Things bible scholars won't mention
First 4 books of OT couldn't have been written by Moses
They were most likely written during Babylonian captivity
Most scholars agree that Moses most likely didn't exist
Many scholars agree that Abraham didn't exist
In the 1970s and 1980s, Thomas Thompson’s summa cum laude PhD dissertation and subsequent book, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham
Others include: Aesop, Homer, the founder of Taoism Lao-Tzu, Swiss patriot William Tell, and Ned Ludd (the leader of the “Luddites” movement) historians believe “Aesop” was invented to place a name to a growing collection of fables passed down from different oral sources; and first historical “facts,” then detailed biographies were written about him. If so, Aesop is a perfect example of a mythical figure who nonetheless became the historical author of an entire body of parables he never actually wrote, complete with wholly invented biographies of him passed off as fact.[ 52]
Many of Paul's letters were forged
Only letters agreed to be authentic are: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.
Helmut Koester reported “it is generally agreed that Paul’s letters do not permit any conclusions about the life of Jesus.”[ 217]
Over a century ago, Albert Schweitzer famously questioned why Paul seemed to continuously go out of his way to avoid quoting –indeed, even mentioning –Jesus’ teachings, even when they were specially relevant to the point he was trying to make. And many other scholars since have remarked on this odd fact.
Paul only refers to a “Peter” once (Gal. 2: 7-8), and it’s still up for debate whether this is a scribal insertion, or if Paul meant Cephas, or a different person altogether (even ancient Christian scholars were confused over this).[ 247]
Paul quite explicitly and repeatedly tells us he learned nothing of his gospel from anyone else but Jesus, through direct revelation to him: For I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Gal. 1. 11-12; see also Gal. 1: 15-17; 2: 6)
But one of the strongest reasons to doubt that Paul’s “Lord’s Supper” was a historical event is that by Paul’s time, communion rituals involving bread and a cup of wine or water had long been a staple feature of the pagan mystery faiths found throughout the Mediterranean world.[ 264] Even the name he uses for this ritual he claimed came exclusively to him is actually a term taken from the mystery cults, kuriakon deipnon, “the Lord’s Supper (or “the lordly supper”).[ 265]
Incidentally, we still have surviving written invitations to sacramental banquets held in honor of these mystery gods, such as “Pray come with me today at the table of the Kyrios Serapis”( for goddesses, it was Kuria, “Lady” -as in “Our Lady” or “Notre Dame”).[ 268]
1 Thessalonians 2.14-16 is one of the New Testament passages that is widely recognized by scholars as an interpolation. ["Hitler, Homer, Bible, Christ", Chap. 14]
1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is another passage widely recognized by scholars as an interpolation. [ibid]
After over a hundred years of scholarly debate, most other Christian scholars, some quite reluctantly,[ 275] have been convinced that Paul and the other early epistle writers are indeed unmistakably referring to supernatural spiritual entities in these verses, and not any kind of earthly political authorities. Paul Ellingworth, in A Translator’s Handbook for 1 Corinthians, reports that today a majority of scholars think that supernatural powers are intended here.[ 276]
Few critical bible scholars think that 1 Peter was written by Peter, the co-leader of the Jerusalem church who in the Gospels becomes Jesus’ no. 1 disciple.[ 299]
Poor 2 Peter has the unhappy distinction as the most widely recognized forgery in the New Testament; even scholars who are loath to admit that there are any forgeries in the scriptures offer very little debate on the matter.[ 308]
Hebrews is older than all our Gospels,[ 331] and although it isn’t a narrative of Jesus, or a collection of his sayings, in a sense it is the earliest Christian “gospel.” But it’s quite a bizarre one. Because even though this first gospel is almost entirely about Jesus, it seems wholly unaware that he ever lived on earth at all. In fact, J.C. O’Neill has made a startling discovery: Jesus does not quite seem to belong in the letter at all.[ 332] At virtually every occurrence of the name Jesus, there are textual variants and uncertainties suggesting the name has been added to an original text that lacked it. With the name removed, the text reads more naturally.
Matthew copies most of Mark verbatim.
Paul's letters are the earliest known writings. Followed by Mark, then Matthew, then Luke & Acts, then John centuries later
All have detailed the ways that Mark’s entire Gospel is a treasure trove of symbolic, rather than historical, meaning, with parts created by borrowing from the Old Testament, the Homeric epics, and the letters of Paul.
The person who wrote Luke also wrote Acts
Biblical scholars today don’t take Luke’s book of Acts seriously as genuine history. As it turns out, there are many reasons why they don’t, as we’ll discover. This is not confined to secular Biblical scholars, though of course, they have far less qualms about saying so directly.
Mark originally ended with the women finding an empty tomb, running away, and not telling anyone. So, how did this come to be written down?
It is commonly accepted that Mark 16:9-20 is either forgery or fabrication. The earliest manuscripts do not contain these verses. Some even contain others entirely!
There are at least 2 different complete copies of the 10 Commandments mentioned in the OT. They differ considerably.
There are 2 different creation stories in Genesis.
Genesis mentions both a talking snake and a talking donkey.
The snake in Genesis was not originally associated with Satan.
When Jesus's rides into Jerusalem in Matthew, he rides two animals at the same time!
In early writings, Satan was depicted as another god, not as an evil being. God and Satan had conversations and even bet against each other in games where humans were the pawns. Re. Job.
The story of Mark has a very clear and highly structured design.
The story of Matthew has a different, but also highly structured design.
There are many earlier stories about dying and rising gods before the NT. Romulus is a good example.
The act of taking a story of a God and writing a earthly life for them, was very popular. Hercules, Romulus, and others had such biographies.
The book of Daniel was most likely forged.
Muslim tradition holds that the Hadith were compiled by Muhammad’s followers shortly after the prophet’s death in 632 CE and these eyewitnesses completed the task within two decades. In reality, the evidence demonstrates this process actually began roughly a century after that time –and continued for generations.[ 81]
Even the prophet’s presumed genuine writings are vastly eclipsed by false hadith (traditional sayings attributed to the prophet), as Muslim scholars have recognized for centuries.
Even the earliest Muslim scholar to investigate the traditions, the 8th century Shu’bah ibn Al-Hajjaj, known as the ‘King of Hadith,’ declared that roughly two-thirds of them were fabrications –and modern researchers are even more skeptical.[ 82]
No two complete New Testament documents match, and between our copies there are differences in not hundreds, not thousands, but in hundreds of thousands of places.[ 245]
The New Testament sags under the weight of forgeries; the forged books outnumber the genuine ones over 3 to 1, and even those few authentic books contain signs of later tampering and editing.
Who actually wrote any of the gospels, is completely unknown. We also don't know why they wrote them, for what purpose, our who was the intended audience.
William Wrede showed that Mark's sequence of events was actually only the writer’s own invention –an artificial timeline he constructed for purely theological, not historical, reasons, with little if any relationship to any actual ministry of Jesus.[ 322]
Even today there remain two different versions of Luke-Acts –only one of which became canonized (ours is the shorter version), despite both being equally ancient, and the fact that scholars cannot agree which is the original…[ 331]
A growing consensus among Johannine specialists is that John was specifically written in response to Luke. They also agree our version is not the original version –it has been redacted and re-edited, repeatedly, by a variety of other authors. But we don’t know anything about those later editors.[ 335]
None off the three different methods of Judas' death can be reconciled.
Richard Carrier has confirmed that the name “Arimathea” is a pun in Greek: ari-(best) math-(disciple) –aia (town/ place).
Round blocking stones like the kind described in the Gospels weren’t used in the time of Jesus, but were commonly used after 70 CE.
There are two different endings to Mark. The "long ending", which we know was forged later. This has been known since 1896.
To begin with, this entire note is part of what scholars call “the Johannine Appendix,” which is composed of the tacked-on ending (or endings, actually, since there appears to be more than one) to John’s gospel: basically all of the last chapter of John; as John originally seems to have ended at 20: 30-31.
Ancient Greek schools taught their students how to create symbolically meaningful historical fiction by both imitating and innovating existing classics.Theywere actually taught toinvent narratives about famous or legendary figures, and to use this platform to construct a symbolic or moral message for their readers. They called this a chreia (pl. chreiai, from the Greek chreiodes, “useful”) a standard rhetorical device extensively taught to all students of literary Greek, like our Gospel authors.
In her book The Past as Legacy: Luke-Acts and Ancient Epic (2000), Marianne Palmer Bonz lays out a detailed and specific case that Luke and Acts are a Christian epic that follows the pattern of Vergil’s Aeneid. Her underlying thesis, that Luke-Acts is a two-part heroic narrative of a foundational sort, is widely accepted.[
It is actually the word γενόμενος, genomenos (from ginomai), meaning “to happen, become.”[ 233] It can also mean “made” –as it does in 1 Cor. 15: 45, where Paul says Adam “was made,” not born, by God; using the same word, genomenos, as he uses for Jesus. Paul uses it yet again in 1 Cor. 15: 37 when describing the new celestial bodies created by God awaiting believers in heaven (2 Cor. 5: 1-5).
There are only two Jesus references in Josephus, one is clearly and widely recognized as forgery, the other is widely recognized as most likely a margin note which was later accidentally inserted.