Who Actually Wrote the Gospels?
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- This is the third episode in a series about the historical evidence on Jesus and if it gives us good reason to accept him as the Messiah.
In this episode, learn:
1. Who wrote the Gospels
2. When the Gospels were written
3. If the authors were trying to be accurate or deceitful
Highlight: 100% of the earliest manuscripts that have been found include the author's names in the title.
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References:
The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Jesus - Brant Pitre
www.amazon.com...
The Son Rises: the Historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus - William Lane Craig
www.amazon.com...
Loving this series. Thank you for putting all this info into accessible packages.
That’s great! I’m glad to hear that
"This is based on the assumption that Jesus is not capable of what the Gospels say he is capable of."
Nope. It is based on the FACT that we have nothing documenting what Jesus ever actually said.
"Are the Gospel account early, or are they late."
The answer is: Yes.
They original scriptures were probably written between 60ad and 130ad, but the scriptures did not reach the form we know today until about 300ad or beyond.
One Gospel problem is the differing definitions of the Sign of Jonah. In Mark 8 Jesus said that no sign from heaven would be given to Israel. In Luke 11, Jesus said that the Sign of Jonah was his ministry. In Matthew 12 Jesus said that the Sign of Jonah would be his short time of burial. In Matthew 16 Jesus predicted the Sign of Jonah while saying something about the signs of times.
Resolving these differences has always resulted in violence to scripture. For instance, some editors suppose that the writer of Mark's Gospel deliberately omitted the words, "except the sign of Jonah." The same editors suppose that Jesus' definition in Luke 11 is nothing more than a conflation of originally distinct sayings. Others regard Jesus' prohibition of a sign in Mark 8 as an "initial refusal" (in other words, Jesus later changed his mind.)
Accepting the authenticity of the Holy Shroud enables a solution to these difficulties that does require any violence to scripture.
See: "The Enigma of the Sign of Jonah," BSTS Shroud Newsletter, Summer 2023, Pgs. 42-46.
"Early sources" - this is debatable. Mark is certainly drawing on eariler traditions. Comparing the Gospels to the life of Tiberius is like comparing apples and organges. Not only do we have two independent sources for Tiberius life, the succession of Emporers was a well known fact amonst the educated populace. Furthermore there are monumental references to Tiberius and also contemporary coins. And YES, all of the COMPLETE copies of manuscripts use the traditional attributions but they are 4th century for Mark and Mid third century for Matthew - plenty of time for these attributions to become accepted. Furthermore, we do not have Papius attribution for Mark, we have a quotation from Eusebius some 150 years later! The Papius quote talks about a book that is "not ordered", hardly the polished Gospel that we know.
"These gospels are still early and still considered reliable accounts."
Nope. That is not how history is done, buddy. Being early does not make them reliable.
"In the book of Mark, Jesus correctly prophesied that the temple would be destroyed in AD 70."
Nope. In the book of Mark, the author portrayed Jesus as prophesying that the temple would be destroyed in AD 70. There is no reason to believe Jesus ever made this prophecy, and we know that Christian scribes were inventing stories about Jesus to lend support to their beliefs. There is a tradition of post-dating "prophecies" in the Bible, going back to the Book Of Daniel.
"All of the early manuscripts that we have uncovered include attributions to the authors."
OK, this is just a bald-faced lie. Our earliest manuscripts are mere fragments. Some the size of postal cards. They do not contain attributions to the authors. Our earliest complete copy of John, for example, is from the 4th Century. So if you are claiming that we know the Gospel of John was written by someone named "John", because 300 years later it was attributed to someone name "John", then your claim is much more tenuous that you want it to appear.
"Papius, Irenius, and Clement Of Alexandria all passed down that Mark documented Jesus's life."
Again, you are being disingenuous. The documents that these individuals referred to were not necessarly the documents we know today.
From Bart Ehrman's blog:
Papias tells a story that is recorded in our Matthew but tells it so completely differently that it appears he doesn’t know Matthew’s version. And so when he says Matthew wrote Matthew, is he referring to *our* Matthew, or to some other book? (Recall, the Gospel he refers to is a collection of Jesus’ sayings in Hebrew; the Gospel of Matthew that *we* have is a narrative, not a collection of sayings, and was written in Greek.) If he *is* referring to our Matthew, why doesn’t he see it as an authoritative account?
It is striking that some modern authors want to latch on to Papias for his claims that Matthew and Mark wrote Gospels, assuming, as Bauckham does, that he must be historically accurate, when they completely overlook the other things that Papias says, things that even these authors admit are not and cannot be accurate. If Papias is not reliable about anything else he says, why does anyone think he is reliable about our Gospels of Matthew and Mark? The reason is obvious. It is because readers want him to be accurate about Matthew and Mark, even though they know that otherwise you can’t rely on him for a second.
You're exactly right. Instead of examining the data and drawing conclusions from it, this creator like all apologists, is doing contortions to make the round peg fit in the square hole.
You have an uphill battle to date the Gospels earlier than current scholarship. You're argument is founded a lot on the Gospels being written by the names authors. And those critical scholars widely reject that, and for very good reasons it turns out. It's not a myth at all as you characterized it. Many scholarly books have been written on that. And many Christian scholars accept that. And Mark is not dated to after 70 solely because of it's discussion of the Temple destruction. There are other very good reasons to date it later you're ignoring. Same with Luke where the lack of the mention of Paul and James death is simply an argument from silence. And the fact he copied Mark.
And yes, the earliest surviving manuscripts all have the names on them, but they were from centuries later, as has been pointed out above. But the very earliest Church fathers who quoted from the Gospels never once mentioned those names. Not until the last half of the 2nd century (other than Papias which I'll get to). And in fact, these earliest Church fathers referred to them with completely different titles instead. As to Papias? Yes, he names Matthew and Mark. But he is clearly not talking about the Matthew and Mark that are in the Bible today. And has a completely (rather ridiculous) different account of Judas death than Matthew. And Church fathers after him did not have a high opinion of him. Calling him not a man of high intellect, subject to exaggeration and telling strange stories. Plus the fact that none of Papias writings have survived.
As to the women finding the tomb? It was women and slaves jobs to deal with dead bodies. Not surprising at all. But when you get to the minimal facts you ended with? William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, and Mike Licona? You seem a little out of date. The burial in a tomb in your numbers 1 and 2 are not usually listed anymore since most critical scholars do not accept this as an historical fact. Most crucifixion victims were buried in mass graves at the time.
And your number 3 is normally stated as something like "some individuals had experiences that they believed were of the risen Jesus". A subtle but very important distinction when you're talking about history. And the "groups of people" you have in yours? No on claims that as historical bedrock. You may want to listen to more recent work and interviews by them. I know for a fact that Gary and Mike have changed on this. Not sure of Bill of the top of my head since he doesn't usually use the minimal facts approach I don't think.
Sorry kid, we know for a fact that the Gospel of Mark was not "completed" before AD62. We know for a fact the ending we have was added much later.
The earliest extant complete manuscripts of Mark, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, two 4th-century manuscripts, do not contain the last twelve verses, 16:9-20, nor the unversed shorter ending.
Please....do some research before you make another video.
nothing that is older then 300 years is reilable...
If that was the case a lot of historians need to find different lines of work! But we can be confident that historical sources are reliable. What matters is how close the sources are to the event in question, not how far we are from the sources.
@@TheTorahGuide Simple question. How many miracles have you witnessed one person perform? How likely do you think it is that anyone is witnessed performing so many miracles. If Jesus is as claimed then as a miracle worker he would be one in seven billion.
@@lordvoldamort4606 The whole point of Jesus’s miracles is that he is the ONLY one that has ever had that power himself because he IS the only God.
If anyone could perform miracles it wouldn’t be impressive that Jesus could perform miracles.
This isn’t what this video is about, but it is what the previous video in this series is about, it’s called “Was Jesus a false Prophet” I recommend giving it a watch and see if there’s anything that you maybe haven’t thought of or not in it.
@@TheTorahGuide Thanks. The video to me is about how your religion is right was right and will always be right. So I figure any angle on that is fair play.
@@TheTorahGuide Historians don't deal in absolutes, they deal in sources and corroboration - it's a fallacy to suggest that just because a sorce is close to the events that it is reliable, another fallacy to suggest "we can be confident that historical sources are reliable" - that is just nonsense and no history undergraduate would be allowed to make such a bald statement. A source is an opinion, a version, a view and historians ALWAYS treat EVERY source with scepticism. The gospels are NOT eyewitnesses, they do not read like eyewitnesses, they are not written as history, they are theology in the manner of the greek tradition of a narrative designed to teach moral or philosophical truths. Mark certainly was not an eyewitness and in all probability, the author of Matthew COPIED Mark, so it is next to impossible that HE was an eye witness. And so it goes on.