Sorry to be so slow getting back to you. Better late than never eh.
Percy writes:
The interesting thing about mythmaking is that the details increase over time. You should include in your exegesis that the earliest Christian writings, the genuine epistles, have much less detail about Jesus's life than the later ones, the gospels.
If the second part of your statement is correct then the first part is wrong and the details didn’t increase over time. I’d also add that I don’t concede that the epistles were the earliest Christian writings. Yes, they were written prior to the Gospels being compiled, but the Gospels were compiled from earlier material, Q or not, that would have been written prior to the epistles.
Percy writes:
If we assume the gospels are true and that eyewitnesses were the source of the information, how did they witness all these events (there must have been many eyewitnesses), and how was that information transmitted faithfully to the gospel writers? What about other source of information? For example, was it really proper to classify the Gospel of Peter as apocrypha, or does it tell us something important about a battle of ideas in the early church, with the idea winning out that it was the Romans carrying out the crucifixion rather the Jews under Herod Antipas's orders. John's mention of Herod Antipas where the other gospels do not is probably a nod toward the Gospel of Peter which must have had its advocates.
I agree that there would be multiple eye witnesses and that the accounts would have been both through the oral tradition and through written material. Luke puts it this way.
quote:
1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
As Luke says many have written up accounts and different individuals would have been privy to some information but not all of it. The different Gospel writers obviously used much of the same information and not others. Through all this we would expect there to be differences in the accounts, which again shows there isn’t collusion involved.
John then ends his Gospel with this:
quote:
24 This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. 25 Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
He is making a claim about its fundamental accuracy and also that there was considerable information available indicating that his compilation consisted what he considered to be the highlights.
Percy writes:
If we assume the gospels are true and that eyewitnesses were the source of the information, how did they witness all these events (there must have been many eyewitnesses), and how was that information transmitted faithfully to the gospel writers? What about other source of information? For example, was it really proper to classify the Gospel of Peter as apocrypha, or does it tell us something important about a battle of ideas in the early church, with the idea winning out that it was the Romans carrying out the crucifixion rather the Jews under Herod Antipas's orders. John's mention of Herod Antipas where the other gospels do not is probably a nod toward the Gospel of Peter which must have had its advocates.
The Gospel of Peter is interesting as it is a Gospel that is clearly written from a docetic POV and disregards Jesus’ humanity. It clearly is written with an agenda that Jesus is God and is actually much more in line with how a 1st century Jew would fabricate the story of Jesus.
Peter does have Pilate involved but it has the final decision being made by Herod. However it is pretty consistent with this account in Matthew 27. I also agree that there were numerous disagreements in the early church which primarily centred around, not the crucifixion and resurrection accounts, but on how to deal with the Jewish laws for Gentiles. Of course the major issue was circumcision.
Percy writes:
If they believed in a messiah that would lead them in battle then they would have followed some other messiah, not Jesus. The power of Jesus's message was that he was leading them down a different more spiritual path, one with a greater chance of success than the combat-focused failures of the past.
I don’t think so. Here was this messianic claimant who was performing miracles. They couldn’t let go of their beliefs that the messiah would lead them against the Romans, and a miracle working leader might just do the trick. Also as far as we know Jesus was the only messianic claimant that had members of the under classes and even outcasts as followers. Here were these tax collectors and fisherman etc that saw themselves being elevated to princely positions. Their belief would be that the Romans would be overthrown, quite possibly by an act of God with possibly no military intervention even necessary.
When Jesus was crucified that dream ended but with the resurrection that hope was initially resurrected, (pun intended). After that they finally accepted the idea of the peaceful revolution against evil itself. Their weapon was God’s gift of love and not the sword or direct divine intervention by God as a means of eliminating Roman domination.
Percy writes:
Crucifixion was just one method employed by the Romans to carry out executions. Other methods were beheading, strangling, being cast from a great height, being buried alive, drowning and death by beast. Why would the priests assume that Pilate would choose crucifixion for a Jew preaching Jewish blasphemy who had committed no offense against the Romans? The gospels have the crowd choosing Jesus's method of punishment as they shouted "Crucify him." Would Pilate, the Roman prefect for Judea, really let the crowd dictate this?
Firstly it was the Jews crying for crucifixion and Pilate would acquiesce for a couple of reasons. Crucifixion wasn’t simply a means of torture and death. It was so much more. It was making a statement that the person being crucified was beyond worthless and virtually sub human. A Roman citizen could not be crucified. The Jews were anxious to have Jesus completely discredited and crucifixion would fit the bill nicely. As Luke tells us in chap 19 the Jews also put pressure on Pilate by saying that Jesus’ claimed to be the Son of God. This was a term used by Roman emperors for themselves. They were saying that Jesus claimed to hold this position and not Caesar. Pilate would see this as a reason for crucifixion even if just for the idea he wouldn’t want it to get back to Caesar that he hadn’t taken firm action.
BTW, I keep using the term Jew. It is short hand for the group of Jews who essentially held power. Jesus was a Jew and all of his first followers were Jewish so I do not mean to disrespect Jewish people then or now in any way.
Percy writes:
That's all part of the drama of another aspect of this very common plotline, that God could overcome even the most demeaning method of execution.
So what? That doesn’t tell us anything about the historical nature of the event.
Percy writes:
Regardless of the specifics of who you think copied from who, the large number of identical passages means there was a common source. If you grab a gospel synopsis and do a little logical connecting the dots you'll see that Mark had to have been a source for both Matthew and Luke, as well as some other document designated Q. Some Biblical scholars get their knickers all tied in a knot arguing about the remaining problems, but cross pollination also occurred between the gospels after they'd been written. What has come down to us as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not their original forms. They existed as independent documents for only a short while (maybe 30-50 years) before the various communities shared their versions with each other, and then there was considerable leakage between them before the final forms we have today emerged.
The simplistic view that "this gospel was written first, and then these other gospels were written next drawing upon the first, and so forth" is popular because it gives the illusion that the evolution of the final versions can be traced backward in time in detail, that we can know the origin of each phrase, even each word, but that's just not true. Unless we discover a lot more very ancient variants of the gospels, we'll just never know.
That is all pretty much conjecture and people then and today usually have agendas, regardless of which side of the issue they are on. My own belief is that the gospels were written separately but, at least in the case of the Synoptics, from largely the same original material.
Percy writes:
But for you the origin of the accounts is eyewitnesses. If the gospel authors were willing to alter eyewitness accounts then how can they be trusted at all? And if they'd alter eyewitness accounts then what greater freedoms might they have taken on 2nd and 3rd hand accounts?
I don’t think that they did alter the eyewitness accounts except to highlight certain things and likely embellish things a bit. I’d say that it is much more likely that there were relatively minor differences in the account just as there are in witnesses in an automobile accident. Just as investigators work to get at what actually happened, the first Christians did their best to provide accurate accounts, and then to understand what it all meant. We carry on that work today.
GDR writes:
As I have said several times my belief is based on believing in a good and loving God and that God resurrected Jesus. That is my starting point...
Percy writes:
But it can be your ending point, too. What you just stated seems more than sufficient.
Absolutely and for most Christians that is enough. If God resurrected Jesus then Jesus command to love our neigbour is complete for Christian belief. I just find theology to be fascinating, and so I find it stimulating to deep deeper into the theology of Christianity but I agree with you it isn’t necessary.
Percy writes:
Science considers everything a natural process.
Which it should. However ultimately you wind up requiring an infinite string of processes to bring about existence as we know it. (Turtles all the way down.) However, as a deist that isn’t your problem
Percy writes:
It wouldn't be accurate to say I reject the evidence of the Bible. It's more that I know what true evidence looks like, and I know that it is common in man's search for purpose in life to build religions that often include confabulous stories, and I know that all the world's religions can't be right and am certain that their widely variant tenets mean that they were not arrived at by evidence, and I know that the innate need to defend one's beliefs means that a post-facto search for evidence will invent it.
I'm in a much stronger position than you. If anyone were to say to me, "Your beliefs can't possibly be true because they are completely unsupported by evidence and you don't even have any scriptures," then I would freely concede all this and go on believing anyway because for me true belief comes from within, not from a book.
Yes I agree that all belief comes from within but that doesn’t mean that belief can’t be informed by a book. I’d even say in my case that my belief came from the philosophical ideas of CS Lewis and then became more focused as I read the Bible and other writers.
Percy writes:
his seems pretty far out there as Christianity or Anglicanism. I still don't think your beliefs that religion is man-made and all the rest are Anglican.
Anglicanism like all religion is mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of God and what that should mean to our lives, and Anglicanism itself continues to hammer differences in belief.
Incidentally I’d forgotten about Matthew 26:56 concerning the accounts of the disciples deserting Him,where it reads Then all the disciples left Him and fled.
He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
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