ecco

Beginning with Chapter 4 Matthew talks about Jesus and his teachings. The first three chapters seem more concerned with attempting to establish a link from Jesus back to the teachings of the Jews. Is there any evidence that the early church leaders may have prepended Chapters 1-3 to the writings of Matthew in order to gain more converts?

Bill

The Christians have so deliberately hidden any and all descriptions of just how these texts came into being (for instance, somehow "losing" the writings of Papias who just happens to discuss just how the Gospel of Matthew was composed; the only reason we know this is because Eusebius happened to quote a few choice words from Papias) that virtually any theory of composition could be validly entertained. Even the theory that John was composed by a troop of monkeys sitting at the first century equivalent of typewriters......

It has long been noted that Matthew is a gospel that is particularly pointed towards the Jews themselves. This seems to be a consistant thread that runs all through the whole book. It seems to be a deliberate editorial decision of the author(s). Thus, it is more likely that the first chapters were in the original manuscript (in some form or another) rather than that they were prepended at some substantially later date. The sorts of things discussed in those first chapters are exactly the sorts of things which would have been important to the Jews of those days.

== Bill

Bill

With all that said, I think its fair to state that most of the Gospel stories bear signs of "editorial work" (revisions and over-writings). Acts, in particular, seems to have been edited rather heavily.

The best view of the evidence is that these stories originally grew up as oral traditions long before they were set down on paper. In that sense, there could be a plethora of authors, as each telling of the tale to some audience could result in some substantial revision to work out some "kink" in the story that somebody in the audience spotted on some given occasion.

== Bill

ecco

Thanks Bill

Tercel

Instead of laughable "Christian conspiracy" theories Bill, don't you think a more simple and sensible explanation for the lack of extent early Christian writings is to be found from the Roman persecutions of the Christians and the destruction of Christian writings at the hands of the Romans?
If Eusebius is prepared to quote Papias as supporting his point, doesn't it rather go against the idea that early writers such as Papias were deliberately lost because they did not say the right things?
That you even suggest that Christians willfully deliberately destroyed their own writings about themselves simply again reminds me just how much crazy twisting one must perform on the historical evidence to be an atheist.

Tercel

aikido7

Tercel, seperating "heresy" from "orthodoxy" always involves some deliberate destruction and/or supression.

Most of the surpressed and destroyed strains of early Christian thought are presently evident only by paying close attention to the church fathers' extant arguments against them. Subsequently, we now have an impoverished view of the early church and the historic Jesus because of this. Early Christianity was rich and varied, but regrettably less so after the political/religious fiat mandated by the Emperor Constantine.

[ August 26, 2001: Message edited by: aikido7 ]

Ron Garrett

Perhaps Tercel has a copy of Marcion's Antitheses in his private collection. According to Christian writers this is the only book he ever wrote and no copy exists, which seems suspect to me since the Marcionite sect matched the entire rest of the church in number of adherents until Constantine made it an outlaw sect in the fourth century. And of course the Christian writers writing against the various heretics were scrupulous to quote them exactly and would never have put words in their mouths for the sake of discrediting them. (ROTFLMAO).