My point repeated a couple of times is more basic.
How do we define ‘what Jesus said’? Earlier the OP agreed the idea was ‘what is in the Gospels’ which to me means the canonical Gospels. In which case there is no significant gap between ‘Paul’s religion’ and the ‘Jesus’ religion’, just on a few, or even just one particular modern social hot button that drives a lot of cultural hostility now towards Christianity IMO. That whole discussion of Paul v Jesus is largely a tangent under the assumption that ‘what Jesus said’ is what the 4 Gospels say he said.
If instead we define ‘what Jesus said’ by looking at rejected (by the Roman era Church) scripture and ‘clues’ and ‘inferences’ then ‘what Jesus said’ could be a wide variety of things depending which other sources, clues and inferences, highly subject to opinion and IMO doubtful to say anything much about it is ‘almost certain’. There would be no general understanding or agreement as to ‘what Jesus said’, and discussion of a ‘religion based only on what Jesus said’ without a common idea ‘what Jesus said’ is basically pointless IMO.
It’s not universally accepted that they were written by different people. In fact, John plays with patterns of 7 in both books. Some scholars believe John actually wrote the Gospel of John after Revelation.
Jehovah’s Witnesses base their religion largely on what Jesus “commanded” them to do.
Or, so they often claim. They seem to see Jesus as some kind of military commander, and what Jesus said to do are referred to as “commands”. And JWs also say they don’t do the things that Jesus didn’t command them to do. This is one of the two explanations I’ve heard for why they don’t celebrate birthdays: Because Jesus didn’t command them to.
Of course, that needs to be taken with a grain of myrrh. The JW religion seems to be largely based on the Book of Revelation, which doesn’t consist largely of the actual words of Jesus.
Well, He did say "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." And of course the Lords prayer- which is *not supposed to be said over and over again. *
Yep, in fact it really looks like Jesus would have forgiven Homosexuals as He did adulterers.
The Celtic Christian Church does *emphasize *the Words of Jesus, as opposed to Paul.
Actually, no. Mark and Matthew are based mostly on Q, and Q is thought to be more or less contemporary with Jesus. The Gospel of John was likely dictated to the Apostle John’s followers when John was a very old man.
The other gospels were either duplicates or transparent forgeries, written at a late date. By the Council of Nicaea , they were quite aware of which 3 synoptic gospels showed up not too long after the Crucifixion.
It’s very true that one mention of Jesus in Josephus was likely edited by some monk. However, there werent many copies of Josephus around. There were many copies of the Gospels, and what we have found from early scrolls (such as the Dead Sea Scrolls*) pretty closely match what we have now, with some minor translation and copiest errors, none of any substance.
The Council was in AD 325. Many scrolls dated earlier than that date have been found. Not to mention the Council didnt discuss the Gospels and apocrypha. Wiki “*Biblical canon
Main article: Development of the Christian biblical canon
There is no record of any discussion of the biblical canon at the council.[79] The development of the biblical canon was nearly complete (with exceptions known as the Antilegomena, written texts whose authenticity or value is disputed) by the time the Muratorian fragment was written.[80]”…“Irenaeus (died c. 202) quotes and cites 21 books that would end up as part of the New Testament, …”
*
So the canon was mostly set before the 2nd century ended.
**Pretty much then, everything in your post is incorrect. **
*mostly OT, not NT but similar scroll caches have been found- papyrus fragment, also known as “P52" has the Gospel of John. Bodmer Papyrus II AD c200 has the epistle of Jude and the two epistles of Peter and earliest known copy of the Gospel according to the Luke and one of the earliest of the Gospel according to John. The A. Chester Beatty Papyri C AD200 has part of a codex of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, letters written by Paul: Romans, Hebrews, I and II Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and I Thessalonians and contains the oldest known text of the Book of Revelation. and so forth.
Paul* promoted* Christianity and was primarily responsible for spreading to the *gentiles. * But there was a Christian Church before Paul. Small, mostly Jewish, yes.
No, because there was a Christian movement before Paul, led by Peter and James- the brother of Jesus. It wasnt very large, and you could call it a Jewish Messianic sect, I guess. But it existed. They stoned James because of it.
Yes, “how much of what we think of today as “Christianity” originated with Paul, or how much different it would be if Paul had never gotten involved” is very much a matter for debate.
There is an alternative hypothesis, the Farrer Hypothesis, that posits that there never was a Q (and we certainly don’t have a Q now) and that the order goes Mark, Matthew, Luke, with Matthew making shit up to make the content of Mark fit more in line with the Old Testament and to make Jesus appear to fulfill OT prophecies. Then Luke came along and, based on Mark and Matthew both, modified the message to make the religion a little less Jewish and focus more on Christ’s humanity and his innocence, among other things.
And then John came way out of left field, the latest of the canonical gospels. We don’t need to go into it here (other thread), but I’ll reiterate that “John as an eyewitness account” is very much disputed, and that my take on the consensus is that NONE of the gospels are considered to be eyewitness accounts.
I personally find the Farrer Hypothesis more convincing than the two-source/Q hypothesis because the former makes fewer assumptions. That is, it does not assume there was yet another “important historical document” that somehow found its way into canon indirectly through the other gospels and so was clearly important to early Christians and largely compatible with what eventually DID make it into canon, but somehow failed to be preserved itself, even as a great many more dubious sources (such as the majority of the epistles) were included in canon.
Even if you tried to do this, you’d run into the “Yeah, but” people. Did Jesus say “Judge not, least ye be judged?” Yeah, but…“Did Jesus tell the woman taken in adultery to go and sin no more, but totally ignore the guy” Yeah, but…
Some vegetarian groups argue that John did not eat locust and Jesus did not eat fish. No, John ate locust bean (carob) and Jesus ate fish plant (seaweed).
I don’t have my references with me at the moment but there are some references to the sky opening up and angels coming down out of the heavens - or something like that - at the start of one of the primary (synoptic) gospels or something that became one. I’ll update later if I’m wrong but I think one was from Justin Martyr and the other is an Arabic work that describes an early version of the Diatessaron and also includes such a description. I am inclined to believe that this comes from an early version of Matthew AKA, the Gospel of the Hebrews, which is consistently described as starting around Luke 3, jumping straight to Luke 4.
The Gospel of Marcion also has this beginning - no angels, just that placement.
The historic record tells us that Mark was created after Matthew but the historic records of Matthew do not match what we see. As said, the beginning wasn’t there and it seems to have had a bit about angels coming out of the sky near the beginning.
The historic record does tell us that the Gospel of Marcion was a chopped down version of Matthew, by a Roman who thought that they should just focus on Paul’s religion and say the heck with the Jerusalem church. The Gospel of Mark does largely match what we would expect to see if we imagine a Gospel of the Hebrews and then cropped it down to remove anything overtly Jewish.
And, well, Mark <-> Marcion. Not a terribly fancy argument but ignoring it for being obvious is possibly being too clever by half.
My personal guess, based on one or two other things, is that the part that the historic record got wrong wasn’t the order of the Gospels, it was that when they reviewed “The Gospel of Marcion”, they were actually looking at Hebrew Matthew or an earlier version of Luke that the Marcionites had accepted that had built off of Mark.
I would also guess that Mark, the scribe of Paul, was in fact Marcion and that The Gospel of Mark was the official Gospel of the Roman church during and just after Paul’s tenure.
Luke, as a Roman, would naturally work off of their trimmed down version, so he developed it out - possibly from a version that hadn’t yet been chopped down quite so much as our Mark or, as said, was shorter than it is now at the point in time when the Marcionites split off.
But, meanwhile, the Roman and Eastern churches were negotiating a “shared” text that they would both agree to. There was an early attempt to fulfill the declaration of the Council of Jerusalem and to find a harmony between the different teachings of the two churches. Through that process of revisions, Hebrew Matthew was developed into what we see today - sufficiently revised by committees, haggling it out over a few years that it is scarcely connected to the original - but, still the most Jewish of the bunch since the church in Antioch and elsewhere had half a say in what went into it.
Hebrew Matthew - Marcion = Gospel Mark
Gospel Mark + Luke = Gospel Luke
Hebrew Matthew + Committees +? Gospel Luke = Gospel Matthew
IMHO
Particularly if we take the idea that the Marcion created Mark but the Marcionites took an early variant of Luke that was based off of that, all of the historic record and dates line up.
Plus we have to remember in the days before printing presses and mass media, and when matching the spiritual message counted more than historical accuracy - every copy of every work had to be written by hand; meaning a moderately educated person with the resources and time to create a copy. No doubt some were done from memory, some were edited to fit (as mentioned about Marcion) either the audience or the author’s predilections. Some were created from the imagination, as evidence the variety of legends about figures such as Robin Hood or King Arthur (or even George Washington and the cherry tree - the GW Principle - “It’s easy to tell the truth when you’re the one holding the axe”). It’s pretty easy to conclude that stories about childhood Jesus zapping his teacher were the imaginings of a bored scribe. It’s pretty easy to imagine someone wanting to impress his view - whether Jesus was human, or a divine apparition, etc. - those doctrinal assertions being inserted into someone’s personal copy and/or spread to others. It’s even easy to imagine - like Jefferson - that miracles were later legends inserted to drive home the message of divinity. (Or, they could be as meaningful as the miracles performed at Lourdes or by southern fundamentalist preachers)
Councils later would suppress not only what they saw as obviously fake texts, but also those that disagreed with the “party line”.
the short answer is we’ll never know. All we can do is read between the lines and make educated guesses.
How does anyone know what Jesus said anyways? It’s not like his ever utterance was recorded. SSo how do you know he never referred to “husband and husband.” Paul, being the asshole he was, would not have made reference to it. He was too busy telling women to sit down and STFU in church.
Like everything else in antiquity, we have very few original sources. People wrote down or told others what they heard, and then someone copied that into what they were writing, etc. Later writers maybe polished, embellished, or “clarified”. Sometimes nuggets of truth shine through.
St. Paul, who also claimed he was an apostle despite never having met Jesus, and also claimed to talk to Jesus regularly after he had a seizure on the road to Damascus, is probably not a reliable source for actual quotes. Actual apostles, maybe.
Plus, if there’s a guy spending several years preaching to bigger and bigger crowds using parables, you can be sure that the bible probably only captures a fraction of the stories he told over that time. A lot has likely been lost.
As for “husband and husband” - the bible does say that when confronted with a woman who had violated sexual mores and Jewish law, Jesus said essentially nobody had the right to punish her. Why would anything different apply to men?
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