What are the most popular theories as to why there are no written teachings of Jesus?
Do you think that the existance of Jesus’s writings would unify or fracture Christendon?
I was under the impression that the parables and teachings in the Gospels were his teachings, or at least those of a person or persons we call “Jesus” these days.
Do you mean “Why did it take five decades to write this stuff down instead of just doing so as soon as it had been conceived?”. If so, maybe the person or persons who thought up the parables and teachings couldn’t read or write?
There’s a lot of “written teachings of Jesus” around.
Just not written by Him.
There’s a lot of things He didn’t do, AFAWK, and it seems somewhat pointless to ask why He didn’t do them.
He came from, and into, a culture in which honor was paid to Writings – that’s what “Scripture” literally translates to – but in which exegesis and teaching from them was generally done orally. That’s what He set out to do.
I should mention, in passing, the strong opinion among many Biblical critics that one needs to read the stories about Him keeping in mind that He expected the End Times immediately – that eschatology was a major focus for Him. (I don’t buy that, but it is defensible as an argument.)
BTW, we know He could write – in the story of the woman taken in adultery, he writes in the sand. And we’ve discussed before the story of the correspondence between Him and Efrem of Edessa, which is 99.99999% certainly a pious fraud.
As for what difference it would make – not much. We’ve got ample written records of what He allegedly said, which are accepted as just that by virtually every group of Christian – and the results are that we’re sadly divided over the meaning of what He said. I think you’d have the same results over what He wrote.
To clarify: Why no teachings written by Jesus?
One might have expected the early Christians to attribute writings to Jesus, as they wrote works in the name of his immediate followers, Matthew, for example. The only relatively early piece that I know of which was attributed to Jesus is the Letter to Abgar purportedly written in response to an invitation from that monarch to visit his kingdom.
Given the authority such works would have had it seems odd that none were written.
Correct my reference in post #3 to “Efrem of Edessa” (an early saint) to “Abgar of Edessa” (the guy aldiboronti links to here) – it was a brain cramp; thanks, **aldi[b/]!! 
I don’t know why He didn’t write anything. Neither does anyone else. I also don’t know why He never created a duckbilled platypus for the amazement of the Twelve Disciples, or sailing to America to preach to the natives (LDS Dopers, please bite your tongues here! ;)). Fact is, He’s not recorded as having done so.
To clarify my clarification: My clarification was directed towards SentientMeat who was unclear whether I was referring to his teachings or his writings.
I’m not very religious, and maybe this is a written tradition person’s puzzlement over why more things weren’t written down in the old days.
I don’t think it’s ‘pointless’ to ask. For a non-religious person like me, I see God writing his rules on stone tablets (if I believe the movie). I see a Jewish religion based on the writing of Moses, and following strict, written Jewish laws.
In the New Testament, I see a lot of first and second hand accounts of what Jesus said. I see a lot of books written by Jesus’s Disciples on how to conduct yourself as a Christian. I see a lot of debates in this forum, on what the true meaning of certain verses are. And I wonder why Jesus didn’t just spell it out, and whether we would be better off if he did?
There aren’t any surviving writings by Buddha or Confucius either. (The Analects, which are the teachings of Confucius, were probably written down 100 years after his death.) For that matter, most of the Bible probably existed as oral tradition for a while before it was written down. In a society that relies a lot more on oral teaching and traditions than we do, writing things down becomes less important.
More to the point, the Gospel of Luke has him reading in the synagogue, so there’s Gospel corroboration that he was literate.
I’ve often asked this question abiout why there are nio writings by Jesus around. In this connection, I have to note that I can’t think of any “sacred” writings that were known or said to be written by the prophets themselves – they always seem to be dictated to and written down by others. Even Joseph Smith, although he wrote a great many things, dictated The Book of Mormon.
my reading of his teachings was that he was predicting the end of the world quite soon, so there was no point in writing anything down as who would be round to read it?
e.g. Luke 9:27 “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God”
Luke 21:31-32
31Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.
32“I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened
of course you can argue what each of those word means, and the doomsday message seems to be largely a Luke thing. We are also assuming he could write. There may well be a passage in the NT that says he could
I would advise a little against circular reasoning here: all we have are a set of consistent parabales and teachings written down at least five decades after they were conceived. The only source that they came from a single person, called “Jesus”, who read scripture in the temple, wrote in the sand and was executed for smashing up a temple, are those people who wrote those teachings down five decades later.
Bolding mine
Huh?
What about,
1 Samuel (Parts of it)
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
**Daniel **
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habaukkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
(The last 12 in this list commonly called “the minor prophets”)
Well, I Samuel, Daniel, and Jonah are debatable (and let’s not get into that argument – I’m merely saying that there are scholars who would dispute their being written by the prophet in question, not making a claim either way). Likewise with parts of Isaiah and Zechariah.
But moving those books and parts-of-books to one side, the rest of your list is, I believe, very much on target as cites against the statement you quoted.
In non-Judaeo-Christian belief, I’m pretty sure the Granth is generally regarded as being written by the Sikh guru to whom it’s ascribed, as well.
I don’t deny the existence of these books, and I had the OT prophets in mind when I wrote my post, but as far as I know, they don’t say anything about the prophet writing them down themselves. But it’s been an awful long time since I read the OT.
Well, he didn’t sail to America. He just appeared to some of them after the Resurrection. No boat needed. 
This story is almost certainly not authentic. It is found as John 8:1-11 is some manuscripts, but in others it is placed at the end of the book, or in Luke, or is missing entirely. See The Five Gospels.
This was probably made up by Luke. See The Five Gospels.
Many current scholars hold that Jesus, like most poor people of his time, was illiterate. There’s no convincing evidence of the contrary.
Jesus was probably illiterate. At the time of Jesus, 95-98% of the Palestinian state was illiterate [sup]1[/sup]. Jesus was a peasant of the artisan class (a bare subsistence social class) and was from very rural Galilee. There was little or no access to education and there was no time, inclination or expectation that peasants would teach their kids how to read.
The Greek word used for Jesus’ writing in the dirt ([symbol]katagrafen[/symbol]) means most literally “to scratch” but can also mean to write or draw. So it’s not clear from the text that Jesus was writing words in the dirt, only that he was “scratching in” the dirt with a stick.
I think the most likely explanation for Jesus not leaving any writings is that he didn’t know how to write. I have read some arguments that Jesus may have been trained to read and write by the Essenes but that’s pretty speculative.
[sup]1[/sup]Crossan, Jesus: A Radical Biography, pg, 25
So with about 260 views, the two theories put forward is that Jesus thought the end was nigh and didn’t see the point in writing it down, or that he was illiterate. Neither of which reflects well on his divinity.
Interesting.
or he knew other people were going to it for him and had better things to do, or that he did and the writings didn’t survive, or …
Dismissal of the John 8 account of Jesus writing & the Luke 4 account of Jesus reading cites THE FIVE GOSPELS, which we have to note, is a product of Robert Funk & the Jesus Seminar, who are about as objective as I am in the other direction.
RE the idea that Jesus expected the End within a generation of his life, I believe that is kind of true, but not the End of the World- rather the End of the Aion, which did come as the Mosaic Priestly-Sacrificial-Temple system were destroyed in the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD.