The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine

[_Maksutov]

The writer of the book of Mark says nothing about any meeting in
Galilee; but he says, chap. xvi, ver. 12, that Christ, after his
resurrection, appeared in another form to two of them as they walked
into the country, and that these two told it to the residue, who would
not believe them. Luke also tells a story in which he keeps Christ
employed the whole day of this pretended resurrection, until the
evening, and which totally invalidates the account of going to the
mountain in Galilee. He says that two of them, without saying which
two, went that same day to a village call Emmaus, three score furlongs
(seven miles and a half) from Jerusalem, and that Christ, in disguise,
went with them, and stayed with them unto the evening, and supped
with them, and then vanished out of their sight, and re-appeared that
same evening at the meeting of the eleven in Jerusalem.

This is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this
pretended re-appearance of Christ is stated; the only point in which
the writers agree, is the skulking privacy of that re-appearance;
for whether it was in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or a
shut-up house in Jerusalem, it was still skulking. To what cause,
then, are we to assign this skulking? On the one hand it is directly
repugnant to the supposed or pretended end- that of convincing the
world that Christ had risen; and on the other hand, to have asserted
the publicity of it would have exposed the writers of those books to
public detection, and, therefore, they have been under the necessity
of making it a private affair.

As to the account of Christ being seen by more than five hundred
at once, it is Paul only who says it, and not the five hundred who say
it for themselves. It is, therefore, the testimony of but one man, and
that, too, of a man who did not, according to the same account,
believe a word of the matter himself at the time it is said to have
happened. His evidence, supposing him to have been the writer of the
15th chapter of Corinthians, where this account is given, is like that
of a man who comes into a court of Justice to swear that what he had
sworn before is false. A man may often see reason, and he has, too,
always the right of changing his opinion; but this liberty does not
extend to matters of fact.

I now come to the last scene, that of the ascension into heaven.
Here all fear of the Jews, and of everything else, must necessarily
have been out of the question: it was that which, if true, was to seal
the whole, and upon which the reality of the future mission of the
disciples was to rest for proof. Words, whether declarations or
promises, that passed in private, either in the recess of a mountain
in Galilee or in a shut-up house in Jerusalem, even supposing them
to have been spoken, could not be evidence in public; it was therefore
necessary that this last scene should preclude the possibility of
denial and dispute, and that it should be, as I have stated in the
former part of the Age of Reason, as public and as visible as the
sun at noonday; at least it ought to have been as public as the
crucifixion is reported to have been. But to come to the point.

In the first place, the writer of the book of Matthew does not say
a syllable about it; neither does the writer of the book of John. This
being the case, it is not possible to suppose that those writers,
who effect to be even minute in other matters, would have been
silent upon this, had it been true? The writer of the book of Mark
passes it off in a careless, slovenly manner, with a single dash of
the pen, as if he was tired of romancing or ashamed of the story. So
also does the writer of Luke. And even between these two, there is not
an apparent agreement as to the place where his final parting is
said to have been.

[_LittleNipper]

Your problem is that you hold to a couple of sightings of the resurrected Christ, when in fact there were many different sightings. Also, the Gospel books are not repeating each other --- they have individual messages that the person studying the Bible is maneuvered by the Holy Spirit to put together and combine. This is even how a murder investigation works. The witness are not in error, they just observe various events from different angles or record a particular eyewitness account that fits the theme of the message the Holy Spirit is urging them to record.

[Guest]

Your problem is that you hold to a couple of sightings of the resurrected Christ, when in fact there were many different sightings. Also, the Gospel books are not repeating each other --- they have individual messages that the person studying the Bible is maneuvered by the Holy Spirit to put together and combine. This is even how a murder investigation works. The witness are not in error, they just observe various events from different angles or record a particular eyewitness account that fits the theme of the message the Holy Spirit is urging them to record.

Josh McDowell doesn't impress people outside of fundamentalist Christianity. Sorry. You're making all kinds of assertions without evidence. You don't know who wrote the Gospels or when and they obviously contradict each other on many points. You rely on Paul who never met Jesus and who invented him as the Christ.

Besides, you have bigger problems:

[_Maksutov]

The book of Mark says that Christ appeared to the eleven as they
sat at meat, alluding to the meeting of the eleven at Jerusalem; he
then states the conversation that he says passed at that meeting;
and immediately after says (as a school-boy would finish a dull story)
"So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up
into heaven and sat on the right hand of God." But the writer of Luke
says, that the ascension was from Bethany; that he [Christ] led them
out as far as Bethany, and was parted from them, and was carried up
into heaven. So also was Mahomet; and as to Moses, the apostle Jude
says, ver. 9 "that Michael and the devil disputed about his body."
While we believe such fables as these, or either of them, we believe
unworthily of the Almighty.

I have now gone through the examination of the four books
ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; and when it is considered
that the whole space of time from the crucifixion to what is called the
ascension is but a few days, apparently not more than three or four,
and that all the circumstances are said to have happened nearly
about the same spot, Jerusalem, it is, I believe, impossible to find
in any story upon record so many and such glaring absurdities,
contradictions and falsehoods as are in those books. They are more
numerous and striking than I had any expectation of finding when I
began this examination, and far more so than I had any idea of when
I wrote the former part of the Age of Reason. I had then neither Bible
nor Testament to refer to, nor could I procure any. My own
situation, even as to existence, was becoming every day more
precarious, and as I was willing to leave something behind me on the
subject, I was obliged to be quick and concise. The quotations I
then made were from memory only, but they are correct; and the
opinions I have advanced in that work are the effect of the most clear
and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are
impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus
Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath
of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous
inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty;
that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean
now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character,
or the practice of what are called moral virtues- and that it was
upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all
my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now- and so help me God.

[_LittleNipper]

Your problem is that you hold to a couple of sightings of the resurrected Christ, when in fact there were many different sightings. Also, the Gospel books are not repeating each other --- they have individual messages that the person studying the Bible is maneuvered by the Holy Spirit to put together and combine. This is even how a murder investigation works. The witness are not in error, they just observe various events from different angles or record a particular eyewitness account that fits the theme of the message the Holy Spirit is urging them to record.

Josh McDowell doesn't impress people outside of fundamentalist Christianity. Sorry. You're making all kinds of assertions without evidence. You don't know who wrote the Gospels or when and they obviously contradict each other on many points. You rely on Paul who never met Jesus and who invented him as the Christ.

Besides, you have bigger problems:

Jesus didn't impress everyone either. You make assertion too. Paul met Jesus on the Road to Damascus. A devout Jew who chucks it all to embrace Christianity and those he formerly killed ---- invented Christ?

[_Maksutov]

Josh McDowell doesn't impress people outside of fundamentalist Christianity. Sorry. You're making all kinds of assertions without evidence. You don't know who wrote the Gospels or when and they obviously contradict each other on many points. You rely on Paul who never met Jesus and who invented him as the Christ.

Besides, you have bigger problems:

Jesus didn't impress everyone either. You make assertion too. Paul met Jesus on the Road to Damascus. A devout Jew who chucks it all to embrace Christianity and those he formerly killed ---- invented Christ?

He never met him. So he imagined him.

There were many Christianities, not all so heavily influenced by Paul. Those with the political and military clout survived. But there was a cloud of concepts and stories, still is and always will be. Out of this cloud you can pick out anything you want and call it your belief, or Christianity, or whatever. And everyone else gets to do the same thing. Isn't it great?

[_Maksutov]

But to return to the subject. Though it is impossible, at this
distance of time, to ascertain as a fact who were the writers of those
four books (and this alone is sufficient to hold them in doubt, and
where we doubt we do not believe), it is not difficult to ascertain
negatively that they were not written by the persons to whom they
are ascribed. The contradictions in those books demonstrate two
things:

First, that the writers could not have been eye-witnesses and
ear-witnesses of the matters they relate, or they would have related
them without those contradictions; and consequently, that the books
have not been written by the persons called apostles, who are
supposed to have been witnesses of this kind.

Secondly, that the writers, whoever they were, have not acted in
concerted imposition; but each writer separately and individually
for himself, and without the knowledge of the other.

The same evidence that applies to prove the one, applies equally
to prove both cases; that is, that the books were not written by the
men called apostles, and also that they are not a concerted
imposition. As to inspiration, it is altogether out of the question;
we may as well attempt to unite truth and falsehood, as inspiration
and contradiction.

[_Maksutov]

If four men are eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses to a scene, they
will, without any concert between them, agree as to time and place
when and where that scene happened. Their individual knowledge of
the thing, each one knowing it for himself, renders concert totally
unnecessary; the one will not say it was in a mountain in the country,
and the other at a house in town: the one will not say it was at
sunrise, and the other that it was dark. For in whatever place it was,
at whatever time it was, they know it equally alike.

And, on the other hand, if four men concert a story, they will
make their separate relations of that story agree and corroborate with
each other to support the whole. That concert supplies the want of
fact in the one case, as the knowledge of the fact supersedes, in
the other case, the necessity of a concert. The same contradictions,
therefore, that prove that there has been no concert, prove also
that the reporters had no knowledge of the fact (or rather of that
which they relate as a fact), and detect also the falsehood of their
reports. Those books, therefore, have neither been written by the
men called apostles, nor by impostors in concert. How then have they
been written?

I am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of
that which is called willful lying, or lying originally, except in the
case of men setting up to be prophets, as in the Old Testament; for
prophesying is lying professionally. In almost all other cases, it
is not difficult to discover the progress by which even simple
supposition, with the aid of credulity, will, in time, grow into a
lie, and at last be told as a fact; and whenever we can find a
charitable reason for a thing of this kind, we ought not to indulge
a severe one.

[_Maksutov]

The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story
of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in
vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of
the assassination of Julius Caesar, not many years before; and they
generally have their origin in violent deaths, or in the execution
of innocent persons. In cases of this kind, compassion lends its aid
and benevolently stretches the story. It goes on a little and a little
further till it becomes a most certain truth. Once start a ghost and
credulity fills up the history of its life, and assigns the cause of
its appearance! one tells it one way, another another way, till
there are as many stories about the ghost and about the proprietor
of the ghost, as there are about Jesus Christ in these four books.

The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that
strange mixture of the natural and impossible that distinguishes
legendary tale from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in
and going out when the doors were shut, and of vanishing out of
sight and appearing again, as one would conceive of an unsubstantial
vision; then again he is hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his
supper. But as those who tell stories of this kind never provide for
all the cases, so it is here; they have told us that when he arose
he left his grave clothes behind him; but they have forgotten to
provide other clothes for him to appear in afterward, or to tell us
what he did with them when he ascended- whether he stripped all off,
or went up clothes and all. In the case of Elijah, they have been
careful enough to make him throw down his mantle; how it happened
not to be burned in the chariot of fire they also have not told us. But
as imagination supplies all deficiencies of this kind, we may
suppose, if we please, that it was made of salamander's wool.

Those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history
may suppose that the book called the New Testament has existed ever
since the time of Jesus Christ, as they suppose that the books
ascribed to Moses have existed ever since the time of Moses. But the
fact is historically otherwise. There was no such book as the New
Testament till more than three hundred years after the time that
Christ is said to have lived.

[_Maksutov]

At what time the books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
began to appear is altogether a matter of uncertainty. There is not
the least shadow of evidence of who the persons were that wrote
them, nor at what time they were written; and they might as well
have been called by the names of any of the other supposed apostles,
as by the names they are now called. The originals are not in the
possession of any Christian Church existing, any more than the two
tables of stone written on, they pretend, by the finger of God, upon
Mount Sinai, and given to Moses, are in the possession of the Jews.
And even if they were, there is no possibility of proving the
handwriting in either case. At the time those books were written there
was no printing, and consequently there could be no publication,
otherwise than by written copies, which any man might make or alter
at pleasure, and call them originals.* Can we suppose it is consistent
with the wisdom of the Almighty, to commit himself and his will to
man upon such precarious means as these, or that it is consistent we
should pin our faith upon such uncertainties? We cannot make, nor
alter, nor even imitate so much as one blade of grass that he has
made, and yet we can make or alter words of God as easily as words
of man.

*The former part of the “The Age of Reason” has not been
published in two years, and there is already an expression in it that is
not mine. The expression is, The book of Luke was carried by a
majority of one voice only. It may be true, but it is not I that have said
it. Some person, who might know of the circumstance, has added it in
a note at the bottom of the page of some of the editions, printed
either in England or in America; and the printers, after that, have
placed it into the body of the work, and made me the author of it. If
this has happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding
the aid of printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually,
what may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when
there was no printing, and when any man who could write could make
a written copy, and call it an original by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John?

About three hundred and fifty years after the time that Christ
is said to have lived, several writings of the kind I am speaking of
were scattered in the hands of diverse individuals; and as the
church had began to form itself into a hierarchy, or church
government, with temporal powers, it set itself about collecting
them into a code, as we now see them, called The New Testament.
They decided by vote, as I have before said in the former part of “The
Age of Reason,” which of those writings, out of the collection they had
made, should be the word of God, and which should not. The Rabbins
of the Jews had decided, by vote, upon the books of the Bible before.