Questions on the bible!

A question (that I have not seen discussed anywhere):

what of all the other disciples, aposotles, etc. that are named and featured in the NT - where they married? had children?

Perhaps this is a topic for another thread but I have no conspiracy angle for it.

I raise the question here because it seems unlikely that none were married and had children but I don't remember any reference to their marital/familial status (other than their lineage) anywhere in the NT. If I am correct, then would that not add some weight to the argument that the NT is simply silent on Jesus and his disciples right across the board...

Anyway, sorry I have no information to add but there are lots of scholars here who can probably answer and their answers may inform this discussion.

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
No, Speight, He was not married, and there are no real books that suggest that. Some writings were also redundant, covering the same material, but not adding to the credibility.

then why bother putting in the four gospels: matthew, mark, luke and john? they all cover the same story, almost identical to believe that they copied from each other, and then in some parts contradict what actually happened as what they wrote down were 2nd, 3rd or more person stories. they each have their own style, and each author put their own twist on the jesus story. yet, it's pretty much just four stories of the same thing. why not just put the four gospels together to make one.

I agree wholeheartedly with Neoamadeus in the statement that jesus was more likely to have been married and have kids. Another thing that helps back up the claim for Jesus and Mary Magdalene is when Mary is mentioned throughout the bible she is always mentioned first after Jesus and before his mother Mary and the other disciples/followers (with one exception in John, but there is the possibility that it was Mary Magdalene who wrote John so would therefore put Jesus's mother Mary first). Now if Mary Magdalene was only a follower of Jesus why is such esteem given to her over the so called Virgin Mary?
On a lighter note the non canonical books are also called the Apocryphal and there are around 50(dont quote me on this one) of them, all heretical in the eyes of the church.
www.oxfordscholarship.com...
Check this site or on google for more info


G

the fact that christians have made some, white european, with long hair, with very feminine facial attributes, as their saviour is laughable. jesus almost certainly would have not looked like that. in fact he was probably very much darker skinned, almost black, yet christians don't have a problem with this...?

Originally posted by speight89
Can anyone help mewith this? I want to know why the vatican does not include ALL of the gospels and the full works of the writers?

The catholic bible is the largest bible.

I know that many other writings have been left out! Does anyone know why?

Largely because they were considered frauds in their own time. The vatican didn't choose what went into it tho, the set of what were authentic and what were fake gospels was generally worked out long before catholicism and the vatican.

shaunybaby
why not just put the four gospels together to make one

I think that when this is done its called a Synoptic Gospel, or something along those lines. The reasoning as to why to not do it is that, these are supposed to be the texts written by the direct disciples of jesus himself. Why combine them at all, even if they are redundant and even contradictory? Also, having a person from another time and place take them and meld them into one would add another layer of interpretation and a different context to the texts, there's already enough what with the context that the apostles were in and the context that the reader is in. And besides, who can be charged with doing that task correctly? And what happens when they have to harmonize differences in the text that have theological import? Rather than having the reader do it themselves, they'd be given the theological understanding of someone else.

yet christians don't have a problem with this

Please don't go off topic. Lets stick to the Gospels.

well calling the gospels after the names of disciples doesn't mean they were written by jesus' disciples. it wouldnt have been too uncommon if none of his disciples could even write. the only reason they were called what they were is because back in the day titles were often titled the way they were to add credibility or authorship etc. it's accepted fact that none of the disciples of jesus wrote the four gospels, the same as moses did not write the first five books of the old testament.

Groupies:

Oh "Blessed are the Innocent...For they Know Not the Manuscript Evidence"
--from a San Francisco bumper sticker recently spotted in slow traffic....

Remember that the 4 "canonically voted in gospels" which can be found today in the socalled "New Testament" originally circulated for at least 150 years WITHOUT titles.

Nobody knows who wrote them, or where or when exactly, although there are some clues in the text what some of the source material may have been.

The names attached to the "gospels" are somewhat arbitrary. They have nothing to do with eye witness testimony. They are Greek written literary products, not Aramaic oral stories told by people who saw something happening with their own eyes. They are 2nd and 3rd hand testimonies (with the odd sentence pointing out an eyewitness to something e.g. in the 4th gospel which contains a marginalium interrupting the Greek text ("and out flowed blood and then water: this is the disciple who saw these things." and under neath that added phrase appears another marginalium, "and WE know that HIS testimony is reliable", whoever WE and HIS are !)

Most of the gospel material circulated first as sayings collections in Aramaic linked together by catch phrases (e.g.see Mark's collection of salt sayings in chapter 9), and later small snatches of stories with a punch line, first in Aramaic (following the examples in II Kings chapters 1-5 with the Galilean Elisha miracles and their parallel fulfllment in "Iesous") which later was re-worked for a Greek speaking audience, with most of the original Aramaic meaning blurred or altogether lost in translation.

Further eroding of the original midrashic thoughts/ideas/Weltanschauung originally expressed in the earliest gospel material occurred when some select Greek versions o the gospels were brought into Latin (e.g. in the 5th century Vulgate of Jerome) and later into English (since before the faulty Caxton/Wycliffe and later King James attempts).

The 4 that eventually got voted into the canon in the 5th century originally circulated anonymously, and later names began to become attached to them in the cities they were read "in the churches" e.g. Rome (Mark), Ephesus (Luke), Antioch (Matthew) and Alexandria (the 4th gospel)---these were some of the larger "political"centers of the early Christian movement in Asia and held tight to their own gospels (by their own traditions) and did not want to adopt another gospel to replace the one they were accustomed to, so the church ended up swallowing 4 of them.

Originally there must have been at least 40 of these gospel collections of sayings, fulfilment verses and deeds/miracle stories (e.g. the sayings Gospel of Thomas, rediscovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, or the passion narrative fragment of the Gospel of Peter etc.) although the non canonical (non Biblical) gospels that have come to light are often in Coptic, Latin or Greek and not in any of the earlier Aramaic orally shaped forms, and like the 4 canonical gospels, these apocryphal ("hidden") gospes betray the mischevious hands of heavy editors over time, especialy carefully studying the different manuscript copies and placing them side by side....

The "church fathers" (i.e. early bishops) between AD 125 and 425 argued bitterly among themselves about which exact gospels from amonst so many circulating around that part of the world "should be read in the churches" and which ones should not, i.e. which ones had authority for believers (much like the Jewish Rebbes arguing as late as AD 120 whether the book of Daniel "defiled the hands" i.e. was sacred scripture or not)...

The purposes of these "propaganda tracts" as we would call them today were probably related to weekly catachetal instruction for newbies to the faith over a 12 month period prior to full baptism:

We can even see in a few early copies of Mark's gospel clearly divided red markings on the pages of the book carefully dividing the whole into 52 sections, apparently one section per week beginning with the Feast of Weeks in May/June and ending with the weeks following Passover in March-April.

These 52 reading sections followed the order of the Jewish Torah synagogue readings over a yearly period, almost as if it were meant to be a fullfilment Torah Reading cycle (or an anti-torah reading cycle) for early Christians who were first, natually, all Palestinian Jews like R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean ("Jeezuz") and later converted and grafted on gentiles (and with the gentiles, a loosening of kosher dietary laws and customs such as circumcision, largely thanks to people like Saul of Tarsus who reacted against the "judaisers" like Jesus' brother James (Yakkob bar Yosef ha Tsaddiq, or James the Just) who demanded kosher diets and circumcision among his christian brethren.

Since the writer of the greek version of "Matthew" and the Greek speaking writer of "Luke" (whoever they were) clearly use the gospel of "Mark" (possibly John Mark, the translator of Shimeon bar Yonah, ha Kephah (Aram. "stone"), aka Peter (from the Greek HO PETROS, "rock") as one of their several literary sources (see "the synoptic problem" and the "priority of Mark" in google for a quick update on the current scholarship) one would have to assume that the author(s) of "Matthew"(whoever he was/they were) and the author of "Luke-Acts" (whoever he was) were NOT eyewitnesses to the events they relate, since logically, eyewitnesses do not tend to borrow (and improve gramatically upon) material from non-eyewitnesses such as John Mark's gospel, the earliest of the 4 in the post 4th century approved "canon" of NT scripture.

The author of Luke-Acts admits many others before him had written gospels (e.g. Luke chapter 1:1-4 "Inasmuch as many have taken it upon themselves to set down an account of beliefs most cherished by us having passed them down to our present time...it seemed good to me, understanding everything clearly, also to set down in order these things, O your Excellency, Theophilus...... " etc.)

Both Matthew and Luke gramatically "improve" upon the Greek in Mark's gospel into smoother more adult language whenever they follow a passage from Mark they found either theologically impossible (e.g. "and Iesous COULD NOT PERFORM ANY MIGHTY WORK IN NAZARETH because of their unbelief" magically at the hands of Matthew and Luke becomes "AND IESOUS DID NO MIGHTY WORK IN NAZARETH because of their unbelief", or "and Pilate wondered how on earth Iesous could be dead so soon..." which the other two simply ignore altogether etc.) or in places where Mark's kiddie-Greek with its Roman accent makes no grammatical sense at times (like in the book of Revelation which is also full of Greek grammatical howlers, suggestive that the final editors may have been more fluent in Aramaic).

The Fourth gospel is so different from the other three synoptics as to suggest it came from another group of sources altogether, probably from Alexandria in Egypt.

But all 4 gospels make heavy use of midrash, not history: Midrash (from the Heb. D-R-SH "to seek out") is didactic teaching method of 1st century Jews and later which makes use of haggadic (i.e. legendary, not purely factual) material derived from certain key "old testament" verses or story which the "believer" can find "a deeper spiritual meaning" in the actions or words of "Iesous" and where telling references are worked into action-pronouncement stories and/or miracle stories remeniscent of Moses or David or Elisha etal. to show that R. Yehoshua ("Iesous") was the promised Messiah of old ("these things were written so that YOU MIGHT BELIEVE that Iesous was the Christos and by believing you might have life in his name...")--again the words of a conscious propaganda artist, not unlike Goebbels' in the 1930s trying to sell the idea of Aryan supremacy to the larger world (and his own people)...

Anyone who denies the marked propaganda element in the gospel material in the "bible" is deluding himself by deliberately overlooking the carefully manufactured language/material employed "in order that you might believe that Iesous is the Christos..."

This is not the way reliable "factual history" in the modern sense is written.

Originally posted by shaunybaby
it's accepted fact that none of the disciples of jesus wrote the four gospels, the same as moses did not write the first five books of the old testament.

Accepted by who? I've never heard this. I wouldn't pretend to be a biblical scholar, but I've looked into it a little and never heard anyone say this, outside of saying that the oldest extant texts we have are later copies, or that the actual physical writers were scribes.

If it was supposed to be Jesus's disciples who wrote the Gospels then why were they named after only two of his disciples? Mark and Luke were not disciples but friends of Paul. So what happend to the other 10 disciples Gospels in the canon??. I know some are Gnostic but what of the rest? Plus it is also possible that Johns Gospel was written by Mary Magdalene!


G

Originally posted by speight89
Can anyone help mewith this? I want to know why the vatican does not include ALL of the gospels and the full works of the writers?

One problem with anything you read online about the bible is that so many people have an interest in debunking it, and still more repeat in good faith the disinformation the first group put out. (The same is true for any topic of controversy, of course). I'm afraid you've been the victim of some of this, and, looking down the thread, so have a lot of others here.

Firstly, the New Testament contains all the gospels that have any reasonable claim to have some connection with Jesus. As you may know, writing books about "the real Jesus" (wildly differing from book to book) is something of a cottage industry today. But it has always been, since the second century on. Anyone wanting to dupe Christians has always resorted to forging a 'gospel' to peddle their beliefs.

The early church took a very dim view of this. They had the advantage that they included people who had known the apostles personally, so had a good idea as to what was, and was not, from the apostolic circle.

Apocryphal NT material is excluded because (a) it was plainly forged by people who had some other ideology to peddle, or (b) it was not from the apostolic circle.

The process of finalising this occurred in the fourth century, for the last few letters in it. But this can mislead: Tertullian, ca. 200, is working with much the same NT as we are, and we do not find a wild collection of texts considered canonically in the ante-Nicene fathers. Letters, being directed to a locality, were not always known in other geographical areas, and agreement on 2 and 3 John, therefore took time. But the idea that this process occurred at one point is a myth. Specifically the idea that the First Council of Nicaea so pronounced is a myth.

I hope that is useful.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Originally posted by shihulud
Plus it is also possible that Johns Gospel was written by Mary Magdalene!

no it isn't. Other gospels confirm that "The one who loved Jesus" is in fact John who wrote both the Gospel of John, and revelations.

Originally posted by NEOAMADEUS
Remember that the 4 "canonically voted in gospels" which can be found today in the socalled "New Testament" originally circulated for at least 150 years WITHOUT titles.

I'm afraid there is no evidence whatever for this assertion.

Nobody knows who wrote them, or where or when exactly, although there are some clues in the text what some of the source material may have been.

The names attached to the "gospels" are somewhat arbitrary. They have nothing to do with eye witness testimony.

These statements are all either false or profoundly misleading. The authorship of the texts is well known to every ancient author who discusses the issue. For instance Irenaeus names all 4 gospels: and Irenaeus was taught by Polycarp who knew the apostle John personally! The exact date and locale of composition is not always clear. That's the nature of ancient texts.

They are Greek written literary products, not Aramaic oral stories told by people who saw something happening with their own eyes. They are 2nd and 3rd hand testimonies...

The evidence of the historical record is that they are either by apostles, or apostolic men. See the statements of Tertullian in Adversus Marcionem.

Most of the gospel material circulated first as sayings collections in Aramaic linked together by catch phrases ...

While this is quite possible, there is no actual evidence of this. So we're dealing with speculation here.

Further eroding of the original midrashic thoughts/ideas/Weltanschauung originally expressed in the earliest gospel material occurred when some select Greek versions o the gospels were brought into Latin (e.g. in the 5th century Vulgate of Jerome) and later into English (since before the faulty Caxton/Wycliffe and later King James attempts).

No doubt something is lost in every translation; but since we possess the Greek, I'm not clear what point is being made here.

The 4 that eventually got voted into the canon in the 5th century ...

There was never a 'vote' on the canon. The four gospels are regarded unanimously as authentic from the earliest point at which we can identify them in the historical record.

originally circulated anonymously, and later names began to become attached to them in the cities they were read "in the churches" ...

There is no evidence whatever of anonymous circulation, nor of varied authorship being ascribed.

e.g. Rome (Mark), Ephesus (Luke), Antioch (Matthew) and Alexandria (the 4th gospel)---these were some of the larger "political"centers of the early Christian movement in Asia and held tight to their own gospels (by their own traditions) and did not want to adopt another gospel to replace the one they were accustomed to, so the church ended up swallowing 4 of them.

This is pure fantasy, I'm afraid. Nothing in the ancient record corresponds to this.

Originally there must have been at least 40 of these gospel collections of sayings, fulfilment verses and deeds/miracle stories

Must there? Why? There is no evidence of this, at any rate.

(e.g. the sayings Gospel of Thomas, rediscovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945,

The Coptic 'gospel of Thomas' is a text found in a jar. It has no apparent connection either with Jesus or the church. The sole mention of it in antiquity is by Hippolytus in the 3rd century, who tells us it was a fake, used in Egypt.

or the passion narrative fragment of the Gospel of Peter etc.)

Also a later forgery of the second century.

although the non canonical (non Biblical) gospels that have come to light are often in Coptic, Latin or Greek

This is correct.

these apocryphal ("hidden") gospes betray the mischevious hands of heavy editors over time, especialy carefully studying the different manuscript copies and placing them side by side....

This can be shown for the 'gospel of Thomas', for instance, by comparing the second century fragments in Greek with the Coptic text.

The "church fathers" (i.e. early bishops) between AD 125 and 425 argued bitterly among themselves about which exact gospels from amonst so many circulating around that part of the world "should be read in the churches" and which ones should not

No such debates are preserved in the historical record, however.

We can even see in a few early copies of Mark's gospel clearly divided red markings on the pages of the book carefully dividing the whole into 52 sections, apparently one section per week beginning with the Feast of Weeks in May/June and ending with the weeks following Passover in March-April.

Possibly so: which copies, specifically? I am unclear why the markup of a text for liturgical purposes shows that it was not considered canonical; on the contrary, surely it shows that it was?

Since the writer of the greek version of "Matthew" and the Greek speaking writer of "Luke" (whoever they were) clearly use the gospel of "Mark" (possibly John Mark, the translator of Shimeon bar Yonah, ha Kephah (Aram. "stone"), aka Peter (from the Greek HO PETROS, "rock") as one of their several literary sources ... one would have to assume that the author(s) of "Matthew"(whoever he was/they were) and the author of "Luke-Acts" (whoever he was) were NOT eyewitnesses to the events they relate, since logically, eyewitnesses do not tend to borrow (and improve gramatically upon) material from non-eyewitnesses such as John Mark's gospel, the earliest of the 4 in the post 4th century approved "canon" of NT scripture.

You are welcome to speculate: however, since the evidence is otherwise, we need not consider this proposal that eyewitnesses would never combine material from other sources.

The author of Luke-Acts admits many others before him had written gospels (e.g. Luke chapter 1:1-4 "Inasmuch as many have taken it upon themselves to set down an account of beliefs most cherished by us having passed them down to our present time...it seemed good to me, understanding everything clearly, also to set down in order these things, O your Excellency, Theophilus...... " etc.)

I do not see in this the word 'gospel', however. It is certainly the case that many wrote about what they had seen. Sadly all these accounts are lost.

Both Matthew and Luke gramatically "improve" upon the Greek in Mark's gospel ...

This appears to be generic vituperation. Any text may be subjected to this sort of treatment, which is why it never tells us much about any given text.

But all 4 gospels make heavy use of midrash, not history: Midrash .... is didactic teaching method of 1st century Jews and later which makes use of haggadic (i.e. legendary, not purely factual) material ...

Anyone who denies the marked propaganda element in the gospel material in the "bible" is deluding himself by deliberately overlooking the carefully manufactured language/material employed "in order that you might believe that Iesous is the Christos..."

This is not the way reliable "factual history" in the modern sense is written.

I find no evidence of these wild assertions in the historical record, however. To complain that the writers wrote to inform seems to me (if valid) to debunk every text and every post, including the poster's own.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Originally posted by Nygdan
Accepted by who? I've never heard this. I wouldn't pretend to be a biblical scholar, but I've looked into it a little and never heard anyone say this, outside of saying that the oldest extant texts we have are later copies, or that the actual physical writers were scribes.

obviously not accepted by you. but if you want to just sit there in church and believe that moses wrote the first five books of the old testament and that jesus' disciples wrote the four gospels then by all means carry on believing that...

i'm not about to lay all the information here on a plate, really you need to go out and look this information up for yourself, and thus come to a conclusion on your own.

Originally posted by Jehosephat

Originally posted by shihulud
Plus it is also possible that Johns Gospel was written by Mary Magdalene!

no it isn't. Other gospels confirm that "The one who loved Jesus" is in fact John who wrote both the Gospel of John, and revelations.

Eh I think you'll find that the jury is out on that one, the beloved disciple is not named in any Gospel. Also if it was John then he must be quite a nosy sh*t as how would he know exactly what was said between Mary and Jesus in the garden??????

[edit on 9-9-2005 by shihulud]

Hi Jehoshaphat:

I have a problem with you assuming that the 4th gospel was written by the same person or persons ("John"??) who wrote the Apocalypse (aka the Book of Revelation) in the canonical NT.

The person or group who compiled the 4th gospel wrote fairly fluent Greek from around ad 110, whereas most of the Apocalypse is full of impossible Greek Grammatical Howlers, although some of the "letters" to the "churches" in chapters 1-3 may have been penned by the same group who penned the 4th gospel (there are some linguistic parallels, but only in chapters 1-3).

The Apocalypse is sometimes attributed to Yohananon the Elder (Ioannes ho Presbuteros) whoever he was. At Ephesus there is a double monument to two men named "Yohananon", one of them seems to be the elder; the other is an unknown "John".

Yohanon bar Zavdai, one of the 2 brothers (Galilean fishermen, who spoke Aramaic and did not write in koine Greek) and who clung to R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean ("Jeezuzz") as Sons of Thunder (aka Benei Regesh, or as the Greek mauls it in the Gospels, Boanerges) died under Herod Antipas in the 40s for sedition against the Roman maiestatis.

The "disciple whom Iesous loved" was not actually physically named in the 4th gospel, and there is no evidence that any "John" (i.e. Yohanon or Yohananon) was the one who "leaned on his breast" and shared whispers with him at one of the last meals of R. Yehoshua.

What makes you think that the "apostle John" (Yohanon bar Zavdai/John the son of Zebeddee) had anything to do with the "beloved disciple"? It would seem strange for a "son of Thunder" to be snuggling up to another man's breast at dinner.

On the other hand, the mysterious figure of Eleazar, ("Lazarus") the brother of Martha of Bethany and another un-named Miryam ("Mary"), probably of the same Daviddic family as Iesous himself (they seem to have owned property and had Miryams in the family: the word Miryiam means "princess of the blood") was called by that phrase ("the disciple whom Iesous loved") in the 4th gospel story of the raising/tomb story "Behold Teacher the disciple WHOM YOU LOVED is dead..."

(Interestingly Lazarus/Eleazar does not appear in the other 3 gospels at all except in a parable of Luke (the parable of Lazarus and Dives) which also has to do with post resurrection judgement day)

So in the 4th Gospel, it isn't "John" who is named as any beloved disciple, but the words used to describe Lazarus/Eleazar may indicate that he was meant to be the "disciple whom Iesous loved" although we do not seem to know much about this person, unless he went by other names/nicknames as well...

The 4th gospel also mentions that Iesous seems to have lost most of his disciples (John 6:65-69) and had to replace them one by one to fill up the number 12 by AD 36 (the 100th anniversary of the Invasion of Pompey into Jerusalem in BC 63) when "these be the days of Vengeance of our god...and Behold, the times of the gentiles is fulfilled, repent and believe in the good news...." and "how beautiful are the feet of them who preach the Gospel of Peace...saying, Your God reigns !"...

In other words we really do not know if Lazarus/Eleazar was once a disciple and left the movement, or died off, or was identified with one of the other ones (the names of the disciples do not match if you compare the lists in the gospels, e.g. Luke has no disciple on the list named Matthew, but he does have one called "Levi" etc.).

But there is absolutely no correlation between "John the son of Zebedee" the galilean fisherman in the synoptic gospels and the writer of the 4th gospel, and even less of a connection in the Book of Revelation (beginning in chapter 4), although the Apocalypse does mention a man named Yohanon, whoever he was---probably the same person who was still alive in AD 96 when Polycarp as a young teenager went to hear him preach in Ephesus (but was so crippled he had to be carried in on a pallet)...apparently all he had the breath at the time to say was "little children, love one another..." and then was carried out.

Did this old man named "John" write the 4th gospel?

Did his disciples write it? Was it worked over after he died by the next generation?

Was this John the same "disciple whom Iesous loved" who seems to have lived to an advanced age (see John's appendix in John's Gospel chapter 21)?

Did this old man actually know Iesous, as perhaps one of the "70 (lit. "sent-ones") apostles sent to the preach the good news of the kingdom to the Lost Sheep of the house of Israel scattered among the gentiles?"

Possibly: but he certainly was not the same John the son of Zebedee, the Son of Thunder, who died in the 40s under Herod's executioner along with his brother James.

Originally posted by shaunybaby

Originally posted by Nygdan
Accepted by who? I've never heard this. I wouldn't pretend to be a biblical scholar, but I've looked into it a little and never heard anyone say this, outside of saying that the oldest extant texts we have are later copies, or that the actual physical writers were scribes.

obviously not accepted by you. but if you want to just sit there in church and believe that moses wrote the first five books of the old testament and that jesus' disciples wrote the four gospels then by all means carry on believing that...

i'm not about to lay all the information here on a plate, really you need to go out and look this information up for yourself, and thus come to a conclusion on your own.

If I have understood you, I think that what you are saying is that your assertions must be accepted unless those you address can show otherwise. You also seem to be asserting some kind of claim to special education, and demanding other people run around rather than displaying any sign of it.

Any proposition -- particularly ones such as this -- must be supported by argument and evidence, not blank assertion. Surely?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Originally posted by roger_pearse
If I have understood you, I think that what you are saying is that your assertions must be accepted unless those you address can show otherwise. You also seem to be asserting some kind of claim to special education, and demanding other people run around rather than displaying any sign of it.

Any proposition -- particularly ones such as this -- must be supported by argument and evidence, not blank assertion. Surely?

Sure you can probably go to www.god-is-awesome.com and it will tell you that the authors indeed were jesus' disciples. but to get an unbiased opinion you need to walk out of the bubble and do some searching.

believe it or not there is no reliable evidence to support the claim that any of jesus' disciples wrote the four gospels. it's important to understand that the existing evidence suggests strongly that they are the product of later church tradition, written down no less than 40 to 50 years after Jesus' death.

when composed originally, the Four Gospels carried no authors' names. they were written anonymously. we don't know who wrote them, how reliable the writers were, or how much those writers actually knew of the life and message of jesus. thus, we are confronted immediately with a problem, not just one of authorship, but also one of language. jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic and taught in that language. the four gospels were written in an entirely different language called 'Greek'. according to the NT, jesus himself was illiterate (John 7:15) and his closest disciples were like-wise (Acts 4:13). it is clear that the four gospels represent nothing more than church tradition.

however, how much you choose to believe, is up to you.

Originally posted by speight89
Can anyone help mewith this? I want to know why the vatican does not include ALL of the gospels and the full works of the writers?
...
I know that many other writings have been left out! Does anyone know why?

Because they were not voted in by those in attendance at the council of Nicea. Just fills you with the warmth of the holy spirit thinking about it, doesn't it?

The Bible was colated in the late 4th century at the order of and under the direct influence of the Roman emporer Constantine. No-one knows the exact process, but you can rest assured that the final set was exactly what Constantine wanted.

Originally posted by shaunybaby

Originally posted by roger_pearse
If I have understood you, I think that what you are saying is that your assertions must be accepted unless those you address can show otherwise. You also seem to be asserting some kind of claim to special education, and demanding other people run around rather than displaying any sign of it.

Any proposition -- particularly ones such as this -- must be supported by argument and evidence, not blank assertion. Surely?

Sure you can probably go to www.god-is-awesome.com ....

This appears to be merely a reiteration of the claim to superior education and intelligence. It's a somewhat unfortunate thing to say, since you don't seem to have understood my comment -- at any rate, you don't address it.

believe it or not there is no reliable evidence to support the claim that any of jesus' disciples wrote the four gospels....

I have addressed all these assertions elsewhere in the thread, and refer you to that. You should note that some of what you repeated here is mutually contradictory.

I'm afraid the sources from which you obtained this hearsay are not worth much consideration.

however, how much you choose to believe, is up to you.

Indeed. Nothing of the above, for instance, since I prefer my statements to be based on fact.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Originally posted by spamandham

Originally posted by speight89
Can anyone help mewith this? I want to know why the vatican does not include ALL of the gospels and the full works of the writers?
...
I know that many other writings have been left out! Does anyone know why?

Because they were not voted in by those in attendance at the council of Nicea.

This story is a myth. No such events ever occurred.

Just fills you with the warmth of the holy spirit thinking about it, doesn't it?

An unfortunate comment, given the factual mistake. But I'm not quite clear what your point is. The belief system you follow, for instance, is bound to be some form of conformity to some subset of the societal values characteristic of the period of history and location in which you grew up. Yet these are manufactured every 40 years or so. So artificially created values are hardly something you could sensibly sneer at, are they?

The Bible was colated in the late 4th century at the order of and under the direct influence of the Roman emporer Constantine. No-one knows the exact process, but you can rest assured that the final set was exactly what Constantine wanted.

I'm afraid you've got your facts wrong again. The atheist literature you read is full of the most crass historical errors. The interesting thing is that atheists hardly ever check it!

All the best,

Roger Pearse