Sheshbazzar

Well, do you not comprehend that my reading and understanding is also that the tale of Jebus and the Apostles is Fiction???
We mutually agree that these Gospel tales are Fiction.

It is in the matter of why, by whom, and for what purpose, these fictional tales were first fabricated that we reach no agreement.

If you employ such as Hippolytus and Tertullian, you may as well employ Augustine, Torquemada, Oral Roberts, and Benny Hinn.

You can diddle around with discrediting these myths until kingdom come, or hell freezes over, but it will avail you little if you never come to understand the real reasons as to why they were written, what it is that they contain besides fabrications, and by whom and for what purpose they were originally devised.

aa5874

Well, do you NOT comprehend that your reading and understanding may be Shallow and Superficial???

You accuse my reading and understanding to be shallow and superficial and have the guts to claim that our reading and understanding are mutual. I reject such absurdity.

What BS. It is the EVIDENCE, the written statements from antiquity that MUST be employed. I cannot INVENT and fabricate evidence. The evidence MUST ALREADY exist and be presented WITH the argument.

Based on Apologetic sources it was PREDICTED by the Prophets that the Temple would Fall and Jerusalem made desolate and it is clear that people of antiquity BELIEVED the short-ending gMark story that the prophecies were fulfilled when Jesus was supposedly DELIEVERED and KILLED because of the Jews.

This is SOUND.

We have the short-ending gMark.

We have the apologetic sources.

We have the books of the Prophets.

And the Temple did Fall and Jerusalem made desolate c 70 CE.

We know why the short-ending gMark was written and we KNOW it was a Fiction story that people of antiquity BELIEVED in the 2nd century or later.

mountainman

Amen.






This is a fair point. We also need to investigate the matter of when and where.

Of course the WHEN can be answered with a non specific formulation such as "not before the mid second century" or "after the fall of the temple of Apollo".

The WHEN is the critical thing in history.
Only then do we have political and historical context.


WHY were the gospels written?

Someone needed a tetrarchy of eyewitness testimonies for the historical existence and heavenly ascension of the Jesus character in downtown Jerusalem on the night the zombies (such as Leucius and Charinus) crawled out of their crypts. And when the Cross walked its walk and talked its talk to God far above in the geostationary Mothership.

The tetrarchy of gospels were to be the foundation of a series of canonical books that would serve to unite the Roman Empire under one supremely sponsored centralised monotheistic heresiological and inquisitional state church.

We are lead to believe that the highly regarded Father of (Neo-)Platonism, Ammonius Saccas, took the liberty of preparing the apostolic canon tables in the 3rd century, in order to clearly analyse which apostle said what, and how many of the other apostles agreed. The Ammonian Tables was a retrospective cross examination of the gospels, and were published with the gospels in the earliest Greek manuscript evidence in our possession.

JP2

Well this was more or less what I was asking. It seems to be assumed in most discussions of gospel authorship and their intent that the authors were essentially trying to engage in proselytising evangelism. But have there been any convincing defenses of this position, or is it just assumed - as you say - prima facie? How would a defender of this position explain away the four criticisms I raised in my OP?

And this is my point: Luke 1:3-4 seems to clearly state that it was intended for those (presuming Theophilus was not a specific individual) who were already instructed in the faith and therefore (it scarcely needs to be said) not in need of further evangelising. How, therefore, could the gospel be intended as an evangelical overture to a general Roman / gentile audience as is frequently assumed?

I agree entirely, hence my point that the content of the gospels (including plenty of dull, abstruse and - as aa5874 pointed out - deliberately esoteric material) are perhaps not the most suitable format to use if your primary intention was to win converts. A more explicitly evangelical gospel would be that of John (i.e. Jn. 20:31) which is obviously quite different in substance from the synoptic gospels. We could also compare these to the format of early Christian apologia, which, again, take a very different form.

So, given this, I'll repeat the question: why assume the gospels were works of deliberate evangelism?

Duke Leto

There's the Zaphod Beeblebrox explanation:

"Oh, I dunno, something to do I suppose..."

sotto voce

'Promotional literature'? One wonders which 'academic' devised that phrase, both lunacy and anachronism. I suppose that the announcement of the (tentative) discovery of the Higgs boson is promotional literature, too!
icardfacepalm:

If Jesus was 'as advertised', if he was 'God, with us', would it be expected that nobody would bother to mention it? It is nothing less than absurd to accept that the Bible exists, and yet wonder why the gospels, that purport to be the fulfilment of it all from Genesis onwards, were written.

You people have opened the OT, haven't you?

aeebee50

This caused many deaths. It is all Greek to me.

sotto voce

A common difficulty, apparently.

aa5874

There was NO evangelism before the short-ending gMark was written and the short-ending gMark does NOT claim Jesus died for OUR Sins.

There is NOTHING in the short-ending gMark to show that there were Christians before the gMark story was composed and nothing to show that the Roman Empire was ALREADY evangelised.

According to the author NO-ONE was told Jesus was raised from the dead when he wrote his book sometime AFTER c 70 CE.

And the LAST words of Peter, the LAST and ONLY disciple to follow Jesus to the trial with the Sanhedrin, was that he did NOT know Jesus--NEVER followed Jesus.

Sinaiticus gMark 16

Toto

Sociologists have studied the process of evangelism, and Rodney Stark has applied the findings to early Christianity. The general process of evangelism does not depend on literature aimed at convincing the general public - it depends on social contacts. Once the recruit to the new religion makes a social commitment to the new group, then he starts to read the sacred literature and construct reasons for his new beliefs.

So the gospels fit into this as part of step 2. They were not intended as advertising to the unconverted, but as reinforcements for converts, to keep them committed to the group.

At least this makes sense to me.