are thinking in terms of a clay pot which, when broken, spills its contents not into oblivion but into the air or the earth, or the like.

Perhaps you mean that when the world is broken (but this is impossible!) the one inside it will then be outside of it like a nut out of its shell. But what exactly is this outside like? What are its length, breadth, depth, features?

Of course, if it has these things then it, too, is a world. And for what reason would a ruler of the world be expelled from a world to which he is no stranger. For if he were a stranger to the world, he could not have ruled it: and who [would be equipped] to force the ruler out of this world against his will?

Or do you mean he goes willingly? Clearly you imagine he will be cast out against his will: that is plain from the record. To be "cast out" is to be expelled against one's own choice. But normally the wrong attaches to the man who uses force, not to the one who resists it.

This silliness in the gospels ought to be taught to old women and not to reasonable people. Anyone who should take the trouble to examine these facts more closely would find thousands of similar tales, none with an ounce of sense to them. [11]

_______________

Notes:

7. Rather puzzlingly Macarius designates the philosopher's view "Hellenic" and then employs allegory to override the literatim contradictions in the texts cited; thus, what appear to be inconsistencies are taken to be peculiarities of style: "the truth is not to be sought by looking for facts in syllables and letters." Macarius soon tires of this defense, however, and takes up the claim that the eyewitnesses were drunk with fear, owing to "the earthquake and the crash of rocks around them" (d. Matt. 27.51-53). Their eagerness to preserve a record of the things happening around them resulted in a fractured and haphazard style, which Macarius excuses as proof of their zeal to preserve the truth. Interesting as well is Macarius' comparison of the evangelists' accounts to the writing of Herodotus: the gospels are more to be trusted because their authors lacked education and did not "adorn their writings with clever rhetorical devices." Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Macarius' defense is his praise for the subtlety of Greek education and his castigation of the Romans as barbaros ethnos, "barbarians like the Jews."

8. Macarius does not deal with the substance of the philosopher's argument, viz., that uncorroborated statements have less force than multiple testimony. Porphyry takes the silence of the three synoptic writers as evidence that the events described in John 19.33f. did not happen and finds the writer's introduction of self-referring testimony simplistic. It is possible that the philosopher had also referred to the absence of the apostles from the other accounts of the crucifixion (d. Mark 14.50; 15.40). If so, Macarius does not take up the point. His stratagem is to treat John's account allegorically; thus, "Blood and water flowed like a stream so that those [Jews] who dwelled in a land of bondage might be delivered by the blood and those [gentiles] who had the stripes of their sins could be washed in water."

9. Celsus makes the same point in the Alethes logos: "Who really saw [his rising from the dead]? A hysterical woman, as you admit, and perhaps one other person -- both deluded by his sorcery, or perhaps so wrenched with grief at his failure that they hallucinated him risen from the dead by a sort of wishful thinking .... If this Jesus were trying to convince anyone of his powers then surely he ought to have appeared first to the Jews who treated him so badly, and to his accusers -- indeed, to everyone, everywhere" (Hoffmann, Celsus, pp. 65, 67).

10. The logic of the philosopher's argument is that an event like the resurrection of Jesus, while not in itself impossible, demands credible witnesses -- "men of high renown" -- whereas the Christian record in the gospels introduces witnesses whose reports are dubious, coming as they do from the lowest strata of society.

Macarius replies by saying that the resurrection was not made known to Pilate or to the Jews in order to prevent the fact from being covered up. Instead, "he appeared in the flesh to women who were unable to persuade anyone of his rising."

11. A number of points raised by Porphyry resemble the criticisms of Celsus and Marcion's critique of orthodox doctrine. Both regarded the world ruler as the lawful proprietor of the world (Hoffmann, Celsus, pp. 90-92; Tertullian, Against Mareion 3.3.4).

His castigation by an alien god -- the agnostos theos of Marcionite speculation -- is seen as an act of usurpation. Any world into which he might be cast would amount to exile -- punishment usually reserved for pretenders rather than for rightful rulers. Crafer (p. 46) observes that Porphyry's reference to the multitude of rulers who have not been deposed by the new world ruler (Christ?) comes from a time following Diocletian's subdivision of the Empire in C.E. 292. The political ambitions of the Christians seem to have been a favorite target for philosophical ridicule of this kind: d. II.vii. The theme of proprietorship can also be observed in gnostic sources; cf. the Nag Hammadi treatise, "On the Origin of the World," NHL 11.97, in Robinson, pp. 162-63.

Go to Next Page