Having thoroughly explored the failures of Christian apologetics and why the gospel stories are likely fictional, one eventually comes to notice that some of the things Jesus reportedly said make slightly more sense if he was just a human preacher rather than a divine, all-knowing figure. He can be wrong about things and put forward ideas different from the Old Testament without creating an inconsistent God. More grounded motivations and explanations for his teachings make these teachings more coherent. Of course, one need not be a skeptic to begin to notice this. During my years as a Christian, a long time ago now, I was always struck by Matthew 27:46. It startles many Christians when Jesus cries out from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It sounds less like the cry of a deity willingly fulfilling his destiny and more like that of a mere mortal who is surprised by his circumstances, feeling betrayed in some way. I did not think this back then — I pushed it all from my mind — but did the Jesus of History believe his god would protect him from execution, or end his agony on the cross sooner, or make it less painful? Did his torturous crucifixion make him question his faith? As religious texts are mixes of real people, places, and events with total fictions, perhaps this is the man momentarily visible beneath the sea of myth. Do his words make more sense if we consider him an ordinary person rather than divine? What else is out there?

Jesus thought the world was about to end — wrongly, it turns out. No one is perfect; to err is human. Look at Matthew 16:27-28, when Jesus, after describing returning with his angels and rewarding all according to their deeds, says to the people with him, “Some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Matthew 24:3-35 says at “the end of the age” the “stars will fall from the sky,” with “the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory,” sending forth “his angels with a loud trumpet call.” Jesus tells his followers that “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” (The same is promised in Mark 8:38-9:1 and 13:24-30, with the same context: they would live to witness “that tribulation” [NASB] where the stars fall. Same for Luke 21:25-36.) This very much sounds like the Last Judgement later predicted in Revelation, which would “soon take place” (1:1), with Jesus “coming with the clouds” (1:7), the “armies of heaven” (19:14) with him, but also his “reward,” to “give to each person according to what they have done” (22:12). The stars will of course fall (6:13). Yet the people Jesus spoke to are all dead! He did not return, the world did not end in their lifetimes. Similarly, in Matthew 10:16-23, Jesus gives his apostles instructions for their ministry, describing how they will be hated, arrested, flogged, and so on. “When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another,” Jesus says. “Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (NIV). Wrong again. Believers may tie themselves in knots trying to explain this — he wasn’t being literal, he was actually speaking to us, he wasn’t speaking of the End Times but rather the resurrection, and so on. (In each of these gospels, Jesus makes these promises just a couple chapters before he is resurrected, after he arrives in Jerusalem for his final Passover and eventual arrest and execution. Why insist a generation will live to see something that is about to happen in a couple days?) The simpler and most likely explanation is that Jesus the Man was like countless apocalyptic prophets, traveling around insisting “The End is coming,” that came before and after him throughout human history and across religions: wrong and full of inventions. That seems more likely than a god making an error, or suddenly deciding to delay his return for thousands of years and thus breaking his word. (The Gospel of John, written much later, when “this generation” had about died out, does not include these types of promises. This is likely not a coincidence. Mistakes must be edited out.)

Jesus was highly critical of the wealthy — after God bankrolled them? Jesus’ critique is fairly well known (often simply ignored by Christian conservatives), but the fact that it seems to counter God’s own messaging goes largely unnoticed. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” Christ said. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort” (Luke 6:20-24). When a wealthy man asks how eternal life can be attained, Jesus replies: “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” He then explains to his disciples that it is nearly impossible for the rich to be saved: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:20-26). Jesus warns against having too many possessions (Luke 12:15) and “the deceitfulness of wealth” (Mark 4:18-19), calls a poor woman more generous than the rich (Mark 12:41-44), says one cannot serve both God and money (Matthew 6:24), and makes a whip to chase sellers and money changers out of the holy temple (John 2:13-16). It is interesting to consider how this class animus might stem from his status as a humble carpenter. Perhaps Jesus said such things not because he was God, but because he was poor. Further, it is important to note that Jesus’ perspective was subversive. The disciples were “greatly astonished” to hear that the wealthy were unlikely to reach heaven, even asking “Who then can be saved?” (Matthew 19:25). If not the rich, who? As Christian sites will tell you, while the Old Testament does feature some warnings of the dangers of money and the wickedness of some who have it, God often showered wealth on the obedient — a bit odd for a deity that would later say woe to the rich, they probably won’t be saved. See Joshua 1:8, Proverbs 10:22, Abraham, Joseph, Job, David, Solomon, and so on. The biggest heroes of Jewish scriptures were often prosperous because they were faithful, creating a perspective, reportedly held dear by the Pharisees and others, which Jesus must work to undo. Even today, churches must battle the idea, now called the “prosperity gospel,” that wealthy people are wealthy because God has rewarded them for their righteousness. A lower- or working-class figure like Jesus might have been disgusted by the notion that the rich are more moral, pious people and therefore on the fast track to salvation. Jesus the Man would simply be working to change the ideology of his society and religion; Jesus the Messiah would, embarrassingly, be working to undo a way of thinking that God’s own actions (his own actions) had encouraged for centuries.

Jesus thought God’s Law needed serious improvement. Jesus states in Matthew 5:17 that he came to “fulfill” Jewish Law, not end it, which is believed to at least partly mean that he would give a full interpretation of God’s moral rules. Adultery, banned in the 10 Commandments, was not just the act, for instance. The thought itself was included under this sin: “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28). One would certainly expect Jesus the Man, the teacher and philosopher, to have his own unique views on God’s Will, on how people must act, on the practices, rules, and ideas of the faith and society, as we have already seen. But if Jesus was God, it raises thorny questions. If it’s morally important for people to know that adultery is not just an act but a thought, why would God not make this explicit in the 10 Commandments? Why let the Jews commit thought crimes for centuries? Or was this not a sin until Jesus decreed it, raising humanity’s moral standard? But why, as a god who is all good, demand a lower standard of behavior in the past? It’s the same with divorce — Jesus also had stricter views on this practice. In Matthew 19:3-9, he opposes the Old Testament implication that men can divorce their wives for any reason: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard… I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” (He leaves out this exception in Mark and Luke.) But Moses was speaking for God (made clear in Deuteronomy 6:1-2) when he seemingly outlined more permissive divorce laws (if a husband “dislikes her,” etc., Deuteronomy 24:1-4). God permitted men to divorce their wives. Why was it acceptable then but not later? Further, Jesus also famously replaced “eye for an eye” with “turn the other [cheek],” was more lax on Sabbath rules, and probably threw out Judaism’s strict dietary laws in Mark 7:18-19 (“Jesus declared all foods clean”), which is why Christians today can eat what they please. Clearly, Jesus has new instructions for how we are to live. Believers might insist God provided the faithful (including the rich!) with different rules for different historical contexts and societal needs, so Jesus asking more of us (or less of us, in the case of diets and the Sabbath) later on is no big deal. Jesus’ arrival, death, and resurrection changed everything, right? Accordingly, he changed his own Law. But it seems strange that a perfectly moral deity would be inconsistent over time concerning what constitutes a sin — early on, divorce is acceptable and eating a pig is not; later, these are reversed. And how we are to treat others obviously shifts massively: God’s demand for blood becomes love thy neighbor, break bread with and show mercy to sinners (Matthew 22:37-40, 9:10-13). It’s the Old vs. New Testament Problem. As I wrote elsewhere, “What should you make of a deity that instructs you to murder your homosexual friends on Monday, but to love them and treat them with kindness on Wednesday? All because of what happened on Tuesday?” Instead of a god staying silent for centuries on the full scope of a sin, or dramatically changing the rules of moral behavior, why not a more obvious explanation? Jesus was a mere mortal who personally disliked parts of the Law and did not think they could possibly represent God’s true wishes, some too strict and others too lenient, many barbaric and lacking mercy, and thus sought reform. A more humane, righteous Law. Perhaps he wanted to eat as he pleased, finding silly the idea that the wrong food would somehow offend the all-powerful creator of the universe.

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Free will is like God: perhaps dead, its absence having something to say about morality (what Nietzsche meant by “Gott ist tot” was that the Christian God wasn’t believable, and that societal shifts away from him would undermine ethics), and yet impossible to fully disprove. By free will, we mean the ability to have done differently — the notion that the control we feel over our choices, words, and deeds is real, not delusional.

The more thought devoted to free will the less believable it becomes. Even the mixed, limited bag of scientific findings generates at least some skepticism. Two short books I found interesting take opposing sides in the debate over the relevant studies: Sam Harris’ Free Will (2012) and Alfred Mele’s Free (2014). Though over a decade old, these works collectively remain a valuable and accessible introduction. Today’s commentary is little different. Skeptics of free will

point to evidence that we can be unconsciously influenced in the choices we make by a range of factors, including ones that are not motivationally relevant; that we can come to believe that we chose to initiate a behavior that in fact was artificially induced; that people subject to certain neurological disorders will sometimes engage in purposive behavior while sincerely believing that they are not directing them. Finally, a great deal of attention has been given to the work of neuroscientist Benjamin Libet (2002). Libet conducted some simple experiments that seemed to reveal the existence of “preparatory” brain activity (the “readiness potential”) shortly before a subject engages in an ostensibly spontaneous action. (Libet interpreted this activity as the brain’s “deciding” what to do before we are consciously settled on a course of action.) Wegner (2002) surveys all of these findings (some of which are due to his own work as a social psychologist) and argues on their basis that the experience of conscious willing is “an illusion.”

Such interpretations have been criticized, but the findings themselves — for instance, that the brain lights up (milliseconds or even full seconds) before we make certain conscious choices — are largely taken for granted. The scientists and philosophers who believe in free will, such as Mele, rightly point to the constraints of the experiments, which ask participants to do mindless tasks. As neuroscientists recently wrote in Scientific American while arguing science has not disproven free will:

The neuroscience of volition typically focuses on immediate (or proximal) and meaningless decisions (for instance, “press the button from time to time, whenever you feel like it, for no reason at all”). The decisions we care about with respect to free will and responsibility, however, are ones that are meaningful and often have longer time horizons. Perhaps many, or even most, of our day-to-day decisions — choosing when to take the next sip from your water cup or which foot to put forward — are not acts of conscious free will. But maybe some decisions are.

Observe the ground that is given here. It is seismic that what we once regarded as a conscious choice — reaching for your water to take a sip — was actually a directive of the subconscious. Your brain began firing long before you “decided” to act. You had your orders, and you followed them, unwittingly. (Note that this is not marveling over the fact that you reached for your glass without an inner monologue — “I should drink now.” Most of what we do is done without the voice inside our heads speaking. But we still assume that we decided to do whatever it was, not our subconscious.) No, science has not shown free will to be false. But it has produced cause for doubt. If my decision to stand rather than remain sitting was not really my decision, it is at least possible that more meaningful, higher-order “choices” — whether to quit a job or propose — are also guided by subconscious processes outside of one’s awareness. We will have to see what future experiments bring.

Philosophy also erodes trust in free will. First, consider the experiential. Sam Harris, on his Making Sense podcast, once suggested we try the following. Think of a movie. Go ahead, any movie will do. Do you have one? When we do this, in no sense do we choose which film arrives. One simply bubbles up from the dark. Who chose it? Well, your subconscious delivered it to you. This is merely a fun introduction to the idea that we may not be as in the driver’s seat as we think, but it is imperfect, for at least the conscious self called out for an example. It is more valuable to simply reflect upon the instances when a random thought pops into your head. We’ve all experienced this. Have you ever thought to yourself afterwards What the fuck was that? or Where did that come from? The fact is, thoughts often come to us completely against our will. They are much like emotions — in the same way the brain inflicts anger, sadness, embarrassment, and so on upon you, many thoughts arrive uninvited and often without mercy. Sometimes we blurt them out, “speaking without thinking.” And of course you are pure animal instinct when you notice an object hurtling toward your face, ducking to safety. Is it so strange to suppose our “choices” might be automatic and involuntary in bodies defined by such terms, where thoughts bubble up from nowhere, unwelcome emotions burn, instinct takes over actions, lungs breathe unnoticed, and the heart drums unstoppably?

More importantly, determinism seems obviously true, as plain as the nose on your face. Think of a mistake from your past. Why do you regret it today? Why, it’s because you’ve had many life experiences since then, you’ve gained wisdom or a new perspective, you’re a different person. If you had been the person you are today back then you could have avoided the misstep. But the reason you made the choice you did was because that’s who you were in that moment. This is self-evident. To have made a different choice you would have had to have been a different person. And how is that possible?

Free will is the ability to have chosen differently. To legitimately choose among options before you at every present moment — for instance, to continue reading or to stop reading. We make a choice, but there is reason to suspect this is an illusion — surely we were always going to choose whatever we did. It seems obvious that each “choice” is simply the product of every moment that came before. How could it be otherwise? Each choice is the inevitable end result of every thought, feeling, “choice,” act, life experience, genetic disposition, and so on you’ve ever had. It is the effect of countless causes. That’s what’s meant by determinism. The thesis seems difficult to deny. How can one argue that who you are in any given moment is not the creation of all preceding moments (going all the way back to conception); how can one argue that who you fundamentally are in that moment does not determine the choice you make? This would make little sense. Every biological, environmental, and experiential factor determined who you were, and who you were could not have chosen differently — only a different you could have done that! Free will seems illusory.

This conclusion can cause consternation. Some see life as less meaningful or real, despite still being surrounded by the wonderful things that made their lives rich and full. As hinted at in the opening paragraph, people wonder where all this leaves morality. If all decisions are inevitable, are we really responsible for our actions? The killer was never not going to kill, after all. He was the product of all past things, how is it his fault? First, it must be said that the question of moral responsibility (like meaning) is often used irresponsibly: it is used to argue for the existence of free will. Free will must be true, we must believe in it, or no one will be responsible for her own actions, everyone might start killing each other! This is the fallacy argumentum ad consequentium, believing something is true because things would be bad if it wasn’t. Sorry, potential consequences don’t have anything to do with whether something is true or false.

Second, and more to the point, skepticism of free will does indeed weaken or reframe the idea of moral responsibility, perhaps stressing the need to build a more decent society, to improve the environment and experiences of all people, to change behavior. If poverty has something to do with crime, eliminate poverty. If a rapist rotting in prison is the result of his fate, not his genuinely free choices (recall that children who are sexually abused are more likely to become sexual abusers themselves; who we are is the result of all preceding realities), more mercy — improved prison conditions and rehabilitation, elimination of the death penalty and solitary confinement — may be justified. Regardless, the concerns over ethics and accountability have always seemed overdramatic. If everyone gained The Knowledge, judging free will and personal responsibility to be fictions, certain people might engage in foul words and deeds they otherwise wouldn’t have (they won’t be able to help it). But most people probably wouldn’t (they won’t be able to help it). This is because acquisition of The Knowledge would be only one cause in an ocean of causes that determine one’s choices. It might be a big one, but so is genetic disposition, a happy life, fear of consequences, and so on. You’ve read a few things in this piece that perhaps make you doubt free will a bit; do you now feel a bit closer to being able to rape or murder someone? Probably not, due to all the other factors that make you who you are. In the same way, laws and punishments, while perhaps reformed, would not disappear if everyone had The Knowledge. Even without belief in free will, we would still be vulnerable, living creatures: most people would still not want to be harmed (they won’t be able to help it) and would thus (again, inevitably) demand violent people be kept away from the general population, regardless of whether such criminals are morally responsible for their actions. As others have pointed out, we already do this. An insane person, a child, or someone who commits crimes while sleepwalking is not considered as morally responsible for misdeeds as your usual adult, but they are not exempt from law or restraint. (The overall concept of morality isn’t going anywhere either, because it is necessary to justify that desired protection from physical harm, as it always has been. Plus, to say we do not freely choose between moral and immoral possibilities is not to say such possibilities have no meaning, as if the latter don’t cause real suffering or violate holy scriptures. We would still want to teach and internalize ideas of what’s right, a powerful causal factor of a desired effect: the unavoidable “choice” to do good, avoiding real-world harms.)

If free will is false, destiny is true. Here it’s skeptics of agency that must be careful to avoid fallacy, because the positives that might come from free will’s nonexistence cannot be used as evidence or argument for such nonexistence. That will always be a temptation, because determinism is psychologically comforting. As already implied, it helps us let go of regret and dissatisfaction. Our most terrible mistakes needn’t burden us any further. You were always going to make that choice. It couldn’t have happened any other way. It’s who you were. Our present conditions, now matter how miserable, no matter what we lack, were likewise inevitable. It was always going to be this way. You can be at peace, grateful for what you have, what you inevitably received. See, determinism is also like God: so comforting we should be suspicious.

I cannot conclude with full conviction that free will is false, for while it is less believable now it has hardly been disproven. However, though armed with a healthy suspicion, I can appreciate the new meaning that would be wrought by The Knowledge. Destiny is a beautiful idea, and here it is fully realized, in the secular world. A few Christian sects reject free will and embrace the concept of fate (see Calvinism, predestination, theological determinism, and so on), but most are mired in the quicksands of their own contradictions: as a human being I was divinely created with free will, yet, as the song goes, “God has a plan for my life.” When God intervenes in this world and saves you from a killer, he violates the free will of two people. How free are you if gods ensure your life goes just so? All that can be put aside. There are no contradictions with the destiny considered here. Old phrases that used to feel so empty to us rationalists who reject religion, astrology, and so on — “everything happens for a reason,” “if it’s meant to be,” “you’re where you’re supposed to be” — are suddenly imbued with new meaning. And that’s a delightful thing.

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In my massive article The Bible is Rife With Contradictions and Changes, I introduced the fact that bible stories and verses have been changed over the centuries, at times significantly, with the following:

Christians don’t want to believe that biblical translations over time altered original stories, but one small way they obviously did was by giving characters altered names. Jesus did not consort with John and James. They were in the Middle East, not an English pub. Instead, Yeshua (ישוע) consorted with Yohhanan (יוחנן) and Ya’akov (יעקב). Hebrew and Aramaic names were translated into Greek and later into English (and other tongues), resulting in names of different pronunciation than were actually used. Mattityahu became Matthaios and finally Matthew. (No, English speakers did not independently have a name like “John” and then “translated” Yohhanan [Hebrew] or Ioannes [Greek] to the pre-existing John, as if there was some magical lingual match or a “Hey, this name sounds a bit like one of ours” situation! Study the etymology of these names. The only reason John existed in English is because over centuries the name Yohhanan, thanks to the bible, spread beyond Palestine, through other parts of Europe, and finally to the English-speaking world, changing along the way.) If something as simple as names and their pronunciations could change from actual people to written text, and then translation to translation, could other things have changed, too?

This is one of those things that is right in front of your face as a devout Christian, which I was until about 12 years ago, but you somehow never notice. Of course the bible has changed over time! To me, all this speaks to how blindly, how absolutely, we believe the bible to be true — if it says his name was John, his name was John — and how little the gears of critical thinking will turn under the stunting influence of religion.

But when exactly did “Yeshua” evolve into “Jesus”? The authors of the New Testament, written in Greek in the later half of the first century A.D., took the Hebrew Yeshua (ישוע) and made it Iesous (Ἰησοῦς), pronounced EE-ay-soos. A change was necessary because the Greek alphabet lacked the “sh” sound; further, Greek male names ended with an “s” sound, so “ς” was added. A few hundred years later, in the fourth century, Latin translations were authored. The Latin Iesus (IESVS) was pronounced similarly to the Greek name. Overall, the Greco-Roman pronunciation ruled for some 1,500 years, a much longer life than the modern version (for now at least). However, one should note that by the 12th century, the spelling “Jesus” was used alongside “Iesus,” but they were both pronounced like the latter. See, the letter “J” began as a fancy, elongated “I” in the Middle Ages, and was applied to all kinds of words and names. Not until the 1500s did J more and more come to sound like the letter we know and love. The modern pronunciation of Jesus began and grew from there, though it took a century or two to become standard. The letter J made the jump from Latin to English in the 1600s. Some readers will recall that Shakespeare did not use the letter J (sorry, Juliet), since it was not part of the English alphabet in his day, and the 1611 King James Bible spoke of Iesus — the 1629 revision spoke of Jesus.

This is not intended to be framed as breaking news. Many know that Yeshua was this figure’s actual name, that it was a common name at the time, that “Christ” isn’t Jesus’ last name, and so on. Plenty of Christian sites will walk you through the transformation of Yeshua. Further, the evolution of a character’s name across time and languages doesn’t automatically make stories about him untrue (we know the gospels are probably fictional for many other reasons). But it is suggestive. Again, if character names can be altered by later human beings, why not the stories the characters are in? Why not whole verses? See the article cited in the first sentence of this piece for examples.

Overall, I find it quite striking to examine the etymology of “Jesus.” More tongue in cheek, there’s thoughts of Darwin, with this slow evolution and a common ancestor of splintered descendants — Yeshua became both Jesus and Joshua. It’s interesting to me, for some reason, that before 500 years ago, no one had ever said the name Jesus, not how we say it; were you to time travel, English-speaking Christians wouldn’t be fully sure who you were talking about. Most importantly, there’s the human fingerprints all over Jesus’ name, in the same way they are all over the tales about him. What human beings believe in, who they worship, the name they cry out to — these things can easily be man-made constructions. Why do we call him Jesus? Because of a limiting Greek alphabet, a Greek tradition regarding masculine names, and a bunch of medieval scribes who wanted to write fancy.

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It was this June that I first learned I had a friend — of nearly twenty years — who no longer believed American women should have the right to vote. Nor should they be tolerated as pilots, pastors, or other professionals. Such arrangements were against the Law of God and women’s nature. After all, “the head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is man” (1 Cor. 11:3), women are not to speak in church (1 Cor. 14:34-35), wives must submit to husbands (Col. 3:18), women are too emotional for some tasks, and so on.

Any hope that he was joking to simply rile me — we always debate politics and religion, a sparring between an atheist on the Left and a religious conservative — drained, like the blood from my face, when he called a waitress over to explain his views to her. I watched as Stage 3 was reached. From a private belief one would never admit to something you’d perhaps whisper to a friend to something you say freely to a stranger, directly to the face of a person you would oppress. I would take away your equal rights if given the chance.

There’s a flashback in the third episode of The Handmaid’s Tale — to before rightwing fundamentalists take over the United States, establish biblical law, and obliterate women’s rights — where the female protagonist is in a coffee shop and is startled when a man eyes her and says the quiet part out loud. Horrific thoughts became horrific words, which later became horrific actions, the final stages. I thought about that scene for a long time after leaving that Kansas City bar, having suddenly lived in some version of it.

Equality, freedom, decency, and democracy, I tried to explain, require extending to others the rights you want for yourself. If a man wants to vote, let him favor the same for women. If a Christian or straight person wants to marry or adopt or be served at establishments or not be fired for who they are, extend this to gays. This is a big, diverse society where not everyone is Christian, I tried to explain. There are people of other faiths and nonbelievers. Laws should not be based on Christian doctrine because this country should be for all people, not just Christians. Principles so morally obvious, yet completely impotent in the face of fundamentalist faith.

Equality, freedom, decency, and democracy must simply be sacrificed on the altar of God. His decree is more important than such things. Who cares who’s crushed, if God wills it? Islamic extremists operate under the same rules. Only in 2015 could women in Saudi Arabia vote and run for office in local elections. When the Taliban retook Afghanistan in 2021, they barred women from most jobs and schooling, and established all-male governments. “Men are in charge of women,” after all, says Qur’an 4:34. Fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity have other obvious similarities as well, such as the oppression of gays and restriction of free, blasphemous speech (think of the Christians pushing for book bans of anything LGBTQ- or witchcraft-related).

Islamic theocracies, the Jewish state of Israel, Christian Europe for fifteen hundred years… Oppression is the natural outcome of religious states, because texts from Iron Age desert tribes call for much oppression. One wonders if slavery will be permitted as well. The New Testament also demands slaves submit to their masters, even harsh ones (Ephesians 6:5, 1 Peter 2:18, Titus 2:9-10). In Luke 12:47-48, Jesus uses the “lashing” and “flogging” of a “slave” (NASB language) to make a point in one of his parables. Why would restoring women’s subservience be ideal in a Christian nation, but not slavery? What’s the difference? Clearly, God wills it. (Whether not wanting to be accused of picking and choosing what to follow in the New Testament or sincerely believing an even more horrific thing, my friend told me that a gentle form of slavery would be acceptable, to replace the welfare state. Again, enslaving Christians or taking away their right to vote would be, one assumes, immoral and unacceptable.)

The encounter shook me in that surreal way that has grown familiar in recent times. A few years ago, an acquaintance of mine, seemingly a normal human being, turned out to be a QAnon nut. Remember how the Democrats were running a global pedophile ring out of a pizza shop? As with conspiracy theorists, you know people who oppose women’s political rights exist, vaguely, out there somewhere — Ann Coulter, Candace Owens, the #RepealThe19th Twitter posters, and so on. Then the moment of horror: No, they’re your friends and family.

I felt a rare pang of despair. That such poison would spread on the Right. That the excesses of the Left may bear some responsibility, extremes stoking and worsening each other, an ideological Newtonian Third Law. Yet most Americans — and most Christians — would be aghast at the idea of abolishing women’s voting or professional rights, if not other things. And despite many recent setbacks, this is an increasingly liberal, secular society. That in itself may evoke a backlash (note that eliminating female voters would ensure Republican rule, another motivation here), but is a trend likely to continue.

We’ve seen recently how democracy survives only if people care more about democracy than remaining in office, than power. Equality and freedom survive only if we care more about them than things like the awful edicts of ancient holy books.

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In The Bible is Rife with Contradictions and Changes, we saw myriad examples of different biblical accounts of the same event that cannot all be true — they contradict each other. But we also saw how other discrepancies aren’t contradictions if you use your imagination. The following example was too long to examine in that already-massive writing, so we will do so now.

It’s interesting that while the authors of both Matthew and Luke have Jesus born in Bethlehem and then settle down in Nazareth, the two stories are dramatically different, in that neither mentions the major events of the other. For example, the gift-bearing Magi arrive, King Herod kills children, and Jesus’ family flees to Egypt in Matthew, but Luke doesn’t bother mentioning any of it. Luke has the ludicrous census (everyone in the Roman Empire returning to the city of their ancestors, creating mass chaos, when the point of a census is to see where people live currently), the full inn, the shepherds, and the manger, but Matthew doesn’t.

These stories can be successfully jammed together. But it takes work. In Matthew 2:8-15, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus are in Bethlehem but escape to Egypt to avoid Herod’s slaughter. Before fleeing, the family seems settled in the town: they are in a “house” (2:11) beneath the fabled star, and Herod “gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi” visitors concerning when the star appeared (2:16, 2:7). This is a bit confusing, as all boys from born-today to nearly three years old is a big range for someone who knows an “exact time” (2:7). But it suggests that Jesus may have been born a year or two ago, the star was over his home since his birth, and the Magi had a long journey to find him. Many Christian sites will tell you Jesus was about two when the wise men arrived. In any event, when Herod gives this order, the family travels to Egypt and remains there until he dies, then they go to Nazareth (2:23).

In Luke 2:16-39, after Jesus is born in Bethlehem the family goes to Jerusalem “when the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses” (2:22). This references the rites outlined in Leviticus 12 (before going to Jerusalem, Jesus is circumcised after eight days in Luke 2:21, in accordance with Leviticus 12:3). At the temple they sacrifice two birds (Luke 2:24), following Leviticus 12:1-8 — when a woman has a son she does this after thirty-three days to be made “clean.” Then, “When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth” (Luke 2:39). Here they simply go to Nazareth when Jesus is about a month old. No mention of a flight to Egypt, no fear for their lives — everything seems rather normal. “When the time came for the purification rites” certainly suggests they did not somehow occur early or late.

So the mystery is: when did the family move to Nazareth?

Both stories get the family to the town, which they must do because while a prophecy said the messiah would be born in Bethlehem, Jesus was a Nazarene. But the paths there are unique, and you have to either build a mega-narrative to make it work — a larger story that is not in the bible, one you must invent to make divergent stories fit together — or reinterpret the bible in a way different than the aforementioned sites.

In this case, Option 1 is to say that when Luke 2:39 says they headed for Nazareth, this is where the entire story in Mathew is left out. They actually go back to Bethlehem, have the grand adventure to Egypt, and then go to Nazareth much later. This is a serious twist of the author’s writing; you have to declare the gospel doesn’t mean what it says, that narrative time words like “when” are meaningless (in the aforementioned article I wrote of us having to imagine “the bible breaks out of chronological patterns at our convenience”).

Option 2 is that they go to Nazareth after the rites as stated. Then at some point they go back to Bethlehem, have the Matthew adventure, and end up back in Nazareth. Maybe they were visiting relatives. Maybe they moved back to Bethlehem — after Herod dies it seems as if the family’s first thought is to go back there. Matthew 2:22-23: “But when [Joseph] heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth.” So perhaps it’s best to suppose they went to Nazareth after the temple, moved back to Bethlehem, hid in Egypt, and went again to Nazareth. Luke of course doesn’t mention any of this either; the family heads to Nazareth after the temple rites and the narrative jumps to when Jesus is twelve (2:39-42).

Option 3 is that Jesus’ birth, the Magi visit, Herod’s killing spree, the family’s flight, Herod’s death, and the family’s return all occur in the space of a month. This of course disregards and reinterprets any hints that Jesus was about two years old. But it allows the family to have Matthew’s adventure and make it back to Jerusalem for the scheduled rites (which Matthew doesn’t mention), then go to Nazareth. One also must conclude that 1) the Magi didn’t have to travel very far, if the star appeared when Jesus was born, or 2) that the star appeared to guide them long before Jesus was born (interpret Matthew 2:1-2 how you will). It’s still odd that the only thing Luke records between birth and the temple is a circumcision, but Option 3, as rushed as it is, may be the best bet. That’s up to each reader to decide, for it’s all a matter of imagination.

Luke’s silence is worth pausing to consider. The Bible is Rife with Contradictions and Changes outlined the ramifications of one gospel not including a major event of another:

Believers typically insist that when a gospel doesn’t mention a miracle, speech, or story it’s because it’s covered in another. (When the gospels tell the same stories it’s “evidence” of validity, when they don’t it’s no big deal.) This line only works from the perspective of a later gospel: Luke was written after Matthew, so it’s fine if Luke doesn’t mention the flight to Egypt to save baby Jesus from Herod. Matthew already covered that. But from the viewpoint of an earlier text this begins to break down. It becomes: “No need to mention this miracle, someone else will do that eventually.” So whoever wrote Mark [the first gospel] ignored one of the biggest miracles in the life of Jesus, proof of his divine origins [the virgin birth story]? Or did the author, supposedly a disciple, not know about it? Or did gospel writers conspire and coordinate: “You cover this, I’ll cover that later.” Is it just one big miracle, with God ensuring that what was unknown or ignored (for whatever reason, maybe the questionable “writing to different audiences” theory) by one author would eventually make it into a gospel? That will satisfy most believers, but an enormous possibility hasn’t been mentioned. Perhaps the story of Jesus was simply being embellished — expanding over time, like so many other tales and legends (see Why God Almost Certainly Does Not Exist).

In truth, it is debatable whether Matthew came before Luke. Both were written around AD 80-90, so scholars disagree over which came first. If Matthew came first, Luke could perhaps be excused for leaving out the hunt for Jesus and journey to Egypt, as surprising as that might be. If Luke came first, it’s likely the author of Matthew concocted a new tale, making Jesus’ birth story far more dramatic and, happily, fulfilling a prophecy (Matthew 2:15: “And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son'”). If they were written about the same time and independently, with the creators not having read each other’s work, they were likewise two very different stories.

Regardless of order and why the versions are different, one must decide how to best make the two tales fit — writers not meaning what they write, the holy family moving back and forth a bunch, or Jesus not being two when the Magi arrived with gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

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