Duvduv

Possibly, but this does not explain the great disparities among the gospels. If that was the primary purpose one does not need to have a set of four very different fables to tell the same story or to vilify the Jews. Nor does it explain the gap between the set of letters called epistles and the gospels, or even among the epistles themselves.

James The Least

I don't see them as very different. Matthew and Luke added more meat to the skeleton of Mark, but this is typical legendary development as the story gets retold and reinterpreted.

I wasn't trying to explain the gap between the epistles and gospels. The relationship between them is as obscure as everything else in the early church.

Duvduv

But if a central body (i.e. the Empire's official council of bishops or whatever) wanted to render the Jesus story as a fable, they could have produced a single story and left it at that, not unlike the Quran. But there are so many differences to call into question that kind of view. Just take the Sermon on the Mount as one example. Or even the nativity story itself.

Juststeve

James The Least writes, "They were not written to "document the life of the historical Jesus before the oral history was forgotten." They are strictly polemical and theological propaganda."

I'm wondering how anyone could possible know that 2000 years after the fact. That the Gospels contain polemical and theological propaganda is not evidence for the proposition that they only contain polemical and theological propaganda. If one were to read histories of undoubted events.", the Civil War or World War Two for example, it would be possible in most to identify polemical and propagandistic elements. That would not indicate to one who thinks carefully that the histories are are strictly polemical and propagandistic.

So it is with the Gospels. Everyone with the exception of a few Biblioidolators would concede that the Gospels contain propaganda and polemics. Give me evidence that is all they contain.

Steve

outhouse

Understanding your point on this, he is right. I would just debate the amount that the gospels contain.

Agreed a impossible task

outhouse

it wasnt just a story to them, they were living this new religion which was survival to these primitive people.


and while they did add layers to Gmark, it was because the movement was different in its early stages solely dependant on different belief's in different geographfic location.

we know the early evolution of the legends were all over the board and there is not a single work that produced another and so on. It was not like a ladder as far as its evolutionary process, instead it was like a tree go half way up and branches were everywhere.

we are only getting the roman version as the jewish versions were not only limited due to illiteracy, but redacted out and or burned at a later date.