“Do the cannonical Gospels represent historical fact?” Opening statement (against)

This is my opening statement to the debate:

The canonical gospels, as found within the Christian bible contain the only stories of the life of Jesus. They give details of Jesus' conception and his ministry. There are details of both the miraculous and mundane. These stories are also claimed by my opponent to be a completely accurate recording of events. I aim to show that the evidence does not support this conclusion.

The story of Jesus as told within the canonical gospels of the Christian bible are extraordinary. They contain amazing feats performed by a man, feats which defy understanding. Christian tradition maintains that these stories are historical accounts of the life and works of a Jesus, and they provide evidence for the manifest deity of this Jesus. As the late Carl Sagan said "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". The gospels, flawed as I will show them to be, do not provide this extraordinary evidence.

So, who wrote the gospels? The names that are born by each gospel is simply the "author" with whom tradition has associated with the work. In fact, all of the works are anonymous. While one can claim that the traditional authors are the actual authors, there is no link between them.

Each of the gospels claims to be an eyewitness account, or in the case of Luke, a thoroughly researched piece of history. Given the anonymous nature of all of the works, one cannot state that any of them are eyewitness accounts. None of them claims to be eyewitness accounts. None of them is written in the first person, as you would expect from an eyewitness. None of them document the sources used to gather the information, nor the methods used to sift reality from falsity. How can we trust anonymous sources whose authorship is a tradition, whose methods are unknown.

The gospels were written some time after the supposed death and resurrection of Jesus, with the earliest being Mark (65-80CE), then Matthew (80-100CE), Luke (80-130CE) and finally the Gospel of John (90-120CE). At the earliest, the first of these anonymous texts was written ~30 years after the events it purports to describe. Not only can we not say that these documents are eyewitness accounts, but the earliest dates have the writing of the gospels separated from the events by decades.

No original copies of these manuscripts exist. The closest copies we have were written/transcribed centuries after the gospels were written and are damaged and incomplete. Neither the date the works were written, nor the date of our earliest copies increase our confidence in the contents of these documents.

The gospel of Mark, along with an unknown "Q" document of sayings were used in the creation of Matthew and Luke. This leaves us with the problem of having only 2 independent attestations for the acts and ministry of Jesus, Mark+Matthew+Luke and John.

Ignoring the claims of the supernatural and miraculous for the moment, lets look at some of the more mundane claims found within the gospels. Luke (2:1-2) says "In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)". We know this census took place in 6CE from Josephus's work. Matthew 2:1 says that "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod,". We also know King Herod died in 4BCE. This gives us at least a 10 year discrepancy between the two accounts. Matthew 2:16 states "When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi." Such an atrocity which would have constituted some several hundred children, is curiously (omit "curiously") not reported in any other document, including the other gospel accounts. In fact Luke ( 2:25-38 ) has Jesus being presented at the Temple in Jerusalem, where his status is proclaimed by others. Surely this would not have escaped Herod's supposedly murderous eye. Matthew (2:21) has Joseph & Mary flee with the baby Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod's wrath.Luke (2:41) has the family visiting the Temple in Jerusalem every year.

The gospels claim that Jesus was raised in a city called Nazareth. It is claimed that Jesus returned to the city of Nazareth where he preached at a synagogue, and where the "multitude" attempted to throw him off a cliff. This city of Nazareth is not mentioned anywhere in the entire Old Testament. The Talmud mentions 63 Galilean towns, but does not mention Nazareth. Neither does older Rabbinic literature. Paul/Saul of Tarsus does not mention Nazareth. No ancient historian or geographer mentions Nazareth until the 4th century CE. Archaeological evidence points to the site of Nazareth being a graveyard during much of the 4th century. The only evidence for human habitation at the time supports a possible small farming community. There is no evidence for a synagogue, and the nearest cliff is 4kms away. Documents which contain such a large error cannot be taken seriously as an accurate recording of history completely accurate history.

On to the extraordinary or supernatural events described in the bible. There is no record of these events external to the gospels and other Christian literature. Surely, if the gospel accounts are correct and Jesus was performing these wonderous feats, we'd expect Jesus to stand out from the multitude of other "miracle workers" who existed in 1st century Palestine. When we look at the evidence however, we find external documentation to provide as much or more evidence for these others. The ancient historian Tacitus records eyewitness testimony for miraculous healings performed by Emperor Vespasian, yet no accounts of works of Jesus. Jesus, according to the gospel accounts, caused a large disturbance in Palestine and Jerusalem, yet he barely gets a footnote in the works of the historians of the time.

Matthew on the death of Jesus (27:51-53) says "And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people." These events are so amazing, should they have occurred, that they would have been remarked upon by every historian, merchant, priest and scribe. Yet we find no other attestation to these events outside Matthew's gospel. Not even the canonical gospels record these extraordinary events.

The gospels are flawed accounts of history written for the obvious purpose of proselytizing the cult of Jesus. Acknowledging their anonymous authorship, late date of writing, lack of contemporary corroborating evidence for events described and the historical errors, some of which are pointed out above, it is clear that the gospels of the Christian New Testament cannot be taken as completely historically accurate.