My dad's rant on Xmas...

Great Debates
21

I’m sorry, ImNotMad2, but there are serious problems with the traditions that we inherited. I think that it is too much to claim that the named authors cannot be the people that tradition names, but there are serious difficulties with most of the traditional claims.

John Mark, may have been a companion of Peter, but then why do the references prior to Papias always associate him with Paul, and not Peter?
The claim that Matthew the Apostle was also Matthew the Evangelist is extremely weak (and its source, Papias, is notably unreliable). If the actual statement of Papias is true, then the collection of sayings that Papias mentions is clearly not the same as the Gospel that we now have, which was written forty years or so later with a clear dependence on Mark. Why would an eyewitness base so much testimony on the writings of someone who was, at best, one generation removed?
Peter, the fisherman, is almost certainly not the author of the two letters in his name, both of which are written in literary Greek and one of which was copied from the letter of Jude.

Neither the letter of James nor the letter of Jude make any personal references to Jesus as a person, creating the odd situation in which someone who was supposed to have been a brother appeals not to the preachings of Jesus but to the authority of the Church when proclaiming their message.

(Appeals to Luke and Mark as the companions of Peter and Paul, if true, do not make them eyewitnesses to Jesus.)

Again, I do not claim that any named person cannot be the actual author, but most of the testimony of authorship dates to the period sixty years after the letters were supposed to have been written and even those reports are second hand. (E.g., we only have the quotations from Irenaeus (mid 2d century) and Eusebius (4th century) regarding what Papias might have written–we have no works by Papias, himself.)

22

Tom already got to this but basically, the traditional “authors” that you are referring to have no historical or documntary support.

It is merely a tradition that the Gospel of matthew was written by the apostle. It does not, in fact, name its own author (and neither do any of the other Gospels). The argument for apostollic authorship for Matthew is further hindered by the fact that it is composed in Greek (and uses the Greek Septuagint as a reference rather than the Hebrew Bible), that it is reliant on Mark and Q. A primary source would not be dependant on a secondary source like Mark and while it is possible that Q is derived from a lost compilation of sayings recorded by a primary source, as it is used in Matthew and Luke it is a Greek composition, not a translation from Aramaic or Hebrew. This makes Q, as used by Matthew, a secondary source as well.

Furthermore, Matthew was not written until the 70s AD at the earliest, and probably more like 80. Matthew would have had to have been a very old man at a time when few people lived past their 40s or 50s.

Be that as it may, the Gospel does not even claim apostollic authorship for itself, so third century claims about such authorship (in an era where false claims of authorship were commonplace as a means to establish authority) are extremely weak.

The Gospel of Mark does not name its own author and there is no reason at all to associate the author with the “John Mark” mentioned in Luke. Even if that were true, Mark would still be a secondary source and not an eyewitness.

Tom covered James and Jude but let me address the Gospel of John by saying that it was not written until c. 100 AD, that it does not name its own author, that it is also composed in greek and that it also shows signs of secondary dependence (though not on the synoptics).
Like Tom said, it can’t be absolutely proven that the traditional authors had nothing to do with these works but the claims have some serious problems on their face and are completely unsupported by any real evidence. As a matter of fact, there isn’t even any real proof that most of these guys ever existed much less wrote anything.

I am inclined to believe that some of what’s embedded in the Canonical Gospels is rooted in oral (and in the case of Q, possibly written) traditions which may very well have originated from apostle or other eyewitnesses, particularly as it pertains to sayings, parables, the beatitudes and possibly a stray anecdote here or there.

However, it is virtually impossible to make a convincing case that any of the books in the NT were composed by apostles or by anyone who ever knew Jesus while he was alive.

23

Islamic teachings and Al Qur’an itslef will tell you that your assertion is completely wrong.

Salaam. A

24

Perhaps you could mention a few, and give the reasons why you think they disprove Brandus’ assertion.

Regards,
Shodan

25

Oops. The line

is from Aldebaran, not Brandus.

Regards,
Shodan

26

You really want a cite that Islam is not an offshoot of Christianity, Shodan? Are you serious?

To call Islam an “offshoot” of Christianity would imply that its first adherents were at some point Christians, meaning that they worshipped Christ.

The Koran speaks of Jesus only as a prophet and specifically denies that he was divine.

Indeed they reject the truth, those that say, “God is Christ, the son of Mary.” For indeed, Christ said, worship God, who is MY GOD and your God (Koran 5:75)."

So the Koran, the foundation of Islam explicitly rejects the divinity of Christ. It also categorically rejects the Trinity, the Resurrection and the idea that Jesus can redeem sins.If anything, Islam is an offshoot of Judaism (or at least, the religion of Abraham) but in no way is it, nor has it ever been Christian.

If you or Branduswant to assert that it is Christian then it’s on you to provide the evidence. The Koran is quite clear that Jesus isn’t God.

27

If you are unhappy with the word “offshoot” then perhaps “reaction to” is more your liking. The fact the Koran specifically mentions the concepts brought on by Christianity, such as Ressurrection, Christ as Messiah, etc, make it a product of christianity, relating it to judaism, in placing it 3rd in the sequence of Judiasm --> Christianity --> Islam. I say this the same way I would say communism is an offshoot of capitalism, even though they are complete opposites.

28

Actually, I would say that Islam is an offshoot of Judaism with elements of Christianity. Just the concept of how do you relate to God is more fundamentally connected with the Jewish way (prayer specifically to God without any intermediary) than the Christian way. There is a lot else that connects Islam to Judaism. The major difference is the difference in texts.

29

Islam is only an offshoot of Christianity inasmuch as it came into the historical picture after Christianity and part of its doctrine is formulated in response to it. Most people do not use “offshoot” in that sense. On reading Brandus’ post:

I think that there is a little more to his thinking than simply that Christianity was developed as a philosophy earlier than Islam and that Christianity was specifically addressed by the Prophet. I could be wrong however.

Regardless, there is a problem with Brandus’s formulation as I see it. It is incorrect to say that there is an “offshoot” line by which a direct progeny can be drawn similar to Brandus’s

It’s very problematic to take the history of the development of a religion or a philosophy and describe it in terms of other religions and philosophies in that way. The arrows fail to take into account all the other religions and philosohpies that influenced Islam and Christianity as well. It’s way too simplistic to simply state a progression of the three religions. While one might teach this to a Middle School class on comparative religions, I think we should be able to rise above this level of reductionism.

Mohammed was reacting to, expounding upon, and redeveloping many different religions and philosophies when he began teaching about Islam. These included both Christianity and Judaism as well as other religious and mythological paradigms that existed on the Arabian peninsula at the time. To single out Christianity is problematic, at best, because it seems to tacitly assume some primacy to the religion of Christianity vis-a-vis Islam. Perhaps this was not the intention of the author, but it’s a common historical error that crops up from time to time.

In general, one can name dozens of religions and philosophies of which any religion is then an “offshoot”.

To wit, and trying to drag the discussion back to the OP’s general topic, Christianity would be an “offshoot” of dualistic schema, Hellenism, Republicanism (in the Roman sense), stoicism, epicureanism, skepticism, Messianic Judaism, the Jewish Temple Cult, the Samaritan Temple Cult, Greek mythology, astrology, sorcery, Goddess Cults, Mithraic cults, Phariseeism, the Essenes, Platonism, hedonism, etc.