What happened? Guess I have to catch up…
Well, I for one have enjoyed it and thank you for the thread.
This presumes that the end of the world was in the far future. Jesus said no one knows when Judgement will come, like a thief in the night. Several times he warned those alive then must be ready for it.
What mainstream scholars have you read from critiquing the Bible? Any? When I type in, Who Wrote the Bible on any search engine, unfortunately, I find it’s overran with fundamentalist sites, still sticking to their guns with the traditional authorship.
When you can’t get extant writings from many church fathers from late first century to early second century, of which there were quite a few, not mentioning their names, but not anything in the Gospels themselves, I would think, if anything, it should have you questioning any biblical authorship integrity. I doubt authorship would have done much good anyway, particularly in the ancient world when first names were the norm, but there is not a scintilla of evidence they were ever on it then. Joseph McCabe covers this quite extensively, but you’ll just have to look behind the curtain yourself, don’t care to copy massive quotes verbatim.
It was a forgery mill back then. Copyrights didn’t exist, the owner of the manuscript could do with it whatever they wanted, some were preserved and little changes made, others serious changes were added. Many a time, notes were taken and written on the sides of them, and sometimes this gets inserted into later texts.
Even on the oldest most complete manuscripts, there are many interpolations that have been added to today’s bibles. Concerning the Gospels, it shouldn’t take till about 180 CE to get a church father quoting from all four with their names, I wouldn’t think, not for such a rock star that the Gospels present Jesus to be. Hell, I think there should have been scribes, quoting his every word from the get-go. Even the three I quoted from earlier, Papias, Marcion, and Justin that may have been quoting a few bits around 140-150 have some dubious parts, and would deserve its own thread, but I’d still have to research this more myself as well, before I could determine what is going on with those three.
The problem of authorship extends through pretty much the whole Bible, it isn’t limited to just the Gospels. About the best they can do, is say, with Paul’s letters, about half of them are considered to be genuine. Starting with the first five books of the OT, mainstream scholarship knows Moses is not the author. The evidence is overwhelming that the sources originate somewhere else, which also shows this couldn’t been a revelation to just the Jews. I recommend something from Richard Friedman’s, The Bible with Sources Revealed. Despite the title, it’s only about the first five books. Some of his books are about $60.00, but I think Amazon has some kindle editions for considerably less.
For the New Testament, consider Burton Mack’s Who Wrote the New Testmant? Bart Ehrman’s Forged also uncovers much of the problems. All mainstream scholarship will also have scholars critiquing their work, that’s what they do, they will quibble about this and that, some of the better ones gets their work gets peer-reviewed by real scholars, not creationist fundamentalist types who want to keep 'em on the farm, but for the most part Ehrman in this book uncovers what has been known for some time.
I would also recommend anything from the hundreds of works with the late ex-Catholic priest Joseph McCabe of the previous century whose works are still valuable and covers many aspects of this extensively. He knew the old languages well. He had access to the works. He was the Catholic Church’ Golden Boy, until he educated himself right out of the faith. See McCabe’s, The Myth of the Resurrection and other essays.
If you want a more detailed discussion on Who Wrote the Bible, set up a thread with it and I’ll contribute, but probably best you get some of these books, and learn from them. Or if you insist on traditional scholarship being correct, we can have a debate on it on another thread, if your interests take you that far. Let’s keep it short here, so the OP can have anyone that wants to answer his question on divinity.
You waiting on the Catholic Church to decide for you? The view inside the CC, is wide and varied. Some are quite brilliant, and others die-hard traditionalists, who still stick to their guns on Original Sin, Adam and Eve being real people along with it portraying real historical events throughout. I actually recommend you spending quite a time on their newadvent site and reading from the early church fathers. Some of it is quite revealing. Much credit for them offering the works on-line to us.
If it’s any consolation for you, previously in 1901, Pope Leo XIII set up the Pontifical Biblical Commission and the Cardinals guided by their great expertise in such spiritual and scriptures matters voted in the literal meaning of Genesis 1-3, and concluded that Adam and Eve were actual historical figures. In 1948, the Commission met again and decided it was no longer necessary to teach that Adam and Eve were historical after all.
So if you want to treat Adam and Eve as non-historical, you now have the Church’s permission.
(Thomas Brodie, Beyond the Quest of a Historical Jesus, pages 18-19.)
If he did in fact rise from the dead, claims to supernatural powers should be investigated. Why would that indicate divinity? Since we have no good, proven, reliable, unbiased examples of either, why does a supposed supernatural power suggest godlike powers? Isn’t it more likely that the stories were just made up?
The “Catholic Church”? Ya think there might be just a tiny bit of religious, self-preservation bias here?