Speculum et Lavacrum

Post-Modernism and the Dethroning of Jesus-

A Presentation of Objections to Christianity

Disclaimer: a large portion of this presentation was taken from various sources to which I'm greatly indebted to. Please see the bottom for the list. Also, in this presentation, I was pretending to be the average loud-mouth critic/hostile college professor, so I was not trying to be entirely accurate on every point, I was trying to be biased and bigoted. The following is not a trascript per se, they're my notes that I used for my teaching, so I didn't follow word for word in the audio to the notes.

“If it weren't for heresy, Christians wouldn't have to defend their faith, nor define (or refine) their doctrines” ~Me

“The Second most important person in the church today, besides the pastor, is the apologist.”

~Matthew Slick, M.Div., Westminster Theological Seminary

The church today at large is loosing it. It has laid down its weapons at the feet of its foes so as to not get hurt anymore. Inevitably, the church has laid down in the lap of Delilah, and the knife is at the Church's roots. We have given up the war to lay down and be pampered by luxury and pleasure. And in doing so have delivered subsequent generations into bondage. We are seeing the fruit of our own actions today as we see the judgment of God come upon us. May we truly repent and get back into the war, and obey, by God's grace and mercy, His divine commands to, as

1 Peter 3:15 says, “in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” and as

Jude 3,4 says, “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

(Mock Class: Religion)

What are your kids learning today in our high school and college classrooms? I need you to listen closely to my presentation today. I'm going to bombard you with long words and all kinds of information. I'm going to do this as to hopefully confuse you, frustrate you, and overwhelm you because this is what your children and your grand children will be getting in the world today. So let's just jump right in.

I'm going to practically read this specific presentation, and I'm going to do it fast. I want you to please listen carefully. I want you to feel the weight of the presentation. I don't have 1 or 2 semesters to spend with you in order to eat away at you. So I have to present a lot in a small period of time.

Read 2 Peter 2:1 “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.”

What does this mean to you?

1. Hermeneutics

We, as finite knowers bring our own biases to the text. For example:

List physical traits, then contrast with what you are not

• Male not female

• White not black

• Over twenty not a teenager or elderly

List educational background, then contrast with where you didn't learn

• Public, Private, and Home schooled not just one

• I went to a Christian Language School, I didn't go learn Russian from a Marxist University

• I went to Peru for Bible College, I didn't go to Indonesia for Islamic Studies

This inevitably effects how I look at things. So the questions I ask the the text are a function of who I am. Aren't they? This also means that the kinds of answers the text gives back to me, are shaped in part by who I am. So, is the text a reflection of the author's thought, and you just ask the text certain questions, it gives you certain answers so that you can know what he was trying to say? But how can this be, because the kinds of questions that you ask of the text will be shaped by who you are. You will ask certain questions and you won't ask others. You are not omniscient and you can only ask one question at a time. And that question might be the result of whether or not you had a good night sleep, what kind of education you have, if you've suffered, how hungry you are.

So many things shape how you raise questions, what you can understand, what you can absorb, what you know how to apply.

So is the meaning really in the author at all? You have no way of questioning Paul directly. Did Paul really say everything he wanted to say, and say it perfectly in Romans, of course not. Paul was limited by his time, his, culture, and the place in which he was raised.

We know this because people interpret Romans differently all the time because they bring different presuppositions to the text. Is the meaning really in Romans at all or is the meaning really in the knower who is studying Romans? Which means ultimately that the knowledge, whatever knowledge is, is not necessarily what Paul thinks at all.

For a start, I'm thinking in English of a kind, I'm not thinking in Common Greek and I have no way of questioning him, so maybe in fact the real meaning is not in Paul the real meaning is not really in Paul's text, the real meaning is in what I come up with. If I come up with something a bit different from you well that's the way it is. Because in fact, when you read the text, you're not necessarily reading it directly, you merely come at it from an angle, and I from mine and each time we look at the text, it comes back at me differently from you. Then each time we read the text, it reshapes me and reshapes you. So no longer am I the same as before I read the text and neither are you.

So that means each time I approach the text I will bring a slightly different set of presuppositions from the “me” that I brought yesterday. This sideswiping continues on day after day. Isn't that someway true from your own experience? So is the meaning really in the text or is it in you? So is there really any truth in any objective sense in the text?

2.Linguistics

Words do not have intrinsic meanings. Words develop functional meanings in their polarities with other words. For example take the word trees, T.R.E.E.S. What does “trees” mean? Does “trees” mean those organic things growing outside with branches and leaves. Does “trees”, T.R.E.E.S., that is the written form or the oral form does it intrinsically mean that?

(write the word “TREES” on the white board and ask, “what is that?” Then erase it, and say, “I just wiped all trees from existence.

Is there truly anything intrinsic to the word that makes it mean “trees”. Absolutely not, its arbitrary. Its meaning is only established by its usage. Its meaning is established by its distinction from other similar words. When you go to another culture those hunks of growing wood and leaves outside aren't “trees” they're “arboles” or what have you. For that matter what's to stop you from understanding “TREE” to be better expressed as “flimshineses” provided that everybody knew what you meant when you referred to those hunks of wood as “flimshinesses”. There is nothing intrinsic to “trees” or to “flimshinesses” to mean what we make it to mean.

For that matter, there is no true meaning in sentences, or in paragraphs. The only way you can even understand what I am saying now is because we are part of an interpretive community. If anyone else from came in that was not part of this interpretive community they would not understand what I am saying. Therefore meaning is determined by your interpretive community, don't you see? The other problem to this is that language is totalizing. Every time someone speaks, they are explicitly or implicitly imposing a perspective upon you. Even what I am saying now. Its a part of the human dilemma, therefore we must be skeptical about everything that comes our way. Everything that is said is coming from somebody with presuppositions from their own cultural milieu. Those who argue for the fact that they have the truth are merely ignorant of their own background. How many of you have ever said, or heard your parents say, “If I could only go back in time, I'd sure do such and such differently.” but yet, when they were in that period of time, they were so certain of what they were doing. So since you really can't be certain of anything, just do what you know, do what seems to be true and right for you.

3.Sociology

In the light of this, when we take a sociological look at knowledge and religion. We see, what I referred to before, how interpretive communities function. You understand things a certain way because of the interpretive community that you were raised in. Supposing you had been brought up over in India, would you think the same as you do now? Of course not, matter in fact you'd probably be Buddhist or Hindu. We are all socialized into a frame of reference aren't we? You are a shaped product of your interpretive community in which you were raised. So who's right, who's wrong, should we care? I mean, we really can't know for sure. In the end, he thinks his way, she thinks her way, I think my way because of the particular backgrounds that we have. Culture determines what you know. Truth and certainty are obtainable, I don't think so, its impossible, therefore why should we even desire it? Its much more desirable to celebrate the diversity and learn from each other and unite under one interpretive community. Therefore those who think they have the truth are merely being arrogant, prideful, and destructive. They're just some group trying to impose their way onto some other group.

New Testament Textual Criticism

How many of you would claim to be Bible believing Christians? How many of you know the background to the manuscripts? How many of you know how we got the Bible that we have today?

This may not have occurred to you because when you buy an NIV in California or In Florida, its the the same. No matter what Bible you buy it's always the same books and in the same order smashed between two covers. But this has not always been so.

Before the invention of printing there was no way to reproduce manuscripts accurately time after time after time. Printing wasn't invented until the 16^th century. So what what happening in the 1500 years before that to the New Testament.

Let me start with an example, the book of Mark, we don't really know if Mark wrote this but let's just assume it for now. We don't even know where the book of Mark was written, but traditionally its said that it was written in Rome, so let's assume this too. Mark wrote down a Gospel, an account of the life of Jesus, his ministry, his death, and his resurrection. Mark wrote this account for his own community, he didn't originally plan that his book was going to become part of the Bible.

How was this book actually published? If you wanted to publish a book it meant that you put it into circulation, if the person you lent it to wanted a copy, they had to make a copy. They did this by hand, or by having somebody else copy it by hand. There was no other way to reproduce a book, you had to copy it one page, one chapter, one sentence, one word, one letter at a time. It was a very slow and painstaking process, even if you were professionally trained to do it.

The earliest Christians evidently were not among the intellectual elite of their day. And at that time, as most people in the Roman Empire, most Christians were illiterate. So who was copying this copy of the Gospel of Mark? It would be whoever was in his community in Rome, who was able to copy a text, more than likely for his own house church, and then this copy would get sent to somebody else who wanted a copy for his church and so on.

What happens when somebody copies a document by hand, slowly, painstakingly, one letter at a time. Well, if you don't know what happens, try it yourself sometime. I will tell you what will happen, you'll make mistakes. There will be a time where your mind will wander, you'll get tired, you'll get bored, you'll get uncomfortable and you'll make mistakes.

The first person who copied Mark invariably made mistakes, then how was Mark copied after that? Well, the original would have been copied, then the copy would have been copied, and the problem is, when somebody copied the copy, they not only copied the copy of the original words, they copied the mistakes the first scribe had made. And they made their own mistakes, what happened when someone came along and copied that second copy? That person replicated the mistakes of both of its predecessors, and, made his own mistakes. Copies were made, week after week, year after year, decade after decade.

Unless someone had the bright idea of correcting the mistakes. With the help of technology, we can read various manuscripts with ultra violet light and we can see underlying texts where the scribe has scratched out what he thinks to be an error. So, scribes would make corrections and many times they guessed wrong. So now the errors have multiplied.

This went on for so long that eventually the original book of Mark was lost forever. We no longer have the original Gospel of Mark, nor do we have the copies of the original book of Mark, matter of fact, we don't even have copies of the copies of Mark, to be more blunt, we don't even have copies of the copies of the copies of Mark.

We don't even have an early copy of Mark, the first copy of Mark's Gospel is a text called Papyrus 45 (P45). This Papyrus dates from around the year 220 A.D. We don't exactly know when Mark was written, some think 50 A.D., some think 60 or 70 A.D. If we took the middle, the year 60, that places our first surviving copy of Mark, 160 years after the original. Not from the original, but from the copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the original. Even then, P45 has only eight chapters of Mark. So the earliest copy of Mark that we have, doesn't even have the whole thing. It has portions of half of the chapters of Mark.

Our first complete copy of Mark comes from the 4^th century, 300 hundred years after the original. Another problem that I haven't told you yet, is that the earliest form of Koine Greek writing is called Uncial text, it's all capitals and there are no paragraphs, no sentences, no punctuation, matter in fact all the words are smashed together, making it VERY easy to make mistakes. This is the situation that we are facing with all of the books of the New Testament, some even worse. We know that there were mistakes and changes made, how do we know, because all of the copies differ from one another.

We have roughly 5,700 manuscripts in Greek, this includes fragments to complete books. This is a very good thing, the problem is, is that none of them go back to the original because all of them have mistakes in them.

-When a manuscript differs from another manuscript this is called a variant. How many variants do you think there are?

There are more than 400,000 variants, that's more than triple the amount of words in the New Testament. Do these variants matter? Christians often tell me, but the variants don't matter, they don't change anything. I beg to differ, even though the majority don't matter worth a thing, they just demonstrate that scribes back then spell as well as middleschoolers can today. However, there are many variants that matter a lot. Some variants can change the whole mood of a book. Some variants even change the character of Jesus of Nazareth.

Example of Paralepsis Occasioned by Homoeoteleuton

Luke 12:8-9 "And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, 9 but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.

10. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

In many manuscripts this occurs with this specific passage. All of verse 9 is missing. Some scribes would leave out a half of a page, some would leave out a whole page. So, I am not merely suggesting that scribes changed the text, I am saying emphatically that they did and we have the manuscripts to prove it.

Now, how about an example of an intentional change?

Scribal Correctors

One of our best Codices is Codex Vaticanus, Codex Vaticanus contains most of the New Testament and in Hebrews 1:3 we read, “he upholds the universe by the word of his power”. The first scribe that wrote Vaticanus accidentally wrote the word “manifests” instead of “upholds”, the difference between “φέρων” and “φανερων”. So a later scribe noticing this, crossed out “manifest” and put “upholds”. A few centuries later, another scribe came a long and saw what the previous scribal corrector had done, he erased the word “upholds” and wrote back in the error, “manifest” and then wrote a marginal note, in between two of the three columns, and I paraphrase, “fool and nave, leave the old reading don't mess with it.” If two scribes were willing to correct a reading, how many other corrected readings are there that we don't know about?

John 7:53-8:11

Scribes early on took two popular stories and combined them into one. Its a story in John chapter 7:53-8:11, the Pericope Adulterae, or as we know it, the woman caught in adultery. If you look at your Bibles you will see notes that read something like “not in the earliest manuscripts”. So why do they leave this story in, because the publishers want to sell their Bibles. This story is in every Jesus film, even in Mel Gibson's, its such a heart wrenching, so moving that Mel had Jesus flash back to it, and is the favorite of many women, and they know where it is, so it's better not to take it out. They don't want people calling them up and harassing them. But the fact of the matter is, its an invention. Its not in the New Testament, and scholars have known about this for centuries.

Another example of purposeful change: interpolation/redaction

The Last Twelve Verses of Mark, Mark 16:9-20

The book of Mark ends with the women going to the tomb and Jesus isn't there. There's a man in the tomb, and he asks, “are you looking for Jesus of Nazareth, he's not here go tell Peter and the disciples that he'll meet them in Galilee.” And then we're told, Mark 16:8, the women fled from the tomb and they didn't say anything to anyone, for they were afraid. Period, it ends there. The women don't tell anybody, but how can this be, this doesn't make any sense. This is exactly what scribes said too. The Scribes added twelve verses, where the women do go tell the disciples. So within a couple verses you have a complete contradiction. But at least the book ends on a happy note where the women tell the disciples, they go meet Jesus, Jesus rebukes them for their unbelief, they go making disciples, baptizing them in Jesus name, you have weird verses about drinking poison, and snake handling, but at least all's well that ends well. But even if you wanted to debate whether or not these were original, which version? Amongst the later manuscripts there are five versions of this text and they all radically differ from one another.

A couple other problems real quick.

Luke 23:34 “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” is not in the earliest manuscripts, it was added later. But yet it still appears in your Bibles. Did Jesus originally say the prayer or not? It depends on which manuscript you read. This one changes theology big time if it is supposed to be there. For Christ is interceding on behalf of people who will not be forgiven. Therefore the Father doesn't listen to the Son.

Matthew 24:36 where Jesus is supposedly to have said, “nobody knows the day or the hour not even the Son.” Jesus who's supposedly God doesn't know? Well, it depends on which manuscript you read. How can Jesus not know when He's coming back? This is exactly what Scribes thought too, they thought it to be heretical. So how did they deal with it? They corrected it by leaving it out. But yet, this is another example of a verse that people would be familiar with so they left it in the Bible as not to upset anyone.

1 John 5:7 “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” The only explicit text on the Trinity and it's a fraud. Just look at any Bible other than the KJV and NKJV and it's not there. Variants matter, were the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all God? It depends on which manuscript you read.

But are there verses that have been explicitly omitted from the Bible? Yes.

For example:

• Matthew 12:47

• Matthew 17:21

• Matthew 18:11

• Matthew 23:14

• Mark 7:16

• Mark 9:44

• Mark 9:46

• Mark 11:26

• Mark 15:28

• Luke 17:36

• John 5:4

• Acts 8:37

• Acts 15:34

• Acts 24:7

• Acts 28:29

• Romans 16:24

• 1 John 5:7

The Other Gospels

So, can rely upon the Bible as inspired? If God wanted to inspire the text why didn't he preserve it? Is it inerrant, you tell me. If the Bible is inspired and inerrant, then WHICH ONE? Which manuscript? Which translation? Which denomination? Which Christianity? Yes, you heard me right. Which Christianity? No I'm not talking about those groups that call themselves Christians today. But I'll get back to this in a second.

However, before you completely throw out the Bible, it needs to be said that there are many great things we can learn from the Bible. Whether or not Jesus was God or not we can't know because the only explicit verse on the Trinity is a hoax. However, we can truly learn some great things from this teacher of wisdom. But in recent days we have discovered many Gospels:

• The Gospel of the Nazareans

• The Gospel of the Ebionites

• The Gospel According to the Hebrews

• The Gospel According to the Egyptians

• The Coptic Gospel of Thomas

• Papyrus Egerton 2: The Unknown Gospel

• The Gospel of Peter

• The Gospel of Mary

• The Gospel of Philip

• The Gospel of Judas

• The Gospel of Truth

• The Gospel of the Savior

• The Infancy Gospel of Thomas

• The Proto-Gospel of James

• The Epistle of the Apostles

• The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter

• The Second Treatise of the Great Seth

• The Secret Gospel of Mark

There are other Acts:

• The Acts of John

• The Acts of Paul

• The Acts of Thecla

• The Acts of Peter

There are other Epistles:

• Paul's Letter to the Laodiceans

• The Letter of 1^st Clement

• The Letter of 2^nd Clement

• The “Letter of Peter to James” and its “Reception”

• The Homilies of Clement

• Ptolemy's Letter to Flora

• The Treatise on the Resurrection

• The Didache

• The Letter of Barnabas

• The Preaching of Peter

• Pseudo- Titus

Other Revelations:

• The Shepherd of Hermas

• The Apocalypse of Peter

• The Apocalypse of Paul

• On the Origin of the World

• The First Thought in Three Forms

• The Hymn of the Pearl

There are also five other lists of Canonized books (Bibles) that have been found:

• The Muratorian Canon

• The Canon of Origen of Alexandria

• The Canon of Eusebius

• The Canon of Athanasius of Alexandria

• The Canon of the Third Synod of Carthage

These sources amongst others reveals a long list of other Lost Christianities: Ebionites, Marcionites, Gnostic Christians, etc., people who followed the teachings of Jesus but came to different conclusions. But as the saying goes, “History is written by the winners.” so this is how our modern Christianity became the predominant religion. Its not because it was inherently true, because history works with probabilities, its because it out won and outlasted the others. The survival of the fittest as we know it.

Since we can't know what the Bible originally said, and there's very good reason to think that several of Paul's letters are pseudepigraphies (ghost written). Individuals would write pseudepigraphas in order to combat the other competing Christianities (just look at how many of the New Testamental books are written to combat other heresies). The only way that their books would be read is if it was under a popular name. Because of all of this ghost writing we aren't certain which ones are pseudepigraphas and which ones aren't. Why should we believe your version of Christianity? Have you ever read the other books? Whose to say that those don't have truth to them? I'll come back to this at the end.

The New Perspectivism

But anyways, to move on, since we can't be sure who wrote each book we must read the books as individual books in order to truly grasp the author's intent. The Bible was written in a specific culture, at a specific time, for a specific people. The whole problem with our understanding of Scripture comes from our innate individualism. The culture of the Bible is communalistic. Also, we were raised in the west, we're this side of the Reformation and the Holocaust. So when we read the Scriptures we read them out of an individualistic guilt complex mixed in with some Semitic self-conscientiousness. But if we realize that this is utterly foreign to the text, and that it's just because of our fundamentalistic pastors imposing it upon the text, we'll grasp a slightly different picture. The Jews for centuries taught that the messiah was an individual who would come to set Israel free from tyranny and establish His kingdom on earth. A Jesus who didn't come to atone for our sins “as individuals”. But he died as Matthew says, for the sins of His people, a community, a specific nation. Jesus said that He was sent not to the dogs but to the house of Israel, Jesus came for the nation of Israel, he came to show that he was there to bring the Jews out of their exile. He said that his coming would unite the gentiles to the Jews. There is a specific word picture given by Jesus, a grafting in of the gentiles to Israel. This has nothing to do with individualistic guilt, it has everything to do with Covenant Community.

When we read the parable of the Prodigal Son, we as westerners, we think the sin was that he wasted his money, since that's the most important thing right? This is not the what the Jews had in view as the principal sin. For them the primary sin was that he left the community. An individualistic inheritance was a slap in his father's face. So, to jump to the conclusion, what Jesus was trying to do was unite the Jews and gentiles. That's why Paul was so concerned with the Jews' enforcement of the ceremonial laws. Because the Jews were promoting Nationalism. Jesus' death was the ultimate demonstration of true power and love. As Jesus said, he did not come to condemn, and when Peter drew his sword and cut off the guard's ear Jesus healed the man's ear. Jesus' purpose was to unite not divide. Jesus also taught that the truest demonstration of love was to lay one's life down for another. True unity includes diverse interpretive communities. Once we realize this, we can see that there is no transcendent imposition here to become cookie cutter Christians. We can be free to enjoy people for who they are and not for what they believe, and we can even benefit from their beliefs.

The Talpiot Tomb of Jesus of Nazareth

What can we learn from some of those other Gospels? Specifically that Jesus and Mary Magdalene got married and had children. This also is evidence of two mistakes in our understanding of Christianity today. First, that we can learn some truth that isn't in what we know as the Bible today. Two, that fundamentalistic pastors have been teaching a wrong understanding of the resurrection of Jesus. In 2007 Jesus' family tomb was found. Jesus' bones were found in a limestone ossuary (bone box) in Talpiot, a suburb of Jerusalem. The bones are presently being held at I.A.A. (Israeli Archeological Authority) In Beth Shemesh. On Jesus'. This is a common practice, in those times, a certain time after the body has been dead it is moved into a bone box and stored in a large cave. This is why there was no body in the tomb. But if Christianity still helps you that's fine, just don't impose your fundamentalism on others. You have the right to believe whatever you want to believe, and so do we.

For the main body of this work, I am indebted to:

D.A. Carson's works: Sacred and Sure-four part series, The New Perspective on Paul (RTS)

Dr. James R. White: The Reliability of the New Testament, Debate with Dr. Bart Ehrman, How We Got the Bible, and The KJV Only Controversy

Daniel Wallace: Is What We Have Now What They Had Then?

Dr. Bart Ehrman: Misquoting Jesus, TTC Lectures, and Debate with Dr. James R. White