Christians..i have a question about the writting of the gospels?

Question

I understand that in the old testament..the stories and poems were repeated thousands of times so they woudl remember..but when i hear the new testament i cant help but wonder how they remembered everything Jesus said..is there anywhere in the bible that speaks of this?

Answer 1

Yes. The answer is found in John 14:26 --
26. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

Also notice II Timothy 3:16 --
16. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

We believe the Bible is Divinely inspired and since God is infallible, His inspiration is also infallible.

Feel free to email if you'd like to discuss it further.

Have a great day!
Scalia

Answer 2

We don't know. The gap between the life of Jesus, and the earliest gospels, is at least several decades. (Paul's epistles are earlier, but he tells us almost nothing about Jesus's life.)

Perhaps there were other records we don't know about in between (such as the fabled "Q" sayings source). Probably many stories passed through a phase as oral literature before being written down--and in some cases, stories of other biblical characters (such as Elisha) got reassigned to Jesus. (This often happens with oral literature.)

If the gospels were created in order to be read every week around church calendar (as seems true of the synoptics--they are easly divisible into weekly portions plus holiday readings), this suggests that some themes (or even facts) were inspired by the Old Testament readings for that week.

Answer 3

In ancient societies, where the majority of the population was illiterate, people developed numerous memory tricks to help them remember things (see article at the first link below). The structure of Mark’s gospel seems to show evidence of these types of memory enhancers.

Mark is not a single continuous narrative, but is rather a collection of stories told in the same repetitive patterns that makes it easy to memorize.

According to church tradition, Mark composed his gospel from the sermons of Peter (who was an illiterate fisherman), and the literary structure of Mark seems to support this tradition [church historian Eusebius, who quotes Papias (c. 60-130 AD), a bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor].

I don’t really want to write a paper here, but suffice it to say that ancient people had a better memory than we do because they were less dependent on things like post-it notes or Blackberries, and they spent time developing their ability to memorize things – more so than modern people.

And it is probably true that Jesus preached the same sermon more than once. He would have had to repeat himself everywhere that he went.

Answer 4

carlita: No human being could remember everything - every detail about their own life, never mind some one else's ! As a Christian though, I can tell you that the Gospels were eye-witness [perspectives] accounts, given by those, who were with Jesus during His 3 and a half year ministry while on earth. The human memory of it self, can not remember every thing BUT the memories of the writers of the four Gospels, were given help by the in-dwelling power of the Holy Spirit to recall and give their perspective on the ministry of Jesus Christ. ( For reference, see: John, chapter 14, verse 26). God did not trust mere human memory to something so magnificent !

Answer 5

They wrote it down. Many churches wanted copies of their own, so they were copied. It's been the same ever since except we've found older manuscripts and fragments to check what we've had before.

Here, check this out. I read a bit of it and I found it interesting.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/bibleorg.html

Answer 6

They constantly preached. 9 days after Jesus went to Heaven the received the gift of tongues, they went forth to the lost tribes of Israel and slowly, but surely, brought them back into the land of Israel(the faith of God)...