Did the NT describe Faults and Flaws in the historical Jesus ?
Just like the various heroes of the Hebrew Bible are described warts and all – one of the beauties of the text imo – there are also many imperfections in Jesus left in the NT text for a careful objective reader…
Here is a list of 21 I’ve complied – I’ve had this reviewed by several PhD scholars and many others whose opinion I respect and would love to hear yours. Have a good day all !
1. In multiple places encouraged family members to turn on each other even says hate (in Greek Miseo) Luke 14:26. This anti-family stance was so strong Jesus even forbade his followers from saying goodbye/going home to bury dead parents.
2. In John 8:37-44 Jesus becomes so upset with his fellow Jews who dont believe in him (which was 99% of them) he calls them children of the devil. This verse is still used today by neo-nazis to justify their anti-Semitism.
3. Approves of and signs off on the horrors in Hebrew Bible as he worshiped the Jewish god, believes in a literal Adam, Noah etc. According to the Trinity concept he IS YHWH come in flesh so also responsible for all OT horror.
4. Says its OK to handle snakes. This may seem trivial to some but in reality the hills of Southern Appalachia are dotted with the graves of people who actually believed and acted on this verse. (note: This is part of the later long ending of Mark)
5. Speaks of an unpardonable sin. Many people down thru the ages have agonized imagining they or a loved one had done this.
6. Doesn’t make speaking out about the evils of slavery a priority.
7. Dispenses the very bad advice that one need not wash their hands or plates before eating…showing ignorance about germs and basic human hygiene practices that directly impact human disease and transmission.
8. Cast demons out letting them land in pigs where the poor creatures, intelligent sentient beings, run off a cliff.
9. Advances and propagates the idea of an eternal hell for a short finite life simply for believing the wrong things. He threatens people with this sadistic torture for not believing him.
10. Thought the new Kingdom was coming in the lifetime of those listening to him.
11. Tells people to give no thought for tomorrow.
12. Never writes anything down that we know. Quite probably, because he couldn’t write.
13. Doesn’t appear before Roman Senate or the Great Courts of China and India on “return”. Just wanders around the exact same tiny geographic area he just came from. Over a 1000 years later the “good news” still hadn’t reached the Americas.
14. Calls a Canaanite woman a dog and makes her grovel for her daughters healing.
15. His own family, including his mom Mary, thought he was crazy.
16. Repeatedly breaks his own proclamations.
17. Becomes angry a few times in Mark for various reasons and it rarely helps the situation or anyone at all.
18. Smashes up a temple with a whip. No manner of disagreement with a church’s financial practices justifies this. His own parents had bought and sacrificed two birds at this temple after he was born.
19. Stigmatizes divorce by preaching whoever marries someone who is divorced is committing adultery – therefore breaking one of the 10 commandments. Many women in religious communities have stayed in horrible abusive marriages.
20. Assigns real physical and mental health problems to demons being in a person greatly setting back medicine.
21. Has 12 disciples and doesnt include a single woman ? C’mon man !
@wintertao
Steve Clark said
One of my favorites verses in the entire NT where Jesus replies :“Why do you call me good ? No one is good except God alone.”
Mark 2:7 “Why does this man speak thus? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
The intention of both verses should be taken to be the same – why is Jesus called good and why does he blaspheme by forgiving sins if these properties should rightly be applied only to God.
First of all, we don’t know Jesus said and/or did all these things (my guess is most of them are either entirely wrong or seriously exaggerated), but if we’re talking about what the gospels tell us about him, we must remember they are four different books with four different points of view about a man probably none of their authors ever met.
I have no doubt Jesus had flaws, and in some of the gospels, notably Mark, it’s made very clear that he considered himself a sinner. But this is at odds with the growing belief among early Christians that Jesus was more than a man. You see that dichotomy increase from Mark to Matthew to Luke to John (who definitely thought Jesus was perfect, and much more than a man).
As to the snake handlers, people who are that literal are going to find something stupid to do whether they read the bible or not. I mean, are you going to blame the show Jackass on Jesus? How about the people who keep a hundred loaded guns around the house–pretty sure that’s not in any of the gospels. If hillbillies took him literally about weapons and violence, the toll taken by venomous snakes would be pretty low in comparison to the number of lives saved (in Palestine, as in most of the world, most snakes are not dangerous, and there is such a thing as poetic license, you know).
Jesus was a denizen of his own time, and not everything he believed was atypical. Nobody knew from mental illness. Even rich educated pagans believed in the supernatural.
Overall, you’re right, Steve. The original idea was that Jesus was a good man chosen by God, who was presenting a better way to live, and promising that those who took up that life would eventually end up in a good world. Live as if the Kingdom is here, and it is, for you. If you have evil impulses, your achievement is all the greater when you overcome them.
Thanks everyone for the thoughtful replies.
For a much more detailed dive into some of the items on this list (about half of them are covered as well as others not listed here) see:
The Bad Jesus
The Ethics of New Testament Ethics
by scholar Hector Avalos
a book by a PhD scholar for other scholars
its not a trade book so a bit pricey but highly recommend
In his view Jesus did not preach pure non violence but a form of deferred violence –
And very soon Jesus says the opponents of the new Kingdom will be dealt with in the most horrible violent ways imaginable
And going by that definition, has anyone ever preached ‘pure’ nonviolence? Does anyone think MLK thought KKK members were going to heaven if they didn’t repent and atone for their deeds? Gandhi, as a Hindu, believed that evil people would be reincarnated in ever-lower forms, ultimately ending up as bugs crushed heedlessly underfoot. Jesus’ belief was that there would be a brief moment of pain and horror, knowing you’d wasted the chance God had given you–then oblivion. No eternal cycle of rebirth (and no chance at a do-over, because Jesus didn’t believe in reincarnation).
Bertrand Russell, an atheist who preached utilitarian pacifism, found ways to justify violence–as in when he wrote in 1915 that it was morally justifiable to invade and colonize less developed nations because they were not making good enough use of the land. Well, his own nation had done precisely that–and how much more violence has resulted?
Jesus said not only to refrain from violence, but to try return good for evil. To love those who hate you. To not even defend yourself when attacked. That is basically as nonviolent as a human can get. But it’s a very hard standard to achieve if you believe the only result of this will be that you get the shaft, and evildoers prosper.
He realized that some people will actually return evil for good–and what is to be done with them? How can the good ever thrive in a world where the evil will have a permanent competitive advantage? Those of good will end up being corrupted by the world, wishing all kinds of evil on those they perceive (correctly or not) as immoral. I’ve seen plenty of people online who profess no belief in God who still clearly wish there was a hell for those they dislike. They cheerfully imagine homophobic TV preachers in hell, because it’s intolerable for them to imagine them enjoying all their wealth and luxury and dying peaceful deaths followed by a long sleep, after doing so much evil in the world. And as Bart has said, the idea of evil being punished in the next life didn’t originate with Jesus, and he wasn’t talking about hell, but rather about the goats being separated from the sheep, and destroyed very quickly, not tortured for all eternity.
Avalos’ reading sounds a mite shallow and self-justifying, and you know, there’s a lot of books on this subject. Give that one a miss.
And I find your answer shallow godspell
Hector Avalos is a widely respected scholar who you obviously know nothing about
You sound like mega church preacher Andy Stanley
Almost anyone could be seen to be near perfect if their life was cherry picked
This is about what’s in the NT
According to Orthodox Christian interpretation of the NT does :
Jesus threaten people with eternal torture for a short finite life ?
Yes
Did he do so often ?
Yes
Does he appear to agree with and approve of the flood story that kills 99.9% of life ?
Yes
Does he smash up a temple with a whip ?
Yes
If you want to cherry pick the NT to fashion your perfect peacenik go right ahead
I’ve read all I care to from you
And there’s more !!!
In the NT :
Does Jesus use the word hate (miseo) in the NT directed toward family members ? Does he use the exact same word (miseo) later in Luke clearly meaning literal hate not love less ?
Yes
Does he launch a viscous verbal attack on his fellow Jews calling them children of the devil ?
Yes
Steve Clark said
And I find your answer shallow godspellHector Avalos is a widely respected scholar who you obviously know nothing about
You sound like mega church preacher Andy Stanley
Almost anyone could be seen to be near perfect if their life was cherry picked
This is about what’s in the NT
According to Orthodox Christian interpretation of the NT does :
Jesus threaten people with eternal torture for a short finite life ?
Yes
Did he do so often ?
Yes
Does he appear to agree with and approve of the flood story that kills 99.9% of life ?
Yes
Does he smash up a temple with a whip ?
Yes
If you want to cherry pick the NT to fashion your perfect peacenik go right ahead
I’ve read all I care to from you
I looked him up, and that’s an interesting life story (not dissimilar to Bart’s, since he was also a fundamentalist convert who became an atheist) but I see no evidence he’s anywhere near the top of that field, and didn’t Bart just debunk his book about how Christianity began as a healthcare reform movement?
Your tantrum is not to be taken seriously, and neither are you. If you can’t stand being disagreed with, why post on the internet?
Bart’s new book is going to argue that Jesus never believed in eternal torment, or indeed in a heavenly afterlife, in the sense modern Christians do. Bart is a far more eminent scholar than Avalos, but of course nobody is infallible (unless you like them?)
Only the Gospel of John says Jesus attacked people with a whip, years before he was crucified, in the Temple Courtyard, and it says he emptied out that entire area, which was the size of several football fields. And then he returned several times, presumably to do it all again, and nobody once laid hands on him.
If you can believe that, might as well believe in the resurrection too.
Steve Clark said
To sum up in the words of Robert Ingersoll :“While there are many passages in the NT showing Christ to have been loving and tender, there are many others showing he was exactly the opposite.”
Yes, but Ingersoll himself (who was opposed to Lincoln becoming President) raised an entire regiment to fight in the American Civil War, so obviously not a pacifist, and that isn’t a critique of him, or of the Union cause he supported–as did many deeply religious men, such as Orestes Brownson, a Catholic convert, whose writings on the war were amazingly prescient, and are today held high regard. Ingersoll was mainly known as a lecturer, and made a large fortune talking about his beliefs around the country. Ingersoll the writer has dated rather badly.
He was an outspoken abolitionist, as was his father, but like many other who wanted to end slavery, he said black Americans should be removed from America, resettled elsewhere, an attitude he partly repented of later, when it became obvious this wasn’t going to happen. He opposed extramarital sex, was skeptical of female equality, and was in general a man of his time in every regard other than the existence of God.
Jesus wasn’t perfect.
Neither has anybody else been. So why be so selective in your critique? Jesus was a man of ancient times. Robert Ingersoll was a man of modern times, and frankly, he holds up a lot worse to scrutiny.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
It must be remembered that Robert Green Ingersoll was a man of his times. Although his positions were enlightened for his day, many of his ideas would strike modern readers as deeply offensive. He was a staunch abolitionist but did not believe in racial equality. Even as he argued that the law must apply equally to all men regardless of race or religion, he maintained that former slaves should be moved to a separate homeland.
His eloquent defense of women’s suffrage did not change his opinion that women were the backbone of home life. It is unlikely that Ingersoll could have imagined the working women of today.
Ingersoll believed in the capitalism of his day and felt that work was among the highest of human values. A large portion of his wealth came from his enormously successful defense of the railroad “robber barons”. This included loophole legal wrangling that deprived many farmers of their land for the good of the railroad’s rights-of-way.
Although Ingersoll was connected to some humanist and ** you do not have permission to see this link ** organizations, it is unclear how much of his wealth was spent to support these groups.
Robert Ingersoll’s eloquent defense of humanism, science, and agnosticism make him deserving of great respect in the non-religious community. But he was a human being, with all the flaws and foibles of our species, and very definitely a man of his times.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
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Robert
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