The Book of Acts as Historical Fiction

Previously, I wrote a series of posts that mentioned several elements from Richard Carrier’s historical/literary analysis of the Gospels in the New Testament (showing that they are not historically reliable, but are rather allegorical fictions), as discussed in his book On the Historicity of Jesus.  I decided to write a complementary post which mentions various elements from Carrier’s analysis of the Acts of the Apostles, since it is believed to have been written by the same author as The Gospel According to Luke.  Let’s begin.

Although it is implied in the preface of the book of Acts that it is supposed to be some kind of historical account, this couldn’t be further from the truth.  In fact, Acts has been thoroughly discredited as nothing more than a work of apologetic historical fiction, and the scholarship of Richard Pervo conclusively demonstrates this to be the case.  Regarding any historical sources that Luke may have used for Acts, the only one that has been confirmed with any probability was that of Josephus (a person who never wrote about Jesus Christ nor Christianity, yet was likely used by Luke for background material), and although there may have been more historical sources than Josephus, we simply don’t have any evidence preserved from those other possible historians to make a case one way or the other.  All of the other sources that we can discern within Acts are literary sources, not historical ones.  Included in these literary sources is what may possibly have been a (now-lost) hagiographical fabrication, and basically a rewrite of the Elijah-Elisha narrative in some of the Old Testament (OT) texts of Kings, although placing Paul and Jesus in the main roles instead, which obviously would have been a literary source of historical fiction (not any kind of historical account).

The scholar Thomas Brodie has argued that this evident reworking of the Kings narrative starts in Luke’s Gospel and continues on until Acts chapter 15, thus indicating that Luke either integrated this literary creation into his story or he used an underlying source text, such as some previous Gospel that not only covered the acts of Jesus but also the acts of the apostles.  So it appears that Luke either used this source text or his own literary idea and then inserted more stories into it, effectively expanding the whole story into two books, while also utilizing some material from Mark and Matthew during the process (and potentially other now-lost Gospels) and some material from the epistles of Paul.  In any case, the unnamed source text mentioned thus far is a hypothetical one that can only be inferred to have existed from the evidence of what’s written in Acts.  Luckily, the remaining literary sources that scholars can discern Luke used are indeed sources we actually have and thus can directly compare to and analyze.

As an example, the scholar Dennis MacDonald has shown that Luke also reworked fictional tales written by Homer, replacing the characters and some of the outcomes as needed to suit his literary purposes.  MacDonald informs us in his The Shipwrecks of Odysseus and Paul (New Testament Studies, 45, pp. 88-107) that:

“The shipwrecks of Odysseus and Paul share nautical images and vocabulary, the appearance of a goddess or angel assuring safety, the riding of planks, the arrival of the hero on an island among hospitable strangers, the mistaking of the hero as a god, and the sending of him on his way [in a new ship].“

Paul actually tells us himself that he was shipwrecked three times, and that at least one time he spent a day and night adrift (2 Cor. 11.25).  It’s possible that Luke was inspired by this detail given by Paul and used it to invent a story that expanded on it, while borrowing other ideas and details from famous shipwreck narratives including those found in Jonah, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid.  In fact, Acts rewrites Homer a number of other times.  Paul’s resurrection of the fallen Eutychus was based on the fallen Elpenor.  The visions of Cornelius and Peter were constructed from a similar narrative that was written about Agamemnon.  Paul’s farewell at Miletus was made from Hector’s farewell to Andromache.  The lottery of Matthias we hear about was built off of the lottery of Ajax.  Even Peter’s escape from prison was lifted from Priam’s escape from Achilles.  There are other literary sources besides Homer that the author of Acts used as well.  For example, the prison breaks in Acts share several themes with the famously miraculous prison breaks found in the Bacchae of Euripedes such as the miraculous unlocking of chains and being able to escape due to an earthquake (compare Acts 12.6-7 and 16.26 to Bacchae pp. 440-49, 585-94).

However, the source that Acts seems to employ more than any other is the Septuagint.  While MacDonald has shown that the overall structure of the Peter and Cornelius story is based on writings from Homer, the scholar Randel Helms has shown that other elements were in fact borrowed from the book of Ezekiel in the OT, thus merging both story models into a single one.  For example, both Peter and Ezekiel see the heavens open up (Acts 10.11; Ezek. 1.1), both of them are commanded to eat something in their vision (Acts 10.13; Ezek. 2.9), both respond to God twice by saying “By no means, Lord!” using the exact same Greek phrase (Acts 10.14, 11.8; Ezek. 4.14, 20.49), both are asked to eat unclean food, and finally both protest saying that they have never eaten anything unclean before (Acts 10.14; Ezek. 4.14).  Clearly, the author of Acts isn’t recording anything from historical memory, but rather is assembling a fictional story using literary structures and motifs that don’t have much if anything to do with what happened to Peter or Paul.  The author appears to be inventing this “history” in order to convince his readers of how the previously-required Torah-observance was abandoned in early Christianity, and to convince his readers that this abandonment of Torah-observance was even approved by Peter all along, and confirmed to be approved of through divine revelation.  Yet, we know this to be a lie because Paul even tells us himself (in Gal. 2) that he was for a long time the only advocate for a Torah-free version of Christianity, and it was merely tolerated by Torah observers like Peter (and often contentiously so).  Similarly, in Acts 15.7-11, we can see that it is basically just Paul’s speech from Gal. 2.14-21 put into Peter’s mouth, which is the exact opposite of what Paul told us actually happened.

In fact, all the other stories in Acts are just like this, where they are a fictional product created from prior literary sources that had no relevance to any actual Christian history, just so Luke could make a point that he thought was important.  There may have been some actual authentic sources behind some of the events we read about throughout Acts, but there is simply no evidence for them, nor any way to discern what those historical elements could even be since if any exist, they are embedded in what looks to be a literary invention as opposed to any kind of real history.  It seems that Luke was writing this to sell some particular idea of how the church began and later evolved in its early years.  Just as Luke had done in his Gospel, Acts tries to portray the Torah-observant and Gentile sects of Christianity as having been continuous and harmonized, it tries to stress the close relationship between Paul and the other apostles, and also the unity of the first believers.  In doing so, the author of Acts had to undermine the Epistles of Paul, most especially Galatians.

One example that shows us the historical revisionism seen throughout Acts is the fact that Paul tells us himself that he “was unknown by face to the churches of Judea ” until a number of years after his conversion (Gal. 1.22-23), he tells us that after his conversion he went away to Arabia before eventually returning to Damascus, and he tells us that he didn’t go to Jerusalem for at least three years (Gal. 1.15-18).  Yet, in Acts 7-9, the author tells us that Paul was known to and interacting with the Jerusalem church non-stop from the beginning (even before his conversion), and rather than going to Arabia immediately after his conversion, in Acts we are told that he went immediately to Damascus and then back to Jerusalem but a few weeks later, never ever spending so much as a minute in Arabia.  So Acts is filled with confirmed instances of historical revisionism, rather than any actual historical accounts.

Another more obvious example of Luke’s inventiveness in Acts is when he expands Jesus’ post-resurrection time on earth to an entire span of forty days, with Jesus hanging out (in secret) with his disciples and dozens upon dozens of other believers.  During this time, he has Jesus teaching them even more than he did while he was alive, before having Jesus fly up to outer space to reside with angels (Acts 1.3-12).  This is a clear-cut example of myth in the making.

The scholar Burton Mack has given other examples of how Luke’s version of the history of early Christianity in Acts is entirely unrealistic.  He tells us:

“Luke says that the standard sermon was preached to the Jews on the day of the Pentecost and often thereafter, whereupon hundreds converted and the whole world became the church’s parish overnight…[but this is] a story that does not make sense as history by any standard.“

Not only is this nonsensical in terms of the ridiculously hyperbolized growth rate, but also in the most general sense of how people would have really behaved.  As Mack says:

“No Jew worth his salt would have converted when being told that he was guilty of killing the messiah.  No Greek would have been persuaded by the dismal logic of the argumentation of the sermons.  The scene would not have made sense as history to anyone during the first century with first-hand knowledge of Christians, Jews, and the date of the temple in Jerusalem.  So what do we have on our hands?  An imaginary reconstruction in the interest of aggrandizing an amalgam view of Christianity early in the second century.  Luke did this by painting over the messy history of conflictual movements throughout the first century and in his own time.  He cleverly depicted Peter and Paul as preachers of an identical gospel…That is mythmaking in the genre of epic.  There is not the slightest reason to take it seriously as history.“

To summarize Mack’s conclusion, the narrative we see in Acts is so incredible and unrealistic, it couldn’t possibly have been based on historical events.  Rather, it is what Luke wanted to have happened and/or what he wants his readers to believe happened.  This sentiment applies throughout the entire book of Acts.  In terms of background information, this conclusion comes as no surprise since all other “Acts” literature written by Christians was entirely fabricated as well, for example the Acts of Peter, the Acts of Paul, the Acts of Andrew, the Acts of John, and the Acts of Thomas, and all of these Christian fabrications look quite similar to the Acts that we find in the NT.  There simply isn’t any reason to trust the Acts found in the NT anymore than these other Christian fabrications, especially after having demonstrated that it is riddled with hyperbole and historical fiction.

Adding to this is the large number of literary coincidences (just as we saw in the earlier post-series concerning the four Gospels in the NT), which aren’t at all believable as history.  As the scholar Robert Price observed:

“Peter and Paul are paralleled, each raising someone from the dead (Acts 9.36-40, 20.9-12), each healing a paralytic (3.1-8, 14.8-10), each healing by extraordinary, magical means (5.15, 19.11-12), each besting a sorcerer (8.18-23, 13.6-11), each miraculously escaping prison (12.6-10, 16.25-26).“

Likewise, just as Peter was sent by God to save Cornelius after he sends for Peter following a vision (Acts 10), Paul is also sent by God to save the Macedonians “when a certain Macedonian man ” sends for him in a vision (Acts 6.9-10).  Luke also made Paul’s story parallel that of Christ’s, where, as Price tells us “both undertake peripatetic preaching journeys, culminating in a last long journey to Jerusalem, where each is arrested in connection with a disturbance in the temple “, and then “each is acquitted by a Herodian monarch, as well as acquitted by Roman procurators “.  Furthermore, both are interrogated by “the chief prests and the whole Sanhedrin” (Acts 22.30; Luke 22.66; cross-referencing Mark 14.55, 15.1), and finally both know that their death is pre-ordained and they both make predictions about what will happen afterward, not long before they die (Luke 21.5-28; Acts 20.22-38; cross-referencing 21.4).

Notably however, Paul does almost everything at a larger scale than Jesus.  Paul’s journeys traverse a much larger region of the world, almost the entire northeastern Mediterranean in fact.  Paul also travels on and around a significantly larger sea than Jesus did (Mediterranean vs. Sea of Galilee).  Even during the one particular journey by sea where Paul faces death from a perilous storm, and is saved by faith, on Paul’s occasion his ship is actually destroyed thus dramatically exceeding the level of peril that Jesus had faced during the storm he encountered.  We also hear that Paul’s trial spanned several years rather than merely a single night as was the case for Jesus.  Unlike Jesus, we hear that there were actual armies plotting to assassinate Paul, and also unlike Jesus, we hear that Paul had actual armies come to rescue him (Acts 23.20-24).  Whereas Jesus was said to stir up violence against himself by his reading scripture in a synagogue (Luke 4.16-30), Paul actually stirs up violence against himself by his reading scripture in two synagogues (Acts 13.14-52, 17.1-5).  Though Paul and Jesus both die and are resurrected from the dead, Paul alone marches right back in the city unharmed and continues to preach the gospel in public throughout the region (as if entirely unimpeded), winning many more disciples for Jesus as a result (Acts 14.19-21), whereas Jesus didn’t win any new disciples after his resurrection and didn’t even attempt to do so.  Even at the end, unlike Jesus, Paul is eventually sent to meet none other than the emperor of Rome himself — another example of something that Jesus was never said to have accomplished.  So despite all the coincidental parallels between Paul and Jesus, by Luke’s account in Acts, Paul has been colored as someone who was not only far more famous and more successful than Jesus was, but also one who faced more dangers and at larger scales.

All of these parallels found between Peter and Paul, and between Paul and Jesus, are simply wholly improbable as history.  Another parallel (or set of parallels) worthy of mention concerns the account of Paul’s conversion (Acts 9.1-20), which looks like nothing more than a rewrite of the Emmaus narrative found in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 24.13-35), which is another demonstrably fictional story.  Both stories involve a journey on a road from Jerusalem to another city (Emmaus: Luke 24.13; Damascus: Acts 9.1-3).  Both stories feature a revelation of Jesus Christ; in Luke the revelation came as “they drew near (eggizein) ” the city where “they were going (poreuein) ” (Luke 24.28), whereas in Acts the revelation came as Paul “drew near (eggizein) ” the city where “he was going (poreuein) ” (Acts 9.3).  In both stories we read that Jesus appears and rebukes the unbeliever and then gives them instruction, and accordingly they become believers and then continue on their way to preach what they’ve now come to believe.  Both stories involve at least three men on the road together and yet only one of those men is actually named (Paul [as Saul] in Acts, and Cleopas in Luke 24.18).  In both stories “the chief priests” of Jerusalem are portrayed as the enemies of the church (Luke 24.20; Acts 9.1, 14).  In Luke’s Gospel we hear that God said Jesus had to suffer whereas in Acts we hear that God said that Paul had to suffer (Luke 24.26; Acts 9.16).  Both stories feature some form of blindness, where Paul is blinded by the divine light of his vision in (Acts 9.8), and Cleopas and his friend are unable to see that their fellow traveler is Jesus (Luke 24.16).  Both stories also end with this blindness reversed (Acts 9.17-18; Luke 24.31).  In Luke’s Emmaus narrative, the visitation occurs on the third day (Luke 24.21), and in Acts the visitation is followed by a blindness that lasts for three days (Acts 9.9).  Finally, in Luke, the blindness is cured after a meal begins (Luke 24.30-31), where in Acts, a meal begins after the blindness is lifted (Acts 9.18-19).

As we can see, in order for Acts to be any kind of history, one would have to assume that all of these parallels are merely historical coincidences which is orders of magnitude less probable than that they are simply inventions that were intentionally created to reflect one another.  It’s certainly possible for a couple of these coincidences to be historical, but it is nigh impossible for all of them to be historical.  Either way, there isn’t any way to weed out any of the possible historical details from within this plethora of fictional constructions.  Overall, Acts just shares far too many features with popular adventure novels that were written during the same period, in order to lend it any trust as history.  Here’s an overview of those features:

1) They all promote a particular god or religion.
2) They are all travel narratives.
3) They all involve miraculous or amazing events.
4) They all include encounters with fabulous or exotic people.
5) They often incorporate a theme of chaste couples that are separated and then reunited.
6) They all feature exciting narratives of captivities and escapes.
7) They often include themes of persecution.
8) They often include episodes involving excited crowds.
9) They often involve divine rescues from danger.
10) They often have divine revelations which are integral to the plot

Since Acts shares all of these features and thus looks exactly like an ancient novel of the period, there is simply no good reason to assume that all of the parallels it has with other literary sources are merely historical coincidences.  Rather, we should conclude that they are in fact what they have been shown to be: literary constructs and other elements of fiction.

Luke, Acts & The Historicity of Jesus

Clearly Luke constructed tales that were meant to affirm the historicity of Jesus, that Jesus was resurrected from the dead (resulting in a conspicuously empty tomb), that he was touched by his disciples, that he slept and dined with them during a forty-day “retreat” that was held in secret behind closed doors, and that he then flew off into outer space while they all watched (Luke 24 and Acts 1).  It goes without saying that all of this is ridiculous and obviously not historical.  There aren’t any witnesses to these events other than fanatical followers, and so not a single disinterested person ever verified any of it.  It isn’t until Acts 2 that we first hear about the public history of the Christian mission where Christians start publicly announcing their gospel.

However, something rather strange occurs at this point.  Throughout Acts‘ supposed history of the movement, from the time it goes public in the city of Jerusalem, at no point in the story (not in any of the 28 chapters) do we hear about either the Romans or the Jews ever showing any knowledge of there being a missing body.  Likewise, we never hear about them taking any action to investigate what could only be to them a crime of tomb robbery and desecration of the dead, which were both quite severe offenses punishable by death.  Matthew’s Gospel even claims that the Jewish authorities accused the Christians of such crimes before Pilate himself (Matt. 27.62-66; 28.4, 11-15), and although this too is certainly fiction, it does illustrate what could not have failed to happen, if a body actually went missing.

Due to the fact that Christians were trying to use the missing body as evidence for a risen Jesus, they certainly would have been the first suspects of such a tomb robbery, if it had indeed occurred.  At best, they would have been secondary suspects, if indeed Joseph of Arimathea was the last person known to have custody of the body (Mark 15.43-46; Matt. 27.57-60; Luke 23.51-56; John 19.38-42).  So he would have been the first person hauled in for questioning, and yet, conspicuously he is nowhere mentioned in this history of the church, as if nobody knew anything about him (or as if he didn’t exist).  If he hadn’t been hauled in for questioning (whether he existed or not), the Christians would have been next in line to be hauled in for questioning for such an offense.  Yet, we never hear a single event in Acts where Christians were accused by Romans or Jews of grave robbery, which implies that there wasn’t any missing body to investigate, and thus no empty tomb known to the Roman or Jewish authorities.  This means that Christians couldn’t have been pointing to an empty tomb as evidence, for they would have been questioned about it, and possibly convicted whether they were involved or not with the disappearance of the body.  Acts is conspicuously silent on this matter and suggests that there were never any disputes whatsoever regarding the body, there weren’t even any false accusations of theft mentioned, nor were there any questions about it at all.

More importantly, the Romans would have had a larger problem to deal with here other than simply grave robbery, for the Christians were said to have been preaching that Jesus had escaped his execution (whether described as a supernatural event or not), that he was seen congregating with his followers, and that he disappeared.  It is doubtful that Pilate or the Sanhedrin would have believed any claims that Jesus had risen from the dead (nor is there any evidence that they did believe this), but if the tomb was empty and Jesus’ followers had been reporting that he had continued to preach to them and thus was still a fugitive, Pilate would have been inclined if not obligated to haul in every Christian for questioning and undergo a massive manhunt for such a threatening escaped convict.  Furthermore, the Sanhedrin would have also been obligated to find and kill Jesus as per their initial plan.  However, we don’t hear any of this happening in Acts.  Nobody asked where Jesus was hiding at, nor who helped him to escape.  This is more than enough to prove that Acts‘ account of the events here is fiction, let alone completely unrealistic.  There was no missing body, no empty tomb, and thus no criminal that was on the run from the law, for if the Roman or Jewish authorities had heard any of this being publicly preached as claimed in Acts, we would no doubt have heard about the expected repercussions, including the likely persecution of Christians by the Roman and Jewish authorities that would have been interrogating them.

If we are to grant that the original Christians believed any of the events in Acts as historical, then the absence of all of these pertinent details and expected events (regarding the missing body), at best, supports the theory that the original Christians were actually preaching that Jesus rose in an entirely new body (a spiritual resurrection) as opposed to the old one that he discarded and left in the grave.  In line with this theory is what Paul wrote, that the body that dies “is not the body that is to come “, but instead this buried body is left to be destroyed, while an even better “replacement ” body is already stored up in heaven waiting for each of us (1 Cor. 15.35-50; 2 Cor. 5.1-4).  At worst, and more likely than any other theory that has been proposed, is that Acts is entirely a fabrication, and there was in fact no historical Jesus, and the earliest Christians instead believed in a celestial Jesus (where he was effectively an archangel) whom communicated to them exclusively through revelation and through hidden messages in scripture, which is a theory that is supported by the material found in Paul’s epistles (the earliest and most reliable Christian sources we have in the NT).

In closing, we can see that Acts, just like the Gospels in the NT, is not at all reliable in terms of having any historical merit.  There are numerous parallels found throughout suggesting that there were many literary sources used for its contents, and Luke was inventing the material contained within, while adding some historical peripheral details (demonstrably obtained from Josephus) to add local color to the stories he was writing as most authors of fiction are known to do.  Other than those less relevant peripheral details, the actual events described within it are entirely unrealistic, not corroborated by any independent evidence, and are exactly what we’d expect to find in an ancient novel of the period in question.  Again, for those interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus, as I have only mentioned a fraction of that which is contained in his overall analysis, and it is very important that one reads all of the background knowledge and evidence to fully understand just how weak the case for historicity really is.  You will not be disappointed.

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The Gospels as Allegorical Myth, Part 4 of 4: John

The final post in this series will mention a few elements from Richard Carrier’s analysis of the Gospels as found in his book On the Historicity of Jesus, specifically pertaining to The Gospel according to John.  As with the previous three Gospels, John also appears to have written a religious novel filled with allegorical myth and fiction, and doesn’t appear to be interested in reporting any factual historical accounts.  Likewise, just as was the case with Luke and Matthew, John quite evidently had knowledge of the previous Gospels and used them as sources.  Though some scholars have maintained that John was writing independent of the other Gospels, there is simply no evidence to support that independence.  Rather, there is abundant evidence that John did in fact know about those Gospels and used them as (at least some of the) sources for his own, with the main difference being that John simply redacted them much more freely than Luke or Matthew did with their sources.

One example of John’s apparent knowledge of Mark’s Gospel, for instance, is the fact that John copies Mark’s pairing of the “Feeding of the Five Thousand” miracle with the miracle of Jesus walking on the water, in exactly the same sequence (So John 6 was likely derived from Mark 6.31-52).  However, as we saw in the analysis regarding Mark’s Gospel, Mark’s specific choice of pairing and sequencing of various miracles were intentionally placed as they were for the purpose of producing a particular literary structure.  Additionally, the paired events themselves are obviously ridiculous and historically implausible, so the most likely reason John shared the pairing that Mark employed is that he in fact borrowed it all from Mark.  Adding to this likelihood is the sheer number of details that they both have in common, including the details that “five thousand” people were fed, exactly “twelve baskets” of crumbs remained, that Jesus performed this miracle starting with exactly “five loaves and two fishes”, and that the amount of food needed to feed the crowd would have cost “two hundred denarii”.

In John’s Gospel, we also find the same literary structure for the narrative regarding Peter’s denial of Christ that Mark originally wrote in his Gospel (compare John 18.15-27 with Mark 14.53-72).  John also mentions the story of Jesus curing a blind man with spit that we first heard about in Mark, although in John, we can see that he freely changed some of the details.  Whereas in Mark, Jesus only uses spit for the magic spell, in John, Jesus uses spit mixed with dirt to make mud which he applies to the blind man’s face.  John also changes the additional magic that Jesus had to use in order to get the spell to work.  In John, after Jesus applied spit, he told the blind man to go “wash in the Pool of Siloam” to get the spell to work, whereas in Mark, the blind man was “half cured” from the spit (as we infer when he tells Jesus that although he could see now, the people he saw looked “like trees walking around”), then Jesus simply touched his face once more and then the spell worked successfully (compare John 9.6-7 with Mark 8.23-25).

John also has numerous similarities with material in Luke and Matthew as well (especially Luke).  Only in John and Luke’s Gospels do we hear about the new character, Martha, the sister of Mary (Luke 10.38-42; John 11.1-12.2).  Only in them do we hear about the miraculous scene where Jesus produces an extremely large catch of fish (Luke 5.1-11; John 21.1-4).  Only in them do we hear the claim that there was in fact a second Judas among the twelve disciples (Luke 6.16; John 14.22).  We also only hear in these two Gospels that Judas Iscariot was possessed by Satan (Luke 22.3; John 13.16-27).  In them alone, we hear specifically that the disciples chopped off the right ear of the high priest’s slave (Luke 22.50; John 18.10).  Both alone mention that Pilate declared Jesus innocent thrice (Luke 23.4, 16, 23; John 18.38, 19.4, 6).  Both alone claim that Jesus had been buried “where no man had yet been laid” (Luke 23.53; John 19.41).  Only in these two Gospels do we hear that there were two angels seen outside of Jesus’ empty tomb (Luke 24.4; John 20.12).  Both alone say that the resurrected Jesus visited the disciples in Jerusalem (not Galilee as in Matthew and Mark) and inside a room (rather than outdoors as in the other Gospels) as well as having Jesus show his wounds and even share a meal with them (Luke 24.33-43; John 20.18-29, 21.12-13).  To be sure, John modifies and adds to many of the contents he’s borrowing from Luke, but either way, the number of similarities and coincidences between the two is far too great to conclude that John isn’t using Luke as a source (even if he is doing so rather creatively).

After we concede to the fact that John is using the other Gospels as sources, we can take notice of the fact that John intended on rebutting a particular theme that those previous Gospels all had in common, that “no sign shall be given” that Jesus is the Messiah (e.g. Mark 8.11-12), which was in line with what Paul said when he mentioned that no signs were given to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ (1 Cor. 1.22-24).  So in Mark for example, even though he invents miracles to put in his stories as allegories, he is careful to make sure that only the disciples (no independent witnesses) are the ones that ever notice, mention, or understand those miracles.  The only thing remotely close to an exception to this in Mark is at the end of his Gospel, when the three women saw that the tomb was empty and heard from a man sitting inside that Jesus had risen (which wasn’t really a miracle that they witnessed, but they were surprised nevertheless), and yet even with this ending we are told that the women simply ran away in fear and never told anyone what they had seen (Mark 16.8).

Matthew had already added to this material in Mark, “correcting” it by instead having Jesus say that “an evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign” and therefore “there shall no sign be given except the sign of Jonah“, meaning the resurrection of Jesus on the third day (Matt. 12.39, 16.4).  Thus we can see that Matthew took what Mark wrote and went one step further, by allowing that one sign, and narrating the story so that the Jews “know” about it (hence his reason for writing Matt. 28.11-15).  So Matthew invented new evidence that we never saw in Mark.  Luke merely reinforced what Matthew had written (Luke 11.29), yet added to it with his invention of the parable of Lazarus (Luke 16.19-31) as well as the public announcement that was made to the Jews (Acts 2), thus illustrating the previous Gospels’ “no sign shall be given” theme.

John rebuts this entire theme by packing his Gospel full of “signs” and by taking Luke’s parable of Lazarus and turning it into an actual tale of Lazarus (John 11-12).  We even read in John 2.11 that “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him“, thus implying that it was because of these signs that his disciples believed in him (something we don’t hear about in any other Gospel).  We read just a few verses later in John 2.17-18 that when Jesus was asked for a sign, he simply says that his resurrection will be a sign.  Notably however, John doesn’t say here that this will be the only sign.  Quite the contrary, for in John 2.23 we hear that “When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing“, and later we read that “a great multitude followed him because they beheld the signs he did ” (John 6.2), followed by John telling us that when people “see the sign he did“, they declared that Jesus was a true prophet (John 6.14).  In John 3.2, we read that a Pharisee named Nicodemus said to Jesus “no one can do these signs that you do, unless God be with him“, and even in John 4.48-54 we read that Jesus said “You will in no way believe unless you see signs and wonders” and then he provides them with a miracle to see.  We are even explicitly told that these signs were indeed the evidence that showed that Jesus is the Christ (John 7.31, 9.16, 10.41-42), and there are several other references to the signs that Jesus gave, including John telling us that there were even more than those mentioned in his Gospel (John 20.30).  So John clearly attempted to rebut this theme present in the other Gospels, and made it blatantly obvious that he was doing so.

Adding to this rebuttal seen throughout John’s Gospel is his resurrection narrative that was the most ridiculous of all — the “Doubting Thomas” narrative (John 20.24-29), where the resurrected Jesus asks Thomas to stick his finger and hands in his open wounds so that he would believe.  So we have multiple examples of the author of John (or authors, as scholars actually believe there were multiple authors that contributed to the extant manuscripts of the Gospel we now have) creating proof, and insisting that all this new evidence justifies belief that Jesus is the Christ.  This is also why John alone invented an eyewitness “source” for his Gospel (never heard of before in the others), whom he referred to as the “Beloved Disciple” (although it is implied that this unnamed person was Lazarus), and said that he got all of his information from him.  In any case, the incredibly propagandistic style and contents in his Gospel make it thoroughly untrustworthy (more than any of the other Gospels in fact) in terms of historical accuracy.

Beyond this obvious propaganda, John is also filled with several long, implausible speeches (that we’ve never heard of before his Gospel) of Jesus, and yet conspicuously absent from these speeches are the Sermon on the Mount, as well as any appreciable amount of moral instruction.  We also see many new characters (such as Lazarus and Nicodemus) and new events that the other Gospel writers seemed entirely unaware of.  John also scrambles the order of many events, for example, moving the episode of Jesus clearing the temple from the end of his ministry to the beginning of it.  John also expands Jesus’ ministry from one to three years, having Jesus go on multiple trips to Judea and Jerusalem rather than only once.  John even moved the date (and thus also the year) of Jesus’ execution in order to make Jesus’ death correlate with the exact day that the Passover lambs were slaughtered, likely in order to make a different theological point with regard to viewing Jesus as the Passover lamb.  Thus John appears to be the worst of all the Gospels in terms of him most freely redacting what the previous Gospel authors wrote, adding and inventing whatever he wanted.  Thus, if John is trying to convince his readers that what he wrote is factual history, then by modern standards, John is clearly lying (just as Luke was).

One of the biggest problems that scholars have faced when trying to analyze John’s Gospel is the fact that we don’t have what John originally wrote.  Scholars are aware that somebody later on rearranged the Gospel, adding and removing content and ultimately scrambling the order of many scenes.  One can see quite clearly that his Gospel has been altered just by noting that it finishes with two different endings, where each ending was written completely unaware of the other (John 20.30-31 and 21.24-25), with each serving as conclusions to two different resurrection appearance narratives (with John 21.1 added as a hasty attempt to stitch the two together).  This “multiple ending” problem had actually happened in Mark’s Gospel as well, where there are at least five different known endings.  Even the famous story of the adulteress (John 7.53-8.11) with the famous line “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” wasn’t present in the original text as scholars know that this was added by a later editor.  There is plenty of evidence in fact that suggests that there are corruptions throughout the entire text.

We can see in John 5, for example, that Jesus goes to Judea (specifically Jerusalem; 5.1), and yet in John 6 Jesus is not in Judea but rather “went off to the other side of the sea of Galilee”.  This is a problem because the sea of Galilee is nowhere near Jerusalem, let alone in Judea.  Evidently, in the original text, preceding John 6.1, Jesus was in Galilee at some location on the opposite end of the sea of Galilee (and not in Jerusalem), so the order of events became jumbled due to various alterations over time.  We’re also told in John 2 (13, 23) that Jesus was in Jerusalem and then we’re told that he entered Judea (3.22), but obviously if he was in Jerusalem (a city in Judea) then he was already in Judea, so it seems that some part of the text was deleted here that would have mentioned Jesus returning to Galilee prior to him re-entering Judea a second time.  There are other examples like this which I’m not going to mention here because there are more interesting materials in John that I’d like to get to now.

As with the other Gospels, John also has several literary structures of his own.  One of the most brilliantly crafted is the sequence where Jesus is traveling from Cana to Cana (something we’ve not yet heard of until John).  This role of Cana is a literary construct that John likely invented to illustrate different degrees of faith and how to obtain those levels of faith.  The story takes place over several days and the literary sequence starts with a miracle at Cana “on the third day” (turning water into wine) and ends with another miracle at Cana on another “third day” (“resurrecting” a father’s son), which is also combined with other notable references as an obvious metaphor and allusion to Jesus’ future resurrection.  Here is what this quite elegant literary structure looks like:

Traditional Context (features a woman as a mother)

–   John 2.1-12: A wedding completed at Cana.

–        – Featuring a mother and her son.

–        – A miracle is requested and fulfilled.

–        – Complete faith in a traditional Jewish context.

–        – Story ends at Capernaum (2.12).

I.  Traditional Context (ends with a man)

–                    A. John 2.13-22: Clearing of the Temple.

–                          – A miracle is requested and not fulfilled (2.18).

–                          – Jesus’ words are thrown back at him (2.19 = 2.20).

–                          – A question is thus voiced as disbelief (2.20).

–                          – A metaphor (of resurrection) is misunderstood (2.19-22).

–                          – The temple Jews have no faith.

–                     B. John 3.1-21: Nicodemus the Pharisee.

–                           – Jesus is believed because of his miracles (3.1-2).

–                           – Jesus’ words are thrown back at him (3.3 = 3.4).

–                           – A question is thus voiced as doubt (3.4).

–                           – A metaphor (of rebirth) is misunderstood (3.3-4).

–                           – A “teacher of the Jews” (3.10) has partial faith.

–                      C. John 3.22-36: John the Baptist.

–                            – Jesus is believed because of his word (3.27-34).

–                            – Jesus’ words are explained; Jesus is the savior (3.35-36).

–                            – John has complete faith.

II. Marginal Context (begins with a woman)

–                       A. John 4.1-15: The Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well

–                             – A miracle is requested and not fulfilled (4.15).

–                             – Jesus’ words are thrown back at him (4.10, 13-14 = 4.11-12, 15).

–                             – A question is thus voiced as disbelief (4.11-12; 4.15 is sarcasm).

–                             – A metaphor (of living water) is misunderstood.

–                             – The woman has no faith.

–                        B. John 4.16-38: The Samaritan woman reconsiders.

–                              – Jesus is believed because of his miracle (4.16-19).

–                              – Jesus’ words are thrown back at him (4.16 = 4.17).

–                              – A question is then voiced as doubt (4.29).

–                              – A metaphor (of spiritual messiah) is misunderstood (4.21-25).

–                              – The Samaritan woman has partial faith.

–                         C. John 4.39-42: The Samaritans of Sychar.

–                               – Jesus is believed because of his word (e.g. 4.41).

–                               – Jesus’ words are understood; Jesus is the savior (4.42).

–                               – The Samaritans have complete faith.

Marginal Context (features a man as a father)

–   John 4.43-53: A funeral averted at Cana.

–        – Featuring a father and his son.

–        – A miracle is requested and fulfilled.

–        – Complete faith in a marginal Jewish context.

–        – Story began at Capernaum (4.46).

John clearly invented this material to make a point, and it looks like he designed it all to fit into a particular pattern of metaphors and parables: two miracles that parallel and invert one another occurring at Cana, and nestled in between two sequences of three conversational narratives, with the first of those triads paralleling the second in terms of the developing faith in each example (no faith, partial faith, and finally complete faith).  We can also see that the first triad is in a traditional Jewish context, and then the second one repeats the same themes in a relatively marginal context, with John alternating the roles of men and women (something we also saw Mark do in his Gospel).  Note also how the two events that ensconce this overall structure both involve an announced problem of some kind (running out of wine in the first event, and an official son’s illness in the last event).  Both involve a request to fix the problem, both involve a rebuke where Jesus says something ornery to the person making the request.  Both also involve a reaction where the requester then puts complete faith in Jesus, followed by a successful solution to the problem (where what they believed Jesus could do, he successfully accomplishes).  John also repeats the same literary components in traditionally Jewish and in marginally Jewish contexts (so we have two sets of each); first a traditional Jewish context (a Jewish wedding) followed by another traditional context (temple Jews and John the Baptist), followed by a marginally Jewish context (Samaria) finally followed by another marginal context (helping a Herodian official).

So we can see that John, just like the other Gospel writers, has created literary structures (a triadic ring structure in the case above) filled with metaphor and allegorical messages (in this example regarding different levels of faith and their respective effects, as well as allusions to the crucifixion and resurrection which I’ll mention more in a moment), as opposed to John reporting any kind of historical events as he claims in his preface.  Once again, it is simply very implausible for historical events to occur in such an order and with such coincidental patterns, and this is compounded by the number of historical implausibilities that are all entirely expected elements to find within fiction.  These implausibly coincidental sequences as well as the types of events and behaviors are not something we ever expect to occur in real life.  John is in fact writing a religious novel here, and is inventing material and arranging it in very specific ways to serve his own literary and theological purposes.

Like the other Gospel writers, John also borrows texts from the Old Testament (OT) and rewrites them or adapts certain ideas in his narratives.  For example, the first miracle at Cana, which is John’s only “new” miracle not present in the other Gospels, illustrates this fact.  This story exemplifies the Word of God in the book of Exodus, where we hear that Aaron “did the signs in the sight of the people, and the people believed” (Exodus 4.30-31), which is the basic model that John employs for his entire Gospel.  In the story found in Exodus, we read that God told Moses that he would give him three signs to perform such that if they didn’t believe after the first two signs he gave, they would definitely believe after the last one was given, with the latter point seen in the following verse:

“If they will not believe even after these two signs, nor listen to you, then you shall take some water that you took from the river, and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you took out of the river shall become blood upon the ground.” (Exodus 4.9)

As we can see, the last miracle Moses was going to perform was turning water into blood, which closely parallels John’s first miracle of having Jesus turn water into wine, thus John appears to be starting where Moses left off and transforming “the last” into “the first”.  One may recall that toward the end of John’s Gospel, at the crucifixion, we read that Jesus spews both water and blood from his body (John 19.34), and so Jesus’ ministry appears to have ended with a reminder of the miracle that it began with.  This is something that Jesus even alludes to in John 2.4 where two references to John’s crucifixion scene are mentioned (Jesus references the hour of his death, and references the fact that he would no longer be his mother’s son).  This demonstrates that John rewrote the crucifixion scene (including the spewing of water and blood from Jesus, which is unique to John’s Gospel alone) as he had these parallels in mind when he matched it with his scene at Cana.  In accord with this intentional matching is the fact that the crucifixion is an anti-type of the scene at Cana: at Cana his mother gives a command to Jesus, and at the crucifixion Jesus gives a command to his mother; at Cana we hear his mother saying to do whatever Jesus says, and at the crucifixion Jesus tells Mary what to do; whereas at Cana Jesus’ mother asks him to make wine from water, at the crucifixion Jesus gives them blood with water; at Cana we hear Jesus asking what he has to do with her, and at the crucifixion he says that he has nothing to do with her (due to a transformation of kinship); at Cana Jesus says that his hour has not yet come, and at the crucifixion his hour had indeed come.  John even repeats the same Exodus theme where he says that the miracle of the water and blood coming from Jesus happened “so that you may believe” (John 19.35), just as God had told Moses what would happen after performing his turning water into blood.  So there is strong evidence here that John is simply replicating the last miracle that Moses performed.  There is also evidence that John borrowed and adapted some of his details from a similar miraculous tale told of Elijah in 1 Kings 17.8-24.  In that story, we read another tale involving a woman and her son, although in that particular story they expected to die soon because they were starving to death (1 Kings 17.12).  The woman’s son is approaching death from illness and Elijah is called upon to heal him (1 Kings 17.24), similar to what we hear happen in John when Jesus later saves a man’s son from deadly illness (his second miracle at Cana).

Related to this is the odd fact that Jesus seems quite rude to his mother when he says “Woman, what have I to do with you?“, which upon further analysis doesn’t appear to be any kind of historical report, but is rather an anti-type of Elijah, when in the tale with Elijah, the woman in need of food says to him “What have I to do with you?” (and the exact Greek is used in both the story with Jesus and that of Elijah in the Septuagint translation of 1 Kings).  In both stories the prophet involved tells those needing food to take empty pitchers and remove from them the required provision, which then miraculously appears before them.  Thus, rather than John being concerned with any kind of factual history, this is just another example of a literary construct John invented, and that he carefully integrated into his revised account of the crucifixion and the entire Cana-to-Cana structure.  John is simply lying and passing it off as history, as the evidence illustrates more and more upon closer analysis.

One good demonstration of John’s overall inventiveness is when he creates an eyewitness, the “Beloved Disciple” (John 21.24, 19.35, 19.25-27, 20.2-8), who is inserted into the same story told by the previous Gospels, and yet this person is conspicuously absent from those previous Gospels.  Unlike in John, there aren’t any male disciples at the cross in any of the other Gospels, nor is anyone resting on Jesus’ chest at the Last Supper.  John clearly inserted this character into the stories that he borrowed and redacted from the other Gospels, and then dishonestly claimed that this person was his “source” for the contents in his Gospel.  This is further confirmed by the fact that John makes considerable effort to imply that the “Beloved Disciple” was in fact Lazarus, a character that was not among the list of twelve disciples mentioned in the previous three Gospels. In fact, Lazarus wasn’t ever mentioned in any of the other Gospels except in Luke’s Gospel when he was only mentioned as a deceased character in Jesus’ fictional parable of “Lazarus and the Rich Man”.  How do we know that John made considerable effort to imply that this never-before-heard-of witness was Lazarus?   There are many reasons, for example, the fact that only one character in his Gospel is described several times as “the one whom Jesus loved”, and that was indeed Lazarus (John 11.3, 5, 36).  Also, right after Lazarus was introduced and described as Jesus’ beloved, we hear that he is reclining with Jesus at supper the very next day (12.1-2, 9-11).  So when we later hear that “the one whom Jesus loved” is also reclining with Jesus at the Last Supper, it is quite obvious that this is supposed to be Lazarus once again.  This should also be the case for every other instance when we hear a reference to “the one whom Jesus loved“, such as at the crucifixion, at the empty tomb, and finally at the resurrection (John 19.26-27, 35, 20.2-8, 21.7, 20).

The final giveaway that the Beloved Disciple is Lazarus is the fact that we hear in John 21.21-24 that a rumor had spread around the community that the Beloved Disciple would not die, and there simply isn’t any reason for this speculative rumor to have arisen other than the fact that in John’s Gospel, Lazarus had been resurrected from the dead by Jesus. So clearly people were wondering if Lazarus would ever die a second time, hence the rumor that began to circulate.  We also hear that the Beloved Disciple was the first person to see the burial cloths that Jesus had cast off and left in his then empty tomb, and earlier in John we were told that Lazarus had been wrapped in burial cloths which he also cast off at his resurrection.  Accordingly, Lazarus is the first person to believe that Jesus had risen since he had experienced a similar resurrection himself and could relate to it firsthand (John 20.8).  However, there are even more similarities worth noting.  In both Jesus’ and Lazarus’ resurrection accounts, we hear the peculiar detail of the soudarion (a small cloth covering the face of the deceased), and in both stories this cloth is clearly distinguished from the burial wrappings.  In both, we hear references to being bound or unbound by these wrappings, as some metaphor for becoming unbound or liberated from death.  Additionally, in both accounts we are also given a colorful and detailed description of these burial wrappings, their placement, etc.  So the many parallels make it quite obvious that the “Beloved Disciple” is in fact Lazarus.

All the details that John gives us about the Beloved Disciple being Lazarus merely exposes that John is lying throughout his Gospel, because there is no corroboratory evidence that Lazarus ever existed, not even from the demonstrably untrustworthy Gospels that John himself used as sources.  Nobody else knows anything about this Lazarus character (let alone his most extravagant resurrection story, in fact the most incredible resurrection story told in any of the Gospels) and we simply don’t hear anything about him except in John’s Gospel.  Thus, a non-existent Lazarus couldn’t have witnessed anything, despite John telling us that he did.  This absence from the other Gospels implies that this is a definite fabrication.  Adding to the exposure of this lie, is the fact that John assigns a high level of importance to the whole Lazarus resurrection event.  The event is so integral to the plot that John tells us that it was because of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, and thus gaining so many newly convinced followers, that the Jewish elite then plotted to kill Jesus (John 11.53).  Yet, we don’t hear anything about this integral reason for the plot against Jesus in any of the other Gospels.  So the fact that John made this “Lazarus resurrection” story integral to his Gospel, just further illustrates that his Gospel is a fabrication, where he is just rewriting “history” (or more accurately he is rewriting the pseudo-historical accounts given in the other Gospels) as he pleases, likely to suit his own purpose of re-emphasizing the many “signs” that were said to be proof that Jesus was the messiah.

Lastly, John appears to have invented this Lazarus tale in order to reverse and thus to rebut or refute the Parable of Lazarus as found in Luke.  The bottom line here is that whenever we find instances of imaginary people in earlier stories being turned into real people in later stories (i.e. Luke’s Lazarus versus John’s Lazarus), what we are seeing is in fact a major marker for myth-making, and one that was quite common in antiquity.  Furthermore, the fact that John turns Luke’s imaginary Lazarus into a real person isn’t the only indication that he is trying to refute Luke.  There are several other indicators of this in fact.  In Luke’s parable, we hear about a rich man that ends up burning in hell and he sees up in heaven a dead beggar named Lazarus that he once knew, and he sees this Lazarus resting on the “bosom of Abraham”, so he begs Abraham to resurrect Lazarus from the dead so that he may warn his still-living brothers in order to avoid the same torturous fate.  The parable ends with Abraham refusing to resurrect Lazarus because “if they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16.31), thus further repeating the point mentioned in the synoptic Gospels that Jesus would not be performing signs since they won’t persuade anyone.  One coincidence worth noting here is the mention of Luke’s Lazarus resting on the bosom of Abraham (Luke 16.22-23), thus ever more confirming that John’s “Beloved Disciple” who we hear was reclining “on Jesus’ bosom” (John 13.23) was in fact Lazarus.  More importantly, we can see that in Luke’s parable, Lazarus does not rise from the dead, whereas John completely reverses this as well in his Gospel, and not only does Lazarus rise from the dead, but his resurrection actually convinces many people to turn their favor toward Jesus and be saved, which goes completely against what Jesus said in Luke’s Gospel (as well as what the other Gospels were saying).

Not only is John’s Lazarus sited as convincing others through his being resurrected, but John also sites Lazarus as a witness to the crucifixion, the empty tomb, and to Jesus’ resurrection (and as the source for John’s entire Gospel), thus illustrating that the overall purpose of John inventing Lazarus was to convince people (despite this going against what Jesus had said wouldn’t work in Luke).  So it is clear that John’s invention of Lazarus was to be a refutation for Luke, and this only further reduces any chances that John is ever accurately reporting history in his Gospel, for he’s freely redacting the Gospels he used as sources, and not at all interested in preserving what they had to say (if he assumed they were accurate histories, which even if he thought so, we can see that they are not), nor is he receiving this from any kind of witness.  As it has been made quite clear by now, what we are seeing in John’s Gospel is allegorical myth and fiction, with these stories created to serve specific literary aims even beyond the creation of literary structures that we saw an example of early on in this post.  As such, just as with the other Gospels, John’s Gospel can’t be trusted as any kind of reliable historical sources.  Rather we are seeing numerous examples in the Gospels of employing well-known ancient literary methods of writing fiction and allegory (most especially students of literary Greek, which the Gospels were written in).

It should also be noted as I near the conclusion of this post, that the common historical methodological criteria that scholars have tried to use to sift out possible historical details of Jesus that are buried in a sea of myth have been proven to be either fallacious and/or unreliable, and this has been demonstrated by the fact that when scholars apply these same criteria to the exact same evidence under consideration, they get different results (which proves the methods are unreliable).  Since fiction often contains peripheral details that are historical and since fiction is written in all manner of genres, due to the principle of contamination we are unable to establish if there are any details in any of the Gospels that can support the historicity of Jesus.  The best method proposed thus far, and one that has been proven reliable mathematically and proven to be logically sound is the application of Baye’s Theorem.  So for those that wish to refute Carrier’s arguments or his conclusions, one must do so by refuting the prior and consequent probabilities that Carrier defends, and one must support their own proposed probabilities with evidence and logically sound argumentation.

This concludes this particular series of posts.  As mentioned in the previous post, regarding The Gospel According to Luke, I may eventually make a fifth post to complement that one, and discuss Luke’s book of Acts to illustrate how it too is quite obviously fiction, and looks very much like a typical ancient novel with all the goodies one would expect to find therein.  For those interested in the most recent scholarship regarding the historicity of Jesus Christ, I highly recommend reading Richard Carrier’s book, as it is the most comprehensive analysis regarding the historicity of Jesus I’ve ever read or heard of, and is very well documented and well researched (featuring a nice 40-page bibliography with everything well referenced regarding extensive work from numerous top scholars in the field).  I only provided readers of this post-series with a small fraction of what Carrier researched and wrote in his book, but I hope that for those interested, it was informative and fascinating!

Knowledge: An Expansion of the Platonic Definition

In the first post I ever wrote on this blog, titled: Knowledge and the “Brain in a Vat” scenario, I discussed some elements concerning the Platonic definition of knowledge, that is, that knowledge is ultimately defined as “justified true belief”.  I further refined the Platonic definition (in order to account for the well-known Gettier Problem) such that knowledge could be better described as “justified non-coincidentally-true belief”.  Beyond that, I also discussed how one’s conception of knowledge (or how it should be defined) should consider the possibility that our reality may be nothing more than the product of a mad scientist feeding us illusory sensations/perceptions with our brain in a vat, and thus, that how we define things and adhere to those definitions plays a crucial role in our conception and mutual understanding of any kind of knowledge.  My concluding remarks in that post were:

“While I’m aware that anything discussed about the metaphysical is seen by some philosophers to be completely and utterly pointless, my goal in making the definition of knowledge compatible with the BIV scenario is merely to illustrate that if knowledge exists in both “worlds” (and our world is nothing but a simulation), then the only knowledge we can prove has to be based on definitions — which is a human construct based on hierarchical patterns observed in our reality.”

While my views on what knowledge is or how it should be defined have changed somewhat in the past three years or so since I wrote that first blog post, in this post, I’d like to elaborate on this key sentence, specifically with regard to how knowledge is ultimately dependent on the recall and use of previously observed patterns in our reality as I believe that this is the most important aspect regarding how to define knowledge.  After making a few related comments on another blog (https://nwrickert.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/knowledge-vs-belief/), I decided to elaborate on some of those comments accordingly.

I’ve elsewhere mentioned how there is a plethora of evidence that suggests that intelligence is ultimately a product of pattern recognition (1, 2, 3).  That is, if we recognize patterns in nature and then commit them to memory, we can later use those remembered patterns to our advantage in order to accomplish goals effectively.  The more patterns that we can recognize and remember, specifically those that do in fact correlate with reality (as opposed to erroneously “recognized” patterns that are actually non-existent), the better our chances of predicting the consequences of our actions accurately, and thus the better chances we have at obtaining our goals.  In short, the more patterns that we can recognize and remember, the greater our intelligence.  It is therefore no coincidence that intelligence tests are primarily based on gauging one’s ability to recognize patterns (e.g. solving Raven’s Progressive Matrices, puzzles, etc.).

To emphasize the role of pattern recognition as it applies to knowledge, if we use my previously modified Platonic definition of knowledge, that is,  that knowledge is defined as “justified, non-coincidentally-true belief”, then I must break down the individual terms of this definition as follows, starting with “belief”:

• Belief = Recognized patterns of causality that are stored into memory for later recall and use.
• Non-Coincidentally-True = The belief positively and consistently correlates with reality, and thus not just through luck or chance.
• Justified = Empirical evidence exists to support said belief.

So in summary, I have defined knowledge (more specifically) as:

“Recognized patterns of causality that are stored into memory for later recall and use, that positively and consistently correlate with reality, and for which that correlation has been validated by empirical evidence (e.g. successful predictions made and/or goals accomplished through the use of said recalled patterns)”.

This means that if we believe something to be true that is unfalsifiable (such as religious beliefs that rely on faith), since it has not met the justification criteria, it fails to be considered knowledge (even if it is still considered a “belief”).  Also, if we are able to make a successful prediction with the patterns we’ve recognized, yet are only able to do so once, due to the lack of consistency, we likely just got lucky and didn’t actually correctly identify a pattern that correlates with reality, and thus this would fail to count as knowledge.  Finally, one should also note that the patterns that are recognized were not specifically defined as “consciously” recognized/remembered, nor was it specified that the patterns couldn’t be innately acquired/stored into memory (through DNA coded or other pre-sensory neural developmental mechanisms).  Thus, even procedural knowledge like learning to ride a bike or other forms of “muscle memory” used to complete a task, or any innate form of knowledge (acquired before/without sensory input) would be an example of unconscious or implicit knowledge that still fulfills this definition I’ve given above.  In the case of unconscious/implicit knowledge, we would have to accept that “beliefs” can also be unconscious/implicit (in order to remain consistent with the definition I’ve chosen), and I don’t see this as being a problem at all.  One just has to keep in mind that when people use the term “belief”, they are likely going to be referring to only those that are in our consciousness, a subset of all beliefs that exist, and thus still correct and adherent to the definition laid out here.

This is how I prefer to define “knowledge”, and I think it is a robust definition that successfully solves many (though certainly not all) of the philosophical problems that one tends to encounter in epistemology.

The Gospels as Allegorical Myth, Part 3 of 4: Luke

In the first two posts in this series, we looked at various elements of Richard Carrier’s analysis of the first two Gospels found in the New Testament, specifically The Gospel According to Mark and The Gospel According to Matthew, as discussed in Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus.  We saw many examples that illustrated that those Gospels were demonstrably myth and fiction, as opposed to being any kind of written histories.  In this post, I’ll be mentioning some elements of Carrier’s analysis as it relates to The Gospel According to Luke.

For starters, The Gospel According to Luke is the first Gospel to superficially represent itself as history.  Unlike the other Gospel authors, Luke actually does write more like a historian, where he adds superficial historical details to form a local color, and even attempts to date some of the events contained therein.  He even includes a preface (although rather vague) explaining what his authorial intentions are.  Unfortunately, after a close examination of what he wrote, we can see that he was no better than Mark or Matthew, and in fact fabricates numerous details throughout his Gospel.  One interesting element that tips us off is the fact that Luke creates a resurrection narrative that is thoroughly designed to answer the skeptics of Matthew’s account, employing a tactic that “requires” his own story to be true.  However, since no other Gospel (nor Paul for that matter) ever mentions the odd and quite convenient details that suddenly make their first appearance in Luke, we can be fairly certain that it is indeed a fabrication.  For example, Luke mentions that Peter not only double-checked the women’s claim that the tomb was empty, but that he also handled the shroud (Luke 24.11-12); that Jesus showed the disciples his wounds and made sure that the disciples touched him and fed him to prove he wasn’t a ghost (Luke 24.36-43); or that the resurrected Jesus actually hung out and partied with many (dozens) of his followers for more than a month before eventually flying up into the clouds of heaven (Acts 1.2-9).  So we can see several examples of Luke fabricating historical events, deliberately trying to win a particular argument against doubters (which included many Christians that had very different beliefs about the details and nature of the resurrection).  That we find these types of things in what Luke wrote, should serve as a clear warning to not trust anything that he has added to the stories found in Mark’s and Matthew’s Gospels.  Rather, we should assume that, just as Mark and Matthew demonstrably fabricated their stories for a particular purpose, such is the same for Luke (unless of course, we find evidence to believe otherwise).

Further justifying this assumption of fabrication is the fact that, although Luke at least tries to sell his readers the pretense that he is reporting history, his methods are entirely non-historical.  He is not doing historical research, nor weighing various facts, nor checking their validity with respect to independent sources in order to write about what events he thinks most likely transpired.  Instead, Luke appears to be producing an expanded and redacted amalgam of Mark’s and Matthew’s Gospels, which were themselves non-historiographical products composed of carefully constructed literary structures containing various allegorical and obviously mythical contents.  Unlike what we’d expect from historians (and those living in Luke’s era no less), Luke never names his sources nor explains why he (or we, the reader) should trust them, nor does he mention how he chose to include or exclude the contents we find in his Gospel.  What we find from Luke is instead an insistence that he diligently followed what had been handed on to him — another claim we know to be a lie, since we have two of his sources (The Gospels of Mark and Matthew) and are able to confirm that he freely altered them in order to support his own agenda.  For example, though there are many instances of Luke borrowing excerpts from Matthew and Mark’s Gospels, he also changes some of the details, such as redacting Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and changing it (effectively reversing it) into a Sermon on a Plain.  Despite this reversal that Luke makes to Matthew’s version, both Matthew and Luke’s Sermons are followed by the unrelated narrative where Jesus heals the centurion’s son in Capernaum (Matt. 8.5-13, Luke 7.1-10), and both Sermons are preceded by a general account of Jesus healing many people (Matt. 4.23-5.1, Luke 6.17-19).

Another more conspicuous example of Luke redacting Matthew’s Gospel in particular (and creatively so), is when Luke rewrites Matthew’s Nativity Narrative.  In his version, Luke reverses almost every key element.  Whereas Matthew depicts Jesus’ family (Mary and Joseph) as basically outlaws, fleeing from Bethlehem and Herod’s dominion and authority and cowering many miles away for more than 10 years, Luke depicts Jesus’ family as being in complete obedience of the law and going to Bethlehem in observance of their emperor’s command (Luke 2.1-4).  While Matthew tells us that Herod was searching to kill the infant Jesus, Luke has Jesus being presented in the Jerusalem temple to several public pronouncements of Jesus’ messianic status by Anna and Simeon (an event that obviously wouldn’t have escaped Herod’s attention, nor that of Herod’s informants).  Also, when Matthew has Jesus’ family hiding in Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath, Luke has Jesus’ family living deferentially in their home in Nazareth for that entire time, even bringing Jesus back to Jerusalem for the Passover every year without fail, to remain in full compliance with Levitical law (Luke 2.41).  So it appears that Luke deliberately changed the reason that Jesus was “born in Bethlehem” yet somehow “came from Nazareth”, which were details that Matthew had already attempted to harmonize in his own Gospel.  It’s unlikely that Luke would attempt the same harmonization unless he knew that Matthew had already started this “Bethlehem” tradition.

There are several other differences between Matthew and Luke’s Nativity narratives that are unlikely if those differences weren’t intentional.  As mentioned before, for Luke, the family of Jesus is always obedient to religious and secular law (and they are never in danger), but also notably they are never hiding in a foreign country (unlike in Matthew’s Gospel).  Luke also completely removes the involvement of foreigners (e.g. the Persian “magi”) and instead replaces them with (apparently Jewish) shepherds.  He even replaced Matthew’s magical star (which informed the “magi”) with an angelic light from heaven (informing the “shepherds”; Luke 2.8-18).  Clearly, Luke didn’t like Matthew’s version of the story, so he changed it to fit his own desires.  It’s also unlikely that Luke’s Nativity Narrative would share so many elements with that of Matthew’s, for example, the way angels send practically the same messages to Mary and Joseph, the fact that both accounts involve an annunciation and mention a virgin birth, and that both have a genealogy in them (though Luke’s genealogy differs from Matthew’s) — unless these similarities and presumably intentional differences are because Luke was in fact borrowing and redacting Matthew’s Nativity Narrative.  There are even certain phrases in Matthew’s narrative that Luke copied verbatim (e.g. “and you will call his name Jesus”, Matt. 1.21 vs. Luke 1.31-32, where the Greek used is identical), thus further supporting this conclusion.  To be sure, in many cases, Luke’s Gospel doesn’t redact Matthew’s line-by-line or verbatim, but it was often the case in antiquity that many redactions were made more freely, to conform to the author’s own linguistic style and literary preferences, which Luke certainly employs.

As mentioned in the last post, whereas Mark’s Gospel was advocating a Pauline (i.e. “gentile-friendly”) form of Christianity, Matthew’s Gospel seemed to be a redaction of this, where instead Matthew emphasized the importance of a Torah-observant (strictly Jewish) form of Christianity.  Luke’s Gospel seems to strive to unify these two major divisions of early Christianity, both the Gentile and Torah-observant sects.  Luke’s account (spanning both Luke’s Gospel and Acts) seems to be revising history in several ways in order to give the impression that both of these Christian divisions were actually in continuous harmony with one another, while also portraying Jesus and Christianity in general as a credible and reverent sect that was law abiding and even respected by the Romans.  In fact, Luke portrays Jesus and Christianity as only opposed by a branch of the Jewish elite.  Thus, Luke is effectively rebutting Matthew, just as we saw that Matthew was attempting to rebut Mark.  So rather than promoting Gentile or Torah-observant Christianity per se, Luke is promoting a harmonious church — one that is a positive and faithful transformation of Judaism into what is ultimately the Gentile church (although Luke is careful not to explicitly describe it as such).  Notably, this amalgamated model of Christianity that Luke describes throughout his Gospel is a significant example of Luke freely changing fairly important details and perspectives that are conspicuously unknown to Matthew and Mark, and it seems fairly clear that Luke did this as a response to the ongoing disagreement between these dissenting sects of Christianity, and so he revised the events in his story as if to imply that they weren’t ever an issue.  In any case, Luke doesn’t appear to be reliably reporting history here, but rather is revising it to fit his literary and theological aims.

Luke also heavily relies on re-writing texts and older myths found in the Old Testament (OT), which, as we’ve seen with Mark and Matthew’s Gospels, illustrate that Luke isn’t writing history here or repeating any kind of eye witness reports, but is in fact simply reusing older myths as models for new ones.  Of the material that Luke adds to that found in Mark and Matthew, there is quite a bit that is demonstrably fabricated rewritten versions of the Elijah-Elisha narrative in 1 and 2 Kings, placing Jesus within them as the central character and changing the setting to 1st century Roman Palestine.  Sometimes Luke directly parallels those stories and other times he inverts them, but there are too many coincidences for this to have plausibly arisen by chance.  Here’s a list of some examples:

Luke 1.5-17 reverses 1 Kings 16.29-17.1

Luke 7.1-10 transforms 1 Kings 17.1-6

Luke 7.11-17 transforms 1 Kings 17.17-24

Luke 7.18-25 transforms 1 Kings 22

Luke 7.36-50 plays on 2 Kings 4.1-37

Luke 8.1-3 plays on 1 Kings 18

Luke 9.51-56 transforms 2 Kings 1.1-2.6

Luke 9.57-62 transforms 1 Kings 19

Luke 10.1-20 transforms 2 Kings 2.16-3.27

Luke 22-24 adapts elements from 2 Kings 2.7-15

In order to illustrate this myth rework that Luke is employing, I’ll mention a couple examples from this list that Carrier explores as they exemplify the rest well.  In Luke 7.11-17, we hear of a new story that Mark and Matthew have no apparent knowledge of, that is, the healing of the Widow’s Son at Nain.  The story on its own is already quite obviously fiction, employing many dramatical elements and miraculous events that we would typically find in fiction rather than in reality.  Also, as it happens this kind of story was a trope at the time, where effectively the same story was told a few decades later about the medical doctor Asclepiades by Apuleius, and similar stories were told by Pliny the Elder before Luke even began writing his Gospel.  It sounds like an urban legend — a tale retold many times involving different people living in different places, but with very similar elements otherwise just as we’d expect from an urban legend, including the typical convenient lack of an actual eye witness account for any of the events in the story.  Adding to these already obvious signs of fiction, is the fact that this story is simply a rewrite of the exact same legend told of Elijah in 1 Kings.  Here are some of the parallels between the two:

• Luke — “It happened afterwards…” (7.11)
• 1 Kings — “It happened after this…” (17.17)

• 1 Kings — At the gate of Sarepta, Elijah meets a widow. (17.10)
• Luke — At the gate of Nain, Jesus meets a widow. (7.11-12)

• 1 Kings — Another widow’s son was dead (17.17)
• Luke — This widow’s son was dead (7.12)

• 1 Kings — That widow expresses a sense of her unworthiness on account of sin. (17.18)
• Luke — A centurion (whose “boy” Jesus had just saved from death) had just expressed a sense of his unworthiness on account of sin. (7.6)

• 1 Kings — Elijah compassionately bears her son up the stairs and asks “the Lord” why he was allowed to die. (17.13-14)
• Luke — “The Lord” feels compassion for her and touches her son’s bier, and the bearers stand still. (7.13-14)

• 1 Kings — Elijah prays to the Lord for the son’s return to life. (17.21)
• Luke — “The Lord” commands the boy to rise. (7.14)

• 1 Kings — The boy comes to life and cries out. (17.22)
• Luke — “And he who was dead sat up and began to speak” (7.15)

• 1 Kings — “And he gave him to his mother” (17.23)
• Luke — “And he gave him to his mother” (17.15)

• 1 Kings — The widow recognizes Elijah is a man of God and that “the word” he speaks is the truth. (17.24)
• Luke — The people recognize Jesus as a great prophet of God and “the word” of this truth spreads everywhere. (7.16-17)

The main tip-off here is Luke’s use of the exact same phrase, given verbatim, from the Septuagint text of this Elijah story (“and he gave him to his mother”), which along with the other parallels is a strong indication of literary borrowing (as these coincidences arising by chance are highly unlikely).  There are also several differences or inversions that are worth noting which are also unlikely to have arisen by chance, for example, when Luke changes the ultimate message the story is trying to convey.  Whereas in the OT text, the idea and recognition of sinfulness leads to a form of despair and is accompanied with the idea that the man of God (or simply God) is a troublesome visitor who comes to punish sinfulness with death, in the New Testament (NT) text, the idea of unworthiness is joined with a sense of profound faith along with a powerful reverence for the Lord.  The NT text shows a clear conviction that despite one’s unworthiness or sinfulness, the Lord comes to heal and save people from death, so rather than the OT portrayal of God passing along the sins of a mother onto her child, the NT portrayal replaces this with the concept of a God that doesn’t look at one’s unworthiness or sinfulness but rather looks at one’s faith in the Lord.  We can even see that in the OT portrayal, we hear “that the Lord is the author of evil, the one who brings harm to the widow (1 Kings 17.20), whereas in the NT, God is seen as the one who comforts and heals instead (Luke 7.7).

The second example that Carrier describes is in regard to Luke 9.51-56 and how it emulates 2 Kings 1.1-2.6, where there are many more examples of direct verbatim and some near-verbatim borrowing from the Greek Septuagint, as well as many parallels and deliberate differences and inversions.  Both stories also have the same five part structure: a plan of death and assumption into heaven (2 Kings 1.1-6, 1.15-17, and 2.1; Luke 9.51), a sending of messengers (2 Kings 1.2; Luke 9.52), those messengers being turned back (2 Kings 1.3-6; Luke 9.53), there’s mention of calling down fire from heaven upon those who rejected those messengers (2 Kings 1.7-14; Luke 9.54-55), and finally journeying from one place to another (2 Kings 2.2-6; Luke 9.56).  Even where there are a large number of other differences between the two stories, the changes Luke made aren’t incoherent at all, and they fully correspond to stable patterns of adaptation including modernization, abbreviation, emulation, and fusion, all of which are common in Luke’s imitation of OT texts.  So just as we saw in Matthew and Mark’s Gospels, Luke is also making up new stories of his own by rewriting other myths found in the OT.

The last example from Carrier’s analysis that I’m going to discuss here is the Emmaus narrative of Luke 24.  This is a tale of a resurrection appearance that isn’t found in any other Gospel, and thus is a distinctive example of Luke’s inventiveness.  In this story, Luke talks about a man named Cleopas (along with some unnamed friend or companion) who goes on a journey from Jerusalem to a nearby city called Emmaus, after hearing that the corpse of Jesus has vanished.  On the way to Emmaus, the resurrected Jesus appears to both of them (although in disguise) and explains to them the secrets of the kingdom, which in this case happens to be a spiritual rather than a physical kingdom.  Afterward, he vanishes and Cleopas realizes who the “stranger” was and goes on to proclaim to others what Jesus told him.  Interestingly enough, the name Cleopas conveniently means “tell all” (i.e. “proclaim”), which is one of several obvious markers that what we are reading is myth.  Whenever characters in the story have a name that has a meaning which is extremely relevant to the tale told (in this case Cleopas “proclaiming” to others what he was told and had seen), it is most often the case that the name was specifically chosen or invented for exactly that reason.  Additionally, the absurd nature of the story gives us more hints that this is myth, including the miraculous vanishing, Cleopas’ unrealistic conversation with a total stranger, and the patently fictional concept of a disguised divine visitor.  In fact, this looks just like the age-old “Vanishing Hitchhiker” legend, conformed to an ancient Roman setting.

The founding myth of Rome, which was at that time famously known everywhere and even celebrated in yearly passion plays, is almost identical to the story that Luke is telling us.  In the Roman version, a man named Proculus (which in archaic Latin means “Proclaimer”, just like Cleopas’ name) takes a journey from a nearby city called Alba Longa to Rome, after the Roman people just learned that the corpse of Romulus had vanished.  On the way to Rome, the resurrected Romulus appears to him (although not in disguise, but rather in a magnificent and glorious form), and Romulus explains to Proculus the secrets of the kingdom (specifically, how to conquer and rule the world), and then Romulus ascends into heaven (which Luke eventually has Jesus do as well).  After this, Proculus, realizing who he was, goes on to proclaim to others what he was told.  If in fact Luke’s intended “Emmaus” is supposed to be the “Ammaus” that was mentioned by the Jewish historian, Josephus (a town located a few miles away from Jerusalem), then in both tales the proclaimers are going from a city on a mountain to a city in a valley (located just a few miles away), in almost the same east-to-west direction.  However, some of the differences are even more telling, for example, while Proculus receives his gospel on the road to Rome, Cleopas instead receives his gospel on a road from Jerusalem.  Whereas Romulus appears in a glorious and explicitly recognizable form sharing the secrets of the visible, physical kingdom/empire on Earth, Jesus appears in disguise, sharing the secrets of the hidden, spiritual kingdom in heaven.

So Luke has reversed the importance of a few key characteristics in Rome’s founding myth, as if to devalue it and send a different message with his story.  Whereas in the Roman myth, all roads lead to Rome, in the Lukan myth, all roads lead from Jerusalem, possibly illustrating that unlike the Romans, the Christians’ resurrected hero promises a hidden kingdom originating from Jerusalem.  Whereas in the Roman myth, Romulus’ glorious appearance is what proved to Proculus that what he was being told was true, it was the powerful word of the gospel that proves to Cleopas that what the stranger said was true (as well as what proves that the stranger was in fact Jesus).  So overall this story appears to have adopted most of the elements of the Roman myth, but as is often the case with mythmaking, this re-written myth is meant to illustrate different values (in this case, some of the differences between Christian and Roman values).  It should be noted that Carrier elsewhere demonstrates in his analysis just how much the Gospels borrowed from this earlier Romulus resurrection tale, as this narrative isn’t the only instance of borrowing, and in fact we find numerous parallels between the resurrection story of Romulus and various elements not only in Luke’s Gospel, but also in Matthew’s and Mark’s.  To illustrate the similarities, recall that in the first post in this series, I mentioned how there were many authors in antiquity who wrote fictional historical biographies, including the example of Plutarch’s Life of Romulus.  In Plutarch’s biography of Romulus, he mentions a few attributes of Romulus that are remarkably parallel to the Gospels’ description of Jesus.  For example, among other things we are told of Romulus that:

• He was the son of god.
• He was born of a virgin.
• An attempt was made to kill him as a baby (and he was saved).
• He was raised by a poor family.
• He became a lowly shepherd.
• As a man he becomes loved by the people, and hailed as king.
• He is killed by the conniving elite.
• He rises from the dead.
• He appears to a friend to tell the good news to his people.
• He ascends to heaven to rule from on high.

Plutarch also mentions that as he wrote this, there were still annual public ceremonies being performed, celebrating the day Romulus ascended up to heaven.  The sacred story that was told at such ceremonies was described as such: at the end of Romulus’ life, there were rumors circulating that he had been murdered by a conspiracy of the Senate (much like how Jesus was “murdered”, in a sense, by a conspiracy of the Jewish Sanhedrin), the sun went dark (just as was the case with Jesus), and Romulus’ body vanished (as did Jesus’).  The people wanted to look for Romulus, but the Senate instructed them not to, “for he had risen to join the gods”.  Most went away in happiness, wishing for only good things from their new god, but “some doubted” (as is mentioned in all the Gospels after Mark; e.g. Matt. 28.17, Luke 24.11, John 20.24-25, though it is implied in Mark 16.8).  Soon after all this, a close friend of Romulus named Proculus, reported that he met Romulus “on the road” between Rome and some nearby town and he asked Romulus, “Why have you abandoned us?”, which Romulus then replied and said that he had been a god all along but had come down to earth and taken human form in order to establish a great kingdom, and that he now had to return to his home in heaven.  Then Romulus instructs Proculus to tell the Romans that if they are indeed virtuous, they will possess all worldly power.  Plutarch then mentions that this annual Roman ceremony of the Romulan ascent involved some people reciting the names of those who fled vanishing in fear, while some people re-enacted the scene of being afraid and fleeing (sharing many similarities to the ending of Mark’s Gospel).

Clearly, there are numerous parallels between the story of Romulus and the stories of Jesus we hear about in the Gospels.  Most importantly, this tale of Romulus is widely attested as being pre-Christian.  Although Plutarch wrote this biography sometime between 80 and 120 CE (during the time the Gospels were being written), he was recording a long-established Roman tale and custom, and this has been proven by noting that the sources Plutarch used for his fictional biography were undeniably pre-Christian (including: Cicero, Laws 1.3, Republic 2.10; Livy, From the Founding of the City 1.16-2.8; Ovid, Fasti 2.491-512 and Metamorphoses 14.805-51; and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2.63.3; which were all written prior to the Gospels).  Beyond the parallels noted here, in terms of the origins of Christianity and the various influences on its origin, it should also be noted that within several different cultures there were in fact a number of pre-Christian savior gods who took on human form and endured various trials, passions, and tribulations, with many of them even dying and later resurrecting from the dead (e.g. Osiris, Zalmoxis, Dionysus, Inanna) and sharing their victory over death with those that believed in them and/or those that took part in various mysteries (including baptisms and pseudo-cannabalistic rites similar to the Eucharist).  One last thing to note regarding these other savior gods is that even though they all were placed into history, with many even having detailed biographies written about them, we can be fairly certain that none of them actually existed.

Now getting back to the Emmaus narrative in Luke, beyond the fact that this Emmaus narrative is written in a distinctively Lukan style (employing his syntax and vocabulary), it also appears to be crafted specifically for the purpose of echoing and reinforcing Luke’s first two opening chapters.  This echoing is especially obvious when comparing Luke 2.40-50 and Luke 24.13-33, where we hear about “another Passover, another Jerusalem visit” and another “couple beginning their journey away from Jerusalem”, where they are either discovering or erroneously believing “that Jesus was not with them”.  In both sections of Luke we hear about a couple that is distraught about having lost Jesus, and both of them quickly return to Jerusalem after a climactic discovery (when Cleopas and his unnamed friend discover Jesus is present, or when Mary and Joseph realize that Jesus is absent).  Likewise, Mary and Joseph find Jesus “after three days”, just as Cleopas and his friend do (Luke 2.46 vs. Luke 24.21).  Both stories involve Jesus asking what exactly they’re doing (i.e. “Why are you looking for me” and “What are you talking about”), and both are followed by Jesus explaining some scripture to those present, telling them that “it is necessary” that he did what he did (i.e. “it’s necessary for me to be among the things of my father” and “it’s necessary for the messiah to suffer these things”).  Furthermore, both stories involve the theme of people not understanding what had happened, and of course, both feature Jesus having disappeared.  Notably neither of these stories found in Luke were ever seen in the other Gospels, thus implying that Luke either invented both stories, deliberately having them echo one another, or implying that Luke used another (likely fictional) source that no longer exists.

In summary, we can see that Luke is inventing the material in his Gospel, as illustrated by the many instances of convenient coincidences as well as other historical implausibilities, with Luke also borrowing and freely redacting material from Matthew and Mark’s Gospels (which as we’ve already seen are demonstrably myth).  Luke also appears to have borrowed and rewritten other myths from texts found in the OT (including his rewriting the Elijah-Elisha narratives found in 1 and 2 Kings).  Furthermore, Luke’s Emmaus narrative as well as his general narrative of the resurrection appears to have used the myth of Romulus as the model for it (as the other Gospels appear to have done as well).  The only sources we can identify that Luke used for the main elements of his stories are unreliable ones (in terms of having any historical merit), as they themselves were littered with numerous markers of myth and various elements that are wholly unrealistic, yet are exactly what we would expect to find in fiction.  There is also reasonably strong evidence that Luke used Josephus as well, specifically as a source for adding various elements of local color to his fictional history.  On top of this, it is also agreed by scholars that the author of Luke’s Gospel was also the author of Acts, and several scholars (including Richard Pervo) have thoroughly demonstrated that Acts is riddled with historical inaccuracies and obvious fiction (Acts looks exactly like an ancient novel), and this authorial link thus further discredits the idea that Luke is reporting history accurately in his Gospel (Here’s a related post I’ve written mentioning some of Carrier’s analysis on Acts to expand on this topic and illustrate what scholars have found in more detail).  So, as was the case with both Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels, even if there may in fact be some nuggets of historical truth buried within the fiction that Luke wrote, we are once again unable to discern what those historical truths may be (if there are any), as we simply don’t have any independent evidence or historical sources to corroborate such details.  The fourth and last post in this series will highlight some of Carrier’s findings regarding the last of the four Gospels, namely, The Gospel According to John.