spamandham

Because he knew someone with a cell phone was recording every word he said verbatim and would eventually get around to publishing those words in print sometime within the next 100 years.

The alternative explanation - that the author simply made up quotes to attribute to Jesus is ludicrous, since we know humans don't ever do things like that....especially during the period in which we are discussing where the practice was the norm.

Russellonius

Sorry my previous post was so long. You may not have read this far:

Augustine was a religious professional. The authors of the NT were religious professionals. Religion requires that purveyors of religious products stand behind the quality of their product. They cannot prove supernatural claims so they require 'faith' on the part of consumers. They emphasize the 'mystery' when pressed for details. They do not point out the 'man behind the curtain' who is creating the illusion because it would be bad for business.

You may not believe in remission of sins, I don't either.
So, the religious product is presented as being a real product to fill a real demand. This product may not sell to you or me, but it sells to people who want remission of their sins. That's quite a few people and for a very long time.

You cannot seriously be claiming that authors made up stories that they then believed were true history! What point are you really trying to make? That religion involves deception?

Yes that happens all the time in the realm of religion. If, as you seem to admit, some gospel reports are false claims, then the authors did not have the intention of accurately reporting history. The intent was to sell religious product. Some 'trickery' is involved when selling products that do not actually exist. Religious professionals teach things as true that they cannot know to be true and that they are not required to prove. Sometimes they make stuff up with actual or feigned conviction. *gasp*

A scheme to sell remission of sins can only be allegorical. Christ did actually provide an alternate method for the remission of sins. It is not necessary for any part of the story to be literally true for this change to have actually happened in history. It is only necessary that people believed it and changed providers, which they did. (It helped that the Temple was destroyed.)

You point seems to be that people should not purchase religious products. That is a consumer-level judgment, not analysis or criticism in the technical sense.

Zed

In the process of formulating a false story, I don't think anyone along the way necessarily lied.

If I tell a story, and someone hears it and tells it to a third person with minor changes and exaggerations, and then a hundred people later, with the huge accumulative effect, the story makes it to you, and it's radically different from what actually happened, or what I actually told, we end up with:

1- A person telling a story believing and intending it to be actual literal history.
2- The story is mostly false and reflects very little of reality.
3- Yet nobody is lying, but everyone involved takes it literally.

That is what seems to have happened with Christianity.

Joan of Bark

C'mon, spam, I proposed an explanation that doesn't require the supernatural (even if Jesus himself lied about what happened).

Not surprising at all, except it's not as clear cut that the author must have "made them up", as you claim. Maybe the author was lied to by someone he trusted (like Jesus).

Always a question to be asked when it comes to an oral quote from history. But it's not necessarily 100% lies or 100% truth. Each quote must be taken on a case-by-case basis for every historical character pre-electronic recording.

spamandham

I understand, but nevertheless, your post projected modern expectations on ancient writers in regard to quotes. Quotes simply did not have the same meaning then as now. They were narrative in nature, not documentary.

It's not that it's impossible that the author was dutifully recording what he remembered, that just isn't a reasonable expectation given what we know about period writers, or even simply by examining the texts in question and noting that they are filled with impossible quotes, including ones where the fourth wall is broken ("let the reader understand"). There simply is no reason to consider the idea that these are dutifully recorded conversations.

show_no_mercy

Getting back to the very first post, I'd like to point out the context of the Pharisees asking for a sign:

How many disciples did Jesus have?
How many years was the woman bleeding before being healded by Jesus?
How old was the little girl when she was thought dead and brought back to life by Jesus?
How many baskets were left over once Jesus had "fed" people on one side of the lake?

How many tribes of Israel are there?

How many baskets were left over once Jesus had "fed" people on the other side of the lake? How many hills of Rome are there?

Russellonius

You are overlooking all the scripture-mining that took place. Jesus was like Adam, Moses, Elijah, David and lots of other ancestors because elements of his biography were pulled from their stories. Jesus 'fulfilled' OT prophecies, for example the Son of Man of Isaiah 53, because those prophecies were incorporated into his biography.

This seems much more like a religious product in development than an effort to accurately report history. They did necessarily 'lie' (although that's not the word I would choose).

The 'telephone effect' could not have applied to Paul's writing. He claims that NO information from Jesus followers contributed to his teaching. Plus, the 'telephone effect' often produces stories that hearers recognize as being nonsense.

Semitic hyperbole is definitely involved in the gospels, but hyperbole is a stretching of the truth with awareness of doing so.

If you could prove to anybody here that the writers thought what they wrote was literally true, where would you go next?

aa5874

That is not what happened.

Please read Galatians 1.18-20.

How did "Paul" manage to stay with Peter for 15 days in Jerusalem?

What happened?

Zed

I don't understand the question.

Russellonius

If the authors did not have an awareness that they were creating myth but instead believed that they were literally recording historical occurrences, what conclusions can we draw about the origin of Christianity?

If your claim were true, where would it lead next logically?