skepticdude

This thread was created to discuss whether the gospel were intended by their authors to overcome doubts of skeptics and unbelievers, or if they were only intended to aid and instruct the faith of existing Christian communities.

The vast majority of Christian scholarship says they were created to aid communities which were already faithful. If that is true, we have to talk about whether the modern apologist's use of them (as if they were affidavits entered into evidence in a court of law and subject to attack) constitutes error on their part.

After all, if the gospels were not intended by their authors to be used to combat skepticism, today's apologists need to get out of the driver's seat, let the gospel instruct THEM, and stop going beyond the inspired author's intentions. But if you can get people to donate into the tithing bucket by misrepresenting the gospels, screw God's purpose, hello green money.

I would argue that the gospels were not intended to combat skepticism for several reasons:

1 - The gospels are anonymous, even though most epistles clearly bear the author's name. The choice to leave their names out of the text would seem to indicate that they didn't want the readers to care who authored them. That is sensible enough if they were aimed at existing faith communities, but is highly improbable if they were aimed at skeptics, whom the authors would know full well would criticize a work's anonymity. If anonymity was the desire of the "inspired" gospel authors, then every Christian apologist and commentator in the world has erred by trying to prove traditional authorship. If the original authors didn't want the readers to find out who they were, why did Eusebius and later Christians start trying to prove authorship? Christianity is strange though, so brace yourself for impact as somebody steps up to the plate to give biblical justification for going beyond God's intentions.

1a - It could very well be that the gospel authors intended to write anonymously in a humble attempt to do a good work without letting their right hand know what their left one was doing, that is, attempting to instruct the church in a way that would insure that they themselves would never recieve credit. Unfortunately for apologists, this humble Christian attitude also prevents establishment of historical reliability. If you don't know who said it, you have no case. If that is the case, then every apologist who ever attempted to establish traditional authorship has clearly stomped this humble INSPIRED purpose to death, as they went about seeking to CREDIT Matthew for Matthew's gospel, Mark for Mark's gospel, etc. Can God bless an apologetics efforts which completely undermines his original inspired purpose in writing the gospels?

2 - The consensus of textual critics is that Mark's gospel ends at 16:8. If that is true, this author certainly didn't aim his gospel at skeptics, because he didn't even include any eyewitnesses to the resurrection, and would surely have known how much skeptics would laugh if the only proof for resurrection was an anonymous story about some scared women who saw an unidentified man announcing that Jesus was risen.

3 - The gospel authors constantly remind the reader of how skeptical the Jews were in spite of interacting with Jesus in the flesh. They knew that simply writing a life of Jesus would come nowhere near convincing those who were already skeptical.

4 - Matthew deliberately lied by skipping generations to make his genealogy of Jesus fit perfectly into 3 sets of 14 names each (Matthew 1:17). Matthew could count on an already-faithful community accepting his work as inspired, trusting that any mistakes were only alleged, exactly the attitude of inerrantists today, but surely cannot have believed that this mistake would be forgiven by skeptics. Matthew is not writing to convince skeptics.

5 - Matthew is 80% nothing but Markan text with slight embellishments for flavor. The rule is that an eyewitness (Matthew) would never depend so heavily on the work of a non-eyewitness (Mark), and certainly not if he was already inspired by God to place his own memories of events on paper.

6 - All scholars recognize the 4 gospels have 4 different themes and appear to be written to communities with different needs. In other words, Luke and Matthew knew about Mark's text, but did not believe it was inspired, because they chose to add and take away as they saw fit, something no true inerrantist would dare attempt. Luke admits knowing of various attempts to write up a life of Jesus, but clearly does not regard them as the word of God, believing that his own account which combines the sources will be "better". Knowing about each other's works but refusing to just accept them as the word of God does not appear to be the procedure of a person writing for skeptics, but a person who thinks what was written earlier is not sufficient to meet the needs of his own faith-community.

7 - If the text of Jesus' predictions of the 70 A.D destruction of the temple were truly in circulation among the general populace around 50-60 A.D., the fulfillment of that prediction by Titus would have turned the gospels into absolutely respectable and revered undeniable examples of fulfilled prophecy. Nearly nothing from those predictions, however, appears in patristic writings, suggesting that there was something about the fulfillment of these "predictions" that was less than convincing to skeptics, again manifesting a lack of concern for apologetic value.

8 - Jesus placed his divine blessing on "blind" faith in John 20:29, when he said "blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed." Such a statement is the very antithesis of investigating claims and evidence, and therefore can only have been intended to sustain those already in the faith. Blessing blind faith is something a first-century skeptic would have mocked with great energy. "Why the need to console those who have no evidence, if evidence was abundant at the time this was written?" etc. etc.

9 - Nearly everything Paul talks about in his epistles was already covered by Jesus in the gospels. Paul's nearly non-existent use of the gospels is just as unexpected on an inspiration theory as would be a modern-day pastor's near total failure to cite the gospels. Paul's failure to make use of such obvious authorities either means they didn't exist, existed in such textually corruptible condition that he knew better than to rest an argument on such sand, or that Paul knew that very little in the gospels as they existed in his day supported his version of Christianity. Or, they existed, but were not deemed authoritative by the Christians followingt him, suggesting theological division that speaks more to gospel authors writing for specific brands of Christians than writing for unbelievers in general.

10 - First John warns against false Christians who say Jesus didn't really exist in the flesh. Why? Isn't the reality of Jesus' material existence abundantly supported by the gospels, especially the physical proofs shown in the resurrection narratives? This is evidence that at the time First John was written, the gospels did not contain the resurrection narratives they do now, or that the First-John author did not regard these accounts as worthy to be trusted by his audience.

11 - Notice each different pericope in the gospels. How exactly would a gospel author have felt that this or that little story about Jesus was something that "would" or "should" get a skeptic to consider changing his ways? The stories are told with the same exact assumption of acceptance on the reader's part as is also evident in fairy tales and the Old Testament.

Thus stuff was written for believers, not unbelievers.

Never once does a biblical author challenge a skeptic's predictable charge that the faith books are unreliable. Apologetics was never their inspired purpose. Therefore the whole enterprise of Christian apologetics is doomed by the word of God. Whatever it meant to defend the faith, it did not mean supplying evidences for the historical reliability of the canonical books. That is all post-apostolic development, when the understandable lack of miracles left the floundering 2nd century church with nothing else to prove their faith, except a pile of writings that would either make or break their case, and on which they were forced to rely.

This argument could be extended so that as long as a New Testament book was not originally intended to be aimed at skeptics of Christianity, it constitutes sin and "going beyond the word of the Lord" for any post-apostolic apologist to try to use them in that way. Since they weren't written to combat unbelief, but build up existing faith-communities, again, the entire enterprise of Christian apologetics is doomed, and the proof of such is the very New Testament itself.

judge

Luke 1

1Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

aa5874

And, immediately the author of Luke wrote a birth narrative of Jesus that makes the author of gMatthew looks like a Liar or a FICTION story writer.

The angels did tell the shepherds where the baby Jesus was and they did find him and told others about Jesus according to the author of Luke, but in gMatthew, it was all secrecy. No-one knew where or exactly when Jesus was born.

Theophilus may have been confused.

show_no_mercy

This is actually one issue that Matthew addresses in his gospel. He adds apologetics about guards being at the tomb, Jews paying off the guards to say the disciples stole the body, etc. So, at least in Matthew's Easter account, he seems to be writing to either skeptics or believers who saw possible objections to Mark's novelty empty tomb tale. Matthew and Mark diverge wildly after Mk 16:8.

One of the markers that Mark invented the empty tomb, and was writing to Christians who already believed.

mountainman

Very interesting article. Do you think the gospels were available at Greek bookshops in the 1st century? In the 2nd century? In the 3rd century? In the 4th century?

It would appear that way.

What about the packaging of these texts? Eusebius certainly covers opinions of unbelievers such as Celsus, whom Eusebius might simply be fabricating for his "histirical narrative". The greatest unbeliever was Porphyry of course, but we are only given this information from Eusebius. My bet is that Eusebius wrote some additional books in the name of Porphyry. After all, his Boss Constantine had already cornered the market on the value of Porphyry's books - they were to be burnt. Good bye to Euclid for how many centuries?

From where did you get your information about the 2nd century "church"?

skepticdude

Theophilus had already been taught certain stuff about Jesus. Nothing in this quote suggests Luke wrote to convince unbelievers. Thanks for the clarification.

skepticdude

I only speak about the 2nd century church merely to grant one Christian assumption for the sake of argument.

Toto

It has been proposed by Roger Parvus (user rparvus on these boards) in A New Look at the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch and other Apellean Writings (or via: amazon.co.uk)) that Theophilus was Bishop Theophilus of Antioch, who had been a follower of a Apelles, who had broken with Marcion. Luke-Acts was intended in part to instruct the Apelleans in the true orthodoxy and get them with the entire program. There is a reference to "Apollos" in Acts, which Parvus believes is a reference to Apelles - It seems more likely that the gospels were written to instruct followers and explain more about what they had already decided to believe.

mountainman

Does Parvus mention the name of "Apollos" in Acts as evidenced in the Codex Bezae? The name in this manuscript is written as "Apollonius". This goes against the idea that we are dealing with an "Apelles" and some form of conjectural Marcionite related orthodoxy crystalisation process. In fact it suggests, as many academics and scholars have pointed out, that the Apollos whom was "written in to Acts" is a reference to the histirical figure of Apollonius of Tyana.

The historicity of Apollonius of Tyana exceeds that of Jesus by some orders of magnitude. Eusebius quotes books written by the man, and writes books and books in refutation of Philostratus's "History". Therefore the author of Acts needed to make references to this Neopythagorean sage and teacher in this quasi-narrative-history we know as the canonical "Acts". For notes about this historical fugure see this resource page on Apollonius of Tyana

The OP correctly IMO notes that the new testament canon does not in itself contain any information to convince anyone of belief, and this just indicates why such an additional load of dogma, propaganda, quick reference manuals and ready reckoners, geopgraphical almanacs, gruesome scary martrology stories, "Histories" and other works were "packaged up" with the books of the new testament canon in its first official widespread and lavishly conducted publication across the entire Roman Empire.

When the new testament first manifestly appears in the empire it is heavily packaged.
And it is in the packaging of Eusebius that we find questions and answers from the skeptics.
But does Eusebius simply invent his sources and then invent other sources to disagree?
This modus operandi is very distinctive!
Of course this never happened in antiquity!

Ah but it did - in the fabrication of the "Historia Augusta".
Quite possibly fabricated in the rule of Constantine.
Thus did Eusebius know anything about this?

Hello Marcion?

When Julian wrote about "The fabrication of the Christians" he was not just refering to the new testament IMO, but rather to the entire literary package which was assembled by Eusebius surrounding the new testament.

SirTristanC

The fact that the gospels were created anonymously does not mean they were intended purely for current believers. If anything it allows them to be taught as the word of God himself, thereby encouraging non-believers to believe. Without a verifiable author, the average mind jumps to the first source they can think of associating with the bible: God. Ask the average person who wrote the Gospels and they will answer with "I dunno, probably God speaking through someone." This, despite the lack of evidence that God had anything to do with the Gospels.