Unless you’re Mormon, of course.
Unless you’re Mormon, of course.
I didn’t say I believed it. I was making the argument as a fundamentalist might.
And I can even conceive of a logical way to explain Jesus’s lamenting on the cross, or his fear in Gethsemene, that is consistent with his being divine/mortal rather than simply mortal.
On authorship of the gospels: Who wrote the Bible? (Part 4) - The Straight Dope
No, Eutychus and me ain’t Cecil, but still.
Indeed, I think your scholarship there is prett damn good. I might have a few minor quibbles, but over-all, it agrees with what I have read and researched.
I agree with this paragraph “William Barclay gives us an elegant answer. He states outright that even if John was not the direct author of the book, it was at least written under his authority. The book likely dates from about 100 AD, the last of the books to be written. If this dating is accurate, John would have been very old. Barclay posits that it was probably a group writing remembrances from John’s fading memories, and it was they who described John as the disciple Jesus loved…”
The fading memories of a old man, and the editing after Johns death explain almost every contradiction.
Note that few books were actually “written” by what we consider the authors- in most cases scholars and politicos would dictate to a scribe. Other than Ceasar, few physcially took pen to parchment for longer writings.
Have you read John? It doesn’t sound like the fading memories of an old man. It has long speeches supposedly quoted verbatim, something a centenarian would be unlikely to be able to recall 70 years after the fact.
It is kind of ironic the way that you read into Mark the alleged adoptionist position that he has, and yet miss the fairly obvious clues that Mark thinks that Jesus was divine.
Mark does not have an expressly adoptionist view of Jesus. Mark simply does not say whether the significance of the Holy Spririt coming on Jesus at his baptism. I think it is more likely that Mark is saying that Jesus eternal divinity is being demonstrated at his baptism. It is especially problematic when you consider the transfiguration of Jesus in Mark 9:1-8. There Mark has another incident where people (in this case Peter, James and John) see something of the divine nature of Jesus and also hear a voice declaring him the Son of God. If this type of thing is supposed to be a sign of adoptionism, then why the two similar events in which one could claim that he became the Son of God?
Likewise I don’t think from the text of Mark it is obvious that at the crucifixion Jesus somehow stops being the Son of God either. In Mark Jesus statement is not about his nature, but about his relationship with God the Father. The whole language of adoptionism is not really found anywhere in Mark, and needs to be read into the text, I think erroneously. If Mark intends his readers to understand an adoptionist view of Jesus I think he does a very poor job.
As for Jesus being God, there are several places where the reader is naturally lead to that conclusion. So for instance in Mark 2:1-12, Mark has Jesus forgive the sins of a the paralytic. Mark even has the Jewish leaders remind us that forgiving sins is the perogative of God alone. I think in this Mark wants us to understand that “The Son of Man” as Jesus calls himself here is in nature divine.
Calculon.
The tradition of John’s Gospel as having been dictated by the Apostle is regarded as spurious by contemporary scholarship.
It seems like whether a person named Jesus, or any person, is a historical or fictional figure is really a matter of definition. And I’m still failing to see any real relevance. If there’s a sliding scale where at one end you have a person with the name Jesus Christ, living at the assumed time and having most of the assumed things happen (like being nailed to a plank etc), at the other end you have complete fiction. I don’t really see how this is relevant. The springing poing is, at least to me, whether this guy could do magic.
To “prove” the christian mythology it’s not enough that Jesus existed as a historical person, he has to be able to do magic and be in contact with an omnipotent supernatural entity. You don’t “prove” mormonism by pointing out that Joseph Smith is a historical figure. He most certainly was, as was Jesse James or Napoleon.
It only matters whether Jesus was “real” or not is if he was able to do magic and/or had a connection with a supernatural entity. Which he of course couldn’t, because it is impossible, and which he of course didn’t have, since there is no such thing.
There an article by Stephen Farris entitled “On Discerning Semitic Sources in Luke” that argues persuasively that certain linguistic details in chapter 1-2 of Luke (up to Mary and Joseph finding Jesus in the Temple) are best explained if that material were written in Aramaic and then translated into Greek. This is not true for any other material in Luke. Since Luke says at the start that there are many documents circulating concerning the life of Jesus and that his goal in authoring the Gospel is to combine and put forth a single source, it seems quite likely that he had an Aramaic source for those two chapters distinct from his other sources. Hence I agree with what you say. Even if I accepted, for the sake of argument, that everything in Luke 1-2 was fabricated it wouldn’t have a bearing on the main thrust of the reliability of that Gospel or any other.
Well, there’s the crux of the argument then. You say it’s doubtful, while I don’t think it’s doubtful. As I have said, I am open to read any argument (readily available and of reasonable length) for your position, but first I have to see such an argument. I’ve debated this many times on the Dope and elsewhere and never gotten one. Until then, I’m more inclined to believe the arguments I have seen.
I might be badgered in agreeing that your argument that details from several different figures were merged into the figure of Jesus Christ by the Gospel authors is slightly more plausible than the figure of Jesus Christ being wholly fabricated. However, I still don’t see it as very plausible at all. Just as I’m not aware of any historical figure being fabricated in that short a time or a substantially longer time, so I’m not aware of any historical figure being made from a mishmash of two or more. If we have a historical Jesus in 33 A.D., an oral tradition would have arisen concerning his sayings and the outline of his life. Scholars such as anthorpologist Dr. Albert Lord of Harvard have studied the transmission of oral tradition in popular culture. They have found that it is very possible for a person to memorize a work as long as 100,000 words (much longer than the Gospels) and transmit it accurately for much longer than a 30-40 year period of time. Lord: “The plot, the characters, all the main events and the majority of the details sayed the the same every time the stories were retold or sung. Members of the community were sufficiently familiar with them to correct the singer if he erred in any significant way. Yet anywhere from 10% to 40% of the precise workding could vary from one performance to the next, quite like the variation found in the Synoptic Gospels. Itemizing the changes we have (1) saying the same thing in fewer or more lines (2) expansion of ornamentation (3) changes or order in a sequence (4) addition of material found in texts of other singers (5) omission of material and (6) substitution of one theme for another in a story held together by inner tensions. The similarity between this list and a list of changes describing the differences among the Synoptics is striking indeed. When one recalls that ancient Jews regularly sang or chanted their traditions, not the least as a help to the memory, one recognizes the presence of a helpful analogy.” So changes of the type Lord describes between the actual sermons of Jesus are quite reasonable, and indeed must have occurred given differences in wording for the same event among the gospels. Changes of the type you describe have no basis in actual studies of the transmission of text by memory.
Ok, so you seem to be saying that the contraditions, errors, and historical make believe found in the gospels can be explained by the way in which the early oral traditions might have spread before being written down? And this applies ONLY to those events that are obvious fabrications and errors, but NOT to the rest?
The biggest contradictions and errors in the Gospels do not come from oral tradition but from from the authors. Luke and Matthew contradict each other most significantly where they do not have either Mark (itself riddled with factual errors) or the sayings source Q to copy from - basically in their nativity and appearance narratives, which are wildly contradictory.
For instance. Luke sets Jesus’ birth ten years later than Matthew, contradicts Matthew’s nativity in a plethora of other ways (starting with Joseph’s genealogy) , and both nativities are chock full of plainly ahistorical details. This has nothing to do with oral traditions, but with both Luke and Matthew contriving different ways to get their Galilean Messiah born in Bethlehem.
Where do you suppose Matthew and Luke got their nativities, if not from oral tradition?
They basically made them up, though from their own perspectives, they were likely inferring them from OT passages and other sources (Matthew in particular leans on the OT). The authors believed, probably sincerely, that they could find information about Jesus in the Hebrew Bible and liberally interpreted passages to suit their needs. Luke may have used Josephus as well.
Basically, they both needed Jesus to be born in Bethlehem (the Messianic expectation since David was born there), and both knew that Jesus was said to have been from Galilee. They used different (and contradictory) methods of getting Jesus to Bethlehem, but neither would have seen themselves as lying or fabricating as such. They would have assumed that Jesus must have been born in Bethlehem and set out to reason how. Matthew had Joseph and Mary already living there from the get go, then trans[lanting to Nazareth (after their stint in Egypt), and Luke seized on the census of Quirinius to get them there from Nazareth (then basically straight back to Nazareth after a quick trip to Jerusalem, with no flight to Egypt)…
But how do you know—how could you know—whether they made them up themselves, or got them from somebody else who may have made them up, or got them through some sort of oral tradition?
We don’t know anything for sure, but, for a number of reasons, prior oral traditions are unlikely since both narratives are unattested anywhere else, since we know specifically what OT passages Matthew used and since they both contain demonstrably fictional details (i.e. ahistorical details that are not likely to have arisen from early oral tradition). If there was a shared oral tradition, then the narratives would be expected to share some commonalities in narrative (they do share the commonality of the virgin birth, which could conceivably suggest a prior oral tradition, but it’s not a narrative detail). If they had prior oral traditions, it would be two completely different ones.
No, I don’t think I said that, nor anything that can rationally be interpreted as meaning that. What I’ve said (multiple times) is that if you’ve actually got an “obvious fabrications and errors”, “contradictions”, or “historical make believe” that you want me to look at, I’ll be happy to look at it. But first you’ve got to tell me what it is. You’ve mentioned the instances in the infancy narratives of Luke and Matthew; septimus has already responded and explained why that tells us nothing about the other material in the Gospels. Other than that, you haven’t given me any examples of obvious fabrications or errors, so I can’t tell you how I feel about them.
I can give you plenty. I’ll do them one at a time. Let’s start with the contradiction in the dating of Jesus’ birth. Why do Matthew and Luke have their nativities ten years apart? Was Jesus born during the reign of Herod the Great or was he born ten years after Herod died during the census of Quirinus? Which is it?
I don’t know what ‘historical proof’ would be, but I’ve never heard of scientific evidence that Jesus existed. No matter how much writing is available, none of it was contemporary or subject to the kind of examination necessary to make an educated guess about its validity. Funny, I thought the belief was based on faith.
As a couple of notes:
The Society of Friends (Quakers) speaks of a Christ spirit and does not strongly advocate the actual existence of Jesus (sometimes, it;s a non-dogmatic religion, so things change).
A survey taken in the 90’s showed the majority of Americans believed that a man names Jesus (or now known as such) once lived, but was not the son of God.
That sounds like a good starting place to me, and like you said, let’s just do these one at a time starting with that one you suggested.
So, When was Jesus born?
Matthew 2-1: In the days of Herod.
Luke 2 1-7: While Quirinus was governor of Syria and a census taken.
At the very minimum there is at least a 10 year difference here. Herod died in 4 B.C. Quirinum didn’t become governor of Syria until 7 A.D.
After ITR Champion clears up what must me a misunderstanding I have with this one, I have 609 more to go I’m hoping that he’ll also be able to help me with as well.
Thanks for doing this for us ITR Champion.
I think that the objection regarding Quirinius is, frankly, a bit petty. There are any number of reasons why it could have been Quirinius, or why the original Greek text should be interpreted as referring to a time that predated his term. There is also some ambiguity in how the term for “governor” should be translated. (cite). This is the sort of matter in which skeptics tend to be overly dogmatic in saying, “No, it can’t be! Not possible! No way at all!” – and that’s generally not a good stance to take when dealing with matters of ancient history for which we have incomplete information.