The Resurrection accounts are FALSE and the Gospels are NOT to be trusted - Jonathan MS Pearce

Today I spoke with author Jonathan MS Pearce again about the importance of understanding that the Resurrection accounts are false and that the Gospels are not to be trusted as history.

As we dove into his book, "The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story," we touched on many intriguing topics, including:

• The idea that the writers of the Bible are writing theology, not history.
• How Paul is our earliest source for information about Jesus, and that the evidence Paul provides is extremely poor.
• How Jesus began as an exalted prophet and slowly became legendized and mythologized with stories borrowed from other stories and mystery religions.
• The dynamic that false and even horrific ideas can seem entirely legitimate and normal to people if they are introduced early in life and reinforced consistently.
• When you expect evidence, and there is none, it is evidence that the claim is false.
• That Paul is silent about the empty tomb because it hadn't been invented yet.
• How the Gospels progressively embellish the narrative -- thus why Paul, and then later on the Gospel of Mark, have an no resurrection story.
• How Paul does not appear to have believed in a physical resurrection.
• How it is likely that Jewish authorities began arguing that Jesus' body was stolen, explaining why Matthew adds an empty tomb story.
• The fact that there are dozens of other Gospels telling very different and incompatible stories, and how church councils, over many generations, arbitrarily picked the Gospels and other books they wanted to go into the canon.
• How the characters in the New Testament don't appear to have wanted to verify extreme claims, and if the characters had been real (instead of just literary devices), they would have had little or no way to verify the claims, and the earliest audiences that read the Gospels for the first time had no way to fact check.
• Once you realize the Gospels are not historical, you realize there's no reason to hang your theology or truth claims on it anymore.
• How the wild embellishment of the Trial and Crucifixion make it easy to see that it's contrived and interpolated.
• How the Jesus character is used as a replacement for the Paschal lamb in the Gospel stories.
• How hyper-literalism keeps people from reading the Bible for what the original authors actually intended and from seeing the theological ploys and naming techniques they used.
• How Midrash, Pesher, and Mimesis techniques were used in the Gospels to retell older Old Testament and Greek and Roman epic stories to make them more valuable for the new audience.
• The dynamics around visions and hallucinations, and the strange contrast between Christians who would question people's current-day claims of visions, and yet do not question the claims of the New Testament authors in the slightest.
• The ways that resurrection mythology helps people stay in false comfort.
• And much more!

Thanks to Jonathan for his book and all the ways he helps clarify that the Gospels are mythology, not history.

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Mentioned in this video:

The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry
https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-C...

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Check out my other interviews with Jonathan Pearce:

Our discussion earlier this year on the same topic of the Resurrection:
   • HARMONIC ATHEIST - Jonathan MS Pearce: The...  

Our introductory interview:
   • Harmonic Atheist - Interview with Jonathan...  

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Check out Jonathan Pearce's interviews with Derek Lambert / MythVision:

Pt 1:
   • The Resurrection: A Critical Examination o...  

Pt 2:
   • The Resurrection: A Critical Examination o...  

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Jonathan's website
http://www.tipplingphilosopher.com/

Jonathan's blog
https://patheos.com/blogs/tippling/

Facebook
  / atipplingphilosopher  

Amazon page
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/ent...

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--Tim

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Ending music by Eyal Raz, "Friends"

   • Friends  

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