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The Books of the New Testament that Jesus Wrote
It seems reasonable that a study of Jesus and his teachings ought to start with the books that Jesus himself wrote. After all Christianity claims to be founded on the teachings of Jesus and he was certainly a very intelligent and literate man. At the tender age of twelve he completely startled the most respected scholars in the land with his wisdom and knowledge of the Jewish scriptures (Luke 2:46-47). He stooped and wrote something on the ground before the accusers of the woman taken in adultery (John 8:6) so he was certainly capable of writing. Jesus was apparently well read; he quoted from 24 different Old Testament books during his recorded ministry. He went to the Temple and read from the Old Testament (Luke 4:16).
Yet, as strange as it may seem, Jesus never wrote a single word that is found in the New Testament! Here we have a bizarre doctrine that claims the Bible, including the New Testament was literally breathed out of the mouth of God, and yet Jesus (claimed by this very same group to be God himself here on earth in the flesh walking among us) and yet he didn’t contribute anything at all – not a single written word! That is a question that must be answered if you are going to claim that God’s thoughts can be captured on the pages of a book.
The obvious truth is that Jesus didn’t feel that anything else needed to be written! If he had meant for there to be a New Testament, surely he would have written it himself. In fact Jesus was all about erasing a lot of the words that had already been written and caused division throughout the ages. His sermon on the mount repeatedly has Jesus saying, “You have heard it said by them of old… but I say to you.” (See the Sermon on Mount, Matthew chapters 5, 6, & 7.) Carrying this idea further, if Jesus had meant for a new world religion to grow out of his simple teaching, he would have begun that religion himself complete with the doctrines to be taught. There is not a shred of evidence that Jesus ever intended to do more than form a new Jewish revival sect which would bring Jews to a more personal and less ritualistic way of experiencing God. Jesus was born a Jew, worshipped weekly in synagogue as a Jew, died a Jew, and was buried as a Jew. The twelve Apostles that followed, inasmuch as we can determine, also lived as Jews, worshiped as Jews, followed Jewish customs, died and were buried as Jews. The one exception might be Paul of Tarsus, but I do not accept him as an Apostle, and apparently neither did the other Apostles. He was never referred to as an Apostle by a single original Apostle. He called himself an Apostle and his biographer, Luke, a gentile convert of his, referred to him as an Apostle, but Paul was prone to brag. (Refer to 2 Corinthians 11:16-18 and Galatians 2:9-11) None of the Gospel writers expected anyone to ever accept their words as the literal words of God. Each one would no doubt gasp in horror if he knew that millions of people had accepted this assumption that slowly entered the tradition of the Church over many years. Only two of the writers of the four Gospels were even eyewitnesses to any of the ministry of Jesus; John and Matthew. But the authorship of John the Apostle has been argued since the second century. Some early Christians believed it was written by Papias; others Cerinthus; and still others John the Presbyter (not John the Apostle). The Gospel of John is drastically different from the Synoptic Gospels in many ways, and, in truth, there are few unbiased historians who hold John the Apostle as the original author. Nowhere in the Gospel of John does it reveal the author’s name, and the book was titled “The Gospel of John” (after the Apostle) merely by consensus of opinion several years after it was written. If Matthew and John were the actual authors of the books named for them as tradition tells us, we must accept the fact that John wrote his Gospel over 50 years after the actual events. The fourth Gospel omits many important events one would expect in an eyewitness account. John differs from the other gospel writers in many ways. How is the Gospel
of John Different?
Source of Table unknown By the time John wrote his gospel, Jerusalem had been destroyed for over twenty years, and Paul’s interpretation of Christianity was the majority opinion in the Christian communities of the world. When Jerusalem was destroyed, John moved to Ephesus, a church founded by Paul who had personally placed his own disciple Timothy in charge as minister. (Acts 18:19-28; 19:1, 17-20; 20:16) Paul’s theological influence on John is obvious and undisputed by most unbiased scholars. His portrait of Jesus is Pauline throughout. The dialogs he reports are curiously different and reflect an obvious bias toward early Pauline theology. This is even admitted in the introduction to the Gospel of John in the Catholic Jerusalem Bible. In the Synoptic Gospels, the teachings of Jesus are mostly parables while John has Jesus delivering lengthy discourses. Both Mark and Luke wrote Gospel accounts of the ministry of Jesus but neither ever heard Jesus teach as far as we can tell. More precisely, Luke plainly did not intend for his Gospel to receive wide circulation because it was a personal letter to a Greek acquaintance of his. “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them to us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you in order most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou has been instructed.” (Luke 1:1-4). [Underline emphasis mine.] And finally, Luke was an apologist for, and biographer of Paul and his teachings and his account would have no doubt reflected this fact. Luke would have naturally included in his work the teachings of Jesus as interpreted and taught to him by Paul, his teacher and companion, since he had never heard Jesus preach as far as we can determine. All the Gospels were written several years after the circulation of most of Paul’s letters, which had redefined the understanding of Jesus’ teachings of reformed Judaism according to the original Apostles into a more universal and inclusive message. In the years when the four Gospels were written there were many gospel accounts circulating. None, including the four in the New Testament, were considered sacred or were called the word of God. Paul’s widely circulated letters had set the groundwork for the way early Christianity would eventually be perceived. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD made the transition inevitable. Through the years, copyists of all the various gospel accounts made corrections and amplifications to the originals that they felt clarified the text or added additional information (i.e. Mark 16:9-20, John 21). The overwhelming acceptance of Paul’s interpretations by the Orthodox Christians makes it highly likely that his explanation of Jesus and his (Paul’s) teachings would have been inserted as copyists duplicated the originals.
If we use Matthew as a reference for the teachings of Jesus, since it is the very first book in the New Testament, then Christianity is definitely not founded on the message of Jesus. It is founded on the message of Paul of Tarsus and Paul never heard the message of Jesus. Furthermore, Paul did not expand or illuminate the message of Jesus as recorded in Matthew, he outright refuted it. The Gospel that Jesus taught in Matthew and the Gospel Paul preached in his many letters were diametrically opposed to one another. I don’t see how anyone who sincerely wants to follow the teachings of Jesus could follow any Christian denomination today because they all accept the teachings of Paul of Tarsus instead of Jesus of Nazareth in all matters of belief and as the authority and chief spokesperson for Christianity.
Jesus apparently found the cumbersome ritualistic religion of his day dead and unable to bring people into fellowship with God. His chief complaint with the Scribes and Pharisees seems to have been their smugness and lack of compassion for the poor and those hungry for, yet ignorant of God. He saw the religious leaders as corrupt men who knew the letter of the law by heart but had completely missed the love, compassion, and mercy that he believed the heavenly Father had for his children. He delivered the most scathing discourse of his short career in Matthew 23. In no place in the New Testament does Jesus make his contempt for organized, ritualistic religion and its callous hierarchy more evident than in this pointed discourse. He begins by accusing the highest authorities in Judaism – the men who sit in Moses seat – of piling heavy burdens of senseless commandments upon the shoulders of the common folk while these heartless leaders were not willing to lift so much as a finger to help them. The only place where Jesus completely lost his temper and resorted to physical violence was when he drove the moneychangers from the Temple for the financial exploitation of those who had traveled far to worship God in the Temple. Jesus was the supreme advocate for the “little guy” and it was clear that he considered the common man (including himself) to be a child of God. In the end he clarified the way to God into a Single Way, universal and compassionate. His chief goal seems to have been to reinforce the words of Micah who had reduced the sum total of God’s requirement for man in the Old Testament into one simple phrase. “…what doth the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
When Jesus met people of other faiths, like the Roman Centurion in Matthew 8:5-10, he did not try to convert them to Judaism because he apparently considered the path to God to be universal. In fact, he commended the Roman Centurion for his faith and said he had not seen such profound faith among the Jews. His universal approach to who could be called the children of God is summed up in Matthew 8:11 where he says that many will come from the east and the west (other religious faiths) and enter the kingdom of heaven, while many of the Jews who rested on their religious and cultural affiliation as the so-called chosen people of God, would be cast into darkness.
Jesus taught a Single Way
of love and service to others that is unconcerned with what you believe
and very much concerned with what you do. There is a wonderful
parable in Matthew; “But what do you think? A man had two sons, and
he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go, work today in my
vineyard.’ He answered and said, ‘I will not,’ but
afterward he regretted it and went. Then he came to the second and said
likewise. And he answered and said, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not
go. Which of the two did the will of his father?”
The way Jesus defined righteousness was directly what you do for others in loving service rather than any creed or systematic theology you believe. Notice that Jesus goes so far as to imply that the only acceptable way for anyone to serve God is to serve others. The implication can also be drawn that the only way to love God is to love others. Consider this parable about who will and who will not be accepted as righteous in the last day. “All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’ “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’ “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ ”Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’” (Matthew 25:31-45 New King James Version). Now consider this, no one in this text was condemned for drinking too much or having an illicit sexual liaison, or for being gay. The only action that was condemned was inaction when it came to loving service to others. The only way that you can serve God is to serve that bit of God in others. The grand God of the cosmos doesn’t need your service. Your neighbor does. Every ounce of energy you spend trying to find or understand God is an ounce of energy wasted that could have been used in serving God by serving those in need. In the modern version of Christianity, it doesn’t make any difference how righteous you are in loving and serving others; you must first and foremost adhere to and defend some lifeless creed. Paul would later claim that it is not by our works of righteousness that we are saved (Titus 3:5) and in Romans 5:1 he said, “Therefore being justified by faith (what you believe)…”, but as you can see from the words of Jesus above, what we do – not what we believe - is exactly what saves us.
Jesus introduced his new teaching with a profoundly different way of understanding God and his love on earth. He takes us from the harsh, condemning God of the Scribes and Pharisees to the compassionate and personal God of love. His message was universal and simple, yet profound. In his very first public sermon, he introduced his listeners to a God who cared for the individual.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness,
Evangelical protestants make a great deal out of the “plan of salvation.” The “plan of salvation” that Jesus taught is far different than the one that Paul taught. Jesus’ plan did not include a single thing that you must believe. Every bit of it is something that can be comprehended in the spirit of anyone from any world religion and followed in any culture or in any place in the entire world. In other words, it is universal and simple. Do you want God to forgive you for your sins? Jesus said: "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” "Judge not, that you be
not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with
the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at
the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own
eye? "Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name?' And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness!'”
He introduced a new intimacy with God and called God his Father and taught that God was equally our Father. Jesus’ referring to himself an anointed “son of God” was a point of constant contention with his religious adversaries. The word “son” is capitalized in the Bible when it refers to Jesus as the “son of God,” but no such capitalization exists in the original text. The words of Jesus are full of this intimacy of Father/child love. “But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. "Therefore do not worry, saying, "What shall we eat?' or "What shall we drink?' or "What shall we wear?' For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.” "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”
He taught an approach to God that did not include any ritual or sacraments or the need for any intermediating Priest. Protestant Christianity (which is not based on the teachings of Jesus) would later teach that Jesus is our mediator to the Father (foreign to the early message of Jesus). Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy (which are equally not based on the teachings of Jesus) would later teach that a human priest is necessary as a mediator between God and man. This is clearly not what Jesus taught. He taught an informal way of personal conversational prayer open to anyone:
“Our Father in heaven, (All quotations above from New King James Version)
“You must be born again!” is the battle cry of Christianity, and especially protestant Christianity. It is quoted frequently and serves as the foundation for all protestant salvation theology. This line is taken directly from the third chapter of John. In this scene, a prominent and powerful member of the Jewish ruling council, Nicodemus, has slipped away unnoticed at night to have a personal and sincere (but highly secretive) theological conversation with Jesus. During the course of this conversation Jesus says the above words to Nicodemus. Now the only way that you or I could possibly know about this conversation today is if someone (obviously John) was eavesdropping on the private conversation and overheard the above remark. The entire episode remained unreported until the last years of the first century when John finally got around to writing his Gospel. In this case we are to believe that John remembered intimate details of a conversation over 50 years old! Could you? Even if he recorded it accurately, how important is this conversation to the teachings of Jesus? If it is the foundation of Christianity as your minister would have you believe, how can you explain the fact that Jesus never spoke of it publicly, only in a private night time conversation apparently overheard by John (a teenage boy at the time) and not considered important enough to report for over 50 years? Wouldn’t Jesus have said it often and publicly? When Jesus preached his famous Sermon on the Mount to introduce his teachings for the first time publicly, why did he leave out this “born again” dogma? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity to base the heart and soul of their theology on such an insignificant event as this conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. How can you explain the fact that these words do not appear in any other Gospel, especially since Luke’s very aim was to include all that Jesus began to do and teach (Acts 1:1) and yet he didn’t mention this foundation doctrine of Christianity? Did the multitudes that read only Matthew’s Gospel go to hell while practicing the practical righteousness that Jesus preached because they died before John got around to mentioning a conversation he once overheard 50 years ago as a teenage boy? Were the readers of Mark condemned? Were the readers of Luke? How can evangelicalism justify placing so much weight on a portion of scripture that the other Apostles totally ignored? Furthermore, it is a cryptic message that has been interpreted differently by different branches of Christianity. Roman Catholics and Orthodox churches from the beginning interpreted “born again” as the point in time when a person becomes a Christian by baptism, while fundamentalists and evangelicals believe it is the point in time when a person becomes a Christian by making and believing the proper confession.
It may well be that Jesus was indeed the anointed Messiah that the Jews had been waiting for, I don’t know; but this fact was certainly not part of the message Jesus wanted people to hear. When Jesus asked who people said he was and Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the son of God.” (Mark 8:27-30.) Jesus explicitly commanded his disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. How can it be that Christians make this the central theme of what you must believe to be saved when Jesus didn’t even want anyone to know this fact? What kind of sense does that make? The only way you or I know that Jesus was the Christ is because someone at some point in time disobeyed Jesus’ plain command to keep that knowledge secret. When Jesus met people with evil spirits and those spirits addressed him as Christ, he immediately told them to be silent. The truth is Jesus left a message of things to do not things to believe. If Jesus had wanted you to believe something wouldn’t he have written it down for you, especially if it was absolutely necessary for your salvation? That’s a question your minister can’t give you a sensible answer to. Oh, he’ll tell you something all right, but in your heart it won’t make much sense. Jesus wants you to do something. He didn’t write that down for you because it is written in the heart of everyone born into this world. You know you’re supposed to treat others as you want to be treated. You know you’re supposed to help the poor and less fortunate. It is universal morality.
The Christian faith as practiced today is very far from the primitive simple message of Jesus of Nazareth. I am sure it will not set well with the reader but the simple truth is that Paul of Tarsus hijacked the Christian faith and laid the foundations for this new faith on theology totally contradictory to the Gospel that Jesus taught. More sadly, he cursed anyone who disagreed with him (Galatians 1:9) and therefore he cursed Jesus. Concepts like the virgin birth of Jesus would eventually become required dogma in the Christian church and yet Jesus, the alleged founder of the faith, never spoke the first word about a virgin birth! |