Richbee

Journalistic history?

What ancient historian ever wrote "journalistic history"?

History is history and so deal with it! (Note, you have no evidence outside of the New Testament.)

Now as to Apoststes, I call 'em as they stand, and no doubt the Ex-Num - Elaine Pagels and the Ex-Ex-Crossan and both pround to be APOSTATES from the Christian Faith. (Biased to the nth degree)

What part of the truth do you have a problem with?

Richbee

Double check with Elaine Pagels the Neognostic "scholar".

RUmike

ROFLMAO!!!!!! LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!

Oh excuse me I must have reverted to Richbee Mode for a second. But seriously, you made me laugh out loud with that comment. Obviously you are not even remotely familiar with modern scholarship if you believe such a thing.

"[O]ne of the greatest ancient historians"? Oh brother. Stop citing that Sir William Ramsey crap (a 19th century chemist, if I'm not mistaken).

Diogenes the Cynic

The earliest evidence indicates no such thing. You are, as usual, completely misinformed.
Sorry to inconvenience you with facts, but the FACT is that all of these traditional attributions of authorship arose from 2nd Century Christian speculation and folklore. All four of the Canonical Gospels are anonymous (none of them names their own author. None of the authors claim to have been witnesses of anything) but we CAN tell some things ABOUT the authors. one of which is that none of them were witnesses. Let's take Matthew, for instance. the Gospel of Matthew was written in the 80's CE, in Koine Greek by an author who copies extensively from Mark and Q. Now why would an eyewitness copy word for word from a secondary source like Mark?

As I said before, you are exceedingly uneducated about contemporary NT scholarship and you're embarrassing yourself with these kinds of posts. The reality is that the vast consensus of mainstream biblical scholars is that none of the Canonical Gospels were written by witnesses and that all four of the authorship traditions are spurious. In fact, there isn't a single word in the entire New testament which was written by an eyewitness of Jesus.

It would take too long to explain all the reasons we know this but I suggest you start by reading this thread, Shredding the Gospels which I started a while ago for the express purpose of laying out the case against traditional Gospel authorship.

Diogenes the Cynic

You can take the quotation marks off the word scholar.

Pagels thinks that the Thomas represented a sapiential teaching (i.e., that Jesus was not God, only a sort of "enlightened" teacher who spoke of a 'light" within each person. There's nothing really "Gnostic" about that, at least not in the sense that involved archons and evil gods of the earth and a spiritual Jesus, etc.

Incidentally, Pagels thinks that Paul was a Gnostic.

Diogenes the Cynic

Theucidides. Josephus.

When I said the gospels were not "journalistic history" I was being polite. What I meant was that they are fiction.

Richbee

False - your empty speculation is noted.

More speculation.

John mentions that he was the very one who was writing the account, the disciple whom Jesus loved. Go back and read John 21, and 22, and the account at the Last Supper. (I have to laugh out loud here again! John mentions his attendence!)

Please appreciate that this thread is not about the some odd 2,000 Biblical scolars in the US.

This thread is about the PBS.org financed crack pot Apostate Anthropologist - J.D. Crossan and the Neognostic witch - Elaine Pagels from Princeton to name two.

Got it?

Diogenes the Cynic

This is not a response to my point.
There's nothing "speculative" about noting that the Gospels do not name their own authors or make any claims to be eyewitness reports. All you have to do is read them.
1. There is no John 22.
2. John 21:24 is a later addition to the text, not part of the original body of John, and explicitly claims NOT to be the unnamed "disciple" which it vouches for.
3. The author makes no claim to have been at the last supper. You are making an unwarrented assumption that "the Beloved Disciple" is the author of John. The text makes no such claim.

Furthermore, there are other reasons we know that GJohn could not have been written by an apostle. Please see my section on John in the thread I linked above.
Flinging this kind of crap does nothing to serve your arguments.

Richbee

So I take it that you missed the internal textual evidence for the disciple Matthew representing the author of Matthew's gospel?

All extant ancient manuscripts of the first Gospel have the superscription, kata Matthaion (“according to Matthew”).

Hahahaha - my mistake.

And, do you have the first edition of GoJ?

On what grounds do you reject this internal textual evidence? (So who was the other "Beloved Disciple" named John?)

Richbee

In review:

The Gospel of Thoams (GoT) is based on an ant eaten manuscript with over 50% from the Gospel of Matthew or other gospels. The problem is that the Greek - Coptic - English translations are very poor and rough, if not filled with errors.

Quote:

"Most scholars believe that the Gospel of Thomas is highly tainted with the heretical philosophy known as Gnosticism (Cameron, Ron (1992), “Gospel of Thomas,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary, David Noel Freedman, Ed. (New York: Doubleday), Vol. 6. )

Occasionally, some very absurd language is put into the Lord’s mouth. Here is an example:

“Simon Peter said to them: ‘Let Mary (Magdalene) go out from among us, because women are not worthy of the Life.’”

“Jesus said:

‘See I shall lead her, so that I will make her male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’”

Quote:

Does that even remotely resemble the dignified status that women are afforded in the New Testament?

R.K. Harrison has well noted that this apocryphal work “cannot in any sense be called a ‘fifth gospel’”

(Blaiklock & Harrison, p. 450).

It is quite apparent that the so-called Gospel of Thomas has no place in the inspired canon, and history has been correct in rejecting it – the Jesus Seminar to the contrary notwithstanding.

Credit: Wayne Jackson

http://www.christiancourier.com