Synopsis: 25 reasons Why I Am No Longer a Christian

For all intents and purposes, the Apostle Paul 'created' the original notion of the Christian Myth which directly influenced the development and direction of Christian doctrine for millennia. Paul never met Jesus in the flesh, he only claimed some strange vision and proceeded to paganize the teachings of Jesus (who preached an enlightened form of Judaism), thus inventing Pauline Christianity. Because there are no known writings from Jesus, the actual Apostles, or anyone that actually knew him in the flesh (other then perhaps James), most of what Jesus may have actually taught is lost forever.

While Jesus is regarded by Christians as the founder of their religion because events of his life lay the foundation story of Christianity, Paul is regarded as the great interpreter of Jesus' mission, who explained, in a way that Jesus himself never did, how Jesus' life and death fitted into a cosmic scheme of salvation, stretching from the creation of Adam to the end of time. The doctrines of Christianity come mostly from the teaching or influence of Paul, a Pharisee who rejected his Pharisaic Judaism and converted to what he called Christ. Paul would later be placed above his Jewish-Christian rivals by a Gnostic heretic named Marcion.

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No Egyptian text ever found contains a single reference to ‘Hebrews’ or ‘Israelites’ in Egypt, much less to an ‘Exodus.’

William G. Dever Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? 12-13

Now let us turn to biblical data. If we look at the biblical texts describing the origins of Israel, we see at once that the traditional account contained in Genesis through Joshua simply cannot be reconciled with the picture derived...from archaeological investigation. The whole "Exodus-Conquest" cycle of stories must now be set aside as largely mythical, but in the proper sense of the term "myth": perhaps "historical fiction," but tales told primarily to validate religious beliefs.

William G. Dever What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? 121

While legitimate archaeologists, geologists, scientists, and historians methodically examine the various strata of the Middle East/Near East only to confirm discrepancies between their findings and the claims of the Bible, Christian apologists, in an effort to rally support of biblical claims, unconscionably promote findings that (1) time and again turn out to be forgeries, (2) stretch or fake 'facts' so as to give the appearance of support, or (3) conveniently fail to report findings that contradict said biblical claims. While scientists and archaeologists have nothing to lose by uncovering the truth—they merely want to divulge facts however they are discovered or wherever they point—Christian apologists are less interested in facts as making spurious facts and half-truths fit a predetermined set of supernatural expectations. Even after so-called 'Bible supporting' artifacts are later found to be fogeries, Christian apologists will go to further lengths to discredit these findings in order to force support for biblical claims. Why is this? Why can't Christian apologists use and accept the same scientific criteria used throughout the scientific/scholastic/academic world? Because, for the mosty part, Christian apologists have very little scientific/scholastic/academic evidence that supports any of the biblical claims outside the names of cities, towns, and the occasional ruler. As far as support for any of the broader claims of the Bible—claims so extravagant there should be a preponderance of external evidence—there is virtually none. It is no wonder that Christian apologists are quick to jump on any bandwagon that supposedly offers "proof" of something claimed in the Bible—there is so little of anything for them to rally around. Instead of approaching such claims with academic reserve and skepticism, Christian apologists waste no time in broadcasting to the ever-faithful the latest-and-greatest "discovery" that 'proves' the legitimacy of the Bible. Even after said discovery is found to be yet another fake and forgery, apologists will hem and haw or point fingers of derision and distrust in order to obfuscate the unavoidable facts. Does this behavior uphold honesty and integrity or are these forfeited in the service of ancient supernaturalistic words? Are the facts allowed to speak for themselves are are they twisted to better fit a supernaturalist presupposition? If magic trumps science does it also trump logic, critical thinking, and rational inquiry? Where do we draw the line? When is it time to say enough is enough! What does the world really teach us? Not words in a book, but physical reality! Dirt! Rocks! Bones! Clay!

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Biblical criticism is a form of historical criticism that seeks to analyze the Bible through asking certain questions of the text, such as: Who wrote it? When was it written? To whom was it written? Why was it written? What was the historical, geographical, and cultural setting of the text? How well preserved is the original text? How unified is the text? What sources were used by the author? How was the text transmitted over time? What is the text's genre and from what sociologial setting is it derived? When and how did it come to become part of the Bible?

Biblical criticism has been traditionally divided into Lower (or Textual) Criticism, that seeks to establish the original text out of the variant readings of ancient manuscripts, and Higher Criticism (Historical-Critical Method) that focuses on identifying the author, date, and place of writing for each book of the Bible. In the twentieth-century a number of specific critical methodologies have been developed to address such questions in greater depth, including Source Criticism, Form Criticism, Redaction Criticism, Narrative Criticism, Structuralist Criticism, Social-Scientific Criticism, Postmodern Biblical Criticism, Deconstructionism, and also contained work using the Documentary Hypothesis.

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The Dead Sea Scrolls comprise roughly 850 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran (near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea) in the West Bank. The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include practically the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before CE 100, and preserve evidence of considerable diversity of belief and practice within late Second Temple Judaism.

Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible were Masoretic texts dating to 9th century CE. The biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls push that date back to the 2nd century BCE. Before the discovery, the oldest Greek manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus were the earliest extant versions of biblical manuscripts. Although some of the biblical manuscripts found at Qumran differ significantly from the Masoretic text, most do not. The scrolls thus provide new variants and the ability to be more confident of those readings where the Dead Sea manuscripts agree with the Masoretic text or with the early Greek manuscripts. Further, the sectarian texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which were previously unknown, offer new light on one form of Judaism practiced during the Second Temple period, particularly the pre-Christian traditions of Messianism and Eschatology, the Teacher of Righteousness and "end of the world" expectations.

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Since the 19th century extensive investigations have been carried out throughout the Middle East, as well as in Greece and Italy, that have shed a lot of light on the traditions of the Bible. During a series of expeditions by the British in the mid-19th century, the great library of the 7th-century BCE Assyrian king Ashurbanipal was uncovered at the site of ancient Nineveh (near modern Mosul, Iraq). In this library were found tablets with the Babylonian stories of creation and the flood, a discovery that set the biblical accounts in Genesis in a wholly new light. Cuneiform documents from ancient Mari (modern Tell Hariri) in western Syria have clarified the origins of Old Testament prophecy, the identification of place names, and the concept of tribal nomadism.

The tablets of ancient Nuzi (modern Yorgham Tepe) in northern Iraq have provided scholars with information concerning legal customs of the 15th century bc, customs with parallels in the patriarchal narratives.

Letters from Canaanite kings to their Egyptian overlords, found at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt, have shed light on the political situation in Palestine about 100 years before the Israelite conquest. Numerous law codes from the libraries of great Assyrian and Babylonian kings have provided analogies and parallels to the law codes of the Old Testament.

From 1929 to the present, excavations by the French at Ras Shamra (Ugarit) in western Syria have produced thousands of tablets belonging to the period between 1400 and 1200 BCE. Many of these are literary in character, describing the exploits of the gods of the Canaanite religion, among them the storm deity Baal (title of Hadad) mentioned frequently in the Old Testament. Moreover, the poetry of Ugarit has strong affinities with that of the Bible and pre-date much of its vocabulary, structure, and the use of figures of speech and other literary devices.

In 1945, at ancient Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, some 50 Gnostic writings in Coptic were discovered. They could be dated to the 4th century ad, but investigation of their character and content showed that they were translations of Greek works of perhaps the 2d century, thus placing them among the earliest known sources for Gnostic Christianity. These writings have proved invaluable for understanding the evolution of Christianity in Egypt, especially in its nonorthodox forms. The complete Nag Hammadi collection was published in English in 1977.

Since 1964, an Italian expedition under the direction of Paolo Matthiae has exposed at ancient Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh), in central Syria, royal palaces, a monumental city gate, rampart, temples, and private houses. From 1974 to 1976, thousands of tablets and fragments of tablets belonging to the early Bronze Age (perhaps c. 2500 BCE) were found. The tablets are written in cuneiform and represent two languages. The first is Sumerian, for which cuneiform was devised, and the second is Semitic, the actual language of the Eblaites and of many other peoples scattered throughout the Middle East. These texts have shed new light on commerce and culture in 3d-millennium Syria and supplied considerable information about both languages at this stage of their evolution. In 1979 the statue of a Syrian king was found at Tell Fakhariye in the Habur region of Syria. The statue, inscribed in Assyrian and Aramaic and dated around 1000 bc, could be of the greatest value for linguists, especially Aramaists, as this is one of the longest inscriptions of such an early date in that language. Having a parallel text in Assyrian enhances its value.

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