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

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

Chapter 433: 419
By John E. Remsburg
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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.

419

State all of the appearances of Jesus mentioned by the Evangelists.

Matthew.

  • 1. To the two Marys (xxviii, 9).
  • 2. To the eleven in Galilee (17).

Mark.

  • 1. To Mary Magdalene (xvi, 9).
  • 2. To two of his disciples (12).
  • 3. To the eleven at meat (14).

The appearances of Jesus mentioned in Mark are all in the apocryphal supplement. The Gospel of Mark proper does not record a single appearance of Jesus.

Luke.

  • 1. To Cleopas and his companion (xxiv, 13–31).
  • 2. To Simon (Peter) (34).
  • 3. To the eleven and others (36).

John.

The last chapter of this Gospel which contains the account of his fourth appearance, and which ascribes the authorship of the Gospel to the “beloved disciple” (John), is a forgery.

No two of the Evangelists agree. No two of them are fully agreed in regard to a single appearance. Each not only omits the appearances mentioned by the others, but his narrative in nearly every instance excludes them. As Strauss says, “The designation of the locality in one excludes the appearances narrated by the rest; the determination of time in another leaves no space for the narratives of his fellow-evangelists; the enumeration of a third is given without any regard to the events reported by his predecessors; lastly, among several appearances recounted by various narrators, each claims to be the last, and yet has nothing in common with the others. Hence nothing but wilful blindness can prevent the perception that no one of the narrators knew and presupposed what another records.”

Referring to the different accounts of the resurrection given by the Evangelists, Dr. Westcott says: “They contain difficulties which it is impossible to explain with certainty” (Introduction to Study of Gospels, p. 329).

Dr. Farrar makes the following admission: “Any one who will attentively read side by side the narratives of these appearances on the first day of the resurrection, will see that they have only been preserved for us in general, interblended, and scattered notices, which, in strict exactness, render it impossible, without many arbitrary suppositions, to produce from them a certain narrative of the order of events. The lacunae, the compressions, the variations, the actual differences, the subjectivity of the narrators as affected by spiritual revelations, render all harmonies at the best uncertain” (Life of Christ, vol. ii, p. 432, note).