Amadeus,
Hold your horses…Easy.
You raise many, many questions in one post. Most(if not all) of them can be accounted for, though probably not in one post. I will do the best I can;
dissecting, critizing/analyzing, perhaps even agreeing with some of the most pertinent points you raise:
YOU CLAIM: “ …Yet it is a fact that the four Gospel accounts (as we have them today) are, on the whole, remarkably consistent documents and generally
agree on the basic essentials….In short, there are no glaring discrepancies between the Gospels (geneologies and chronology aside)…”
This is an oversimplifcation of the material with which we are here dealing
You're missing my point. For starters, I think even the most vehement detractors would agree that despite this apparent 'pluralism', what is
remarkable with regard to the recorded parables and miracles of Jesus is their fundamental consistency . In all four Gospels, Jesus is presented as
one who teaches in parables and performs miraculous deeds. Few scholars question the historical authenticity of Jesus' parables and radical sayings.
In addition all four Gospels agree in general as to the resurrection, virgin birth,and approximate day of his death....In all four Gospels, the
beginning of Jesus' public ministry is associated with John the Baptist.,etc.
Now, if for instance, Mark were to insist in his account that Jesus was hanged in October, that would be a serious problem . It has long been an
accepted dictum of New Testament scholars that the gospels are not biographies,... agreed. In the sense that they do not set about their task in the
way a modern biographer does this is undoubtedly true. Their records are highly selective, have only a loose chronological framework, focus
one-sidedly on matters of theological significance, and tell us little or nothing about their subject's psychology or personal development. .In these
ways, however, they are much closer to the type of 'biography' which was fashionable in the ancient world. There is also no physical description of
the historical Jesus in any of the Gospel accounts, for a variety of reasons.
The Fourth Gospel ("John", which circulated anonymously for 200 years beffore someone put John the Elder on it) states his purpose quite clearly
What??.. Could you clarify yourself here please, with supporting evidences .
“These things were written so that ye might believe that Iesous is the Christos and by believing ye might have life in his name”.
Does this statement by itself negate the historical value of the entire Gospel of John? All writers have agendas, -- Flavius Josephus had one,I think,
and so did Herodotus, etc. John was no different. In fact I would dare wager John the Elder more ‘historical’ than , say, the ‘Father of
History’. In short, all writers, great or small are biased, just as you and I are also , but that doesn’t mean we discount everything they(we) have
to say; or worse still, question their integrity. Judge only by the merit.
This is not the aim of an “historian” but rather the aims of a “propagandist” trying to push a specific “agenda”. In this case, to get readers and
listeners to believe that "Iesous" is the "Christos".
True. But I woudn't go so far as to call him an 'propagandist'. He was biased, no doubt.
This is the general aim of all FOUR canonical (“council approved”) gospels which make heavy use of HAGADDIC MIDRASHIC EXPANSIONS of the Old Testament
to make their “points of history”,
Thats a bold contention. I don't know if I totally agree with it.
Did Iesous miraculously start glowing on a hill (as with the Synoptic accounts based on Mark 9) with a “thundering voice” (in Aramaic QOL can mean
Voice OR Thunder) emanating from the “cloud” or was there just a violent Thunderstorm with lightning flashes to which someone below in the crowd said
“behold, it thundered, whereas someone else said, no, An Angel hath spoken something to him”? (John’s version)
Different perceptrions of the same event....Suppose you’re the driver of a car redded at an intersection , who just happened to have picked up
two hitchhikers; one sits next to you, the other behind you, in the back seat. Suddenly, out of nowhere , a car slams into the driver’s side of
your vehicle. You’re hurt and are barely conscious, but alive.
A few weeks later all three of you meet again for the first time since the accident. All are asked to file separate accident reports, in the same
conference room.. The driver who slammed into you is also present, he also furnishes his side of the story. .What are the odds tha all four of your
stories will match?..Almost thes ame principle applies in the Transfiguration account.....
Actually to compound the problem, we are dealing with a supernatural event in the Transfiguration which is by it's very nature more difficult to
fathom and expound upon. The mere fact that the Gospel accounts differ somewhat and yet are still intergrateable, fairly coherent , is, in my view,
circumstantial proof of it's varicity .
Relatively ‘minor’ [maybe not to you!] discrepancies which can either be explained , or which do not threaten the fundamental idea of the historical
Jesus as we know him , do not therefore threaten much the inherent consistency of the Gospel accounts. Remember I’ve already conceded the biblical
writers to not be strict historians in the vein of 20th century biographers , but they seem to be honestly compiling the life and times of Jesus as
best they could with 1st century technology and means. The’ big picture picture’ , which the four gospels furnish , us is exceptionally unified, all
said and done.
Was there really a “wedding at Cana in Galilee” where water somehow was treated the way the wine god Dionysius treated water? Why does ONLY the Fourth
Gospel relate it and the synoptics know nothing of it? (hint: Cana was a cult center for the Mysteries of Dionysius-Bacchus since before 200 BC)
I hope youre not suggesting Jesus indulged Pan worship simply because he attended a wedding in Cana of Galilee, where wine apparently flowed quite
naturally. What’s your point here? Are you suggesting if only one Gospel mentions an event, that in all probability it never happened?
John’s Gospel omits a large amount of material found in the synoptics, including: the “Temptation” of Iesous , and the Institution of the “Eucharist”.
The fourth Gospel also make no mention of Ieosus casting out demons.
John’s purpose was apparently to supplement (or even correct!) the Synoptic Gospels, to combat some form of heresy (perhaps Gnosticism and it’s the
Dionysius cult), to opposecontinuing followers of John the Baptist. But the overriding purpose of John, as you have already mentioned was “that you
may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,…”(20:31) He amy have had Greek readers mainly in mind, some of whom were being exposed to
heretical influence, but his primary mission was evangelistic. It is even possible to understand ‘may believe” in thesense of “may continue to
believe”—in which case the purpose would be to build up believers as well as to win converts.
Large blocks of teaching such as the Sermon on the Mount and the so-called Lord’s prayer are not found in the Fourth Gospel. We are not dealing with a
unified approach to writing a history of this man if you look at all closely at these differences.
One of John’s aim was not to rehash the Synoptics but to add to them.
In view of these no inconsiderable differences of fact between them, how can you say the four canonical (and “council approved”) Gospels are
inherently consistent in any way shape or form?
The big picture.. the four Gospel accounts are certainly consistent where it counts.. Now if John had said in his Gospel, like the Koran does,
“Jesus was not resurrected at all but was pulled alive from his cross at night by God”, now , that would raise eye brows : [Qur'an: 4:157 "That
they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah"- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was
made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, butonly conjecture to follow, for of a surety
they killed him not:"]
The Gospel of “Luke” (whoever he was) places the “birth of Iesous” during a Roman “census” during the administration of “Quirinius” (in AD 6) whereas
the gospel of “Matthew” (whoever he was) places the birth of Iesous during the reign of Herod the Great (who died in 4 BC) a historical discrepancy of
at least 10 full years apart.
I assume you mean contemporaries in office--they were certainly contemporaries in life...Quirinius, at the time of King Herod's death was doing
military expeditions in the easternprovinces of the Roman empire (Tacitus , Annals 3:48; Florus, ), with some evidence indicating that he either was
a co-ruler with the governor of Syria or at least placed in charge of the 14- year census in Palestine. The census was due in 8-7 BC, and Augustus
could easily have ordered his trusted Quirinius (fresh from subduing the Pisidian highlanders) to assist . Herod I had recently lost favor of the
emperor and was probably dragging his feet on taking the census--a process with always enraged the difficult Jews! This would have pushed the
timeframe into the 5 BC mark, which fits the general data.
Also consult William Ramsey ( "Quirinius") on this subject.--
And curiously enough, even if that were NOT the case somehow, the linguistic data of the last few decades indicates that Luke 2: 1 should be
translated 'BEFORE the census of Quirinius' instead of the customary 'FIRST census of Quirinius'-- (see Nigel Turner, Grammatical Insights into
the New Testament, T&T Clark: 1966, .)
It should be pointed out, moreover, that the same Luke whose work is criticized on account of the census problem also wrote the acts of the Apostles,
where the overlap with recorded history is far greater, and in this area Luke's accuracy in referring to the details of political institutions and
appointments in Asia Minor and Greece was sufficient to cause the archeologist Sir William Ramsay to change from an inherited scepticism to a warm
regard for Luke as a careful and responsible historian. the bearing of external data on the historical reliability of the gospel writers is not all in
one direction.
So….. when I say that the writer of the “gospel of John” (whoever he was) was not taking “historical dictation” in his relating of the “fornication
argument” episode of Ieosus and the Judaean authorities, but rather making theological points in his exposition of the “event” there is some wider
background behind my words here.
I guess your point is John can’t be trusted because he was pro-Jesus. As you wish. But you readily quote far removed Rabbinic traditions from the
second century AD as reliable, recalling Jesus a sorcerer who gained a following and 'led Israel astray', and so 'was hanged on the eve of the
Passover'. But aren’t these so very obscure(not to mention biased), and bear little relation to the Jesus his own followers remembered. Their
polemical nature and their lack of interest in factual data does not create confidence in their potential as historical evidence for Jesus.
Regards,
.
[edit on 19-11-2004 by Logician]
