Contra Christianity

Brian Holtz
First published 2004-04. Updated 2008-09-30

This is an outline of the evidence and arguments against Christianity, along with some answers to selected counter-arguments. It is being constructed from my arguments against Christianity and my related polemical writings.

0. Introduction
0.1. Christianity Defined
0.2. Arguments for Christianity
0.3. Arguments against Christianity
1. Old Testament Evidence
1.1. Sources
1.2. History
1.3. Science
1.4. Miracles
1.5. Yahweh
2. Old Testament Interpretation
2.1. Contradictions
2.2. Prophecy
2.3. Theology
2.4. Theodicy
2.5. Naturalistic Explanations

3. New Testament Evidence
3.1. Sources
3.2. History
3.3. Science
3.4. Miracles
3.5. Jesus
4. New Testament Interpretation
4.1. Contradictions
4.2. Prophecy
4.3. Theology
4.4. Theodicy
4.5. Naturalistic Explanations
5. Early Church History
6. Philosophical Issues

0. Summary

0.1. Christianity Defined

Christianity is the West Eurasian monotheistic fideist religion professing that Jesus of Nazareth (c6 BCE - c30 AD) was the divine Son of God whose sacrificial death and miraculous resurrection fulfilled the prophecies of the divinely inspired Old Testament and offers merciful salvation from humanity's deserved damnation. This definition is intentionally broad, because I seek to refute not just the inerrantism of fundamentalist Christians, but also the supernaturalism of even the most liberal Christians.

0.2. Arguments for Christianity

The best evidence for the Christian doctrine of a divine Jesus is:

Epistles c.50-60CE
- Paul's letters broadly confirm the teachings and miracles of Jesus, and specifically his resurrection [1 Cor 15].
Gospels c.60-90CE
- The veracity of the gospel accounts is supported by their mutual aggreement and their inclusion of embarrassing and vivid details.
- The gospels are unanimously persuasive that Jesus died, and report many vivid accounts of encounters with the risen Jesus.
- The gospels describe in vivid detail Jesus' miracles (many healings, three reanimations, etc.) and their acceptance throughout Judea and Galilee.
Extra-biblical evidence
- The 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus confirms the historicity of Jesus by mentioning him as the brother of the martyred James.
- Non-Christian writers like Josephus and Celsus agree that Jesus was known for his "feats" and "wonders".
- Christianity as a movement survived even in Palestine among the people who would have had the best available opportunity for refuting its claims.

0.3. Arguments against Christianity

There are at least eight insurmountable problems within the extant evidence that each independently refute the Christian doctrine of a divine Jesus:

Jesus' endorsement of the murderous immorality of Yahweh in the Torah;
Jesus' doctrine of "eternal punishment" in the "eternal fire" of Hell;
Jesus' failure to claim actual divinity;
Jesus' failed prophecy of his imminent return;
Jesus' failure to competently reveal his doctrines (concerning e.g. salvation, hell, divorce, circumcision, and diet) in his own written account or that of an eyewitness;
Jesus' failure to perform miracles the accounts of which cannot be so easily explained as faith-healing, misinterpretation, exaggeration, and embellishment;
Jesus' failure to attract significant notice (much less endorsement) in the only detailed contemporaneous history of first-century Palestine;
Jesus' failure to recruit
- anyone from his family,
- any acquaintance from before his baptism,
- a majority of Palestinian Jews, and even
- some of those who heard his words and witnessed his alleged miracles.

An omnipotent omniscience benevolent deity competently attempting a revelation would have foreseen and corrected all of these problems. The existence of any one of them implies that Christian doctrine is false.

1. Old Testament Evidence

1.1. Sources

The Torah is a patchwork of folklore, legends and myths about a tribe whose patriarch Abraham turned to monotheism because of fertility problems.

Documentary hypothesis: Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist and Priestly accounts
Deuteronomy "discovered" in the Temple 622BCE [2 Kings 22:8; 2 Chronicles 34:15]

1.2. History

In this section we test the Old Testamant against the science of history.

Flood
Abraham
Moses

1.3. Science

In this section we test the Old Testament agains the natural sciences.

Cosmology
Astronomy
Geography
Evolutionary Biology
Physiology
Anthropology

1.4. Miracles

1.5. Yahweh

The god of the Torah makes appearances, speeches, promises, and predictions; raises the dead; and takes credit for various plagues, fires, floods, astronomical events, victories, healings, and deaths. It is implausible that the Creator's works would be so confined to ancient times and so apparently constrained by ancient imaginations.

After creating billions of galaxies in Genesis, the god of the Torah is implausibly obsessed with the family of Abraham and the Jordan valley where they live. It seems implausible that an omnibenevolent, omniscient, infallible deity would entrust a few fallible men in a backward corner of the world with such paltry evidence and then demand that everyone else either hear and believe them or suffer eternal damnation.

The god of the Torah tests and torments his followers, commits mass murders of e.g. Noah's flood victims [Gen 6:7, 7:21] and the firstborn sons of Egypt [Ex 12:29], creates linguistic division for fear of an ancient construction project [Gen 11:6], and curses mankind because Adam dared to "become like one of us, knowing good and evil" [Gen 3:22]. It is implausible that the Creator of the universe would be so petty and wicked.

The god of the Torah promotes or demands extravagant worship, dietary taboos, animal sacrifice, repressive sexual codes, human mutilation, monarchy, subjugation of women, slavery, human sacrifice [Lev 27:29, Jud 11:30-39, cf. Heb 11:17, Jam 2:21], and mass murder of even infants [Gen 6:7, 7:21, Ex 11:5, 12:29, 1 Sam 15:3, cf. Heb 11:7,28].

Monolatrism

http://www.northernway.org/fathergod.html
Ex. 34:14; Ps. 81:10; Is. 44:10, Judg 16:23; Psalms 96:5; 97:7
http://www.reslight.addr.com/elohimplural.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1994/1/1poly94.html

2. Old Testament Interpretation

2.1. Contradictions

2.2 Prophecy

2.3. Theology

Hell, Angels, Satan
Creation, Eden
Heaven

2.4. Theodicy

The God of the Torah's holy scrolls is far too pedestrian in his works, parochial in his concerns, petty in his decisions, and primitive in his policies.

There are numerous persons that the Bible claims were granted direct first-person eyewitness of Yahweh or his miracles, starting with Adam and continuing beyond the Apostles. The Bible repeatedly admits that many of these eyewitnesses nevertheless retained enough free will to reject or deny the Lord: Satan, Eve, Pharaoh, the Israelites in the desert [Ex 32:8], the Pharisees [Mt 9:34, 12:13-14, Mk 3:5-6, Jn 9:16-34, esp. Jn 11:48, Lk 6:10-11, 14:4-6], the villagers of Korazin, Bethsaid, and Capernaum [Lk 10:13, Mt 11:20], various Jews [Jn 10:32, 12:37], disciples of Jesus [Jn 6:66] -- and of course Peter and Judas. Jesus is even quoted admitting that people have witnessed his miracles and still rejected him: Jn 15:24, Thus Christianity's own sacred texts incontestably refute the contention that first-hand evidence of God must "coerce" belief.

2.5. Naturalistic Explanations

3. New Testament Evidence

3.1. Sources

3.1.1. New Testament Sources

The gospels were stitched together decades after the crucifixion by non-eyewitness zealots freely borrowing from oral traditions and now-lost earlier texts.

Other gospels. At least a dozen other gospels (e.g. of Thomas and Peter) are known from whole texts, fragments, and ancient references, but were not deemed by the early Christians to be divinely inspired.
Differing manuscripts show that the gospels have undergone insertions, deletions, additions, and revisions.
Copying. Matthew and Luke are based in part on copying from Mark and in part apparently on a now-lost earlier compilation of Jesus sayings.
Anonymity, Contemporaneity. The gospels were written 35-60 years after Jesus' death, and (unlike every other intact work of classical nonfiction) no authors are identified in the earliest copies. Only about a century later did the gospels become associated with the names of their alleged authors. Writing extensively twenty years after Jesus' death, Paul gives no hint that any gospel had yet been written down.
As the historian Richard Carrier points out, "no ancient work I know of, which claims to be factual and for which we have the complete text, truly went unsigned. [..] All written manuscripts of De Bello Gallico (including the oldest, the codex Paris Latinus 5763, from the 9th century) begin incipit liber gaii caesaris belli gallici iuliani... (i.e. the "Julian Gallic War" by "Gaius Caesar"), with only minor variations. [..] Livy, Tacitus, Pausanias, and Plutarch's biographies [..] all have titles that include the author's name, in all extant manuscripts. [..] The works of Suetonius are unsigned, but this only proves my point. The first several pages of his collected lives are lost. [..] The gospels claim to be fact, and they are complete, yet they are all unsigned, making their anonymity effectively unique and therefore suspicious."
Mark was written c.65-70 by an unknown author who later church tradition said was an associate of the apostle Peter. The earliest copies of this gospel end abruptly at 16:8 before any visions of the risen Jesus, which were added later in various differing endings.
Matthew was written c.70-80 by an unknown author who later church tradition identified with the apostle Matthew, but the text heavily quotes the non-eyewitness Mark rather than providing an independent eyewitness account. Matthew changes (21:5 vs. Mk 11:7) or embellishes (2:15, 2:23) its narrative to make it fulfill Old Testament prophecies.
Luke is a second-hand [1:2] account written c.80 by a supposed companion of Paul. Luke is confused (4:23, 31, 44; 24:12) about Palestinian geography. Writing after the fall of Jerusalem, Luke in 21:8 modifies Mark 13:6 to say the end is not necessarily near.
John was written c.90 by an unknown author who is ambiguously identified (in the third person: 21:24) with the apostle John only in the final chapter, which is itself an apparent addendum.

Formation of the New Testament Canon

3.1.2. Extra-Biblical Sources

Christian apologists often claim that if false, the gospel traditions would have been refuted and discredited by skeptics in 1st-century Palestine. However, there is no indication that the Jesus movement was important enough then to merit the sort of early written debunking that would have been preserved despite skeptical apathy and Christian hostility. Except for the stolen-body rumor denied in Mat 28, the earliest records of anti-Christian skepticism date after the first century and are preserved mainly as excerpts in Christian rebuttals. Celsus (quoted by Origen) dismissed the miracles as the "tricks of jugglers" that he said are "feats performed by those who have been taught by Egyptians", and says Jesus was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier named Panthera (whose possible grave has been discovered in Germany). The Jewish slander reported by Tertullian claimed the empty tomb was faked.

The 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus is hard to count as anti-Christian, even after discounting his affirmation (unnoticed by all of his earliest Christian commentators) of the resurrection as an interpolation. Josephus may have written that Jesus "performed surprising works" and even that Jesus was believed to have been resurrected, but the (possibly interpolated) mention is only in passing. Josephus devotes more space each to John the Baptist [Antiquities 18.5.2] and James, and reported less on the founding of Christianity than on

Judas the Galilean who led a rebellion in 6 CE and was "the author of the fourth branch of Jewish philosophy";
a "charlatan" named Theudeus who c. 45 CE "persuaded a great part of the people [Acts 5:36 says 400] to take their effects with them, and follow him to the river Jordan" which he claimed he would then part, and who was captured and beheaded;
an Egyptian "prophet" c. 55 CE who "deluded" thousands of followers and led them through the wilderness to the Mount of Olives to await the miraculous fall of the walls of Jerusalem, but fled when the authorities attacked;
a "certain imposter" who c. 59 CE led some followers into the wilderness on a promise of deliverance;

Each of the men above led movements apparently smaller than the one described in the gospels and Acts as attracting many thousands of converts, and yet Josephus gives more space to each than to Jesus. Josephus also does not count the Jesus movement as one of the four sects/branches of Judaism. And of course, Josephus does not mention:

the Christmas Star that disturbed Herod and "all Jerusalem" [Mt 2:3],

Herod's massacre [Mt 2:16],

Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem [Mt 21:8-11],

the Good Friday earthquake [Mt 27:51],

the Good Friday resurrectees that "appeared to many people" in Jerusalem [Mt 27:53], or

the Good Friday 3-hour darkness "over all the land" [Mk 15:33, Lk 23:44, Mt 27:45].

These events in fact went unnoticed by every non-Christian writer, including the historians Seneca and Pliny the Elder. Contrast this with the supernova of 1006CE that was noted in China, Egypt, Iraq, Italy, Japan, and Switzerland. (Syncellus quotes a lost text of the Christian historian Julius Africanus which itself cites a lost text by Thallus: "Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse". The identification of Thallus' eclipse with "this darkness" might just be in the mind of Julius Africanus, and Thallus at any rate cannot be reliably dated as writing independently of the gospels.) The Alexandrian philosopher and commentator Philo outlived Jesus by 15 or 20 years, and as a visitor to Jerusalem should have met witnesses to the Easter miracles. His silence suggests that Jesus and his followers did not make the early impression that they should have if the gospels were true.

3.1.3. Apologetics

Certain assertions and omissions in the gospels seem to either suspiciously deny or unwittingly create embarrassing alternative explanations for the claims therein.

Self-fulfilling prophecy. The gospels repeatedly relate [Lk 2:4, Mt 2:15, 21:4, 27:9, Jn 19:23, 36] hard-to-verify (and easy-to-fabricate) details and then cite them as fulfillment of prophecy. Each of these details is in only one gospel.
Vouching. The author(s) of John protest (19:35 and 21:24) that the testimony quoted in this gospel is true, and admit (20:31) it has "been written so that you may believe". The 2nd letter of Peter claims [1:16] the gospels are not "cleverly invented stories", then warns [2:3] that "false prophets" will employ "stories they have made up".
John dies. John 21:23 (in the appended final chapter) makes an excuse for Jesus' apparent promise that John would not die before the second coming.
Empty tomb. Alone among the gospels, Matthew [27:64] alleges an order by Pilate that Jesus' tomb be guarded to prevent his disciples from secretly removing his body. Matthew 28 reports a widespread story of such a secret removal and attempts to discredit it by saying Pilate's guards were bribed. In the other gospels the first disciples to check the tomb encounter no guards.
Appearances. In order of writing, the gospels give accounts of Jesus' resurrected appearances that are increasingly elaborate. None of the alleged (and almost certainly pseudepigraphic) letters of Peter, James, Jude, and John mention an empty tomb or a physical resurrection, even in contexts [1 Pet 3:18, 1 Pet 5:1, 2 Pet 1:16] where one might expect them to. The first written account of appearances (1 Cor 15) vaguely lumps them together with post-ascension manifestations to Paul in a discussion of spiritual resurrection, making them suspect as accounts of bodily resurrection. Original Mark claims an empty tomb but describes no appearances. Matthew says simply that the two Marys and later the Eleven "saw him" but "some were dubious". Luke elaborates on both of these episodes, building the latter into an account that approaches the full Doubting Thomas story finally told in John. Thus, reports of the resurrection become more assertive as the accounts grow more removed from the actual events.
Eyewitnesses. There is no reliably first-hand testimony to the physical resurrection of Jesus. Paul does not claim to be such a witness. Original Mark contains no appearances at all. Matthew is anonymous and contains no assertions of first-hand witness by the author. The anonymous author of Luke admits he was not an eyewitness. In what appears to be an addendum, the anonymous author of John vaguely refers to "the beloved disciple" in the third person as "the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down" [21:24], and otherwise makes no assertions of his own eyewitness.

Exaggeration, etc.

Liars?

Memoritzation

3.2. History

3.2.1 Martyrs

Martyrs have been common throughout human history. If dying for a belief can show the belief is true, then the kamikazes of Japan showed that Emperor Hirohito was divine. Note that Peter and James are the only alleged resurrection witnesses who the New Testament names (John 21:18,19, Acts 12:2) as martyrs, but there is no evidence that recanting their alleged belief in physical resurrection could have saved them. They probably just died for their very sincere belief in some Easter-related experiences that they interpreted as evidence of a triumphant and vindicated Jesus. All other Christian martyrs died for what they were told about the alleged resurrection and not for what they witnessed about it.

3.2.2. Kooks and Quacks

Miracles were reported commonly in ancient times and are attested in many other religions. Christians might argue that competing miracles were wrought by demons, but those very miracles could be used by a competing religion to justify the same claim about Jesus' miracles.

Social Factors
Messiahs

3.3. Science

3.4 Miracles

In the gospels Jesus heals the sick (possession, blindness, skin disorder, bleeding, fever, paralysis, withered hand), revives the recently deceased, calms a storm, multiplies food, and walks on water. The miracles ascribed to Jesus seem not to have been very convincing [Mt 11:20, Lk 10:13, Jn 6:66, 10:32, 12:37, 15:24], and seem explainable by a combination of conventional faith healing, exaggeration, and mythologizing.

3.4.1. Nature

In the gospels Jesus calms a storm, walks on water, increases fishing yields, and multiplies food.

3.4.2. Healing

The three people Jesus allegedly reanimates [Mk 5/Lk 8; Lk 7; Jn 11] might not actually have been clinically dead, and the gospels report not a single indication supporting such a diagnosis. The oldest reanimation story [Mk 5/Lk 8] is about a girl thought to have just died but who Jesus says is merely "asleep", and who Jesus rouses after dismissing potential witnesses and before ordering secrecy about the episode. The most detailed story of reanimation is only in the latest gospel [Jn 11] and is about a man (Lazarus) mentioned in only one other gospel and there only in a parable about hypothetical reanimation [Lk 16:20-31]. Any cases of blindness, paralysis, or demonic possession cured by Jesus could have been psychogenic. Jesus apparently admits [Lk 11:24-26] that his cures for demonic possession are often not permanent, and in the synoptic gospels there is only one mention [Mt 21:14] of a cure being performed in Jerusalem. The one case of congenital blindness is recorded as disputed, and only in the latest gospel [Jn 9].

The evidence is consistent both with conventional faith-healing of conversion disorders and miraculous healing of physiological defects, and that the former explanation is more economical than the latter.

3.4.3. Easter

At his death the apostles abandoned Jesus in panic, even though they should have been expecting his resurrection if they had indeed witnessed his miracles, heard his divinity claims, and heard him say at least four times [Mk 8:31, 10:34; Mat 16:21, 17:23, 20:19; Lk 9:22, 18:33, 24:7, 24:46] that he would "rise from the dead" or be "raised to life" "on the third day".

The Empty Tomb story could have resulted from a discreet reburial or removal -- perhaps by a disciple, as in a rumor reported in Mt 28. Possible conspirators were Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene, a longtime disciple [Lk 8:2] "out of whom [Jesus] had driven seven demons" [Mk 16:9, Lk 8:2] and who (unlike any apostle) attended both the crucifixion and entombment. She was the first to visit the tomb on Easter [Mt 28:1, Jn 20:1], and the possibility of removal [Jn 20:2,14,15] was not unimaginable to her. She weepingly lingered [Jn 20:11] after the apostles left the empty tomb, and thereupon was the first [Mk 16:9, Mt 28:9, Jn 20:14] to claim seeing an appearance. Her claim was initially "not believe[d] [by the apostles] because [the women's] words seemed to them like idle tales" [Lk 24:11]. After the apostles start having the visions too, she is expunged from Paul's list [1 Cor 15] of appearances, and indeed not mentioned again in all of Acts or anywhere else in the New Testament. (In the apocryphal Gospel of Mary, Peter tells her "we know that the Savior loved you more than any other woman. Tell us the words of the Savior that you know but which we haven't heard." She answers "I saw the Lord in a vision" and relates the conversation she had with him.) Mary or some other (possibly non-conspiring) disciple could have exaggerated a feeling or vision of a morally triumphant and spiritually resurrected Jesus, a vision which other core disciples soon unconsciously induced in themselves (and elaborated on).

The appearances were suspiciously exclusive: "He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen" [Acts 10:40-41] "Why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?" [Jn 14:22]. Many of the "appearances" seem to have been unimpressive to the disciples who heard about them (and should have been expecting them) and even to those who witnessed them:

But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like idle tales. [Lk 24:11]
When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it. Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them [Mk 16:11-12]
These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either. [Mk 16:13]
When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. [Mt 28:17]
Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. [Lk 24:15-16]
she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. Thinking he was the gardener, she said ... [Jn 20:14-15]
Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. [Jn 21:4]

There need not have been a historical empty tomb for the empty tomb story to have arisen later. What could have happened is that some disciples began having epiphanies, perhaps involving the occasional dream, ecstatic vision, encounter with a stranger, case of mistaken identity, or outright hallucination. The disciples in their desperation and zeal initially interpreted these experiences as manifestations of a triumphant and vindicated (but not necessarily reanimated) Jesus, who had apparently predicted that he would in some sense return or at least that his ministry would require but survive his death. If a tomb had in fact been found empty, that doesn't necessarily imply that these early manifestations were initially interpreted as experiences of a physically reanimated corpse. The disciples might have just believed that Yahweh had “raised” Jesus' body to heaven so as to not “abandon [it] to the grave” and to “decay” [Ps 16:10, cited in Acts 13:35-37]. An empty tomb belief would greatly have helped the early epiphanic experiences be misinterpreted, exaggerated, and embellished over the subsequent half century into the reanimated corpse stories that appear only in the two latest gospels (Luke and John).

The gospels themselves give precedent for the idea of a dead person being “raised from the dead” [Mk 16:14] by inhabiting the body of some other person currently living. When some [Mk 6:14, Mk 8:28, Mt 16:14, Lk 9:19] -- including Herod [Mk 6:16, Mt 14:2] -- thought that John the Baptist had been "raised from the dead", at least a few of these people would have known that Jesus' body had (like the Easter gardener's) been animate before the Baptist's death. There is no record that anyone ever considered checking the Baptist's body (the grave of which was known his disciples [Mk 6:29, Mt 14:13]), and there is no record that anyone wondered why Jesus' neck did not show signs of John's earlier beheading.

3.4.4. Acts

3.4.5. Progression

There is an obvious and undeniable progression from the early gospels to the later gospels in

the resistance of the Baptist to the idea that Jesus would need baptizing;
the elaborateness of the resurrection appearances,
the impressiveness of the healing miracles (Lazarus; the congenitally blind man),
Jesus' confidence on the cross, and
Jesus' divinity claims.

3.4.6. Standards of Evidence

it's subjective

3.5. Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth was a faith healer and self-proclaimed divinely-special savior who tried to reform his native Jewish religion. In the gospels Jesus never claims equality with God or even mere divinity, but rather a divinely special status as "the Son of God" and the "Anointed One" (Hebrew: messiah; Greek: christos)

3.5.1. Jewishness

Jesus was a Jewish prophet who affirmed Jewish law [Mt 5:17-18; Lk 2:27,39; Jn 10:35], observed the Jewish calendar [Lk 4:16, Mt 24:20], and preached about the God of Israel [e.g. Mk 12:29] in Jewish synagogues [Mk 1:21, 1:39, 6:2; Mt 4:23, 9:35, 13:54; Lk 4:15, 4:44, 6:6, 13:10, 19:47; Jn 6:59, 18:20] exclusively for Jews [Mt 10:5, Mt 15:24]. Jesus no doubt echoed the Torah theme that "all nations" would witness the majesty of Israel's God, but his only command to actually convert and baptize "all nations" is in a post-Easter speech alleged only in one gospel [Mt 28:19] (and in an appendix later added to Mark [16:15]).

3.5.2. Discipleship

Jesus began his (apparently one-year) ministry as a follower of John the Baptist (whose embarrassing baptism of Jesus is played down or not mentioned in the later gospels).

3.5.3. Son of God

3.5.4. Son of Man

When the Jews characterized [Jn 5:18ff] the "Son of Man" title as "making himself equal with God", Jesus answered not by claiming identity but by drawing distinctions:

the Son can do nothing by himself
the Father loves the Son
the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son
the Father sent the Son
the Father has granted the Son to have life in him
the Father has given him authority to judge
I seek not to please myself but him who sent me

3.5.5. Messiah

In the earliest gospel (Mark), Jesus never calls himself Christ/Messiah, is reluctant for his special nature to be known.

3.5.6. Wisdom

3.5.7. God

In the gospels, Jesus repeatedly distinguishes himself from God:

Why do you call me good? No one is good--except God alone. [Mk 10:18, Lk 18:17, Mt 19:17]
No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. [Mk 13:32]
And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. [Lk 12:10]
Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done. [Lk 22:42-43]
Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. [Lk 23:46]
the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son [Jn 5:22]
By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. [Jn 5:30]
I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. [Jn 8:28]
I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. [Jn 8:42]
If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who is glorifying me, of whom ye say that He is your God. [Jn 8:54]
I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. [Jn 12:49]
The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work [Jn 14:10]
If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. [Jn 14:28]
I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me. [Jn 14:31]
Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. [Jn 16:25]
I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father himself loves you [Jn 16:26-27]
I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. [Jn 20:17]
As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. [Jn 20:21]

When Jesus' opponents say his assumption of authority could be interpreted as a claim of divinity, all three synoptics agree [Mk 2:10, Mt 9:6, Lk 5:24] that Jesus merely asserted "authority on earth", and none intimates that his accusers concluded he was affirming their accusation.

In the one instance in the gospels [Jn 10:33ff] in which Jesus' identity with God is explicitly discussed, Jesus cites a Psalm [82:6] in which mere men are called "gods": "If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came [..]". The referents of Jesus' word "them" are mere men, and he is saying that if those men can be called gods, so can he. Jesus then hastily retreats to his formulation of being "God's Son", adding vaguely that "the Father is in me, and I in the Father". However, 1 Jn 2:15 says this is true of anyone who acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, and Jesus used the same mutual inclusion poetry about him and his disciples [Jn 14:20]. Air is in Jesus and Jesus is in the air, but Jesus is not air. Thus Jesus retreats the only two times he is accused of claiming identity [Jn 10:33ff] or equality [Jn 5:18ff] with God. If Jesus wanted to say he was God, he would have said it. He didn't, because he was a devout Jew who knew he was not God.

In the Passion story, Jesus was mocked or accused as a faith healer, prophet, king of the Jews, Messiah, and "Son of God" [Jn 19:7] -- but never as divine or as a god. When Jesus died, onlookers are said to have exclaimed not that Jesus was God, but rather the "Son of God" [Mat 27:54].

The title of 'God' is never reliably applied to Jesus anywhere in the New Testament. (In many translations of 2 Pet 1:1 and Titus 2:13, the description "God and Saviour" is seemingly applied to Jesus, but the scholarly consensus regards these two letters as late and pseudoepigraphic.) Acts quotes [2:22, 2:36, 3:13, 10:38, 17:31] Peter and Paul describing Jesus in terms of a man appointed to an office, but never calling him God. The gospel authors never explicitly claim Jesus to be God, and the closest they come is the vague language of Jn 1: "the Word was God" and "became flesh". John quotes Thomas exclaiming [Jn 20] "my Lord and my God", but immediately states [20:31] as a creed merely "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God". The "mystery" of Jesus' nature was hardly clarified by the Apostles [e.g. Phil 2:6, Rom 1:4, Col 1:15, Col 2:9], whose epistles never claim Jesus has any kind of identity with God. (Christian scribes tried to change that; cf. the differing manuscripts for Rom 9:5, Acts 20:28, and 1 Tim 3:16.) Even the alleged angelic annunciation of Jesus to his parents ommitted [Lk 1:32, Mt 1:20, Mt 2:13, Mt 2:20] the claim that Jesus was Yahweh incarnate.

If Jesus ever unambiguously asserted that Jesus is God and God is Jesus, the gospel authors forgot to write it down. It seems odd that there is even any room at all to debate the central point of Christianity -- Jesus' revealed identity. Note that there is no room to debate what deity Jesus worshipped (Yahweh), or which people were originally chosen (the Jews), or what city was most holy (Jerusalem), or how Jesus died (crucifixion), or where Jesus ended up (heaven). Unfortunately, Jesus was never once quoted saying what Christianity so dearly wishes he would have said.

3.5.8. Frailty and Secretiveness

In the earliest gospel (Mark), Jesus never calls himself Christ/Messiah, is reluctant for his special nature to be known, and (as he does in Matthew) despairs on the cross. By contrast, in the later Luke and John, Jesus asserts he is Christ, and confidently assures a co-crucified convict of their impending ascension.

3.5.9. Family Relations

Jesus seems to have been illegitmate, and to have been known to be such in his community [Mt 1:18-24, Jn 8:41]. His only recorded words before his ministry concern his disobedience [Lk 2:48,51] at age 12 to his mother and stepfather, whom he denied [cf. Mt 23:9] by calling the Temple "my Father's house". He spurned his stepfather's trade of carpentry to take up a ministry proclaiming himself the son not of Joseph but of God. Despite angelic revelations [Lk 1:32, Mt 1:20, Mt 2:13, Mt 2:20] to Mary and Joseph, Mary's knowledge [Lk 1:34] of the virgin conception, and Mary's witness of at least one miracle [Mk 2], they (and Jesus' siblings) did not believe in him [Jn 7:5, Mt 13:57] and thought him "out of his mind" [Mk 3:21], leading Jesus to repeatedly stress [Mk 3:33, 10:29; Mt 10:37, 12:48, 19:29; Lk 11:27-28, 14:26] that one should choose God over one's biological family. Only on the day of his death do the gospels record a single friendly word [Jn 19:26] from Jesus to his family. Only after Jesus' death does the New Testament record someone from his family joining his movement. James may have been an opportunist, or may have in his grief tried to salvage some meaning from his brother's sacrifice. The only significant thing James does in the New Testament is expand the movement's donor base by ruling [Acts 15:19] that converts need not be circumcised. In sharp contrast to Jesus' brief ministry, James enjoyed three decades in the leadership of the movement before being executed in his old age in 62CE in a dispute with the Sanhedrin.

In Mark 3, Jesus' family says he is "out of his mind" and tries to extricate him from a crowd of his followers.
In Mk 3/Mt 12, Jesus dismisses the concerns of his biological family ("Who are my mother and my brothers?") because they do not "do God's will".
In Mt 13, in response to questions about his mother and siblings, Jesus said "Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor."
Jn 7:5 says of Jesus that "even his own brothers did not believe in him".
Nothing in the gospels suggests that Mary or Joseph was a believer in Jesus, despite the gospel claims that
- Mary knew (Lk 1:34) she was a virgin when Jesus was conceived;
- Mary was told (Lk 1:32) by the angel Gabriel that Jesus "the Son of the Most High" would "reign forever";
- Joseph was told (Mt 1:20) by an angel that his virgin wife would conceive a savior;
- Joseph was warned (Mt 2:13) by an angel that Herod wanted to kill the baby Jesus, who the Magi had honored as the "king of the Jews" that "Herod and all Jerusalem" believed had just been born;
- Joseph was told (Mt 2:20) by an angel that it was safe to return from Egypt (the angel seemed misinformed, as Joseph decided that Judea was still unsafe and went to Nazareth in Galilee instead).
Jesus repeatedly stressed (Mk 10:29/Mt 19:29, Lk 14:26, Mt 10:37) that one should choose God even at the expense of one's biological family.
The gospels never record a friendly word from Jesus to his biological family during his minstry.

3.5.10. Psychology

Jesus "could not do many miracles" in his hometown [Mk 6:5, Mt 13:58, Lk 4:24], and he at times was considered mad by other Jews [Jn 8:48, 10:20]. Jesus' movement seems not to have been joined in his lifetime by a single family member or prior acquaintance, but only by strangers. Jesus satisifed the diagnostic criteria of paranoid schizophrenia:

hallucinations: hearing or seeing God, Satan, demons, and angels;
delusions of grandiosity: belief that he is the salvific Christ/Messiah with miraculous powers and apocalyptic foreknowledge;
delusions of persecution: temptation by Satan; opposition by demons;
an insidious reduction in external relations and interests: nomadic asceticism; estrangement from his family.

However, Jesus was not so mentally ill as to believe he was omnipotent. The gospels say repeatedly [Jn 7:1, 8:59, 11:53-54, 12:36; Mt 12:14-15, Mk 3:6-7, Lk 13:31,33] that Jesus retreated from or avoided danger. He was secretive and evasive about his special nature [Mk 3:12, 8:30, 4:41; Lk 9:21, 10:22-24; Mt 16:20; Jn 2:24, 8:25-29, 10:24-38, 12:34], and reluctant to have his powers tested [Mk 8:12; Lk 11:29, 23:8; Mt 4:7, 12:39, 16:4; Jn 2:18]. He was likely neither liar nor lunatic, but rather a preacher, faith-healer, and apocalyptic prophet who in the months leading up to his anticipated execution came to believe he was the Jewish Messiah and even the divinely-special savior of mankind.

4. New Testament Interpretation

4.1. Contradictions

Among the many minor contradictions and inconsistencies in the gospels are several that cast significant doubt on the gospels' central message of a divine messiah foretold by the prophets.

Genealogy. Wildly contradictory genealogies for Jesus are given in Mt 1 and Lk 3, which cannot even agree on the father of Joseph.
Birthplace. Lk 2:4 and 2:39 say Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth before Jesus' birth, but Mt 2:23 says Joseph only later moved his family to "a town called Nazareth".
Birthdate. Luke says Jesus was born during [2:2] the census of Quirinius and before [1:5] the death of Herod. The census was in 6 CE, but Herod died in 4 BCE.
Chronology. John indicates Jesus' ministry lasted two or three years, while the earlier Synoptic gospels indicate one. John says Jesus cast out the money changers at the beginning of his ministry, while the Synoptics say it was right before his crucifixion.
Appearances. The poor geographer Luke places resurrection appearances only around Jerusalem [Lk 24:33,49], while the other three gospels [Mk 16:7, Mt 28:10-16, Jn 21:1] report Galilee appearances.

4.2. Prophecy

Jesus said [Mt 16:28, Lk 9:27] some "standing here" would live to see "the kingdom of God". Jesus also said [Mk 13:30, Lk 21:32, Mt 24:34] that "this generation" would not pass away before the "see[ing] the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory" as well as a "distress" "never to be equalled". Jesus' audience of course saw no such "kingdom" or "coming", and no "distress" like e.g. the Black Death or Holocaust.

No non-trivial prophecy in the Bible has both a) been documented as having been made before the predicted event and b) had its fulfillment documented independently of the Bible itself. If self-fulfilling prophecy is considered valid, then for example the Book of Mormon is a valid prophetic text.

4.3. Theology

4.3.1. Atonement

4.3.2. Trinity

The Christian doctrine of the "trinity", attempting to reconcile Jewish monotheism with Jesus' self-revelation, holds that Jesus 1) is both fully human and fully divine, and 2) is God (in a different "person"). The former is a contradiction, and the latter has no scriptural basis. The doublethink of the "trinity" is not found in the Bible, but instead was invented to reconcile Jewish monotheism with Jesus' idiosyncratic Sonship claims.

Just as Jesus failed to leave clear teachings about salvation, hell, divorce, circumcision, and diet, he also did not effect a competent revelation of who precisely he was. Depending on e.g. various 4th-century Roman emperors, there waxed and waned such christological heresies as Ebionism, Docetism, Adoptionism, Dynamic Monarchianism, Sabellianism, Arianism, Marcionism, Apollonarianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, and Monothelitism.

Jewish

4.4. Theodicy

4.4.1. Morality

In the gospels Jesus damns entire towns [Mt 11:23], compares non-Israelites to dogs [Mt 15:26], and affirms even "the smallest letter" [Mt 5:18, Jn 10:35] of the Torah. In the gospels Jesus affirms the Torah [Mt 5:18, Jn 10:35], endorses the murderous flood of Noah [Mt 24:38, Lk 17:27], and promises sinners not a thousand years' unrelenting torture, nor a million or a billion, but an eternity of excruciating torture by fire [Mk 9:43, Mt 18:8, 25:41, 25:46]. It is implausible that a competent and benevolent deity would in his revelation allow the endorsement of such heinous crimes and evil policies.

4.4.2. Necessary Evidence

A divine Jesus could trivially create new miracles to unambiguously vouch for some modern school of Christianity. For the gospel accounts of Jesus to be believable, two kinds of evidence would have to surface:

Textual discoveries that Jesus did not believe in the literal truth of the entire Old Testament, and that the unjust Christian notion of eternal damnation is a misunderstanding.
Compelling corroboration of gospel miracles through physical artifacts (e.g. the Shroud of Turin) or historical records (e.g. of the three-hour darkness on Good Friday).

4.4.3. Divine Shyness

The gospel story of a secretive danger-avoiding family-resenting faith-healing slavery-tolerating unpublished schizophrenic bastard carpenter in the rural outback of a peripheral province of a pre-scientific pre-industrial regional empire seems an unlikely self-revelation for the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Creator of the universe:

Why such ambiguous and picayune miracles? Why not raise a new mountain in the desert, or install a new star in the heavens?
Why such vague and equivocal claims of divinity?
Why after his resurrection appear so ambiguously, so briefly, and to only his disciples? Why not -- after perhaps a more convincing execution, e.g. beheading -- march back to Pilate and Herod and ascend in front of Jerusalem assembled?
Why not write his revelation himself, and ensure that it survive in perfect copies? Why not include in it indisputible authentication, e.g. by predicting a fundamental physical constant?

Some Christian apologists claim that such evidence would be too compelling, in that it would deny humans the freedom to deny God's existence, and thus infringe on their free will. This desperate and defensive argument is contradicted by Christian principles and by Christian scripture. These Christians claim that the hyper-ultimatum of infinite punishment and infinite reward does not infringe human free will. At the same time, they claim that convincing evidence that God exists would infinge free will -- while other Christians claim that God's existence has multiple independent proofs via history, biology, cosmology, ethics, and even ontology.

There are numerous persons that the Bible claims were granted direct first-person eyewitness of Yahweh or his miracles, starting with Adam and continuing beyond the Apostles. The Bible repeatedly admits that many of these eyewitnesses nevertheless retained enough free will to reject or deny the Lord: Satan, Eve, Pharaoh, the Israelites in the desert [Ex 32:8], the Pharisees [Mt 9:34, 12:13-14, Mk 3:5-6, Jn 9:16-34, esp. Jn 11:48, Lk 6:10-11, 14:4-6], the villagers of Korazin, Bethsaid, and Capernaum [Lk 10:13, Mt 11:20], various Jews [Jn 10:32, 12:37], disciples of Jesus [Jn 6:66] -- and of course Peter and Judas. Jesus is even quoted admitting that people have witnessed his miracles and still rejected him: Jn 15:24, Thus Christianity's own sacred texts incontestably refute the contention that first-hand evidence of God must "force belief".

4.4.4. Salvific Particularism

4.5. Naturalistic Explanations

The evidence about Jesus is less likely to have resulted from divinity than from misinterpretation, exaggeration, rationalization, delusion, deception, and mythologizing.

5. Post-Testamental Considerations

5.1. Rise of Christianity

There is not a single instance in all of Acts in which any missionary of Jesus invokes or invites verification of Jesus' divinity among anyone other than Jesus' original followers. Indeed, there is no evidence in Acts of verification ever being cited or attempted for any claim of a remote supernatural event. Instead:

In the one instance in Acts [10:37-41] where a missionary (Peter) vaguely and rhetorically told listeners (in Caesarea) that they "know what has happened throughout Judea", he immediately apologizes that the resurrected Jesus "was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen".
In Antioch, Paul admits [13:27] the people of Jerusalem "did not recognize Jesus", and seeks to excuse their disbelief by making [13:31] the qualification that "for many days [the resurrected Jesus] was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem".
In Berea (Greece), Paul's audience does not try to verify his story but merely [17:11] "examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."
In Achaia (Greece), the missionary Apollos "vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ." [18:28]
When Festus describes [25:19] the case of Paul as being "about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive", Festus says [25:20] he "was at a loss how to investigate such matters", even though the events were less than 20 years and 20 miles removed.
Before Agrippa, Paul recounts his persecutions and subsequent missions, adding [26:26] "I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner". However, even though Agrippa recognizes [26:28] that Paul is trying to convert him, Paul does not cite any vindicating evidence of the Resurrection, but instead admits [26:8] that his listeners "consider it incredible that God raises the dead".