How to convert me

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Part II of this article is here.

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Hello all!

Dave Muscato here again! I hope you’re having a good day.

Right now, I’m in the middle of an ongoing internet back-and-forth with someone who is seemingly trying to convince me that a god exists. He (she?) posed this question:

First you say, “I don’t believe gods exist”; then you say, “I don’t think humans can be certain about whether gods exist or not.”

Can you be certain that God doesn’t exist?

These aren’t mutually exclusive. The first statement addresses the question of what I believe. The second statement address the question of whether the existence of god is within the epistemological grasp of humans.

The answer to his question, of course, is no. But I don’t need to be certain there is no god in order not to believe in one. Just like I don’t need to be certain there is no such thing as a unicorn in order not to believe in unicorns. I’m reasonably sure that all the stories, books, movies, legends, etc about unicorns are either intentionally or unintentionally fictional, and that’s the same way I feel about (all) gods.

Evangelical readers, if you want to convert me, you’re going to have to try harder than this. I know some of you really have taken the time to study the arguments for atheism, but honestly, most of the evangelicals who want to talk to me have not. It helps to understand the definitions of, for example, “atheist” and “agnostic.” I don’t mind going over the same arguments repeatedly if it helps someone to understand my point of view, but if you want to be more effective as an evangelist, here is some advice:

1. Understand that as an atheist, I have a lot more experience debating my beliefs than you do. This is not just because I’m an atheist activist, but because I live in a country where atheists are the minority. I am accustomed to defending why I am an atheist and explaining the holes in the arguments for god(s) to people who have taken it upon themselves to try to convert me. I do this every day, and only sometimes because I want to. I try to keep my head up and not take it personally when an evangelist goes on the verbal offensive. I’m used to it, and I’ve heard it before. That’s not to say you could never change my mind; just understand that it’s extremely unlikely that you’re going to present something I haven’t heard (and dismantled)—multiple times—before. I don’t say this to be arrogant; it’s just a fact of being an atheist where I live. People regularly try to convert me, and I encourage that. I will be the first to admit I’m wrong if you can convince me to believe in a god. But please, try to empathize. It will help you build rapport with me.
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2. If you’ve never read the Bible (or whatever your holy book is) cover-to-cover, do so. A great number of atheists, including me, have done so. It’s the least you can do. I am constantly amazed at the number of evangelists I talk to who tell me that they believe the Bible is the most important book ever written—or even more laughably, their favorite book—and simultaneously, they’ve never even read it! If you know how to read and you’ve been a Christian for more than 6 months, I consider you without excuse for having not read your own book. You don’t have to have gone to seminary to engage me in a conversation about your religion, but make some effort to meet me halfway here, folks.
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3. Understand that your personal experience is not going to convince me. There is no amount of insistence that you saw or experienced a miracle that is going to convince me that the laws of physics were suspended in your favor, rather than that you were simply mistaken. Even if I saw a miracle myself, I would be skeptical, as you should be, too. Human senses are quite fallible and the much-more likely explanation is that, lo and behold, there is a scientific/naturalistic explanation for the occurrence. See whywontgodhealamputees.com for more on this.
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4. Don’t tell me what I believe. Ask me what I believe. I am not angry at your god. I did not have a bad experience with a church. I do not worship Satan, nor do I believe he exists (nor demons, nor angels, et al). I am not “refusing” your god. I don’t “know in my heart” that your god exists. I have no desire to go around raping and killing just because I don’t believe in hell. Further, you are not going to have any success scaring me into belief in your god by warning me about hell. That only works on people who believe hell is real. I don’t believe in your god because I have carefully examined the logical arguments and the historical evidence and find both unconvincing. That’s really all there is to it.
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5. Don’t give up. If you think you have a good argument, and I offer you a reason I think it’s wrong, go research it and come back and talk to me some more. You are not going to convince me in a single conversation, and you shouldn’t go in with that expectation. That’s totally okay! Let’s build up a mutually-respectful friendship where we can have discussions like this whenever we want. If nothing else, it will help you have a better understanding of the reasons you believe.

If you want to convert me, all you have to do is be honest and talk to me. You may be surprised to find that your reasons for belief are not as solid as you thought—be prepared for that and take it into account. Conversely, If I find what you have to say convincing, I will change my mind. But please understand that I’ve done this a lot, and to be frank, nobody before you has succeeded. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try—I am always interested in respectful discussions about religion.

I hope this has been helpful. Have a great one!

Dave

Part II of this article is here.

Dave Muscato is the Kansas/Missouri-Area Volunteer Network Coordinator for the Secular Student Alliance. He is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A non-traditional junior at Mizzou studying economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday and twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com. Opinions posted here do not necessarily reflect the views of MU SASHA, the Secular Student Alliance, nor the Humanist Community at Harvard.

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This is not an April Fool’s post: I guess I’m not an accomodationist anymore.

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I guess I’m not an accomodationist anymore.

From my Facebook wall today:

Christianity is offensive. It is offensive to reason, offensive to human welfare, and offensive to social progress. It is a willfully ignorant and deliberate abuse of logic, and a shortcoming of rational thought. All religions, Christianity included, prey on human gullibility and fear of the unknown. Christianity is dangerous. It is cruel. To quote Christopher Hitchens, “It is not moral to lie to children. It is not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people, and tell them that if they believe nonsense, they can be saved. It’s immoral.”

Christianity claims that 6,000 years ago, a talking snake, apparently fluent in ancient Hebrew, persuaded a woman, made from a rib, to eat a piece of fruit. Because of that, all of us are going to burn for trillions and trillions of years in a lake made out of fire and sulfur, unless we telepathically pledge our allegiance to an invisible Jewish zombie, who – by magical thinking powers – can take our consciousness (which somehow by magic survives our deaths) to an invisible place where he lives with his daddy, who is (somehow by magic) also he himself?

Do you mean to tell me that you, in all seriousness, believe this insanity? All the touchy-feely gooeyness of how being around your friends at church makes you FEEL aside, or how listening to worship music makes you FEEL, is the above paragraph really, truly what you believe is historically true and factually accurate? If so, what on Earth is wrong with you? If you believe this literal non-sense, you SHOULD be ashamed of yourself, and the satire has served its purpose. And for this, I do not apologize.

I do not believe that you are really a Christian. I believe that you identify as a Christian because your parents told you that what to believe, and your culture has reinforced it. I think you are smarter than that. I think you know that there is no difference between talking snakes and the Tooth Fairy. It’s a myth. Yahweh is just another “god” from just another ancient myth. There are thousands of gods that you don’t believe in. To quote Stephen F. Roberts, “When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

If you want to read the full thread, here it is. It started with an April Fool’s status:

Dave Muscato:

Jesus is LORD! Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” What more do you need?? Hallelujah, Amen, Praise Be, He is Risen! (17 likes)

Trevor B:

He is risen, indeed.

Dave Muscato:

Goodness me, I forgot to capitalize Way, Truth, and Life. Capitalization makes it more factual, you know. And that’s True with a capital-T. (8 likes)

Franklin K:

Wait, does it say that in the Bible? Cause otherwise I don’t know why you’d ever believe that. (2 likes)

Dave Muscato:

It’s a little early to interrupt dinnertime, but around 6, I’m gonna go door-to-door with some tracts sharing the Good News. Who’s with me?? (3 likes)

Dave Muscato:

Franklin, it’s John 14:6. Do you have a Bible? I will give you one. Everybody should read a Bible everyday. What’s your address? IM me. (3 likes)

K.C.:

Glad you’re coming around finally, Dave. I was worried for your eternal soul there for a while…

Dave Muscato:

No need to worry about me, Keenan! I’ve got the Holy Spirit in me. I know this because I believe it. (2 likes)

Becky K:

Lol, yesterday they came by twice, completely confused when I said I wasn’t interested bc I’m Jewish… (1 like)

Dave Muscato:

That’s great, Becky; so was JC! You’re halfway there (2 likes)

Sarah K:

Ohhhhh you fool! You April Fool! (1 like)

Becky K:

Oh, you’re so silly (1 like)

Dave Muscato:

Cynthia S:

Haha! Happy 1st of April!

Megan K:

oh yeah, april 1st! i was like wtf?? haha (1 like)

Tyler C:

Nice. Best fucking April Fools’ Day joke ever. (2 likes)

Catherine P:

I must share. (1 like)

Zach C:

It surprises me that you would try to be intentionally offensive… from talking to you in the past I would’ve expected more.

Dave Muscato:

Hey Zach! It’s April Fool’s Day, and this is satire. Like all satire, it’s designed to hold abuses, follies, or shortcomings up for ridicule – because such abuses, follies, and shortcomings are, well, ridiculous. Satire is designed to be funny, but it has a greater purpose of constructive social criticism, in order to shame individuals or societies into improving themselves.

Christianity is offensive. It is offensive to reason, offensive to human welfare, and offensive to social progress. It is a willfully ignorant and deliberate abuse of logic, and a shortcoming of rational thought. All religions, Christianity included, prey on human gullibility and fear of the unknown. Christianity is dangerous. It is cruel. To quote Christopher Hitchens, “It is not moral to lie to children. It is not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people, and tell them that if they believe nonsense, they can be saved. It’s immoral.”

Zach, Christianity claims that 6,000 years ago, a talking snake, apparently fluent in ancient Hebrew, persuaded a woman, made from a rib, to eat a piece of fruit. Because of that, all of us are going to burn for trillions and trillions of years in a lake made out of fire and sulfur, unless we telepathically pledge our allegiance to an invisible Jewish zombie, who – by magical thinking powers – can take our consciousness (which somehow by magic survives our deaths) to an invisible place where he lives with his daddy, who is (somehow by magic) also he himself?

Do you mean to tell me that you, in all seriousness, believe this insanity? All the touchy-feely gooeyness of how being around your friends at church makes you FEEL, or listening to worship music makes you FEEL, is the above paragraph really, truly what you believe is historically true and factually accurate? If so, what on Earth is wrong with you? If you believe this literal non-sense, you SHOULD be ashamed of yourself, and the satire has served its purpose. And for this, I do not apologize.

I do not believe that you are really a Christian. I believe that you identify as a Christian because your parents told you that what to believe, and your culture has reinforced it. I think you are smarter than that. I think you know that there is no difference between talking snakes and the Tooth Fairy. It’s a myth. Yahweh is just another “god” from just another ancient myth. There are thousands of gods that you don’t believe in. To quote Stephen F. Roberts, “When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

Hope this helps, and I hope you’re having a great weekend! And I mean that sincerely. – Dave (6 likes)

Christian H:

 Interesting perspective. i believe in Christ, as well as the garden account. And it’s not because my parents taught me to. I was both an atheist and a skeptic. And I am still quite rational. As I’ve stated before, it was the evidence (historical, prophetic, archaeology, etc.) that convinced me. Some of whlich I’ve shared with you before to no avail, and you chose to ignore, change the subject by raising another objection, or by explaining it away. And that’s fine I understand. But it’s incorrect and untrue to make such a blanket statement about all Christians.

You claim Christianity is bad for the world, but for every example of someone doing something wicked in the name of Christianity (which can be demonstrated to be someone simply using a religion as they would any other power they could get over people) and I can name ten examples of how Christianity has made the world better. (1 like)

Christian H:

If we are being satirical, then happy atheists day (Psalm 14:1). (3 likes)

Zach C:

If you truly stand by your above statements and want to help people by removing this nonsense belief from them then I would suggest you alter your approach. As a person in a position of leadership you act as an ambassador for your belief set. I have many friends that don’t prescribe to the same belief set as me and completely respect that they have received the same inputs as me over their lives and come to a different conclusion. The fact that they believe something different than me doesn’t bother me. It’s your lack of respect for your fellow man that bothers me. Your post oozes arrogance which in no way would be proactive to making me give your new truth the time of day. You’re being counteractive and it’s frustrating. Your beliefs are what they are… beliefs. If you want to have a missional attitude about promoting what you believe in order to help others by opening their minds then you should consider some serious adjustments in your means of communicating in a public forum like facebook. I cast no judgment on my friends who are atheists because they will state that it is what they “believe”, just like I “believe” in the Christian faith. That’s what it is, a belief — nothing more, nothing less. Regardless of whether God exists being arrogant is silly. You just come off looking like a dick.

Devin W:

Dave that was awesome, I’m going to have to repost most of that if it’s okay. (1 like)

Devin W:

I wish I could be a dick like you. I’ve heard a lot of preachers who are dicks…talking about hell, fire, damnation.. it’s all kind of a slap in the face.. but can be effective none the less. (1 like)

Rebecca V:

I have to agree, Dave. You made an extremely blanket statement about all Christians. I know many Christians who grew up with atheist parents or parents who were lapsed Catholics and so on who are ridiculed by their family for their new found faith. My sister, whom you met yesterday just started going to church and changing her life around after years of going her own way. Most of her friends don’t understand the radical change in her just in the last four months. We grew up not going to church and just barely understanding Christianity because my mom was a believer but not my dad. My dad finally realized his need for Jesus about 5 years ago, just before he turned 50 after my mom prayed for him for nearly 30 years. So, as I have learned to not stereotype atheists, I hope you learn not to do the same about Christians. (2 likes)

C.S.:

Dave,
I still haven’t got a reasonable explain (Euthyphro [sp?] doesn’t count, if you read the wiki you provide for that argument it also provided the solution to the false dicotomy. Saved my grey cells alot of trouble hehe) of why I should feel ashamed…If there is no God right & wrong do not exist. Therefore you can’t shame me because I’ve done nothing wrong . Also I find your anger encouraging. According to CS Lewis’s theories (found in Mere Christianity I think…I sometimes get his apologetic works mixed up. Have you read any of his works?) you are probably closer to finding & having a relationship God than you ever were attending a church thinking you were set but apparently having no relationship. So happy TRUTH (all caps mind you) search!

Devin W:

i dont want hijack dave’s post. but can you explain how the existence of right and wrong are dependent upon there being a god? (2 likes)

Renee S:

LOL. ♥ (1 like)

Christian H:

Devin, can you explain where right and wrong comes from without a creator?

Stephen A:

Devin, I’m with you. There is no valid argument for that viewpoint; however, there’s tons of observable evidence to support the argument that “right and wrong” are social constructs, witnessed in other species. Unless someone is going to go batsh*t crazy and argue that animals know right and wrong because they made the conscious decision to accept Christ into their lives, then I think the discussion is settled.

Christian H:

So it is ONLY social? And you derived this because you observed other species having a standard of right and wrong? Please enlighten me.

Christian H:

Let’s say that you are right though. Right and wrong are merely social constructs. Then right and wrong does not really exist. It is arbitrary. It is not a standard, but an agreement. It can be changed if the majority changes. If all of society agrees that it is okay to eliminate a group of people say… simply for their ethnic background, then that would be okay. Because nothing exists outside of society to dictate otherwise. Or like, in the past, when different cultures and societies deemed women inferior and treated them like servant dogs for sex, etc. then that was totally acceptable because that society said so.

Dave Muscato:

Christian, if I may, I can. Economic anthropology is what I’m in school to study (esp. the evolution of morality in cooperative species). In under 50 words, here is where right & wrong come from (it is an ongoing process), without hypothesizing a magical intelligent agent:

Natural selection favors cooperative animals over their non-cooperative competitors for resources because of economies of scale and gains-from-trade. Animals that work together are able to accomplish more, have a higher standard of living, and therefore provide for and ensure the survival of more offspring.

It’s really not that complicated. If you want to know more of the details, I recommend “The Evolution of Cooperation” by Robert Axelrod (NB it’s a little math-heavy) or one of my favorite books of all time, “The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation” by Matt Ridley:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-Virtue-Instincts-Cooperation/dp/0140264450

Dave Muscato:

Stephen, right and wrong are not social constructs, unless you’re not drawing a distinction between non-human animal sociality and human sociality. There are solid biological foundations that cause them to arise in certain patterns, and we can predict those patterns by theoretical frameworks in game theory. Specific variations are culturally relative, but there are good, evolutionary-biology reasons for the universal traits we see in terms of right & wrong across all cultures.

Stephen A:

That’s what I meant by social construct. Thanks for explaining it better, Dave. (1 like)

C.S. (deleted post).

Dave Muscato:

Chantelle, it seems to me that you are trying to say that the lack of an *immutable* standard means that all standards are therefore arbitrary. This is a straw man and a non-sequitur. No one ever said that moral codes are arbitrary, just because they change over time. Quite the opposite, actually: They have a demonstrable, predictable biological basis. E.O. Wilson brought the term “sociobiology” to international attention in 1975 when he more-or-less founded the field of studying that basis, and there are thousands of scientists who have since made careers out of furthering our understanding of it. It’s not arbitrary.

C.S.:

Sorry i deleted that b/c my phone was behind the times. So why do we honor those who defend the weak or genetically inferior? Biologically speaking shouldn’t we admire those who snuff them out as that would improve the genetic code? Or rape is commonly disliked, but isn’t that just increasing the chances of the physically strong passing on genetic materials? & why do charitable deeds or try to cure chronic illnesses? Anyway you get the idea that there are many widely accepted morals that do not make sense biologically.

Dave Muscato:

Chantelle, read the book I linked to above. It will answer all of these kinds of questions and is a solid introduction for the layperson in beautifully readable language. You’re dipping your toe in an evolutionary subfield with a very academically-rich, 70-year history of solid research and excellent publications.

Stephen A:

Odd that you’d bring up rape as being deplorable, though, considering that the Christian moral tradition makes it clear where a woman’s place is.

Dave Muscato:

Indeed, until the 1970s, most states did not even consider spousal rape a crime. It wasn’t until 1993 that North Carolina became the last state to remove the spousal exemption. This was mostly based on the idea that married women are to be subservient to men in Abrahamic cultures, thanks to Bible verses like 1 Tim 2:13, 1 Corinthians 11:7-9, etc.

I will be expanding on some of the points raised in this thread in my next article, as well!

Regards,

Dave

mail@davemuscato.com

(573) 424-0420 cell/text

Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.

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Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

Dave’s Mailbag: Which Bible translation?

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A friend asks for my thoughts on Bible translations. Here is my response:

Hey Will!

The short answer is:

For English, I recommend the New American Standard Bible. Alternatively, I recommend the Revised Standard Version (NOT the New Revised Standard Version).

For an annotated bible, I recommend this one, which is my usual Bible when I want an English translation:

http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Apocrypha-Standard-Expanded-Hardcover/dp/0195283481/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331990828&sr=1-1

Note that this is the 3rd edition. There are two considerations when choosing an annotated Bible: The translation itself, and the editor who wrote the notations. Bruce Metzger, Bart Ehrman’s mentor, edited that one and he knew what he was doing. There is a newer version, the 4th edition, but it’s an annotated bible based on the NRSV translation, which is not as good, and it has a different editor (Michael Coogan et al; Bruce Metzger died in 2007 and the 4th edition came out in 2010). Don’t get me wrong, Coogan is extremely competent and qualified in his field; I just prefer Metzger’s tone and the RSV specifically.

If you are interested in an annotated bible (which I recommend), check out the 3rd edition linked above, even though it’s older. The translation itself is just much truer to the Greek.

The Revised Standard Version is widely considered to have the most agreement with the Greek NA27 (the most common text used by Greek NT scholars and seminary students studying the NT in its original Greek). If you’re looking for accuracy in comparison to the most commonly-accepted Greek compilation of sources (the NA27), here is a list of 20 translations, ranked in order of agreement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Testamentum_Graece#Influence

If you can read Latin, I also highly recommend the Vulgate.

I am the wrong person to ask about the OT, but if pressed for a recommendation, I suggest the Jewish Study Bible (ed. Adele Berlin et al), published by Oxford.

For quick reference, I also recommend the YouVersion Bible app for Android and iPhone. What I like about this app is that you can select from about 150 translations and swap back & forth if you want to compare them. It has multiple Greek, Latin, English, and other-language translations, including Koine (although unfortunately not the NA27), and allows you to highlight & take notes, and share specific verses on Twitter & Facebook. Although the lack of the NA27 and annotations make it inappropriate for study, the app is free, and it’s useful for speedy access during discussions with people or during debates. To access a specific verse, just tap the top of the screen and scroll to the book you want. It will display, in a series of squares, all the chapters in that book, like a page from a monthly calendar. Click on the chapter you want, and it will display (in a series of squares) all the verses in that chapter. Click the verse you want and it goes right to it. You can access any specific verse in roughly 3 seconds.

The long answer:

This question is one that’s very important to me, and it’s part of the reason I stopped believing that the Bible has any more authority than any other religious text. It was only a short step from there that I stopped believing that any of these books are holy in the first place. More on that in a moment.

As far as which translation is “best,” I would take this fellow’s advice: He is Robert M. Price, one of the world’s leading Bible scholars and a world expert in higher biblical criticism, a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, etc. Aside from teaching and writing books, he has a radio show where he answers people’s questions. Someone asked him on the radio show’s Facebook page which version(s) of the Bible he recommends; you can read the discussion here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/thebiblegeeklisteners/permalink/285258728212798/

You might also want to listen to this podcast of his radio show where a listener asks about the same topic (skip to 52 minutes for the relevant part):

http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-20430/TS-413626.mp3

Historically, the Vulgate is probably the most influential and important translation. I would go so far as to say it is difficult to overstate the Vulgate’s influence on the history of Western European religious scholarship since the 4th century. It was the basis of more-or-less all vernacular translations and teaching for well over 1,000 years, from its commission in 382 until the Protestant Reformation/modern era around the 16th century, and the time that English began to come into play as mover-and-shaker language. The King James is heavily influenced by the Vulgate (see below), and the Douay-Rheims is a translation from it into English, as well. The Vulgate was (more-or-less) the only Bible available to scholars, priests, and Christians altogether throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Another reason the Vulgate is historically important is that it’s credited with being the first translation of the Tanakh directly from Hebrew to Latin, rather than via the Greek Septuagint – you can lose a lot in a translation-from-a-translation! The Vulgate also had an immeasurable influence on the development of the English language. Many modern English religious words come to us via the Vulgate: creation, salvation, testament/testimony, angel/angelic, evangelist/evangelize/evangelism, rapture, apostle, justify/justification, etc all exist in English because of the influence of the Vulgate.

Ultimately, it’s useful to read multiple translations. The more Greek, Latin, and Hebrew you know, the more you can get out of reading different ones, and understanding the interpreters’ word choices and annotations. (Notice I said “interpreter”: There really is no such thing as a “direct translation”; unless you’re talking about English & Pig Latin, which have direct parallels for literally every word, and the grammar and syntax are literally identical.) It is helpful even just to learn some basic root words and cultural rudiments, whether or not you’re interested in learning a whole new language. Additionally, the more you know about ancient Roman and Jewish culture and history, and Semitic mythos, too, the more you will get out of reading the Bible, annotated or not.

My own usual Bible is this one; it’s the one I bring with me when we do the Ask an Atheist table:

http://www.amazon.com/Interlinear-Bible-Hebrew-Greek-English-English-Hebrew/dp/1565639774

I have a few important criticisms of this one, namely that the NT is based on the (Greek) Textus Receptus, which is hardly my first choice as a source text. Although it was the source text for the Luther Bible and the King James (the missing parts were filled in from the Vulgate as mentioned above, which is why I keep it at the Ask an Atheist table), it is not even close to what I would consider the best that modern scholarship has to offer. The NA27 makes use of a more systematic method of identifying copying errors, and places more weight on older documents versus documents that we have in great numbers.

When you’re talking about which translation is the “best,” there are a couple of important things to keep in mind. Firstly, we don’t have the manuscripts — the original, hand-written documents, as opposed to just copies — for ANY of these books. We only have copies. More accurately, we only have copies-of-copies. In fact, the oldest fragment we’ve found from any part of the New Testament dates to about 125 CE, and it’s a bit from the book we now call the Gospel according to John, which was written last chronologically, of the four canonical gospels.

When trying to piece together ancient history, one thing we like to see is records that aren’t too removed chronologically from the events they describe. The oldest complete copy of the New Testament dates to around 325 CE, or about 250-300 years after the events it describes.

As far as ancient precedent, that’s actually not as bad as it sounds, but when we’re talking about miracle claims, we have to set the bar a little higher. Carl Sagan popularized a wonderful summation of this concept in five words: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Ideally, we want independent, unbiased, multiple eyewitness manuscripts. By that I mean, in a perfect world, we’d have multiple people who do not know each other and did not collaborate, and who have no reason to lie, writing in their own hand, about events they saw with their eyes. This is what we have come to expect for news reporting in the modern world — multiple, independent reporters writing from the scene, who employ journalistic integrity to the best of their ability.

We actually do not have any of these things. What we have are copies-of-copies, written by people who most definitely collaborated, whom we know with certainty fudged their accounts, and further, who were not eyewitnesses. In the case of Paul, who wrote [allegedly] 14 books of the 27 in the New Testament, and the case of Luke, who [allegedly] wrote the Gospel according to Luke and also the book of Acts, they tell us explicitly that they are not eyewitnesses and did not know Jesus personally. I might take some heat for this, but I’m willing to say it: The New Testament is pretty much a worse-case scenario when it comes to historical reliability. In the wonderful words of former SASHA president James Pflug, “The Bible doesn’t know anything about anything, and why people listen to it is the only miraculous thing about Christianity.”

We have examples of miracle claims today that meet the modern standard as stated above, but I think it’s important to note that few people actually believe these modern miracle claims, and that’s extremely telling. If people are going to rely on written accounts of miracle claims, they should at least be consistent on what they believe and don’t believe based on the strength of the evidence. As Dave Fitzgerald points out in his book Nailed, we have 1st-edition, 1st-printing copies of the Book of Mormon signed by Joseph Smith himself, which include eyewitness affidavits from 11 people who also signed off swearing that they have personally seen and handled the golden plates. What stronger written evidence could you possibly want? Yet for most Christians, this level of evidence is not persuasive, and they don’t believe the miracle claims of the Book of Mormon. Inconsistently, they believe miracle claims from a series of books that are much, much older, with anonymous and in some cases fraudulent authors, relying on copies-of-copies. It makes no sense.

You might also be interested in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Year-One-First-Century-Palestine/dp/1594488991

It’s called “Life in Year One: What The World Was Like In First-Century Palestine” by Scott Korb over at NYU. It’s very helpful for understanding a lot of the cultural reasons for certain linguistic phrasings, analogies, metaphors, parables, etc.

Although a departure from Bible translation recommendations, I also HIGHLY recommend this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Christianity-First-Three-Thousand-Years/dp/0143118692/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331991770&sr=1-1

called “Christianity: The First 3,000 Years” by Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch. It’s a history book about Christianity as a whole and lengthy (~1,200 pages), but I just cannot recommend it highly enough: Though it only came out in February 2011, it’s already being praised as one of the greatest non-fiction achievements in the history of English books about Christianity, and I agree with this wholeheartedly–It will be a very long time before this one is outdone. MacCulloch’s scholarship is simply unparalleled in the study of the history of Christianity. I also like his attention to Christianity in non-traditional places, which is often neglected or underestimated in Euro-centric courses and history books.

Hope this helps!

Dave

mail@davemuscato.com

(573) 424-0420 cell/text

Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.

Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

Remember this one for debates!

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First time here? Read this.

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Been really sick the past few days, and I apologize for the lack of updates. Here is one to hold you over, and frankly, it says it all:

Pro tip: This goes for any text, not just the Bible or other “holy” texts.

As a reminder, Rick Santorum and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson will be speaking in Columbia today (Friday) at 4 PM. Here is the SASHA Facebook event if you have questions for them!

Also don’t forget that on Sunday at 10 AM, we’re having our monthly “Alternative Church” with coffee, bagels, and the Columbia Atheists group. Check out our Facebook group for more details.

New articles coming soon!

- Dave

mail@davemuscato.com

(573) 424-0420 cell/text

Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.

Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

A comment about “Christian” bullying

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My friend, atheist advocate & activist, and SASHA blog guest author, Damon Fowler, posted this to Jessica Ahlquist in response to the treatment she is receiving by so-called “Christians” following the recent ruling regarding the prayer banner:

I’m really sorry you have to deal with that kind of treatment. People would always tell me “You don’t want to talk to those kinds of people anyway”, which is probably true, but it didn’t make it much better. I guess the best advice I can give is keep what friends you have close, don’t act like you’re bothered by it in front of them, and keep your online support on standby. I’m sure anyone would be willing to listen if you needed someone to talk to. I’m here and I know a bit about what you’re going through. Anyway, things will get better. You did a great thing.

My response:

I’m not trying to give unsolicited advice, but I disagree that someone should act like discrimination/bullying etc doesn’t bother them, if indeed it does (as it should!). Their behavior is not only completely unacceptable morally, but it’s also illegal, and ironically, anti-Christian. I think in some cases, in the face of egregious bullying, it can be more productive to call the bullies out on it, very publicly, especially if you have the option of “low-hanging fruit”; for example, you might say…

“Jesus said,  ’You have heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you’ (Matthew 5:44). Jesus said, ‘If someone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat as well’ (Matthew 5:40, Luke 6:29). Do you think that I am evil? Then remember what Jesus said about evildoers: ‘Do not rise up against an evil person; if someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn your other cheek to him as well’ (Matthew 5:39).

What you should really be doing, instead of getting mad at me, is asking yourself if you are really a Christian, or if you are what Jesus called the Pharisees, a hypocrite – the Greek word for an actor, someone who pretends to be righteous, but in reality, is selfish, prideful, and wicked. If you are really a Christian, you will do as Jesus commands, even when it’s difficult, ESPECIALLY when it’s difficult. If you are really a Christian, you will recognize your pride, your indignation, and stand up for what Jesus taught – tolerance, and peace with those who disagree with you, but most of all, forgiveness to those who persecute you. If you are really a Christian, you should be asking yourself, “Would would Jesus do?”

You believe that Jesus could work miracles, that he could do anything he could imagine with just a mere thought. When Jesus was being tortured by the Roman soldiers after his arrest, did he summon lightning to strike them dead? No, he prayed for them. When Jesus was hanging by nails through his feet and wrists on the cross, did he spit on his executioners, call them names, and threaten them? No, he asked God to forgive them.

In Romans 13, the Apostle Paul wrote, “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.” By persecuting me, you are disrespecting the judge’s decision that the banner is unconstitutional, and by disrespecting the judge, you are disrespecting God. Christians are commanded to obey the governments that God has placed over them. When the Apostle Paul wrote that, he was writing under the Roman emperor Nero, perhaps the most tyrannical and anti-Christian government in Christian history. Under Emperor Nero, Paul – who, unlike Jesus and his other apostles, was a Roman citizen – was executed, a nearly unprecedented punishment for a citizen. The Apostle Paul had every imaginable reason to fight his government, but he steadfastly refused – in fact, he encouraged obedience, because this is what Christians are commanded to do. If Saint Paul could obey the decisions of his government, even in the face of his own execution, what makes you think you don’t have to?

You call yourself a Christian; why is it that I, an atheist, am more kind than you? Jesus wanted you, as his follower, to set an example of how to treat people, regardless of whether they are Christian or not, and ESPECIALLY if they persecute you. You call yourself a Christian; why is it that I, an atheist, am more civil, more peaceful, more gentle than you?

If you choose to persecute me, if you choose to disrespect the judge’s decision, understand that, as Paul himself said, you will bring judgment on yourself. Your words and actions are bigoted and hateful, not forgiving and peaceful, as Jesus taught. You are treating me this way out of your own selfishness, bigoted intolerance, and lack of respect, love, and generosity toward your fellow man. Further, your thoughts, words, and actions are explicitly against the instructions of both Saint Paul and Jesus himself. And if you are a Christian, you YOURSELF believe that you will face judgment for this. You think that I am going to hell because I am an atheist? I stood up for the United States Constitution, even though it was difficult, even though I knew I would face hatred from hypocrites like you. And I did it with respect, kindness, and a desire for tolerance. And what do you do in return? Directly, blatantly, and pridefully disobey Jesus himself. And as the Bible says, whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it (James 2:10). So I have news for you: If you want to call yourself a Christian, you have two choices: Regardless of whether you agree with it or not, and regardless of what you think of me personally, you must respect the judge’s decision, and you must treat me with love, tolerance, peacefulness, and forgiveness, as Jesus commanded, or you will burn in hell yourself, according to your very own rules. The choice is yours.

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s having to teach someone their own damn religion. Ugh.

A note to Jess:

I want you to know that the 550+ members of SASHA are behind you 100%. You are an an inspiration, an amazing person. These “Christian” bullies, they get defensive and angry because that is how our brains respond to cognitive dissonance – when they are demonstrated to be wrong, but they cannot cope with it. They know they are wrong, but nobody likes to be wrong, and it’s easier for them to lash out at you instead. That is not only childish, selfish, and wicked, but it’s also anti-Christian. Their own religion tells them, in no uncertain terms, to love their enemies, to forgive those who persecute them, and to obey their government. Take heart in knowing that you are right, and no amount of bullying can take that away. And frankly, in terms of love, kindness, forgiveness, and tolerance, you are showing THEM how it’s done.

Keep up the great work. We’re here for you if there’s anything at all we can do to help. I’m looking forward to hanging out with you again and hearing you speak at the Reason Rally!

Dave

P.S. You’re not old enough for this yet, but here’s what we enjoyed when we got the news that you’d won

mail@davemuscato.com

(573) 424-0420 cell/text

Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.

Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

Dave’s Mailbag: Cite your sources!

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Hello all,

I greatly appreciate it when our readers take the time to poke holes in things we say here. As a skeptic, I want to make it abundantly clear that I love being proven wrong about things; it is only when I find out I was wrong that I have the opportunity to really grow in my knowledge and understanding of the world. So, with that in mind, I want to specifically thank my friend Christian Huls for his response to my post yesterday.

In kind, I want to take some time to respond to his comments point-by-point. Here we go:

Dave, you continually make bold claims and statements as if they are authoritative undisputed fact, site nothing, and stand against ancient testimony that was much closer to the events than you. Your history is more fraudulent than that of Dan Brown’s…

When I’m blogging, I admit that I make less of an effort to cite all my sources for every detail – especially if it interrupts the flow of the post, or if I’m making a humorous point – the way I would in an academic paper. Depending on the subject matter, I often hotlink to sources, and I appreciate you calling me out on this. I will attempt to be more thorough in future posts, and for future reference, if you would ever like to know my source for something I said on here (assuming it’s not original research), please feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll dig it up for you!

You write:

Matthew was not anonymous, nor was it written by someone ignorant of Hebrew. What is your evidence of this? There is good evidence that Matthew’s gospel was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic and later translated into Greek.

I would like to see this good evidence. To my knowledge, the only evidence that favors the idea that Matthew’s gospel was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and later translated to Greek (as opposed to being composed in Greek), is that Papias, as quoted by Eusebius, made an extremely ambiguous reference to this, which modern scholars by and large reject as either a misunderstanding, or an outright error on his part.

According to the beautiful, highly-regarded 4-volume International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, (chief ed. Geoffrey Bromiley, a church historian and historical theologian who sadly died two years ago this past August, a Professor of Church History at Fuller Theological Seminary, ordained in the Church of England, with an MA from Cambridge and a PhD, DD, and post-doctoral D.Litt from the University of Edinburgh), to which I am very grateful to have free access anytime I want here at Mizzou’s Ellis Library (considering it’s about $240 on Amazon), the book we now call “The Gospel according to Matthew” was indeed anonymously written, and the modern scholarly view is that it lacks the characteristic linguistic features one would expect to find in a Greek rendering of a work originally composed in Hebrew. I’m quoting: “The gospel itself says nothing about its sources” and “[Matthew's Greek] reveals none of the telltale marks of a translation” (Vol iii p. 281). On page 280: “Early in the 2nd century, Papias referred to Matthew as the collector of “oracles” [sayings] of Jesus; shortly thereafter the Gospel as a whole was attributed to Matthew. Later traditions about Matthew are mixed and unreliable.”

You wrote:

Papias (60-130), as quoted by Eusebius, makes the following obscure statement about the origin of the gospel testifying to both the author and the language (H.E. 3. 39. 16): “Matthew composed the sayings in the Hebrew language and everyone interpreted as he was able.”

Irenaeus (130-200) (Adv. Haer. 3.1.1; also quoted by Eusebius, H.E. 5.8.2): “Now Matthew brought forth among the Hebrews a written gospel in their language, while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and founding the church.”

Origen (185-254) (as quoted by Eusebius, H.E. 6. 25.3-4) asserts, “Among the four Gospels, which are the only indisputable ones in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the first was written by Matthew, who was once a tax collector, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts from Judaism, and published in the Hebrew [or Aramaic] language.”

Eusebius wrote of Pantaenos (died c. 190), associated with the church in Alexandria (H.E. 5.10.1-4): “One of these was Pantaenos, and it is said that he went to the Indians, and the tradition is that he found there among some of those there who had known Christ the Gospel of Matthew had preceded his coming; for Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached to them and had left the writing of Matthew in Hebrew letters, which was preserved until the time mentioned” (see H.E. 3.24.5-6). According to Jerome, Pantaenos brought back a copy of this Hebrew version of Matthew to Alexandria (De vir. ill. 36).

Eusebius (H.E. 3.24.6): “For Matthew, who had at first preached to the Hebrews, when he was about to go to other peoples, committed his Gospel to writing in his native tongue, and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence.”

Jerome (342-420) stated several times that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, and even said that the original Hebrew Gospel was in the library at Caesarea in his day (De vir. ill. 3; see Ad Damas. 20; Ad Hedib. 4).

Epiphanius (315-403) wrote concerning the Nazarenes, “They have the Gospel according to Matthew quite complete in Hebrew, for this Gospel is certainly still preserved among them as it was first written, in Hebrew letters” (Panarion 29.9.4).

My response:

Quoting again from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Vol iii, p. 282:

The arguments for the priority of Mark and Matthew’s dependence upon Mark are too strong to be overthrown by the testimony of Papias, which as we have seen is difficult to interpret.

Quoting further still:

Almost all scholars agree that our Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Greek and is not a translated document”… “Our Greek Gospel of Matthew is not the translation of  a Hebrew or Aramaic original.” “Matthew’s OT quotations are derived from the LXX [Septuagint] rather than the Hebrew text… the Aramaic Gospel supposedly referred to by Papias can at best be a Proto-Matthew… the majority of NT scholars remain convinced that Markan priority is a superior hypothesis. In the face of these problems it must be concluded that either Papias was wrong in what he said or, giving him the benefit of the doubt, that he has been misunderstood, perhaps by the early church fathers (e.g. Irenaeus, Pantauenus, Origen…)

You wrote:

Perhaps there is some evidence that the Greek translator was not fluent in certain Hebrew/Aramaic idioms. For example, the infamous camel through the eye of a needle phrase – in Aramaic, the word for camel and rope are the same. An interesting article on this http://healing2thenations.net/papers/hebrewmt.htm

Consider also the Aramaic words found in Matthew: Emmanuel, raka, and mammon.

My response:

As I stated above, the scholarly view is that Matthew was composed in Greek. This is the majority view, among both believing-Christian and secular scholars, for reasons available in much greater detail here. As stated, it’s possible that some of the sayings of Jesus came to the author of “Matthew” via Aramaic, which seems to be what Papias was talking about when he says that the author collected tá lógia - it really does all depend on the interpretation of that word. But even then, this goes against Markan priority + Q, for which there is much more solid evidential footing, and which is accepted by the majority of modern NT scholars (see Christopher Tuckett’s “The Current State of the Synoptic Problem,”delivered at the 2008 Oxford Conference in the Synoptic Problem).

I think the best we can say is that it’s inconclusive. Quoting the above encyclopedia yet again (p 281), “Although the evidence allows only speculation, it may well be that what Papias referred to was a collection of sayings of Jesus in Aramaic that ultimately, in Greek, became the core of Matthew’s gospel, and that the whole then took the name of the part – ‘the oracles of the Lord.’ Papias was misunderstood not only because of the ambiguity of the word lógia but also because several Jewish Christian Gospels existed in the 2nd cent. (e.g. the Gospel of the Nazarenes, the Ebionites, and of the Hebrews), and it was easy enough to suppose that one or all of them originated in the lógia referred to by Papias. Even the great Jerome first identified one of these Gospels, which he examined in Syria, with the work of Matthew, only later to withdraw this conclusion.”

You wrote:

There is also external evidence for the authorship and early existence of the Gospel of Matthew as well.

Clement of Rome (c. 90) used sections of the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. 5:7; 6:14-15; 7:1-2, 12; with Luke 6:31, 36-38) (1Clem. 13:1-2).

Ignatius used the Gospel of Matthew (c. 100) quoting the phrase “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt 3:15) in discussing Jesus’ baptism (Smyr. 1).

The author of the Didache (c. 110) quoted from Matthew’s version of the Lord’s prayer (Did. 8:1-3).

Justin Martyr (c. 100-165), whose works I just finished reading in their entirety a few weeks back, frequently quotes from a harmony that he apparently put together of the synoptic gospels. He says that there are only FOUR gospels.

His pupil Tatian (120-180) produced a harmony of the four gospels called the Diatessaron which was the standard text in the Syriac churches until the fifth century. The harmony does not include Jesus’ encounter with the adulteress (John 7:53- 8:11), and no significant text was added. In all, only 56 verses in the canonical Gospels do not have a counterpart in the Diatessaron, mostly the genealogies and the Pericope Adulterae.

Not centuries later. A century later it was in circulation enough that someone had put together a harmony of three of them. They were well known enough even by the critics. And it was common knowledge that there were four, and that they were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in that order.

Did I say that Matthew was composed centuries ex post facto? I believe I said (or at least, I meant to say) decades, not centuries. If so, that was an error on my part. The consensus scholarly view for the date range of “Matthew’s” gospel is about 15 years after Mark, i.e. circa 85 CE. Aune’s “Blackwell’s Companion to the New Testament,” page 298, specifies the terminus a quo of Matthew’s gospel as “sometime after 70 CE.” He goes on to say:

The range of possibility is 70 to 110 CE. Most scholars prefer a date for Matthew midway between, about 80-90 CE, allowing some years after Mark. This time period is strongly supported by an internal analysis of Matthew and other known historical events.

You wrote:

The earliest fragments of Matthew are dated to the middle or latter half of the first century.

Source? The earliest fragment of Matthew of which I am aware is 104, over at the Sackler Library at Oxford (aka P.Oxy.LXIV 4404), which dates to the late 2nd century. Here’s a lay source chart indicating that it’s the earliest known fragment. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri database also lists it as “late second century.”

You wrote:

Just because a modern skeptical “scholar,” who doesn’t believe in God and presupposes that miracles are impossible, postulates that these were written in different order, assembled, etc. does prove it to be so.

Couldn’t agree with you more

You wrote:

These were not merely voted upon out of hundreds of gospels centuries later, but the councils merely affirmed what was already accepted by the churches, as evident by the lists of scriptures by earlier writers.

I don’t see how a council affirming what was “accepted” by tradition lends any credibility to the tradition per se. Lists of scriptures by earlier writers only means that those scriptures, in some form or another, were in existence at that time. We have no way of knowing what they contained or how much they were altered or edited in between. If a Muslim council were to get together today and “affirm” that Muhammad was a true prophet of God, on the basis of earlier writers of the Qur’an and the Hadith, would that be convincing to you? As good scholars (and good scholars and by nature skeptical!), we’d also want to see solid independent, unbiased, external evidence, preferably evidence that comes from undisputed eyewitnesses, etc.

You wrote:

Regarding riding on the colt and the foal of the donkey, this is easily reconciled if the two animals are tied together and if Messiah is riding side saddle on the adult with His feet on the foal. Though this is not even necessarily so either. It could have simply been that the foal remained tied to the other and no one was riding on it.

It’s possible, sure. It’s not parsimonious, and it doesn’t explain why “Luke,” “John,” and “Mark” all specify one animal, as does the alleged prophecy in Zechariah.

You wrote:

Furthermore, early hostile eyewitnesses could have easily disputed this and none did.

You’re right; in fact it’s even worse than that: Early hostile eyewitnesses didn’t mention any of these events at all – almost as if these events never happened and were made up by the gospel writers decades later!

I also want to point out one more thing. You (rightly) called me out for making bold assertions without citing my sources. I hope that I have corrected this to your satisfaction. However, I noticed something in reading over what you wrote…

- “Matthew was not anonymous, nor was it written by someone ignorant of Hebrew…”
- “There is good evidence that Matthew’s gospel was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic and later translated into Greek…”
-  ”Papias (60-130), as quoted by Eusebius, makes the following obscure statement about the origin of the gospel…”

The first two things, I would like to ask you, in turn, to provide citations for. But it was this last bit that caught my eye in particular, when you said “makes the following obscure statement…”

I realized I’d read that exact line before. After a quick Google search, I realized you had simply copied & pasted pretty much the entirety of your post from a webinar workbook provided to students of Barry Smith’s Religious Studies 2033 class, “The New Testament and its Context,” at Crandall University in New Brunswick, Canada, a tiny, private Baptist school operated by the Convention of Atlantic Baptist Churches and founded in 1949 as the “United Baptist Bible Training School,” before they changed the name to something that sounded a little less backwater.

By bizarre coincidence, I happen to be familiar with Smith’s research; he went to McMaster Divinity School and also got his PhD from McMaster University in Ontario, where an old friend & colleague of mine happens to teach anthropology (my friend got her undergraduate degree in anthropology here at Mizzou, where I also study anthropology).

If we’re talking about citing sources, I’m not so sure Dr. Smith would be so happy to hear about this, haha. I also want to point out, as I spelled out above, that this interpretation directly opposes the majority view of NT scholars. Not that Dr. Smith isn’t entitled to his professional opinion, but I don’t think it makes sense, if we’re truly trying to unravel this mystery, to draw from 1 uncredited source that contradicts the majority view, without providing overwhelming evidence in favor of this view (re: the assertion that Matthew was not anonymous, the “good evidence” that it was translated into Greek, etc). Am I to understand that the “good evidence” you refer to is simply Papias’ third-hand say-so (4th-century Eusebius, quoting 2nd-century Papias, writing about the as-yet-untitled 1st-century gospel of “Matthew”)?

Thanks again for your feedback, Christian!

- Dave

mail@davemuscato.com

(573) 424-0420 cell/text

Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.

Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

Conversation with a Christian friend

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Hello all,

I recently had this conversation with a Christian friend of mine. I wanted to comment on it further. Here it is:

“T” (Facebook status update). For the record, “T” is getting bachelor’s degrees in psychology & ministry:

Practicing for [Christian campus group] for Monday night

Me:

What happens Monday?

I asked because there has been some talk about this particular Christian campus group getting together with their campus’s skeptic’s group on Monday to talk about morality, and I wanted to know if that’s what he was referring to. It’s 90 miles away, but I’m planning to attend, especially if he’ll be there.

T:

We’re just doing bible study now

Me:

What are you studying though? I’m curious

T:

We’re in Genesis at the moment talking about original sin and stuff like that

Me:

Original sin is in Genesis? It’s my understanding that original sin comes from Paul (Romans 5:12-21, 1 Cor 15:22), and from Bishop Irenaeus in the 2nd century.

T:

Well we’re talking about the first sin, that’s what I meant

Me:

ohh, the fall, genesis 2? Out of curiosity, do you think Adam and Eve were two real, literal people?

T:

Yes I do believe they were two actual people

Me:

How come?

T:

There is nothing in the bible that leads me to believe that they are metaphorical

Me:

I’m just trying to understand this, I hope you forgive me for all the questions, haha. Even when I was a Christian, I never myself believed that the Adam & Eve story was literally true. So I guess the next question is, you’re saying you believe it’s literally true because it’s in the Bible? Does that mean that you believe everything written in the bible is literally true unless it explicitly says otherwise?

T:

Not necessarily, there are many things in the bible that are explicitly meant to be metaphors and there are some things that are meant to be taken literally, but I believe that Adam and Eve is literal because there is nothing, to me, that seems to say otherwise

Me:

Right, I mean there are parables and stuff that are obviously not supposed to be literally true. But I mean, if the bible seems to say that something happened, that’s good enough for you to believe it literally happened, unless the bible itself says otherwise?

T:

Yes, why would I doubt the word of God, if I doubted the word of God then I wouldn’t be a Christian, you ask all these questions, but I don’t understand why?

Me:

I think you can be a christian and still have reasons for believing what you believe that aren’t from the bible itself. 1 Peter 3:15 says you should always be ready to give reasons for what you believe to anyone who asks. And when that was written, the bible wasn’t wholly compiled yet, so one could hardly say that all the answers are supposed to come from the bible itself.

One thing I noticed is that you said, “why would i doubt the word of god…” referring to the bible. I guess my real question is, why do you think the bible is the word of god? There are lots of books that claim to be the word of god… the qur’an, the book of mormon… what makes the bible different?

T:

Because of the prophecies fulfilled, none of those other books have the same ones. I still don’t understand why you are prying, I’m not going to change my faith and I know you are not going to change yours

Me:

Oh, I’m not trying to change your mind. I am just curious about why you believe, that’s all. I have no intention of trying to change your mind. I just want to understand your reasons… what prophecies?

T:

Haven’t we gone over this before in [Christian campus group]?????

Me:

We might have… I’ve asked a lot of Christians this over the years and honestly I don’t remember who’s told me what, LOL.

It’s something I ask everybody, when I have the chance… I am always interested in what sorts of things convince people to believe things. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. Everybody believes for different reasons and I was just wondering what caused/causes you to believe.

T:

Lol we already talked at [Christian campus group] so yeah lol

—————

When I said that you can be a Christian and still have reasons for what you believe, I was thinking of the late Harvard Divinity School professor James Luther Adams, who, paraphrasing Socrates, said, “The unexamined faith is not worth having, for it can be true only by accident.” Like I mentioned above (1 Peter 3:15), there is also a good biblical basis for this, albeit within the apocryphal Petrine epistles, although it is still technically part of the New Testament canon.

These sorts of conversations are interesting to me, because I used to believe many of the same things, and I used to use much of the same reasoning. I believed the Bible, and that was good enough for me. In fact, I believed in the Bible so much that I wanted to know all about it. That’s why I read it for myself, cover-to-cover, the first time (NIV), and the second time (KJV), and started learning Latin & Greek, so I could read it more truly for myself the way the authors intended. What I found, though, is that the closer you look, the harder it is to keep believing, because in order to do it, the more you have to deny the obvious: That the Bible is a man-made, haphazard, pieced-together collection of fragments and copies-of-copies, and has no more divine authority than the Qur’an, the Upanishads, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Analects, or any other “holy book” you’d care to name.

The “prophecies” basis for believing the Bible has divine authority is, frankly, total bullshit. I make no apologies for saying this and I don’t care if it offends anyone, including my Christian friend. I am convinced that the only reason anyone thinks Biblical prophecies are any sort of evidence in favor of divine authorship is that they are ignorant about the real history behind these so-called prophecies.

Now, I do want to say that I am NOT calling people who believe these things stupid. Stupid and ignorant are NOT the same thing. Ignorant simply means “lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about some subject in particular.” This is totally different from stupid, which my friend certainly is not. Fortunately, ignorance is easy to fix

Here’s why belief based on prophecies is bullshit:

Believing that the New Testament is of divine authority, on the basis that it tells tales of fulfilled prophecies first laid out in the Old Testament, makes no more sense than believing that the 7th Harry Potter book is of divine authority, on the basis that it tells tales of fulfilled prophecies first laid out in the first Harry Potter book.

The authors of the New Testament knew exactly what was written in the Old Testament, and they wrote their accounts in order to make them fulfill prophecies in the Old Testament, sometimes explicitly so!

And even more telling, sometimes they misunderstood the prophecies and even get them wrong!

Robert Miller, writing for the journal The Fourth R (Westar Institute), explains it well:

Twelve times in his gospel, Matthew interrupts the story to tell us that the event he is narrating fulfilled a specific prophecy, which he then quotes.

Disclosure: I am an associate member of the Jesus Seminar, which is run by the Westar Institute, and which also publishes the journal The Fourth R.

The author of the book we now call The Gospel According to Matthew (the title was assigned by committee vote decades after its composition, and “Matthew’s” authorship is an attribution – the original text was not only untitled, but anonymously written as well) had access to what we now call the Old Testament. He specifically crafted his stories, in 12 cases explicitly so, to make them fulfill prophecies. His stories do not match up with extra-biblical historical accounts, nor with the other gospel writers. 

There are a dozen to choose from, but I think the best example of Matthew “adjusting” events in order to make them more-closely fulfill prophecies from the Old Testament is in Matthew 21:4-5. Let’s start with the prophecy from the Old Testament:

In the Old Testament, in Zechariah 9:9, it’s “foretold” that the king of Zion will make a triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem. In beautiful Hebrew poetic form, it reads like this:

גִּילִ֨י מְאֹ֜ד בַּת־צִיֹּ֗ון הָרִ֙יעִי֙ בַּ֣ת יְרוּשָׁלִַ֔ם הִנֵּ֤ה מַלְכֵּךְ֙ יָ֣בֹוא לָ֔ךְ צַדִּ֥יק וְנֹושָׁ֖ע ה֑וּא עָנִי֙ וְרֹכֵ֣ב עַל־חֲמֹ֔ור וְעַל־עַ֖יִר בֶּן־אֲתֹנֹֽות׃

Here’s an English rendering:

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

And here is the same passage in Greek. The reason this is important will become clear in a moment:

χαῖρε σφόδρα θύγατερ σιων κήρυσσε θύγατερ ιερουσαλημ ἰδοὺ ὁ βασιλεύς σου ἔρχεταί σοι δίκαιος καὶ σῴζων αὐτός πραῢς καὶ ἐπιβεβηκὼς ἐπὶ ὑποζύγιον καὶ πῶλον νέον

The Greek text above comes from the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament rendered by, according to legend, a group of 72 Jewish scholars (thus the name). According to the legend, all 72 scholars were working independently, and yet all 72 of them miraculously rendered exactly the same translation. If anything (other than my “Why Translation Matters” talk) should convince you that translation is not an exact science, this is it: It was literally considered a miracle when multiple people rendered the same translation! I have said this before and I will say it again: There is no such thing as translation, only interpretation. If you are not reading something in its original language, you are reading it through the filter of its translator, and you should ALWAYS keep this in mind if you’re even flirting with the idea of taking something that’s been translated literally.

So, back to Zechariah 9:9. One important thing to note is that the king is riding a donkey; the reason this is significant is that it symbolized that he was coming in peacetime (symbolically, coming on a horse would be warlike). But that’s not the end of the story, not by a long shot!

If you read Greek, you noticed this little tiny word - καὶ – in the Greek rendering, but not in the English rendering (it’s also not in the original Hebrew). This one little word makes a HUGE difference in understanding Matthew’s thought process here. Namely, it shows that Matthew rewrote history in order to make it LOOK like Jesus was fulfilling an Old Testament prophecy, even though in order to do that, he had to make Jesus look either ridiculous or insane within the narrative itself. The reason is that the author of the Gospel of Matthew, who could not read Hebrew, was using the Septuagint as his source for Old Testament prophecies. The Septuagint is in Greek, and among many others, contains one very important translation oddity.

That little word, καὶ, means “and.” And why does it make such a huge difference?

Because in Hebrew, there is a very important poetic device called synonymous parallelism – the repetition of a line, using different wording, for poetic effect. In Hebrew poetry, writers used this all the time. For example, it works like this:

I gave my love a flower
a rose, so red and so soft

Looking at this, anyone who isn’t brain-dead would clearly understand that the author gave his love a total of one (1) flower, and the more-specific type of flower the author gave his love was, in fact, a rose.

However, imagine if the poem said this:

I gave my love a flower
and a rose, so red and so soft

Well, that certainly changes things. It’s a lot harder to look at this now and see that the author obviously meant a total of only 1 flower. That little “and” carries so much meaning here. In linguistics, it’s called a “non-contrasting conjunction” (as opposed to, for example, “but” or “yet”).

Now let’s look back at Zechariah 9:9 (as translated from Hebrew by David Stern), specifically the part about the donkey:

riding on a donkey,
yes, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Anyone familiar with Hebrew would immediately recognize this as the poetic device of a synonymous parallelism, and understand that the author meant only 1 animal. But Matthew, who was reading the Septuagint, a Greek translation, read this, and because his translation said:

riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey

he thought the prophecy was saying that the king would ride into the city ON THE BACKS OF TWO ANIMALS!! (A colt is a male foal; a foal is simply a donkey that’s less than a year old, male or female.)

Unlike Jews, Christians believe that Jesus fulfilled this prophecy when he entered Jerusalem (Jews are still waiting for someone to fulfill it). This event is one of the most important in the entire New Testament: It marks the beginning of the Passion narrative, and takes place just a few days before the Last Supper and Jesus’ crucifixion. The so-called Triumphal Entry is a moveable feast, called Palm Sunday, and is described in all four canonical Gospels.

So, when the author of “Matthew” is telling the story of Jesus obtaining the animal, on the back of which he will ride into the city (21:2), what does he write?

Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them,“Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me.

Then, in 21:4-5, Matthew MISquotes Zechariah 9:9, using the Septuagint:

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

“Say to Daughter Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

AND! AND! aaah!

And here’s the kicker, in Matthew 21:6-7:

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on.

Come again? They spread their cloaks across BOTH animals, and Jesus rode them into the city? What, like straddling both of them?

Are you picturing this? Maybe this will help:

Still having trouble putting this together in your head? How about another angle?

You probably know that none of the four canonical Gospel writers describe Jesus between the ages of 12 and 30, but did you ever realize THEY ALSO LEFT OUT THE PART ABOUT HIS TIME TRAINING FOR THE RODEO?

People often ask me why, now that I’m an atheist, I still study the Bible “religiously.” The long answer is that regardless of my beliefs, it’s still the most influential book in Western history, and it has a lot to offer scholars in terms of understanding the language, culture, politics, and justifications of the last 3,000 years. The short answer is, BECAUSE IT’S HILARIOUS.

If we ever needed good evidence that the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses (aside from the fact that the author of “Luke” says so explicitly), I think we need look no further than the Triumphal Entry. This event is also described in John 12:12-19 and in Mark 11:1-11 (and also in Luke 19:28-44, although again, “Luke” tells us that he was not an eyewitness). However, in both “John” and “Mark’s” accounts, Jesus was riding only one animal.

Mark’s account was written first, and Matthew “borrowed” heavily from it. In reality, he pretty much took the entire thing verbatim – about 60% of it, in fact – and simply added some stuff, and changed a few other things. For example, he added Joseph’s genealogy and the story of Jesus’ birth, neither of which appear in Mark – Mark starts the story when Jesus, as an adult, gets baptized by John the Baptist. He also changed some stuff – for example, the number of animals Jesus was riding when he came into the city. Why did he do this? He tells us explicitly (Matthew 21:4):

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet.

As I mentioned before, I am convinced that the main reason people believe in the Bible is ignorance. I hope that this article will help some people on their paths toward a better understanding of why the Bible is not a trustworthy source of historical information. Sure, read it for its cultural value – I applaud that. But to quote James Randi, “Enjoy the fantasy, the fun, the stories, but make sure there’s a clear sharp line drawn on the floor. To do otherwise is to embrace madness.”

Until next time,

Dave

mail@davemuscato.com

(573) 424-0420 cell/text

Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.

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Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!