Steven Carr

What a pity that when preparing an article on his book, France left out all the bits which trashed Wells, while keeping the bits which trashed consverative literalism and blind acceptance of minor references to 'Christ' 80 or more years later.

Yuri Kuchinsky

This is a clear misrepresentation by Bede.

Of course I've never said that "extant manuscripts are the only acceptable way to date a text" -- which is an obvious absurdity.

In fact, I've already explained my position on this repeatedly and in some detail. What I'm actually saying is that the gospels are primarily political documents, and so they should be expected to reflect the changing theology of early Christian movement. So we can fully expect a lot of continuous "adjustment" there on the part of orthodox Catholic editors -- until both the Catholic theology and the gospel text were more or less fixed permanently ca 300-400 CE. These are not merely some "minor copying errors" that I'm talking about, but the deliberate theological corruptions by later editors.

Thus, if Bede prefers to see the history of the gospels apart from those bitter political battles that afflicted Christianity over the first 200 years or so of its existence, then he will get a falsified history of the gospels.

So here we see how the agenda of an aggressive Christian apologist like Bede happens to be fully in accord with the agenda of our so-called secular-oriented academic NT industry. Both of these camps -- the Christian apologists, and our so-called "liberal" NT scholars alike -- still work together hand in glove to perpetuate the false myth that our canonical gospels are the "original 1c documents". But this is, quite simply, a deception.

Regards,

Yuri.

"Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road." -=- VOLTAIRE

Bede

Yuri,

Please can you give me an example or two, with evidence, of specific changes made to the Gospels and also explain why embarressing details like Jesus expecting the imminent end of the world and being rejected by his family were not expunged?

Thanks

Bede

Layman

Well, since his book was targetting Wells and his article was not, why would you be surprised about the differences? And he rejected the "minor references" to Christ in his book as well.

Yuri Kuchinsky

There are thousands of examples. How about Jesus being baptised by John?

In Mt and Mk, Jesus is baptised by John. But in Lk, it looks like Jesus is being baptised by... the Shadow!

(Luke 3:21 RSV) "Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, (22) and the Holy Spirit descended upon him..."

So what happened there? Well, it looks like some later Lukan editor wanted to distance Jesus from John. And so, according to Lk alone, John had already been arrested -- just before Jesus is baptised! (See the preceding verses in Lk.)

And the same thing also applies to Jn, basically. So it's quite clear what's been happening there. As the movement became increasingly more Gentile, there were some efforts to distance Jesus from his Jewish background in general, and from John the Baptist in particular. These changes were probably made in mid-second century.

As to "the imminent end of the world", not everything could have been expunged. And why expunge something that still remains a big selling point for all sorts of preachers even today?

And as to "being rejected by his family", I now have some pretty good evidence that this in fact was _added up_ by the Gentile-oriented editors!

Yours,

Yuri.

Toto

I am bumping up this year-old thread, since I have just read France's The Evidence for Jesus. I was looking for the thread in which Peter Kirby was looking for a reviewer for this book, and stumbled over this instead.

The posts in this tread give a good idea about the book. I will add a few things about The Evidence for Jesus - it is a very slim volume. It is also a very good book, at the $4.95 I paid, perhaps the most cost-effective book on the historicity of Jesus that I've bought. It is well written, from a fairly scholarly point of view, and not full of dreadful apologetics.

It is, however, utterly unconvincing on the subject of the existence of Jesus. France thinks that nothing specific can be learned from Josephus, but he thinks that there must have been some mention of Jesus. Otherwise, he thinks that there is no clear evidence of Jesus outside of the gospels. And the best that he can say for the historicity of the gospels is that they might very well represent what people who knew Jesus remembered.

But parse this first sentence:

Perhaps this refers back to the introduction, where France attacks "extreme scepticism with regard to the primary evidence for Jesus, the canonical gospels." Instead of extreme scepticism (sounds like a new Olympic event), France seems to prefer a moderate amount of gullibility.

Vorkosigan

Toto, are there any new arguments in that book of France's we should be aware of?

Also, it is sad that France labels mythicists people who antecedently decide that the gospels are not true. I've never met anyone who "antecedently" decided the gospels weren't true.

Vorkosigan

Toto

There are no new arguments, just a useful summary of the evidence. His chapter on archeology had the most new information for me.

The book appears to have been written in response to a controversial BBC series on the historical Jesus broadcast in 1984, which France felt gave too much attention to fringe theories, like John Allegro's and Morton Smith's. But he does seem to approve of revising the story of Jesus based on historical investigation. He ends the book noting that in the series "there was a repeated sequence in which a plaster image of Jesus was dramatically exploded. It was a very traditional image (appropriately described by one critic as 'kitch') of a white-faced Jesus with long, wavy hair and a rather sickly expression. As the pieces of this shattered 'Jesus' floated in slow motion across the screen, we were invted to consider the possibility that our old image of Jesus was now destroyed beyond repair by historical investigation, and that it was time to adopt a new one. It was, perhaps, not in the best of taste, and some were understandably offended. But even if this was not the most diplomatic way to make the point, was there not a point worth making?"

Can you imagine something like that on American TV?

Vinnie

-5 Versions of Mark
-The redaction of John
-Layers of Q if you accept the existence of Q and is reconstruction (e.g. Formation Q)
-Layering of Thomas
-2 Corinthians is more than one Pauline Epistle Combined (if you accept this majority view)
-Tons and tons of interpolations that could be easily cited.
-The fact that all the earliest texts as bestwe can reconstruct (even second century data) appear to already be mixed texts.

Of course, I don't doubt the overal textual veracity of most ECWs. I just frown upon views or theories based upon too specific a reading of them as if they were textually stable.

Speaking of the end of the world isn't that the reason E.P. Sanders gives for the additional ending of John? Apologizing for the mistake?

2 Peter closes the issue for good a 130 AD with its comment that a day to the Lord is like a thousand years. But yeah, MT, LK, and MK seem to have kept them intact with some apolgizing. But thse and other instances serve as checks on the level of creativity. In fact, things like Mark's paucity of Gentile related material serve to caution us from applying too high a level of creativity to Mark. Just as certain as Mark was creative is the fact that Mark worked with firmly embedded tradition.

But at the same time, once the Gosapel tradition was firmly embedded (late 2d) wouldn't it have been more difficult to cut out various traditions wholesale (a generalization of course)?

And couldn't embarrassing traditions about Jesus family be alleviated by sayings like the one that goes something like "whoeever accepts my word is my brother and mother".

Vinnie