The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of His Existence

Chapter 256: 244

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A skeptical, systematic critique argues that the Christ of the New Testament is a constructed myth rather than a reliably attested historical person. It assesses the silence of contemporary writers, the anonymous and late character of the gospels, and the contradictions within infancy narratives, ministry accounts, crucifixion, and resurrection reports. The author evaluates the moral portrait and teachings attributed to the figure and traces parallels with older pagan religions and divinities as possible sources of the myth. The conclusion asserts that supernatural claims lack sufficient historical support and that veneration rests on literary and theological fabrication rather than firm documentary evidence.

244

What did Jesus accuse the Jews of doing?

Matthew: Of having slain prophets and wise men, among them “Zacharias son of Barachias” (xxiii, 35).

The Zacharias mentioned was slain in Jerusalem, 69 A. D.; so that Matthew makes Jesus refer to an event that occurred forty years after his death.

Referring to this passage, the Catholic scholar, Dr. Hug, says: “There cannot be a doubt, if we attend to the name, the fact and its circumstances, and the object of Jesus in citing it, that it was the same Zacharias Barouchos, who, according to Josephus, a short time before the destruction of Jerusalem, was unjustly slain in the temple.”

Commenting on this passage, Prof. Newman says: “There is no other man known in history to whom the verse can allude. If so, it shows how late, how ignorant, how rash, is the composer of a text passed off on us as sacred truth” (Religion not History, p. 46).