Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [29]
If the gospel narrative as found in the canon had existed earlier than 170-80, and if it constituted a true story, there would be no accounting for the widely differing traditions of "the Savior's" death: To wit, "By the third century A.D., there were no fewer than 25 versions of Jesus' death and resurrection! Some have him not being put to death at all, some have him revived back to life, and some have Jesus living on to an old age and dying in Egypt."36 These various details of the lives of Christ and his apostles should have been "set in stone," had the story been true and these books been written by the apostles, or even had an orally transmitted "life of Christ" been widespread during the decades that followed.
Various other aspects of the gospel accounts reveal their nonhistorical nature, including faulty geography, as mentioned, and incidents such as Jesus's preaching in Galilee, which allegedly occurred precisely during the time Herod was building the city of Tiberias. Of this incident, Dujardin says:
We should here note the total lack of historic verity as to facts and places in the gospels. With the methods then available a town was not built rapidly, and the work would not have been completed in A.D. 27 or even 30. The gospel writers were therefore unaware that they were placing in a countryside overturned by demolition and rebuilding the larger part of the teaching of Jesus.
If the stories are historical, it is in the middle of timber-yards that one must picture the divine precepts delivered, with the accompaniment of the noise of pikes and mattocks, the grinding of saws, and the cries of the workers.37
Furthermore, in the gospels Jesus himself makes many illogical contradictions concerning some of his most important teachings. First he states that he is sent only "to the lost sheep of Israel" and forbids his disciples to preach to the Gentiles. Then he is made to say, "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations ..."
Next, Jesus claims that the end of the world is imminent and warns his disciples to be prepared at a moment's notice. He also tells them to build a church from which to preach his message, an act that would not be necessary if the end was near. This doomsday "prophecy" in fact did not happen; nor has Jesus returned "soon," as was his promise. Even if he had been real, his value as a prophet would have been very little, as his most important "prophecies" have not occurred, thus proving that he was no more prophetic or divine than the average newspaper astrologer or palmreader.
In reality, the contradictions in the gospels are overwhelming and irreconcilable by the rational mind. In fact, the Gospel was not designed to be rational, as the true meaning of the word "gospel" is "God's Spell," as in magic, hypnosis and delusion.
As Mack says:
The narrative gospels can no longer be viewed as the trustworthy accounts of unique and stupendous historical events at the foundation of the Christian faith. The gospels must now be seen as the result of early Christian mythmaking.38
The Acts of the Apostles (177 CE)
In addition to the hundreds of epistles and gospels written during the first centuries were many "Acts" of this apostle or that. The canonical Acts of the Apostles cannot be dated earlier than the end of the second century, long after the purported events. Acts purports to relate the early years of the Christian church, yet in it we find a well-established community that could not have existed at the time this book was alleged to have been written, i.e., not long after the death of Christ. In Acts we read that the first "Christians" are found at Antioch, even though there was no canonical gospel