Christians please give me some background on this if you can?

Question

. The Bible is not a reliable guide to Christ’s teachings. Mark, the oldest of the Gospels, was written at least 30 years after Christ’s death, and the newest of them might have been written more than 200 years after his death. These texts have been amended, translated, and re-translated so often that it’s extremely difficult to gauge the accuracy of current editions—even aside from the matter of the accuracy of texts written decades or centuries after the death of their subject. This is such a problem that the Jesus Seminar, a colloquium of over 200 Protestant Gospel scholars mostly employed at religious colleges and seminaries, undertook in 1985 a multi-year investigation into the historicity of the statements and deeds attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. They concluded that only 18% of the statements and 16% of the deeds attributed to Jesus had a high likelihood of being historically accurate. So, in a very real sense fundamentalists—who claim to believe in the literal truth of the Bible—are not followers of Jesus Christ; rather, they are followers of those who, decades or centuries later, put words in his mouth.

Answer 1

That's right, and I would think that anyone who reads the bible knows how it was put together and in what context it was written. The Nicene counsel collected everything they had and decided what would be used and what would be omitted. It's common knowledge that around 40 men wrote what is used in the bible in a period of about 1600 years.

"The Bible was not written in one specific year or in a single location. The Bible is a collection of writings, and the earliest ones were set down nearly 3500 years ago.

The first five books of the Bible are attributed to Moses and are commonly called the Pentateuch (literally "five scrolls").

Moses lived between 1500 and 1300 BC, though he recounts events in the first eleven chapters of the Bible that occurred long before his time (such as the creation and the flood).

These earliest accounts were handed on from generation to generation in songs, narratives, and poetry.

In those early societies there was no writing as yet and people passed on these oral accounts with great detail and accuracy.

The earliest writing began when symbols were scratched or pressed on clay tablets. The Egyptians refined this technique and developed an early form of writing known as hieroglyphics. The Bible tells us that Moses was "educated in all the learning of the Egyptians", so he would have been familiar with the major writing systems of his time. We also read that God gave Moses "two tablets of the Testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God"(Exodus 31:18). All this leads to the conclusion that the earliest writings in the Bible were set down around 1400 BC.

The writings of the thirty or so other contributors to the Old Testament span a thousand years! They recount the times and messages from Moses' successor, Joshua, to the last of the Old Testament prophets, Malachi, who wrote his little tract around 450 BC.

Then there is a 500-year period when no writings were contributed to the Bible. This is the period between the testaments, when Alexander the Great conquered much of the world and when the Greek language was introduced to the Hebrews. Indeed, they began to use Greek so much that the Hebrew language was replaced by Greek and by another language, Aramaic, which was spoken all over that area of the world at that time.

The New Testament was written during a much shorter period, i.e. during the last half of the first century AD. The Bible closes with a majestic book of visions and dramatic views of the future. It was penned by the aged Apostle John around 95 AD and describes the new heaven and the new earth when God's kingdom will embrace the universe and all rebellion and death will be a thing of the past."

Answer 2

Mark may have written his Gospel 30 years later, but people write memoirs today all the time that people take as accurate truth. Plus, people are still writing biographies of people they've never met that lived hudreds and thousands of years before them. Given that Mark knew Jesus first hand, it is a pretty reliable account. Second, only 30 years between Jesus death and a writing about Him is a pretty good time considering certain parts of the OT may have been written hundreds of years after the actual even. I don't think any Gospels were written 200 years later. All the Gospel writers were dead then.

I've never heard of any evidence that the Gospels were edited. They have been translated, but we can still go back and read the Greek for ourselves.

Finally, why are you more likely to believe a bunch of so called "scholars" 1950+ years later than first hand accounts written by people who walked with Jesus? Where do these "scholars" get their knowledge of what Jesus did and did not say. Can you name a better guide to Christ's teachings?

Answer 3

That is a good question that is often asked.


We have to realize something very crucial in this.

The Jesus seminar people are operating under a very particular set of philosophical assumptions.

Those assumptions are that Jesus would be incapable of performing miracles (so reported miracles have a natural explanation), that He cannot predict the future, and that He would not lay down moral laws that contradict a lax and "enlightened" notion of freedom we have today.

All that analysis presupposes that omnipotence, omniscience, and absolute moral purity do not exist.

So anything in the Gospel that contradicts the non-existence of such is scratched out.


Every analysis of that type has an underlying set of presuppositions.





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Answer 4

In the case of Jesus Buddha and all the others there ideas became bigger then them. Would you want to be remembered in every detail or would you want the best of what you are quoted?
Does it make what it says untrue? love your neighbor feed the poor etc etc .
People who take these things as indisputable history would have been laughed at by Jesus. They are like people who go to the greatest restuarant on earth look at the menu and see delicious things, then eat the menu. THey miss the greater point they miss the whole meal. The reason is it no longer reaches there souls so the less it touches them spiritualy the greater there need to make it history and to mark any one who doesnt just eat the menu as evil beacuase they threaten there very very fragile faith.

Answer 5

Remember the History of Alexander the Great was written over 400 years after his death; now compare this to the New Testament.
The New Testament have indeed been edited but nothing to change the meaning; we know which parts have been edited..the most heavily edited is Mark. Remember, all History has been edited...it's normal.

The Jesus Seminar???? LOLLLLLL!
Please do some research on who really make up the Jesus Seminar; they are all ATHEISTS...just like you.

Answer 6

I am not a christian but I completely agree that the bible is not a reliable source of information on Jesus or his history. I don't understand how people can follow the bible and call it His word.

I follow nature in its own divinity and feel that I have a better chance at a peaceful afterlife than most of the bible-beating christians of my aquaintance.

Answer 7

Most Christians would challenge those assertions. A lot of things about the Bible may not be provable by today's standards, but they weren't written based on those standards. And 200 years from now when the sicientific standards have changed again, it won't have been written for those standards either.

Answer 8

It depends on which version of the Bible. Actually, the Bible is one of the only records of history during that time because there was so much destruction, so how do these scholars know they're right, they didn't live then. The King James version is the most accurate, but it is not perfect because people did mess with it.

Answer 9

You have a lot of real data and some false junk mixed up. Any time you read some garbage from "Bible Scholars" who are not believers of the bible you can get the kind of crap you have regurgitated here. What you need to do is to get in one camp or the other and dig out what they have and analyze it. the go to the other camp and do the same-then figure it out. But you can not mix data from opposing views-it will confuse every time.

Answer 10

Your dates are wrong.

Matthew was written 41 CE
Mark 60-65 CE
Luke 56-58 CE
John 98 CE

the remaining letters were written between
56 & 65 CE

Revelation, 96 CE

3 letters of John 98 CE