h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just pointing something out here, that is probably totally irrelevant and quite amusing to all non-xians; God is supposed to be the author of all the Bible's Books, Old and New.
And how many xians, I wonder, believe that?

And as to the 'they remember it all' argument, it was written when they were all about 60? So were they senile?

¦M¦

Ming: so you want your choice amongst religions, huh? Well, parents do NOT give their kids a choice, they take them to their church whether they like it or not. They are forced to believe in God, just like their parents did to them, and theirs to them, etc. I also was forced to go to church as a child. When I was old enough to understand the bible, I made the only sensible choice: I realized that it was a bunch of meandering.

ZenMondo: (this is a trick question) Does God love homosexuals?

They seemed to have a very accurate memory of the exact words that Jesus said. Even when they were not present. Interesting.

That seems to be a tradition carried on to the present day. After all, I guess the people with the 'WWJD' bumper stickers think *they* and their kind could figure out what he'd *do* in any given situation.

Compared to that, ancient authors deciding what they think he might have *said* seems somewhat less presumptuous.

Yes I do.
And as parents DON'T give their kids a choice, all the more reason why schools should teach us about other religions and atheism, so we CAN make our minds up, no matter WHAT our parents try to make us believe.
I wasn't brought up with a specific religion, except at school, where we had a religious assembly every day. My Dad was brought up a Xian and made the same choice as you and decided with Mum that we should get our own choice...

Trick question? God : is 'he' really a 'he' or a 'she' or an 'it' or none of those? (assuming there is one...)

More importantly, what would Brian Boitano do?

GB,

Well, I didn't say that Gospel authorship was a complete mystery, only anonymous. Scholars more conversant than I have fixed the authorship of each, and it is beyond my abilities to debate that. I was just sowing a little bit of doubt, not making a conclusion.

As to the WWII analogy, I was only disputing that eyewitness accounts, even those greater than 50 years old can still be valid. Sure there is a lot of corrobation for the existance of WWII, but the stories my Grandfather tells are his, and his alone. His unique perspective in his role he played, and the people he met. The argument that the gospels cannot be an accurate record because of time elapsed between the events and the recording is in my opinion a weak one. My point was that there are stronger arguments than the "lack of accuracy because too much time had passed" argument.

I see myself as helping our friend Sandman if he is to debate the accuracy of the bible, lets convince him to put away the pea shooter and bring out some bigger guns!

As to trusting Matthew over Mark:

The point where I am now, I really dislike what Paul had done to help shape Christianity into the beast that it is today. When you look at what we have, Paul and Jesus don't seem to have the same 'vibe' for me. Matthew being a "close personal friend" of Jesus would paint a more accurate picture of what the man was about. As an aside, when reading the Gospels I'm pretty much interested in the "red text" (The words of Jesus) and not the conclusions of the authorship. Mark was part of Paul's gang, and so in my eyes the political nature of Paul and his followers make me suspect. So that is just a personal vibe sort of thing. Not really grounded in any strong scholarship. YMMV.

Luke was also a follower of Paul, and pushing Paul's Agenda, so that is why I look at Luke skepticly. Remember "Luke" (or whoever) was also the authour of the book of Acts which in my opinion is just a propaganda piece designed to set Paul up as an authority, an apostle (amazing since he never met Jesus!) and an all around good guy and hero.

Man GB, I would have loved to have crossed horns with you when I was a full-on Jesus Freak. That would have been a fun debate.

More later...

P.S. Remember, we are on the same side now... Well we both are not on "their" side anyway.

P.P.S. Oh, and Brian Boitano would just use his Magical Fire Breath to scare away any pesky Christians. (Then they would probably sic an Exorcist on him...)

Zen: it's still fun, but now you might be more open to the things I say, and vice-versa. So... to continue...

True, eyewitness accounts can be very reliable. However, two questions shadow the biblical story. First, it has been a general assumption that the Gospels are written by eyewitnesses, but there is reason to doubt. They are written anonymously, and it is church research that has attributed them to the people they say. We've seen how unreliable their word has been in the past, so I'm not going to put too much stock in it.

As for Jesus' quotes, the authors of the Synoptic Gospels (being Matt, Mark, and Luke) all three plagiarized an earlier work, known as Q. The Gospel of Thomas is known to be a generation of the original Q, and it's simply a collection of the sayings of Jesus, without any sort of plot or organizational structure. If they were eyewitnesses, why did they rely almost entirely on an earlier work for his words? And why is it that when they get away from Q, they can't agree on anything (such as Jesus' dying words)?

That discredits those three, so what about John? John came about 60-80 years after Jesus died... 'nuff said.

The Internet Infidels (link on the FFFF page) have a wonderful article that sheds light on the Gospels. It's a transcript of a live debate at a college that pits Dan Barker against some zealot. Dan puts forth the first universal theory of the gospels that I'd ever seen that makes complete sense. He looks at the Gospels and can see the evolution of the myth. The first book is Mark... Mark's Jesus does some healing, makes some speeches, and dies and rises. Then comes Luke, who makes him born of a virgin, connects him to David, and other new twists. Matthew gives him a couple new things later, but his is so similar to Luke that it doesn't add too much. Then along comes John, the latest, whose tale is the most outlandish by far. It is clear that as the story was told, it acquired embellishments, until the truth was completely obscured. The best example of the evolution of the story can be seen in the varied tales of the discovery of the empty tomb:

Mark: Mary, Mary and Salome approach after dawn. A young man in a robe greets them and gives the news.

Luke: The women come at dawn. "Two men in dazzling garments" give them the news.

Matt: Mary and Mary approach at dawn. An angel descends, there is an earthquake, he overawes them with his presence before deliverng the news.

John: Magdalene comes alone while it is dark, sees the stone rolled away and Jesus gone, freaks out, and notifies the disciples. They look in and then leave. Mary sobs alone on a rock when two angels in "dazzling robes" come to console her. Jesus appears on the scene here and consoles her himself.

See... the story grows with each telling.

As for Matt vs. Mark, you can dislike Mark's account for whatever reason you choose, but I caution you on putting too much stock in Matt the Plagiarist. My Bible illustrates the dependence of Matt on Mark like this: "namely, the 600 of Mark's 661 verses found in Matthew, as well as the relationship of language and order in those two gospels."

And, as a complete aside, let me caution you against using firearms metaphors with Sandman. I know him personally, and he is all too likely to take you literally.

My arguments are ripe with assumption. I think I enjoy the exploration of an idea more than coming to a conclusion. So for the interest of discussion, I put out the assumptions, and see what blossoms.

Lately I have found myself attracted to the words of Jesus, and am trying to approach them from outside of the rest of the Christian baggage that has been built up around them. Locating a copy of Thomas' Gospel is high on my priorities in this endevour. Discovering recently the politics in early Christianity, and seeing how Constantine's preferred flavor squashed all the other variants out there have sparked an interest in 'alternative' Christianities like Gnostism.

I enjoy the "fish story" (hmm a possible pun there?) analogy for the tellings of the life of Jesus. Interesting illustration there.

As to using Q as a reference, why not? I'll take a journey in my imagination as a Gospel author: If Q was an earlier work, suppossedly collected nearer the time his words were uttered, it would be foolhardy not to use this refrence when writing my account. I think it would be akin to a reporter referring to a transcript of the State of the Union address when writing his report on speech. If there were available a refrence that was considered authoritive at the time, it would be a great starting point for an eyewitness account. I could use the words as a memory aide. There could be the text of the sermon on the mount, and reading that, I could remember, "Yeah, that was said there at the bottom of the hill when all those people showed up to see us. Lets see he said Blessed are these folk, Blessed are these other guys.. oh here it is in Q, 'Blessed are the poor' yeah, that's it." So I *imagine* that using Q as a refrence for the words make sense. But like I said, its just how I imagine it... today. Check me again next year.

I guess my real point is that in my opinion, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the Gospels may be accurate. Not at the nit-picking level but as a general accounting. That is all I really expect out of them, a general account of the life of Jesus, and the gist of his words. I don't expect it to be an exact historical record, but enough to get the point across. I guess if I don't expect much, there is less to be disapointed about.

Ya gotta admit it is kind of fascinating that one man's 3 year lecture tour could have snowballed into the Christianity we see today.

I agree, it is fascinating what that lecture tour became. I suppose my own studies of the subject have a common central theme, that of trying to find out how it all went so horribly wrong.

I just can't take any of the gospels as "gospel truth" (my favorite oxymoron ) because there are too many factors involved:

1) The belatedness of their original authorship, as well as their anonymity.

2) The fact that no surviving copies pre-date the 4th century. The originals would have been considered holy relics, and preserved with utmost care... unless they were trying to hide something. What, you ask?...

3) The evidence of extensive tampering with the gospels during the 2nd-4th centuries.

4) The gross contradictions and glaring omissions.

5) The complete lack of any corroborating evidence from contemporary Roman sources. This argues for one of two things: either Jesus never lived, or the corroborating evidence would have damaged their image of him, and was systematically confiscated and/or destroyed (what I wouldn't give to have free reign in the bowels of the Vatican with a small army of dead languages experts).

As for the use of Q, I could see it happening the way you say. However, in the Synoptics, there is always a section where they just pour in the words of Jesus without giving much of a pretext. It sounds so forced and out of tune with the rest of the writing that even xtian biblical scholars have called attention to it... that was how they knew of Q before Thomas was rediscovered. I think they like to say that Thomas is not the true Q because it makes it easier to distance themselves from some of the harsher things in it, like "he ho does not hate his mother and father cannot be my disciple." It seems just as likely to me that Thomas was in fact the original Q, and the authors of the gospels chose to soften or revise where they felt necessary.

For this post I will tackle the lack of cooberative evidence in contemporary histories.

I wonder if the ministry of Jesus was at the time not enough to garner notice in the local papers so to speak. Could it be that until after he left this earth (I will leave it to the individual as to HOW he left...) that this whole thing surrounding his person really started to build momentum. Even Christian mythology/history agrees that Jesus was esconed in his father's prescence for a good while before the church got started on the day of Pentecost. Lets face it, Jesus did not minister to Romans. There were even schisms in the early church over weather to allow non-jews into their club. It is not outside the realm of possibilty that Jesus the guy escaped historian's notice.

I like your idea of a systematic censorship of historical records. I am drawn to believe in many conspiracy theories, and would be happy to include the censoring of Jesus in there with UFOs, JFK, and Elvis. I really would not be surprised. Kind of needing to hide the humanity of God incarnate. I can see those in religious-political power wanting to do that...

The UK has a state religion, only as much as it is a monarchy. That is, technically it is, and the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury carry weight as an independant observer of political events, in the same way that the words of Prince Charles carry weight. However, in practice the affairs of the country are run by politicians who are generally careful to keep their religious views out of the picture.

At least - that's the way I see it...