Chili

Iconic as angel.

Chili

The gospels are for us to read and find agreement with and tell us how it is whether we like it or not.

Iskander

History

DNAReplicator

The 'Q' material muddies the waters though. Either Mathew and Luke are redactions of Mark and Q, or Matthew is a redaction of Mark and Luke is a redaction of Mark and Matthew.

Well yes, Matthew and Luke have obviously different agendas to Mark, and tend to use her text to further these. But actually they don't change the text they include in their gospels much, and between them omit only one pericope.

Again they use the 'Q' material differently, but agree on the text pretty well. They are showing some dereference to Markan/Q text, and apparently felt they were compelled to preserve it where it did not interfere with their agandas. It seems at least plausible that it was because Mark/Q was believed to be 'the truth' at the time they were writing, by the people they were evangelising to. If so, Mark/Q represent a more 'accurate' picture of early Christian beliefs.

If you think there was some dude called Jesus, then the more 'accurate' gospels can be used to better understand his ideas/beliefs and the subsequent development of Christian theology.

If you do not think there was some dude called Jesus, then the earlier texts are likely to give a more accurate picture of the sales pitch used by Paul and others in the original ''of course you'll get resurrected, don't worry, it's all kosher....erm....'' scam.

Chili

. . . and don't forget that poetry is not an art but rationalism is a handicap wherein oblivion seeks understanding.

jakejonesiv

I don't accept the hypothetical "Q" document. But in any case, multiple someones were copying from someone else, and no one hesitated to change whatever they wanted any time they wanted. This indictaes a lack of regard for the earlier gospel. Just because "stuff" was left unaltered doesn't indicate that it was held in any higher historical regard. It just survived because the redactors (and that is exactly what the later evangelists were) didn't find the particulars onerous enough to screw around with.

Listen, the gospels are religous propaganda documents and they have about as much history in them as there is chicken in a can of chicken noodle soup.

Jake

jakejonesiv

:worried: Oh sweet jesus, what if I had been wrong all this time?

Iskander

It doesn’t matter. :wave:

Adam

My own explanation of the similarities in the Synoptics is over in my thread on Gospel Eyewitnesses. See the 4th and 5th in my series, posts #52 and #74. There's Q, which comparison with the Gospel of Thomas shows is even in Proto-Mark. But it's even more complicated than that. The parts of Q that are largely identical between gMatthew and gLuke are from a later edition of Q that had already been translated from Aramaic to Greek. But this part is from a 9th in the series that I have not presented there even yet even though we're past 175 posts over there.
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=306983&page=3

archibald

Fantasy, obviously. But that isn't the question. The question is whether someone believed it to be true, or alternatively believed the core elements to be true and the additions merely plausible elaborations. On that count, the phenomenon of belief in divine and supernatral occurances and characters is so thoroughly commonplace amongst the religious of all shades and varieties, and their writings, throughout the entire course of recorded history, right up to the prsent day, that it's easier to think the gospels writers fitted into that pattern. There is, in fact, no good reason to think otherwize. To prefer that these guys did not themselves subscribe to the material they were presenting and their explanations is to apply a postmodern sensibility and project it backwards onto them, it seems to me.