zaphod pog

Hello all.

Easter is the time that we are all reminded (whether we wish to be or not) that Jesus died for us.

Methinks it is a dramatic fiction, a stupendous April Fools joke played out for us all.

That aside, the Gospels feature intimate and detailed accounts of Jesus' private time in the Garden of Gethesemane as well as his trials before the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate. The accounts tell us that he was not accompanied by any of his followers as they had scattered like scared rabbits.

So where do the details come from? I don't think that "The Jerusalem Times" had any court reporters at that time. Clearly the Romans didn't bother to record such details or even the trial itself. Jewish writings remain void of any such accounts.

Who is the source and why should they be trusted to have produced an accurate account of the encounters?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Llyricist

There was a recent thread on this here

zaphod pog

Gracias!

sharon45

The NT shows enough that it isn't very trustworthy even within a single gospel's account with jesus speaking while his followers are present, so it is even more so while they are not even around.

Boro Nut

Erm.. actually, the chocolate randy little bugger bunny rabbits and fecund eggs remind me mainly of the fertility of the sacred goddess earth mother, and the variable timing in conjunction with the new spring moon reminds me that the horny bitch is awake again, so it's off to dance around Stonehenge and impregnate her fertile womb again with my best plough phallus before my seed bags split themselves. Had Jesus had the foresight to have died in the southern hemisphere you might have had more of a case.

It's about time Christians thought up some festivals of their own instead of trying to hijack our traditional holidays at Christmas and the like. Don't let them. They'll only pour out the booze, switch off the record player, and insist you sing Kumbaya or something.

Boro Nut

zaphod pog

I recently finished and highly recommend Randel Helms book Gospel Fictions. Helms presents a brief and very concise tour de force of exposing the obvious fictions created to construct the historical Jesus. Whereas Bible believers will argue that Jesus was fulfilling Jewish prophecies, Helms shows us where the miraculous fulfillments were only rewrites of Hebrew texts into the Gospel accounts. Matthew and Luke especially make use of this type of midrash to embellish their plagarisms of Mark.

Helms also has another book titled Who Wrote the Gospels? that I am looking forward to reading.

CX

The usual explanation is divine inspiration. God told the authors what happened. Interestingly, god isn't very good at keeping a story straight so it's different in different gospels. The usual dodge for this is that God only inspired rather than dictating the story so each author recounted it in his own way.

Al Kafirun

Duh! Its God-breathed. God told the blessed anonymous and contradicting authors what to write afterward. See, simple explanation, ye of little faith.