Did any author in the New Testament actually know Jesus?

Okay, here we go. "The book is TOO Old."But if the New Testament had been written 200 years ago then the skeptic's excuse would be:" Well, the book is TOO RECENT. It hasn't been around long enough to be really tested by time."You see, with many it is one excuse or another. It's TOO old. But niether should it be fadish and too recent.How many years then do you think are the proper number of years that the New Testament should be in existence to be credibly considered? Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

I don't think it is the age of the Book that is the problem, I think DA is on about the history of the construction of the Book.The obvious editings, redaction, and the anonymity of its authors are more of a concern than its age.

Textural critics like Bruce Metzger miticulously catalogue and record differences between the thousands of extant copies and fragments of copies of the New Testament. They do statistics on these known differences. The people who really care have done the hard work for us. They are not all skeptics. But they CARED enough to want to track these things.I read about this is Norm Gielser's book A General Introduction to the Bible. You should get the book.There have been thousands upon thousands of either whole or portions of the New Testament found. Aside from these there exists a huge body of references in sermons and writings of the so-called church fathers.Through careful study of references to and copies of the New Testament textural critics do a very good job, if not perfect, of ascertaining what copyist errors or changes have taken place and probable times of alterations in the text.Having said all that my point is this. If you are looking to textural differences in the thousands of sources of New Testament writings to seriously effect any major tenet of the Christian faith, you are going to be disappointed.As far as the New Testament document is concerned:
No, you won't find a copy that says Jesus was not Diety made flesh. No, you won't find a none redemptive death of Jesus.
No, you won't find a "no resurrection" copy of the NT.
No, you won't find a "Jesus is not Lord and Son of God" NT.The things which you hope to find to give you reason to hold to a "tampered with" Gospel that altered a "demythosized" Jesus Christ, you will not find.Hear me again Brian. There is NO ancient "Jesus was just a non extraordinary regular guy that the disciples blew up into a mythological legend" Gospel. You're hoping for something that simply does not exist.I am no expert on NT Textural Criticism. But I do have some stats on how much major Christian tenets are effected because of copyist's errors or textural differences in the transmission of the NT through the centries.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Which editing seriously challenges the central theme of the Christian faith concerning the incarnation of God as a man, His miraculous life, redemptive death, His resurrection, His coming again as Lord?Produce the editing which call any of these major tenets of my faith into question.Anonymity may be mostly a problem of suspicion and mistrust on your side.The book of Hebrews tells us of no author. So what? Probably Paul wrote it. It refers to Timothy as a few other of his letters did. But if not, the book always says that the Spirit said something (refering to the Hebrew Bible). The point being that it is the Holy Spirit of God speaking to us. That is what is important.A Greek professor and translator told me that Peter's Greek is deemed too sophisticated for a fisherman. Well, that doesn't mean much. They coordinated together and he could have had someone HELP him write his thoughts down in high sounding Greek. They worked in teams harmoniously ( for the most part ) as we might expect people to do with a tremendous sense of collective mission.I don't know why some people find it unusual that a group of people would be so impressed with a sense of mission to the rest of mankind that they would not cooperatively work together to write Gospels and letters to the existing churches - checking and confirming facts with one another, editing one another's writing style.This was big. They were godly people and wanted to do a good job worthy of the God they served.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

What the fck are you on about?

Jaywill, why would you suggest that Brian is "hoping" for anything? Everything I have read from Brian in the last few years suggests that he is simply interested in facts.

You have to hand it to her, Brian, she's game on! Gotta love it. Do I sense that she believes what she says and has "data" to back it up? You're going to be a choir boy when gets through with you.

I'm at a loss as to why I'd look at a Gospel to try and disprove that Jesus was God!There are other texts of course that do claim He was only human, had an earthly father, and that His disciples made up stories about Him. But I wouldn't expect these ot make the Canon!Plus, I couldnt care less about Jesus, He was just another in a long line of failed messiahs. His life story is about as boring as it gets.

I would think that if God were planning a special occasion..like the birth of His son..He would have chosen a time and place when exceptional recorded records could have been kept..like the 21st century as to assure that everyone could see the real Son of God and all He would do...rather than the middle of nowhere in a time when proof of occurrence would be impossible. All powerful and all-knowing, wouldn't God have known what would be happening today? "Let's hold up on the birth of my son till there are cameras to make sure everybody experiences this!" "Also, let's use another story that hasn't been used before...!"

Hi Jaywill, Let's look at your religious position from another view just a minute to see what we "critics" see.Jews are God's "chosen people" and I feel they have not gotten the "people" treatment ever (enter Hitler in the late 1930's as an example of recent "mistreatment of God's chosen ones". Surely you see my concern for why God would allow mistreatment his own.I am not aware of any statistics that show Christians have any advantage in any category in their lives. Maybe I missed it, but can you provide data showing that Christians have reaped any benefits from their devotion to the son of God over all others?Do they live longer, better, smarter, have less disease, less suffering? Do they lose less babies to crib death? Do elderly Christians not become old and die terrible deaths compared to, for example, the Hindus or Buddhists? Do they have less incidences of cancer than non-Christians?If not, what has God/Jesus done for you Christians for devoting your lives blindly to Him? Have you ever asked that question yourself?

Isn't the point not so much a reward in this life, but more a reward in the afterlife?

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I hunt for the truth

This is what I am talking about:We can compare the Iliad as an ancient book which holds much in common with the New Testament. Both books were considered sacred. Next to the New Testament there are more extant manuscripts of the Iliad - (643) as recorded by the late 60s. Perhaps more have been found by now. The point is that the New Testament and the Iliad are two ancient sacred books with the most discovered extant manuscripts.Both the NT and the Iliad underwent textual changes and criticism in their Greek manuscipts. The New Testament has about 20,000 lines. The Iliad has about 15,600.Only about 40 lines of the New Testament are in doubt. About 764 lines in the Iliad are questioned. That is a 5% textual corruption of the Iliad compared to a 1/2 of 1% of similiar emendations in the New Testament.Another ancient sacred book could be compared to the Greek New Testament. That is the national epic of India, the Mahabjarata. This ancient book is eight times the size of the Iliad and the Odyssey together. It contains about 250,000 lines. The estimated corruption rate of the text is about 10%. There are 26,000 lines which are questioned as probable latter amendations.The New Testament has survived in more manuscripts than any other book from antiquity. It also has a purer form than any other great book. It is 99.5% pure in terms of textual corruption.There are about 200,000 "errors" in about 10,000 places in which these typos crept into the NT text by scribal mistakes. That sounds very large. But the significance of these 200,000 errors is very low.Estcott and Hort estimated that only about 1/8 of all variants had any weight. The majority of other variants are merely mechanical matters such as spelling or style. About 1/60th of these rise above "trivialities." One sixtieth could be classify as "substantial variations." Mathematically this would compute to a New Testament text which is 98.33% pure.Exra Abbot has similar figures estimating that 19/20 (95 percent) of the readings should be classified as "various" rather than "rival." The major percentage of lines undergo no appreciable difference in the sense of the passage based on the adoption or rejection of variant readings.Philip Schaff wrote in his day of 150,000 variations known of which only 400 affected the sense of a passage. And of these only 50 caused any real significance in an alternative or rival interpretation. He further stated that not one of these variations affected "an article of faith or a precept of duty which is not abundantly sustained by other and undoubted passages, or by the whole tenor of Scripture teaching."A.T. Robertson suggested that the real concern of textual criticism is of a "thousandth part of the entire text." This would result in the reconstructed text of the New Testament 99.9% free from "substantial" or consequential errors. Benjamen Warfield says "the great mass of the New Testament, in other words, has been transmitted to us with no, or next to no variations."At first glance the number of variants would seem to put the integrity of the New Testament into question. But the contrary is true. Ironically, the larger number of variants supplies at the same time the means of checking on those variants. Ironically, the corruption of the text provides the means for its own correction.We are on firm ground in believing that the New Testament we have today is virtually identical to what was written by the ancient writers. If "virtually identical" is too strong a phrase I would say that compared to other ancient writings it is by far more adaquate for our trust. One comparison which is important is the nmber of Greek manuscripts found. The Greek manuscripts of the NT total over 5,000. Add to this about 9,000 versions and 2,000 lectionaries. In comparison some of the great writings of antiquity have survived in only modest few manuscripts.The ones who I question know what they are talking about are the ones who assume that transmission of the NT has altered in any substantial and meaningful sense what was originally penned by the authors.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Hello Jaywill.Nice post there. There's just one point I'd like to make.To me, it doesn't matter if the text was altered significantly or not. This does not mean that any claims made by it are true. No matter if the text reflects the first way it was written in perfectly, you still need supporting evidence for the claims it makes, the lack of this evidence makes me question it, not the fact that it might be altered afterwards.

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I hunt for the truth

I would say that for a unbeliever enfluenced by skeptical opposition to the Christian Gospel, that probably shows some modest progress towards acceptance of its message.Congradulations.Probably I can comment more latter. Some of these things I have been through with Brian in the past. If I could locate the post I would simply link you to it.That is evidence that strongly suggests that the Gospel writers were candid and not peddling false propoganda.I'll return.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Historians can tell whether an author is truthful by testing by a "principle of embarressment." That is inclusion of details protentially embasessing to the author are probably true. The false propogandist is far more likely to omit deatils which make them look bad.Let's see some potentially embarressing details mentioned by the Gospel writers:1.) They indicate that the disciples were dim witted at numersous times. They failed to understand what Jesus was saying [b](Mark 9:32; Luke 18:34; John 12:16).A false propogandist would be more likely to present themselves as so sharp that nothing Jesus taught was not perfectly clear to them. What profit would it be to their cause to let people know that they may have misunderstood their own Master's teaching? Think about it.2.) The disciples were recorded as uncaring. The fell asleep twice at Jesus' most needful hour in which He urged them to pray. (Mark 14:32-41)What profit would it be to them to have their opposers grasp the fact that they didn't care enough to stay awake for their own Master?3.) The discples recorded the embaressment that they didn't even provide a place of burial for their esteemed teacher. One certainly not in the inner circle of disciples had to step forward to care for this need, Joseph of Arimathea.They risked the scandel of having people argue "What do you know about Jesus anyway? You didn't even have the decency to give Him a proper burial. Why should we believe you as reliable witnesses?"4.) The Gospel writers record that Jesus rebuked the leading disciple and called him Satan (Mark 8:33). What confusion in the ranks that could have caused. This embaressing detail is recorded without mercy. It argues that they are probably telling the truth.Can't you hear people say - "Why should we believe Peter's sermons? Jesus called him Satan! Who can trust Peter then ?"5.) Not only Jesus rebuked Peter but we read of Paul, his junior apostle also scolding Peter publically (Gal.2:11).Peter was arguably the leader of the original twelve. Why would they rather conceal that this disciple had a tendency to in need of strong rebukes not only by Jesus but by his younger colleague in the Gospel preaching?6.) The disciples are recorded as acting as cowards. Peter denies his Master with cursing, and that before a powerless little servant girl. Three times Peter told that lie that he was NOT a follower of Jesus (Matt. 26:33-35).Wouldn't you expect a false propogandist to have this scandel concealed from all future readers of the history of Jesus and His disciples. The candid inclusion of this embaressing information argues for the probable truth telling of the evangelists.7.) The disciples are latter seen hiding in fear after the crucifixion of Jesus, a very embaressing detail.8.) The Gospel writers indicate that some of Jesus own disciples were in doubt about His forwarned death and resurrection -(John 2:18-22; 3:14-18; Matt. 12:39-41; 17:9, 22-23). Though He told them so many times some were still in doubt. And even after His resurrection some were in doubt (Matt.28:17)This scandelous unconvincability of some of the disciples we would expect to be swept under the rug. Can't you hear in a court of law an attorney argue - "Is it not true that neither before nor after His alledged resurrection some of you disciples continued in unbelief?" This would be damaging testimony to the veracity of their witness.Other recorded information which put Jesus in a bad light:1.) He was considered "out of His mind" by His own mother and brothers. And they came to seize Him and take Him home (Mark 3:21,31).You would expect this damning embarressing detail to be hidden as it does not add to a sense of His credibility as a teacher. Those closest to Him as family once doubted His sanity.2.) His own brothers once doubted His claims (John 7:5).A false propogandist would be expected to conceal this information as it puts Jesus in a bad light among even the closest of His relatives. It could be argued "Why then should anyone else believe Him if His own brothers didn't?"3.) Jesus was recorded to have a reputation among some people as a deceiver (John 7:`12) This is a damning detail which we would expect the false propogandist to conceal. It doesn't help his propoganda to remind us that Jesus had a reputation as a trickster. Think about it.4.) The Gospel writers recorded that some of His own followers deserted Him (John 6:66). The inclusion of this detail certainly has to potential of persuading the reader that neither should he bother following Jesus either. If His own disciples decided to turn away how much more those who did not walk with Him?The inclusion of the detail argues for the truthfulness of the account rather than its fabrication by a false propogandist.5.) Jesus was recorded to have "turned off" some of the Jews who had made a decision to believe Him! (John 8:30-31). You mean, Gospel writer, that He bit the hand that was feeding Him? Once deciding He was truthful He stepped on their toes?This detail would be so embaressing to false propoganda that it should be expected to be concealed and not recorded.6.) What profit to the false propogandist would it be to record that Jesus was called an alcholic or a "drunkard" (Matt.11:19). Any presidential candidate and his promoters would only be expected to have to admit this reputation with the greatest amount of reluctance."Sirs, we have heard that some of the people said that your Master Jesus was a drunkard ?? Hmmm ??".Wouldn't you expect a false propogandist interested in putting Jesus only in the best light, to conceal such a fact? I would. That's tabloid embaressing stuff.7.) He was also recorded as being accused of being "demon possessed" (Mark 3:22; John 7:20, 8:48). A false propogandist would be expected to put miles between this Master and any appearance of being involved with the occult or enfluence of evil spirits. Why would they volunteer such information? Maybe they are just being candid about the history.8.) Jesus was called a "madman" (John 10:20).Why would the false propogandist volunteer that the sanity of thier Master was questioned? It msut have been true - not that He was a madman but that some people thought so. The very fact that they did would be counterproductive to the false propogandist.9.) Jesus had his feet washed by the hair of a prostitute (Luke 7:36-39) Talking about a potential tabloid scandel? This had the appearance of promiscuity and could well be taken as thier Master succumbing to the sexual advance of a professional sex worker.The inclusion of the account argues for candidness and reliability of the witness.10.) "Anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse." (Duet 21:23). The evangelists therefore included an account of Christ's crucifixion which, to any informed Jew, would have immediately disqualified Jesus from possibly being the Messiah.We might expect a false propogandist for a Jewish Messiah to exclude or modify this detail. It was not hidden or revized by the Gospel writers.We can go on from these to DIFFICULT sayings which had the potential of causing the job of the disciples to be more difficult. We would expect false propogandist to eliminate from his account troublesome teachings of Jesus:For example:1.) "The Father is greater than I" (John 14:28). This is recorded as being said by Jesus by the man who wishes to portray Jesus as God Himself. Why would John say that the Word was God (John 1:1) and turn around and include such a problematic saying of Jesus which potentially undermined John's central thesis of God becomming a man?2.) The prediction of Jesus concerning the time of His return present problems to many readers (Matt.24:34) Surely Matthew could have seen the difficulties that would be caused by recording these troublesome saying of Jesus about His second coming.Thier inclusion argues for the Gospel writer's candidness and faithfulness.3.) Jesus was recorded as not knowing the time of His own return. Neither was it known by the angels but by His Father only. This difficult saying was not excluded from the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. 24:36).4.) Luke includes a saying which potentially could call into question the Deity of Jesus - "Why do you call Me good? ... No one is good - except God alone." (Luke 18:19)Of course Luke could have avoided controversy and difficulty by excluding from his account that Jesus said this seemingly contradictory saying.5.) The account of Jesus curing the fig tree had the potential of showing Jesus to be fickle (Matt. 21:18). It was not excluded bu included inspite of its potential cause of putting Jesus in a bad light.6.) Jesus seems unable to do miracles in His own home town ( except to heal a few sick people) (Mark 6:5). That is difficult and potentially embarressing information about His mission.That is enough for the length of this post. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.