What has been established in the subject of earliest Christianity, and to whom? Next to nothing in the critical arena. ‘Its a safe place to do theology and call it thirsty, autobiography and call it biography…’
I concur that the authors of the Gospels are lost to us based on a personal and thorough evaluation of the evidence for myself. Personally, I don’t go by what has been established (appeal to consensus?). In the field of NT studies I read all the arguments for myself. If an author references another book or scholarly article (SBJ as you mentioned or NTS, CBQ, JSHJ) I buy the book or obtain the article and then keep spiraling down the rabbit hole acquiring sources they reference. I found some of Pitre’s arguments alarmingly bad given his credentials which are far superior to my non-existent ones.
For some areas it is impossible not to. Unless you want to learn Greek or Hebrew, then one could never read the reconstructed text of Bible without some appeal to authority. I would never read NT works with the same level of faith as I would a science text book, however. The stakes are much different and pure science is not colored by theological bias. Nor is real science based upon speculation and reading ancient author’s minds. This can be a dangerous practice in the field of NT studies as its very easy to always pick the ones who agree with you. Outside of language issues, I evaluate whatever I can and abstain on what I am uncertain of in the field of New Testament studies.
I can quote 50 scholars who think Paul wrote Colossians and 50 scholars who think he didn’t. Should I just pick one side or should I evaluate the arguments listing all the arguments and rebuttals for and against? I would say I should abstain from judgment if I haven’t done the latter.
No. I pick valid arguments, not professionals. I could care less who makes the argument. When analyzing an argument, in theory, the name of the author should be irrelevant to you.
We might be more liable to give an author the benefit of the doubt if we consistently find them to have good information but this is still no substitute for evaluating the evidence and NT studies is not like science, medical advice from a doctor or a mechanic’s diagnosis. And if you are more or less blind parroting someone else, you probably should never try to convince others of your views.
Every field has its own pitfalls and levels of trust. For Christian origins my level of trust is low. Seen too many misguided arguments from heavily credentialed scholars. I also would never base my religious epistemology on the laurels of an author.
We’re saying the same thing. The arguments are put forth by a professional so to me they are one and the same thing, generally speaking. We all have our own collection of arguments that we accept and those that we don’t. My collection isn’t any better or worse than yours. It is just different.
A document could have a title “The story according to Bill”. Does that mean you or some other Bill wrote it? No. It could have been written by someone else, who may or may not have had direct contact with the relevant Bill. There is the problem.
It should. At the very least it should indicate the source was Bill.
And I just had a thought. If you are correct then somebody was going around and adding a false title to the text. If the title is false then how much else in the document is false? Does this mean the entire document should be considered false? Perhaps we should shift to a document that we know who the author is without a question or doubt, such as the Koran. Do we just ignore the Holy Spirit’s work in generating the NT?
No, I don’t think we can just ignore the NT. There are, at the very least some words of Jesus that could not have been made up IMO. They reflect great wisdom. So some of it, don’t know how much, but some of it is genuine. But some of it may have been made up. We need to scrutinize what we read in any and all holy scriptures. As far as the NT is concerned I would say that the Romans had a hand in what was written or edited in. And they wanted to create a myth to suit them. There is evidence that I would say shed a dim light on some of the NT, especially the works of Paul.
But even with the Koran where we know the author without question, we still need to scrutinize what we read. After all like Jesus, Muhammad was killed, poisoned in his case. So was the Buddha for that matter. Buddha had, again like Jesus, pointed out the ritual practices that had been made into a very profitable business by the Hindu High Priests. Muhammad was denied the means to leave a will at the end and name his successor. He wanted Ali to succeed him, not because of any familial reasons but because Muhammad felt that Ali had the highest spiritual development at the time. He was fit to lead.
I also read that someone, I can’t recall who it was off hand but this person killed a large number of people, who had learnt the Koranic verses by heart. Why do that? The only explanation for me is that they wanted to add some things in and leave other things out so that it suited the cultural norms that they wanted to keep.
I don’t think it is wise to accept what is written as is, without question. Maybe that is the scientist in me. However when we see a history surrounding scripture with several different parties that want to push their own interests, then red flags should go up.
According to Islam, the Qur’an was dictated by the angel Gabriel to Muhammed. But it includes late apocryphal stories about Jesus deemed not acceptable for the NT.
In part I am using my intellect, but not simply because one also has one’s spirituality. People respond to the truth. This is why a prophet is able to teach the people. And not all people. Those who don’t have enough spiritual development such as atheists and other who are evil people or inhumane people I call them are of course turned off by spiritual truths.
It is less of a slippery slope than taking everything as true when some of it may be false.
You know the truth because it will resound with you. And you can meditate on various passages that you question and in this way too, you can come to an understanding, you are spiritually guided and thus discover if they are true or false. As Jesus said “seek and you shall find” and also “knock and the door will be opened to you”.
But what happens if your truth doesn’t resound with my truth? Who is correct? I will say that the application of Scripture can vary with the individual and this is where you can trust the Holy Spirit’s guidance. I am just not comfortable with saying this part is true and this part is false. After all we are told “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work”. And this was said about the OT which is way more problematic than the NT.
“If we consider X in the Bible edited, then why don’t we consider Y in the Bible be edited?”
Because there is evidence of X being edited and there is no evidence of Y being edited. Sure, it’s possible Y was edited, and it’s also possible that I’m actually a billionaire mad scientist posing to be interested in theological discussions on this forum whereas my true purpose is to gauge the neurochemical reactions in the brain that manifest themselves as interest in theological discussions from the comments on this forum.
It’s possible the resurrection story is edited, therefore the resurrection story is edited. What amazing logic. For that matter, it’s possible that Christianity is false, isn’t it? So why don’t we stop the conversation right there if we’re just going to make up an existential crisis about random possibilities? For that matter, it’s also possible that Christianity is true and that the resurrection story isn’t edited. Wow! Possible this, possible that, none of this is even remotely relevant. People need to base their views on reason and evidence, not random ideas they can invent.
What’s the evidence on whether or not the resurrection stories are edited?
They are in literally all existing manuscripts (unlike Mark 16:9-20, which is absent from all the earliest manuscripts).
Mark had a resurrection narrative. Luke and Matthew both used Mark as a source, and used Mark as a source for their own resurrection narratives. But Luke and Matthew were only writing a few years after Mark was published. So do we posit a magical interpolation right in those few years based on zero evidence and just to make the story fit - and do we also posit that the interpolation found its way into both the copies of Mark that both Luke and Matthew had? Or do we posit that the resurrection stories in all the Gospels are interpolated, which is an even more complicated and contrived theory just to make our initial hypothesis work … not to mention that it also contradicts all our evidence from every single manuscript of both Luke and Matthew which all have the resurrection story.
The resurrection of Jesus is also mentioned many times in the letters of Paul, and at additional length in 1 Cor. 15:3-8. So we know, before Mark wrote, that the notion of the resurrection was present among Christians from the earliest times and that it was considered to be, in fact, the crux of Christianity. Given the extreme prominence and importance of the notion of resurrection … what sense would it make to say that Mark, who is writing a gospel of Jesus i.e. a biography of his ministry, would possibly exclude the resurrection? And why the hell would Mark, who is a Christian, just end his Gospel with Jesus being shamefully crucified and that’s it without a resurrection?
And I can go on and on and on. This is why “X is possible therefore I am in existential crisis!” is terrible logic.
Our understanding of “The Truth” can vary. That’s true. We are all at different stages of spiritual development. However to overcome this problem in everyday life, God has given us a conscience. This is our guide in doing what is right action and knowing what is wrong action.
I understand you saying that you are not comfortable with this or that being true or false, but the alternative is to accept it all as true on trust. You say " After all we are told “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work”.
Who told us? It was church fathers and we don’t know them. Furthermore the majority of them were Roman. We see that some had various agendas while others are plain corrupt. They don’t criticize the Romans for crucifying Jesus, they glorify them. I am sorry but I reject the idea that Jesus died to white wash all and sundries of their “sins” without even the recognition that some was not sin, but wanton transgression.
And even the idea of the Trinity was argued out by the bishops for Constantine I. He wanted to rule in the East and they were Greeks. They were not going to worship him as a god. Furthermore the debate over the nature of the body of Christ was truly heated. He had to bring the army into the church to separate the warring factions. So he se t up the council at Nicaea to settle the matter. They debated until the majority won the day and the one that continued to disagree was banished, exiled.
I am more uncomfortable in taking it on the word of others as being the words of God in total, especially when the history sets up red flags all over the place.
