Jesus is a myth: The atheism debate revisited (part two)

In my previous post I argued that the question of God’s existence is largely an unsolvable one and that, in that limited sense, we must all allow the possibility that there is such an entity in the universe (or not).

Which brings me to the other big question:

2. Is the Bible true?

Bundled into this query are many similar questions: Is the Qur’an true? Did the Jews exit stage left from the pharaoh and wander for 40 years across a desert so small you could walk it in an afternoon, with picnic time to spare? And, importantly, did Jesus exist at all?

There are four ways to read the Bible:
a) as literal truth: what it says is factually true;
b) as a rough history: the Bible is an account of historical events, perhaps misunderstood or poorly recorded, but serves as a useful historical document with an essence that is true;
c) as metaphor: although the stories themselves aren’t true, the Bible conveys a meaning and truth about the universe that holds and reveals itself the more we learn; or
d) a mixture of the above three.

A. The literal reading
Fundamentalists of all shapes and forms hold that the Bible is fact. Reborn Christians, ultra-Orthodox Jews and radical Muslims all agree, ironically, that what the good book says is an accurate account of things that happened in the world before now. They disagree, of course, on where that truth ends: Jews at the end of the “Old” Testament, Muslims at the end of the Qur’an, Christians in between.

Now, this is a completely different matter from belief in God addressed in my previous post. It is not a matter of faith. How can it be? Either Moses parted the Red Sea or he didn’t. Either Jesus wandered around Jerusalem healing the sick and performing cheesy magic tricks or he didn’t.

We do not run into the same epistemological problems here as we do when it comes to the existence of a creator. Why? Because this stuff falls into the same mundane category as any other reputed historical event. And fortunately, we have more and more tools at our disposal to investigate such claims.

We have, for example, hundreds, if not thousands, of scholars in fields ranging from archaeology to ancient civilisations and anthropology (and that’s just the As) who spend all their time researching such matters. With the internet, they can share such knowledge and build on each other’s work.

As it turns out, there is absolutely no credible historical record of any of the events in the Bible, read literally. Starting at the beginning, there is obviously no evidence of Adam and Eve and the creation story — seven days to create the entire universe is a story so childish it makes one cringe to even hear it told with any sincerity. No evidence that the Jews were ever slaves of the Egyptians. No evidence of their supposed 40-year trek. No ark. No evidence of men being swallowed by big fish.

And no evidence that Jesus lived or did anything like what the gospels claim.

And it is now a known fact that the gospels — which contradict one another on so many points they are their own worst enemies — were written at least 150 years after the purported life of Christ. And they are the singular texts that recount the Christ story. In one of the most advanced civilisations in human history, the Roman, combined with the highly learned Jewish culture at the time, packed with writers and scholars, no one thought to write a single word down about a man who could raise the dead, and who was crucified by mob justice contrary to all legal conventions of the time.

Many others have given the facts here better and in more detail than this, but the challenge to Christians is clear: prove that your beloved Christ is not just a made-up amalgam of various stories, myths and fables floating around the early part of the first few centuries AD (AD indeed). And here we will not accept an argument from faith. Prove it or lose it, because history is against you.

The literal reading of the Bible is in all kinds of trouble. With each scientific discovery over the past five centuries, more and more of the Bible has been chipped away into dust. What’s left is a bunch of laws and regulations such as stoning those who work on the Sabbath to death and not worshipping graven images. About those, all we can say is that there they are, backed by no historical evidence. If you choose to make those a matter of faith, go right ahead. But it’s all a little hollow without any of the historical events to back it up.

B. The rough historical reading
With the virtual demise of the literal reading of the Bible, believers have had to try to come up with a way to retain the essence of the Bible, while being able to let go of the details. One approach is to allow for the deletion of the obvious nonsense, such as the parting of seas and talking snakes, and pitch the Bible as a matter of general historical fact.

On this reading, Jesus lived at roughly the time it says he did. Maybe he didn’t walk on water or come back from the dead, but he did exist and did some amazing stuff and was, in essence, what he said he was. Same goes for all other biblical stories: OK, so there wasn’t literally a boat with all animals two-by-two on it. But there was a flood in the region; there was a holy man who rescued many people.

This historical reading has to tread very carefully not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just how much can be given up without giving up the whole thing? And just how much is enough to make it believable?

The historical reading, in my view, is a slow defeat. Every time history or scholarship smashes another part of the biblical story into smithereens, the historical reader will say: “Yes, sure, there was no parting of the Red Sea by Moses. However, there was a period when the waters of the Red Sea subsided due to tides and a particular wind phenomenon …”

The defeat is obvious. Eventually there will be nothing left. Like with the literal reading, stripped of its fireballs and miracles, the Bible is simply a book of laws. Some common sense, some wise and some downright evil and twisted.

And once again, this is not a matter of faith. Whether a trumpet brought down the walls of Jericho either happened or didn’t. Since we can’t see into the past, we can’t know for sure. But when you put together archaeology with reason and contemporary science, you can get pretty close to the truth of most of these things.

I say again: no evidence of any kind has ever been found that gives any kind of credence to the important biblical stories. And much evidence to the contrary exists. On matters of fact, faith is just dogmatism.

c. The metaphorical reading
The Bible as metaphor is the last resort of the desperate believers: to see the Bible as a symbolic book, which teaches important lessons or couches complex events in simple terms that the ordinary folk can understand.

It’s obvious why this is an appealing angle. Firstly, it requires no evidence to back it up. The weird and impossible events can be let go in their entirety. Secondly, it is open to ongoing interpretation. Scientists discover evolution, and suddenly the creation story is a metaphor for this natural process. Psychologists discover the unconscious, and Jacob dreaming of his fight with an angel pre-empts Freud.

Although there is much to say about this approach, it is too easily dismissed to be worth serious discussion.

Who gets to decide what the correct interpretation is? A favourite retort on the creation story is that a “day” may not refer to our 24 hours as we now see it. It may have been billions of years, thus allowing the Big Bang to be coherent with biblical lore.

On whose authority are we supposed to accept that that is, in fact, what the Bible meant? I can argue that Alice falling into the rabbit hole is a metaphor for humans being able to travel large distances via cosmic wormholes. If that turns out to be true, does it mean that Lewis Carroll knew of that possibility, and encoded it here for us to find?

Leaving post-modernism out of this, it seems self-evident that interpretations of this kind cannot be proven wrong, and that does not mean they are right. It means just that. They fit, but only because one of a shopping list of available interpretations has been picked. All the others fit equally well, and there’s no way to decide which is right.

Which also leads to something else: the metaphors appear after the science and history. Before the Big Bang there was no biblical scholar touting this interpretation of Genesis. Now it’s all the rage. This urgent work to make the Bible keep up with emerging fact is a lost cause. It might make religious scientists sleep better at night, but that’s about all it does.

As various writers have argued, why not encode something really good in the Bible, something completely bizarre and unintelligible to our ancestors, but blindingly obvious to us? How about a chapter with pi written out to 200 places? Or a brief explanation of nuclear fission? Or something simple, like the fact that stars are actually balls of gas like our own sun?

The obvious conclusion — in fact, the only conclusion — is that this stuff isn’t in there because it was written by men, not by God. Feel free to hold some convenient excuse like God wants us to find this stuff out for ourselves or some such, but please be aware as you do of the post-rationalisation that you have to employ to make this stick.

4. Mixed readings
The last class of readers wants to keep some literal stuff and convert some others to metaphor. They want the creation story to be metaphor, but the Jesus story to be literal, for example. Why? Because some stories are obvious fabrications, whereas others have more of a ring of truth about them.

You just can’t have it both ways. If the Bible is the word of God (in some traditions, the unalterable word of God), then who are we, mere humans, to throw bits of it out? If it’s not, then it doesn’t matter anyway.

Having grown up in a Jewish home, I have seen first-hand the convenience of picking and choosing the bits of religion that one likes and discarding the bits that one doesn’t. No one in my family stoned anyone to death for working on the Sabbath. But they did (and do) insist on not eating pork or a combination of meat and dairy products. And there are many more less extreme examples.

You also can’t use faith to guide you here, because this drives the Bible down to the most personal of all books, different bits meaning different things to different people, and as far from the truth as Moby Dick or The Lord of the Rings — the latter of which, I wager, has meant an awful lot to an awful lot of teenage boys, without having to pretend to being true.

In conclusion, believers, know this: there is no compelling evidence of any kind that the stories in the Bible are true. Common lore has it that Jesus is mentioned in Roman texts or scrolls or that Noah’s ark has been located roughly where it is meant to be. This is, to be kind, absolute bullshit. No such finds have ever been made. Jesus is a myth. And so is the rest of it.

Cling to God if you must. Hold to the idea of a designer and creator. And accept that there is something “bigger” out there. But the naive kiddies’ stories, like those of Zeus and Apollo before them, must, as a matter of reason and historical fact, be consigned to the rubbish heap of time.