"Did the man called the Christ really exist in this real world?" Why is this question so bold and rude that chtistian priests, scholars and believers are ready to bark for it with their crimson face?

2.1: The four Evangels as the Christ's biography

Does anyone doubt, one may wonder, that the Bible, especially the four Evangels, tells the Christ's biography evidently?

The four Evangels were compiled before long after the Christ's time: it is said that Matthew and Mark wrote them 44 BC, Luke 55, John 96/7. Seeing this, does still anyone dare to augue their reliability?

These books have been believed and worshipped by one-fifths of world people for two thousand years. Without being true and faithful, could they have this great history? What kind of demons does try to blaspheme the God by downplaying them? Thus christian people say.

Is this story wholly true? Is the Bible - the New Testament in particular, and the Evangels above all - so exact, so true and so precious a book as above mentioned?

Born to this world and still being anable to discern east and west, christian people get baptism from a minister and hear hymns in their birthbed; such people may believe this story without objection. Born in a non-christian family and having some critical and inquiring spirit, however, I can hardly believe this.

If a man with common sense reads the Evangels thoughout, shocked by the fact that they are filled up with wonderful but strange stories, he will feel that it's far safe to take these books as nothing but compilations of ancient mythical stories, far from credible historical documents.

Things being so, the man may feel at a loss to criticize these books, seeing that they have so many conflicts that biographies on the same man seem to describe completely different men.

2.2: Contradictions in the four Evangels

Since Straus and other people have already pointed that the four Evangels give us uncountable contradictions, I will take a few from them now.

First: taking up the Christ's genealogy described in the Matthew and the Luke, these two Evangels differ so much that christians from ancient times have made efforts to gloss over them with farfetched arguments all in vain. Surprisingly enough, from David to the Christ Matthew counts only 28 generations but Luke 43. Besides this, throughout these generations only three people appear in both genealogies: Salathiel, Zorobabel and the Christ's father Joseph; that is, except them, members of each list are wholly different. For an example, just one generation before Joseph, same name no longer appears: one call him Jacob, the other Heli. For another example, things are same as this just one generation after David: one Solomon, the other Natan. Both genealogies have no common background except the intention to match them to the prophecy that the Messiah comes from the David's family. In a word, these stories are nothing but fabrication. Or can anybody defend them?

Next: as for angel's appearance at the Annunciation too, both Evangels hold back each other. In fact, in the Luke the angel appeared only to Maria and just said for what she got pregnant and that she should name her child to be born Jesus, but didn't come to Joseph. In the Matthew, however, the angel appeared to Joseph first as if he had never seen Maria. If theologians' apologetics are true, the angel saw Maria first, then went to Joseph and repeated all the same things he said to her. Thus the angel took so much complicated process, didn't he? Moreover, if Maria kept what the angel said to herself and told it to nobody, however she wanted the angel to tell it to Joseph, in order to make him hear it from somebody else as written in the Matthew, then both Maria and the angel did something hardly understandable, didn't they? Or the story that Maria met Elizabeth was not a historical fact at all and thoroughly just a myth, as Strauss pointed out, isn't it?

Thirdly: as for when the Christ was born, the Evangels failed to agree. According to the Matthew, he was born during the reign of the king Herod. According to the Luke, however, he was six months younger than John the Baptist who was born during the same regime according to the same Evangel. Besides this, the Luke says, when the Christ was born, they took an investigation of people's registration, which is known to be taken in reality ten years after that. Then, the Luke contradicts both the Matthew and itself, doesn't it? Furthermore, the Matthew forgot to mention a shepherd coming to the Christ, however the Luke doesn't seem to know the doctors looking fot the Christ and the annihilation of new born children.

Fourthly: as for his birthplace, the Matthew says thus: in order to escape from King Herod's anger, Joseph at first left Bethlehem for Egypt with the intention of coming back later. However, hearing Akelaos, Herod's son, reigned over Egypt, left there for Galilee with fear then "got to a village called Nazareth and stayed there." Against this the Luke tells: living in Nazareth in Galilee from the start, Joseph had the Christ at a lodge at Bethlehem, and went up to Jerusalem to celebrate it, and then "came back to his village, Nazareth." The Matthew said Joseph moved to Nazareth, but the Luke called it his homeland. Which should we believe?

According to the Luke, Joseph's family had a celebration at the shrine in Jerusalem and Simeon, responding to the spirit, celebrated him, then an old female prophet "told everyone about him." What a dangerous situation is this! If King Herod had ordered to find the Christ as soon as possible, every new-born baby might have been decapitated at the shrine. Even more suspicious enough, the Galilean King Antipa couldn't be more gentle a king than the Judaic one Akelaos, because both kings had the same father Herod.

Fifth: on devil's temptation as well, the Evangels cannot stand consistent. According to the Matthew, a devil came to the Christ after 40 days and nights fasting. According to the Mark and the Luke, however, after the 40 days trial the demon left him and an angel came instead for the first time. The angel, the Mark says, served him all the way. Besides these, on the Matthew, the Christ got the second temptation to throw himself away, and then the third to get the whole world. The Luke, however, reverses this order. More than these, as for the pasage that the devil made him "stand on the top of the temple," did the Christ and the devil fly togethe in the air? Seeing them standing side by side on the top of the shrine to look down the holy capital at a glance, how much astonished people filled the city were! By the way, where was the high mountain where the Christ and the devil looked over the whole world?

Sixth: as for Peter's denial of Christ, the Evangels fail to coincide. In the Matthew, on the one hand, the Christ predicted that Peter would deny him three times before cockcrow. In the Mark, on the other hand, as soon as Peter gave his first denial a cock crowed. Besides this, according to the Luke, Christ was with Peter at the very moment and "turned and saw Peter." According to the Matthew and Mark, however, being at a garden or outside, the Christ couldn't see him. As for this episode the four Evangels differs so much like this that we can take this the most powerful evidence for their reliability as historical documents. I don't want to go further and compare their original texts. Maybe it's enough here to they have so many contradictions.

Seventh: as for the date when the Christ started his enlightenment as well, the Evangels cannot be consistent. The Luke says that the 15th year of the reign of the King Tiberius saw the Christ's baptism. Thus in a certain year during seven years after that Christ must have benn killed on the cross. The first three Evangels, on the one hand, say as if he would have preached for not more than one year; for, he saw the Passover just for one time since that. Seeing that the whole city welcomed him frightend with asking who he was, we should take it that that was his first visit there as an adult. The fourth Evangel by John, on the other hand, tells a different story; for, it says, he saw the Passover two times and went to Jerusalem frequently. According to the last Evangel, thus, he preached for not less than two years.

The Christ started his preaching at Bethany, the John says, and welcomed his first disciples; Andrew, Peter and another guy. Then the next day, he went to Galilee and met Philip and Nathanael. Thereafter, with these disciples, he did miracles at Cana, went to Capernaum and Jerusalem, there boasted "Destroy this shrine, desciples, and I will buid it up again in three days." And after these, coming back to Jordan, he gave baptism, and finally went back to Galee with them. The John takes that all these events happend before the imprisonment of John the Baptist. On the other hand, other three Evangels tell thus: hearing the news of John's imprisonment, the Christ went back to Galee, and stayed at Capernaum. And "at that time" he started preaching, and then traveling along the seashore by himself alone, he met Peter, Andrew, Jacob, John and others and made them his desciples. First of all, the Christ began to preach from different times. If we rely on the John, what is more, it is impossible that these desciples abandoned him later, and Peter was surprised by seeing the miracle of fish, because they had already followed him at Judea and convinced he was the Christ through many miracles.

The last: even as for whether if the man was the Messiah and the Christ, they failed to be consistent; according to the John, Andrew said that, Samaritans admitted it, Peter called him so, Martha believed that, and Jesus himself from start regarded himself as the Christ, and even never stopped boasting himself that. In other three Evangels, to the contrary, when the desciples called him the Christ, he cautioned them not to tell people that he was the Christ, though, in a contradictory manner, later he blamed Judean people for denying that he was the Messiah.

2.3: The Evangels forget to mention the birth and the Ascention of the Christ

And furthermore, as for his miraculous birth, the Mark and the John give no mention of it, and as for his ascension, the John and the Matthew seem to know nothing about it. What on the earth made them forget or ignore these two events, though they have the heaviest importance on the human history and give the most powerful evidence for Christ's deity?

The four Evangels compared each other make us compile a magnificent voluminous book by enumerating contradictions and inconsistencies, of which I have mentioned above just one spot.

However small it may be, this spot allow us to guess its whole, doesn't it? Without being a christian, who takes criticism and investigation sin, can anybody insist that Christ's biography is unquestionably expressed by the Evangels, against these fatal inconsistencies? Seeing them conflicting, can anybody admit them to be historical facts, without making them fictional stories?

Then, how can we tell the true from the false in the new testament, above all, among the four Evangels? Should we take them spurious as a whole? Or, can we get anything true and reliable from them?