He passed away the day JFK was gunned down.
I am reluctant to say the field has improved very much since he was alive. Being evaluated by their peers is less than a true means of gathering information about their accuracy, I think. They don’t have confirming methods for authors who lived 2,000 ago.
That’s why I’m developing a test. I hope to sell the idea to a producer or someone who can help me make it happen. Its goal will be to test in a double-blind controlled fashion whether experts can in fact identify particular writers using their previously published books or stories or papers.
Thanks for your response.
I find it interesting that as of right now on this day, no one has even tried to answer my question about who could have conceived of the words Christ spoke. You are not alone, everyone. I have no idea what he or she would be like.
Pretty powerful stuff especially considering I have asked our community at large for a month to describe who could possibly put those words in His mouth, if they were not his own and I haven’t had one offer.
Who was this guy, if not Christ? How could anyone, intentionally or not, have created Him and fleshed him out as the Son of God? Who would bother? Why? What motive would compel them to undertake a project like that? If He was mistaken and He wasn’t an apocolyptic prophet as He thought, making up the resurrection story was pretty nuts.
Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.
Today you will be with me in paradise.
Woman, behold, thy son! Behold, thy mother!
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
I thirst.
It is finished.
Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.
Who says they were made up? They were transferred from memories and oral transmissions. I suppose you are referring to something like the Jesus Seminar, which I have not really looked at closely.
Perhaps so. If your point is just that somebody making up words wouldn’t put “My God why have you forsaken me” into their Messiah’s mouth (possibly among other things in your list too) - I take your point. It’s more than a bit dangerous trying to decide what a culture 2000 years ago should find objectionable or not - but no matter. We can speculate too. One thing I won’t speculate about though is whether or not I’m in a position to rival current experts (linguists and translators) in their own field that they’ve spent their careers studying. If they conclude that two texts were written / edited / contributed to by two different authors, then I will take their conclusions more seriously in the matter than my own lesser-trained ones. The arrogance of doing otherwise is breath-taking.
That said - I’m also pretty sure that there is a wide world of (probably the actual and real) possibilities in between the two extremes y’all end up fighting over here: Either he himself wrote the book; or somebody else did much later and the claimed-in-text author had no part of it whatsoever. Those two stark extremes that so many of you immediately latch onto ignores the world of possibilities (and I would say realities) that actually lives in between. Maybe a secretary took dictation from Peter or Paul - maybe some Greek was smoothed out by a scribe? Or even further, perhaps letters were circulated and repeated (both written and orally) among communities and scraps of those later assembled by somebody who compiled it into the piece that our present day translators had access to or a copy of? Or further yet, maybe disciples of that person who knew him well got stuff down as soon as they realized the world wasn’t ending quite so quickly as they initially thought? All of these things would make it “technically false” that the claimed namesake himself literally wrote those exact words. But it doesn’t make it false that those involved teachings originated from that person. I’m betting that everything I just said there would probably be fairly non-controversial among believing scholars, but I’m willing to be corrected … because … they know more than I do.
This all does serve as a warning though, that if you are stocked up to the gills with detailed creed that stands or falls on this or that translation of some word ostensibly uttered by no less than ____ himself, then you’ve probably already ventured way out onto the thin ice of creedal obsessions that go far beyond what a simple Christ follower need trouble himself over. If your conviction doesn’t pass the smell-test of a biblically-informed overall narrative, then it’s probably one you ought to only hold lightly if at all.
Rabbi Hillel was one Jesus quoted quite a bit, I understand. I hesitate to say Jesus was unique in what He taught, as we will find a lot of similar apocalyptic and other quotes in the literature of the day (which can help us better understand what he was saying, too). I am a Christian and put my faith in no one else but I don’t want to go down a tube that the Bible doesn’t claim is there.
Many Muslims say that the Qur’an is the greatest miracle of all–that no one can produce anything like it, and that that is the self proof of its being a gift from God. However, a Christian Arab once re wrote part of the Injil (gospel) in the rhythm of the Qur’an, recited it in a Muslim village, and no one realized it was not the Qur’an.
I’m at work now and answered in a lull, but there are other good reasons to be a Christian :). Thanks.
He quoted me without mentioning it. I don’t know if he is referring to all the sayings in John but personally I think a lot of the super-high Christology, “I am” type sayings and where Jesus talks about himself in a long monologue don’t go back to the ministry of the historical Jesus. They are John reframing Jesus from the divine perspective. There is significant evidence parts of John is also reframed synoptic material. There is also significant evidence quite a few parts in John look early and to antiquate synoptic material. The author certainly knows pre-Temple destruction Palestine!
None of this is to say John is not mostly correct. I think he gets Jesus right. But I wouldn’t take everything as a literal saying of Jesus for sure or condemn everyone who doesn’t share my ideology because I interpret something Jesus probably didn’t ever actually say with a wooden literalism. John is certainly still scripture and inspired so we have to contend with the fact that God gave us a true four-fold Gospel–not just four completely harmonious narratives and theologies about Jesus. He wanted us to have John. I would presume our Christology was meant to be higher. Ergo, John. And this is not Jesus seminar type stuff. The problem of John and the Synoptics is extremely well known and attested in scholarship. I outlined the evidence for it in the “Reframing or History” thread. Origen even picked up on some of this ca. 200.
And here I thought we were buddies!
How do I explain myself simply?
I think it is wrong to write headlines that state as fact that our NT is a forgery. I think it is unfair to state categorically that it is filled with at least 400,000 errors. I think it is inapproriate to accuse as factual that anyone who has a, “grasp of history at all knows also just how violent Christians have been over the ages, sponsoring oppression, injustice, wars, crusades, pogroms, inquisitions, holocausts—all in the name of the faith.”
I think citing the phone game to help establish that the NT is a collection of who knows what? isn’t scholarly. I think assuring readers that almost no one was literate back then and there is a reach, an unjustified one. That our memories are like sieves, that long sentences and long essay letters rule out certain NT writers from particular NT letters.
I think it is too fashionable to condemn Christians for a huge number of untoward behavior without giving equal effort to the other sides of these accusations. I smell something other than true scholarship. It is more like a slaughter, a gleeful rummaging through every piece of filth to hurl at us out of bitterness and hatred. There may be some scholarship mixed in, but it certainly doesn’t like to be challenged. I mean, how did the NT amount to anything at all given the thrashing it takes 24/7? If we accept the pounding and the tearing it apart, it should be a comic book that failed
That all sounds like click-bait stuff or “headlines” as you say. I wouldn’t take them too seriously. They probably don’t even reflect the nuance you might find in the very article they are attached to (and perhaps the author didn’t even choose or write that headline for themselves?) I know titles of books aren’t always determined by the author. I do agree with you that such headlines do not reflect good scholarship or well-warranted views. As to all the other things you object to - you cover a lot of ground there that would require a lot more unpacking. But hey - I can be your buddy in indignation regarding flippant dismissals of sacred texts!
Ehrman was correct when He said Christians are engaged in war. Those “headlines” turn people away from their qwest to find God. So do the insults and false accusations, Mervin. There is a war raging all around us–for the hearts and souls of human beings. Christians remind me of obedient servants of the Morlocks slowly edging closer, step by small step, to their dinner tables.
Almost every Christian I have ever known is nothing like the way they are depicted after the bashing they receive from all quarters.
I don’t think Jesus hung there bleeding half dead with his mom watching for kicks.
I don’t think Christians somehow rise above the human condition. So no doubt Christian humans have also committed atrocities back when brutality was more in vogue, or at least more visible on the surface. But your lot is no worse than any other except perhaps when the church held more political power. But even then I’m sure the abuse of power was no worse than for other groups when they held the power.
Sure. I have been asking for John 13-17 for a month. Got nuthin.
I mentioned those sayings because there are fewer of them and no one being murdered for nothing criminal says stuff like that. No one says those things period. Do you think? In absolute agony, having been beaten and whipped almost to death as people ask you to tell them who just smashed in your jaw, blood everywhere, blood in a mist turning everything including the air a bright red. The women screaming. An innocent man suffering, dying in front of you as his mom watches. I wouldn’t be able to hear him. I’d be cowering in safety miles away. It was a bloody, filthy, tragic, tragic horror show and my best friend of all time asks Abba, Daddy, forgive them. Mom, here’s your son. Johnnie, your mom. O GOD I THIRST. O GOD DADDY FATHER, Where are you NOW? Help me
As for the many generations, we must add a limit. These serve to enrich the perception of the meaning only so long as the cultural tradition is not lost. There may come a break or change after which readers arise whose point of view is so alien that they might as well be interpreting a new work. Medieval readings of the Aeneid as an allegory and Ovid as a moralist, or modern readings of the Parlement of Foules which make the duck and goose its heroes, would be examples. CS
I think the language He spoke is like music. Universal. But, we can lose its meaning if we drift far enough.
I would like to start with I gave you examples of how other people could have put words in Jesus’s mouth. Just because the crucifixion was horrible doesn’t mean someone didn’t add to the account.
If I stipulate that those chapters are an accurate record of the words of Jesus what does it say about the rest of the Gospel? Nuthin. Which would explain why nobody has bothered to answer your taunt.
But that doesn’t mean automatically somebody else didn’t write it.