Where Did Jesus Die? — Page xxi
Introduction xxi God. Had they voted otherwise, all the people, since calling themselves Christians, would have believed otherwise, for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other’. 2. They are not, therefore, the Word of God, nor did the Evangelists put forward any claim to that effect. 3. They were written very many years after the crucifixion, ‘When it must have been very difficult for the writers to make an accu- rate record, to collect reliable and trustworthy data from the welter of hazy impressions formed in their minds during the rapid succession of events which culminated in the climax of Calvary’. 4. Numerous inconsistencies and contradictions existing in the four accounts are positive proof of their contents being doubt- ful and liable to be correct or incorrect. 5. Modern research has shown that the author of the fourth Gospel was not John the disciple of Jesus, and verse 24 of the last chapter of that Gospel also reveals this fact. Likewise, the original Hebrew text of the Matthew Gospel was lost and the author of the existing translation was an unknown person. The other two (Mark and Luke) were not the Apostles of Jesus. 6. It cannot be doubted that a historical work is often greatly affected by the personal beliefs and mentality of the historian. The various historical data mentioned in the four Gospels,