PhilosopherJay

Hi Duvduv,

Good points.

However, we should remember that we are dealing with just the canonized gospels. We have or know about over 40 gospels, plus numerous apostle based documents. We should take note of the fact that there are very few references to Moses and Abraham. We might imagine that educated sectarian Jews, certainly readers of "the Prophets" texts, adopted a pre-existing Mystery-teacher/Philosopher character as their own.

Consider the Dark Knight and Batman characters. Anybody who reads the first Dectective Comics #27 (May, 1939) story of Batman sees a great difference in tone and character with the Dark Knight character of the recent Batman movies. It is a light-hearted Detective-Gangster adventure spoof. The Dark Knight emphasizes violence and madness.

I suspect 150-210 C.E.as the most likely time period for this transistion.




Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Duvduv

The gospels were written in a biblical style because they were to be considered an equivalent of the Tanakh. They were to be canonized as such.
There is no other explanation for their uniformity of a biblical writing style. And Acts also tried to offer the same thing.

steve_bnk

The best description I have heard is that the four versions reprent four persepctives of JC with different interpretations written at dfferent times in the movement.

JC ranges from the angry radical ranting in the temple over money changers to the New Age love prophet in the Sermon On The Mount.

steve_bnk

Modern metaphors are the best way to understand the writings.

Duvduv

So the question remains why all four gospel stories are uniformly structured like the old Testament, suggesting there was a decision to have the gospels stand alongside the Tanakh beyond being merely generic and anonymous memoirs (although Justin shows the so-called memoirs were read alongside prophets).

outhouse

ya it couldnt be that people who worshipped judaism wrote like followers of judaism :constern01:

Duvduv

Could be. But they still considered their Gospels important enough to imitate the Tanakh which would suggest an official status.

MrMacSon

i have seen commentary ttat there were lots of stories doing the rounds among the non-Jews for a long time - a few centuries - and the ones that were most popular were the ones that fulfilled the Tanakah prophecies, and they were the ones eventually collated and edited into the NT canon.

outhouse

your missing the point.

much of the OT was written by private parties, collected over hundreds of years before being compiled, redacted, and re redacted.


the gospel authors were just people who were writing what was important to them, and if you didnt know, this was no game to them, they believed the BS so much so, this was all life and death to them. They placed so much importance on the OT that of course they would keep it close.

But then you have other issues as to the simularities.



Not only were they redacted for content

but they were also cherry picked to match at a later date. those with too whacky or far out there theology were burned.


the main point though really is the fact they were writing from a simular time period from a simular foundation, by simular barbaric primitive people that viewed these scriptures as life or death


no matter how you view it, private scribes were just using the OT as a foundation due to its importance to daily life

Duvduv

Who says they were written by "private parties" and redacted over hundreds of years??

Maybe they were produced by a regime-sponsored group of individuals representing different ideas to accomodate different groups of believers in the empire.
The fact that they are all written in a biblical style means the stories were intended for some kind of canonization along with the Old Testament.