judge

Er?
I think you are confusing speculation with hard facts..don't you agree?

Your insisitence that things are "definite" is just a dogma you want to believe.

Kosh

Look, there would not be an early Mormon writings if NOTHING HAPPENED! There would be no reason to make up a lie for no reason at all. What reason would anyone have to say "Well the Angel Moroni gave these gold tablets to Joseph Smith that shows how the American Indians are a lost tribe of Israel, and that Jesus appeared to them after his ascension" to which everyone replies "Yes! Let's make this up!!"

Does this make sense to you?

Chris Weimer

In biblical studies, there are no hard facts. I've said that a bajillion times here judge. There's only probabilities, and so far probability is definitely on my side.

Do you have any evidence that Matthew invented Jesus? If so I'd like to see it.

judge

And yet you present these probablities, or opnions, as if they were hard facts.

lpetrich

It doesn't have to be a lie -- it only has to be a figment of the imagination; and one that grew out of control.

Jesus Christ's biography is a close match for Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero profile, which I'd discussed in some previous threads here.

And Earl Doherty's Jesus Puzzle site proposes something like this scenario:

From pagan influence, some Hellenistic-era Jews believed in some spiritual intermediary between God and humanity -- Wisdom, The Word, etc.

And from additional pagan influence, some of them came to believe in a dying and resurrected messiah sort of spiritual intermediary -- the Anointed Savior or Jesus Christ. Paul was a particularly notable one of these.

Them someone wrote an allegory about this personage, an allegory that gave him an earthly habitat. Someone known to us only as Mark.

Then some others, known to us only as Matthew and Luke, added the "Q" collection of sayings, putting them into Jesus Christ's mouth, and also expanding on his earthly history. They both invented genealogies for his father Joseph, tracing him to King David, and they also invented pagan-style divine impregnations of his mother.

Still a fourth writer or set of writers got into the act, one only known to us as John. They composed an elaborate theological discourse, putting it into Jesus Christ's mouth.

Not surprisingly, the story of Jesus Christ's resurrection grew with the telling, with the various Gospel writers separately inventing details.

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Putting words into people's mouths was a common literary techique among historians of the Greco-Roman world; they often invented speeches for those they wrote about.

So could the writers of the Gospels also have done that?

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And as to outright fraudulence, there is such a long history of pious frauds that one cannot automatically presume the Gospel writers innocent.

Gooch's dad

Am I the only one that wishes judge wouldn't turn every bleeping BC&H thread into another lame attempt to rehash his failed case for Aramaic priority? Give it a rest, please.

Chris Weimer

It's a terrible tragedy. The least we could do is refuse reply.

Jack the Bodiless

That's the part that Matthew (specifically) DID make up: sifting through the Old Testament to come up with bogus "prophecy fulfillments". This is easily checked: pretty much all of the "prophecies" in Matthew refer to out-of-context OT verses that actually refer to other Biblical characters.

Chunk

lpetrich, thanks for posting that. Ive read a lot of people making cases for how the gospels are fiction, but not many scenarios to explain why and how we have the gospel today if it isnt true.

I have some questions about the scenario.

Id like to point out im not trying to fight the Christian arguement against them, just see both sides.

Why? Why would a group of people just come to believe that? If Jesus was a real person that was known just as a revolutionary who died for his actions, why would this group of people just come to believe that?

If this man Jesus lived within the life time of this group of people, or very close to the life time of this group of people, why would they just believe that for no reason. If there is mystery surrounding him then perhaps you can push your doubts to one side, but so close to his life how could a group of people all do that?

It doesnt make sense to me that they would be waiting for this Messiah to show up only to go and pretend that Jesus was that Messiah. Surely it defeats the whole point. If they believed strongly enough to want to make this up, surely their belief would tell them that what they were doing was pointless.

I can understand how thismight happen. If enough time had passed, Mark was allready a believer and his work was aimed at other believers its likely he could have changed things around and made changes and got away with it.

How much can you change and invent at once and still have people believe it? Surely if people were honestly believing in all of this, they wouldnt just accept all of these additions just because somebody told them to.

Isnt this scenario getting a bit ellaborate now as well? A fourth writer gets in on the act and creates this and then puts it into Jesus' mouth?

If people were following it by this time, why would they continue to change things round. Would it be easy to get people to just keep on believing in more and more things without questioning at all? What reason would people have to make this up?

Surely people only do things to this extent if there is substantialbenefit to them. How did they benefit from making any of this up?

hatsoff

I explained this in an earlier post. You may have missed it: