Why Did Jesus’ Disciples Abandon Him in His Last Hours?

By Wizened Sage (Galen Rose) ~

There is much in the New Testament to cause one to question whether the Jesus story(s) of the Gospels ever really happened. For example, in several places in the Gospels Jesus is quoted as saying this or that, but he was alone at the time according to the text. So, how could anyone know he said those things? There are also all those conflicts in the resurrection story, like how many women went to Jesus’ tomb that Sunday, and how many men were in the tomb when the women arrived? The Gospels disagree on these and numerous other details.

One of my own favorite sticky questions is why did all of Jesus’ disciples abandon him the night before his crucifixion? As far as I can see, this makes no sense at all in view of what they should have known about Jesus by that time.

Consider that, according to the Gospels, these guys had followed Jesus around for 3 years. They had seen him perform dozens, perhaps hundreds of miracles; healing the sick and crippled with a touch, walking on water, changing water to wine, feeding thousands with a few fishes and loaves of bread, bringing the dead back to life, etc. Pretty amazing stuff, huh? That would have been more than enough to convince me that this guy was god, the son of god, or both.

But that’s not all! Three of the apostles witnessed Jesus “transfiguration” on a mountain top. On the mountain, Jesus begins to shine with bright rays of light. Then the prophets Moses and Elijah appear next to him and he speaks with them. Jesus is then called "Son" by a voice in the sky.

And that’s still not all! According to Matthew 10:1, when Jesus

“had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.”

So, now the apostles also had miraculous powers. And, Acts 8:5-8 tells us that they actually used these special powers:

“Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them. And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed.”

Why did all of Jesus’ disciples abandon him the night before his crucifixion?Yet, after all this, on the night before his crucifixion, all of Jesus disciples abandoned him, denying they knew him and staying away. Contrast this with the Jim Jones of Guyana story where, according to numerous eyewitnesses, many of his followers willingly drank the Kool-Aid. They obviously believed Jones was a legitimate prophet who was in god’s inner circle. Yet, Jones never showed them any miracles, was never transfigured, and never passed on any special powers to his followers. How much more evidence did the apostles have of Jesus importance to the cosmos? Yet they still abandoned him.

Is this believable to anyone who has ever given it any real thought? To further confound things, it is claimed that the apostles were staunch supporters and proselytizers for Jesus after his resurrection, some claiming the apostles all died violent deaths rather than recanting their belief in Jesus. Some turnaround, huh?

So, why would the Gospel authors tell the Jesus story in this way? I suspect that Jesus’ abandonment by the apostles was merely a literary device to increase the readers’ sympathy for Jesus. This left Jesus truly alone in his darkest hour, deserted by even his closest friends. Yet, Jesus keeps faith with god. He becomes an even greater hero through this device; even more deserving of our admiration and worship.

So, what’s my point? Well, my point is that this is one more reason to doubt the Jesus story as told by the Gospels. Given what they knew of Jesus, and their own powers given them by Jesus, there was every reason for them to stand by him in his darkest hour; more reason, by far, than Jim Jones followers had to stand by him. I think the Gospel writers seized on this literary device without thinking it through. By using this device they increased our sympathy for Jesus, yes, but they simultaneously cast a very deep shadow of doubt on the whole story – for those of us who actually bother to think about what the Bible says.

Comments

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~ S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden – Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~ A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins Accepting Christ as Savior Frequently reading the Bible Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules) Attending church services Partaking of the Lord’s Supper Tithing Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc. Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro

Search This Blog