gurantee that the Gospels are accurate?

Great Debates
1

I’m told that the Gospels are divinely inspired, and therefore, must be correct

Who, exactly, came to the conclusion that they were to be or are, divinely inspired?

If they are divinely inspired, shouldn’t they agree on all details?

2

Clearly they’re not correct in details, they contradict each other in various places. I’m not sure who says they are divinely inspired or why. Whoever they are though I doubt there’s much point trying to rationalise with them.

3

I believe it was the early Father’s of the Church under the direction of the Pope to decide which writings are inspired and which were not. I find it strange that they didn’t Include the writings of Peter( Jesus was to have chosen him as head Apostle) or the writings of Thomas, who was an Apostle. But chose Luke and Mark’s writings. For nearly 300 years there was not one Bible as people know it to day.

Monavis

4

This thread is discussing some of the issues relevant to this debate, namely how major aspects of the religion and its sacred texts were decided:

5

The compilation of the bible and decision about which books to include and which not is covered here: Straight Dope Staff Report: Who wrote the Bible? (Part 5)

6

Who told you the Gospels were divinely inspired? How do they know?

My understanding is that the Gospels were written between 30 - 70 years after Jesus died. It’s not clear how accurate they could be, since they relied entirely on eye-witness accounts, presumably most of which were secondhand.

7

“Inspired” is an abstraction that can be taken more than one way.

What can be said is that the Gospels were written between 70-100 CE by non-eyewitnesses. Matthew and Luke both copied extensively from Mark as well as another probable common written source called Q in NT scholarship.

There are many contradictions between the gospels as well as a number of other factual errors, historical anachronisms, etc.

The gospels are all anonymous and their traditional authorships were ascribed to them by 2nd century popular and patristic tradition that does not hold up to serious scrutiny and which has largely been abandoned by contemporary scholarship.

Having said all that, “inspiration,” doesn’t have to mean inerrant or literally true and many Christians can and do read the Gospels, particularly the words of Jesus as being genuinely revelatory of God without necessarily reading the stories a journalistic history.

Jesus himself taught in parables. Whether those stories literally happened could not have been less of the point.