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Letter-to-Christian-Scholars

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1st Person Accounts Of Jesus

Central Question:

Are the Four Gospels an actual history or fables told as history?

Why this is important to me:

I understand the importance of faith. I feel that there needs to be some basis to build that faith upon. This is about that base. Where can I find a foundation worthy of considering christianity

The “Four Gospels” are the central authority for this basis. The Four Gospels are where we learn about the sacrifice Christ did for everyone. It is where we learn that Christ is the Savior

Luke 2 is read throughout the world every December 24th. The Beatitudes define the western worlds culture. His miracles give Christians hope and the relationship with John the Baptist proves that the Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled.

Ancient Manuscript Dating

Dating texts cross-references many techniques to check the results of each. Carbon Dating is one method but not the only method. Experts also look at inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of persons, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time periods

A good example of this is text handwriting clues such as fonts that did not exist before a time period. The same method is also used for words too. The goal is to narrow down the date by finding features/words that had not been designed before a specific date. After a date has been chosen it is peer reviewed for accuracy within their scientific journals

Mark Was Written 30-40 years after Christ

Most scholars date Mark to c. 66–74 AD, either shortly before or after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD.

They reject the traditional ascription to Mark the Evangelist, the companion of the Apostle Peter, which probably arose from the desire of early Christians to link the work to an authoritative figure, and believe it to be the work of an author working with various sources including collections of miracle stories, controversy stories, parables, and a passion narrative

The Other Four Gospels are Written Generations after Christ

The other Four Gospels are all written after Mark and copy much of the contents in Mark. Here is a chart showing the similarities between all of the Gospels. The best chance for an eyewitness account of Christ is via Mark.

The Q Theory - Only Truly 2 Gospels

Q was hypothesized by 1900, and is one of the foundations of most modern gospel scholarship[1]. B. H. Streeter formulated a widely accepted view of Q: that it was written in Koine Greek; that most of its contents appear in Matthew, in Luke, or in both; and that Luke more often preserves the text’s original order than Matthew.

Funk, Robert W., Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar. The Five Gospels. HarperSanFrancisco. 1993. “Introduction,” pp. 1–30.

Matthew was written anonymously 30-70 years after Christ

Most scholars believe the gospel was composed between AD 80 and 90, with a range of possibility between AD 70 to 110; a pre-70 date remains a minority view.[1] The work does not identify its author, and the early tradition attributing it to the apostle Matthew is rejected by modern scholars.[2] He was probably a male Jew, standing on the margin between traditional and non-traditional Jewish values, and familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time.[1] Writing in a polished Semitic “synagogue Greek”, he drew on the Gospel of Mark as a source, plus the hypothetical collection of sayings known as the Q source (material shared with Luke but not with Mark) and material unique to his own community, called the M source or “Special Matthew”.[1]

Duling, Dennis C. (2010). “The Gospel of Matthew”. In Aune, David E. (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-0825-6
Burkett, Delbert (2002). An introduction to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity. Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-0-521-00720-7.

Luke was written anonymously 45-200 years after Christ

Most modern scholars agree that the main sources used for Luke were (a) the Gospel of Mark, (b) the Q source, and (c) material found in no other gospels, often referred to as the L (for Luke) source.[1] The author is anonymous;[2] the traditional view that it was Luke the Evangelist, the companion of Paul, is still occasionally put forward, but the scholarly consensus emphasises the many contradictions between Acts and the authentic Pauline letters.[3] The most probable date for its composition is around AD 80–110, and there is evidence that it was still being revised well into the 2nd century.[4]

Duling, Dennis C. (2010). “The Gospel of Matthew”. In Aune, David E. (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to The New Testament. Wiley–Blackwell. ISBN 9781444318944.
Burkett, Delbert (2002). An introduction to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00720-7.
Theissen, Gerd; Merz, Annette (1998) [1996]. The historical Jesus: a comprehensive guide. Translated by Bowden, John. Fortress Press. ISBN 9780800631239.
Perkins, Pheme (2009). Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels. Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0-8028-6553-3.

John was written anonymously 55 years after Christ

The Gospel of John, like all the gospels, is anonymous.[1] John 21:22 references a disciple whom Jesus loved and John 21:24-25 says: “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true; but there are also many other things that Jesus did; if all of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.”[2] Early Christian tradition, first attested by Irenaeus (c. 130 – c. 202 AD), identified this disciple with John the Apostle, together with the Gnostics, such as Ptolemy who in his letter to Flora quotes the Gospel and attributes it to an Apostle without giving names and Basilides who quotes John 1:9 and considers it a gospel, but most scholars have abandoned this hypothesis or hold it only tenuously[3] – for example, the gospel is written in good Greek and displays sophisticated theology, and is therefore unlikely to have been the work of a simple fisherman.[4] These verses imply rather that the core of the gospel relies on the testimony (perhaps written) of the “disciple who is testifying”, as collected, preserved and reshaped by a community of followers (the “we” of the passage), and that a single follower (the “I”) rearranged this material and perhaps added the final chapter and other passages to produce the final gospel.[5] Most scholars estimate the final form of the text to be around AD 90–110.[6] Given its complex history there may have been more than one place of composition, and while the author was familiar with Jewish customs and traditions, his frequent clarification of these implies that he wrote for a mixed Jewish/Gentile or Jewish context outside Palestine.[citation needed]

O’Day, Gail R. (1998). “John”. In Newsom, Carol Ann; Ringe, Sharon H. (eds.). Women’s Bible Commentary. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 9780664257811.
Reddish, Mitchell G. (2011). An Introduction to The Gospels. Abingdon Press. ISBN 9781426750083. Page 41
Lindars, Barnabas; Edwards, Ruth; Court, John M. (2000).The Johannine Literature. A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-84127-081-4. Page 41
Kelly, Joseph F. (2012). History and Heresy: How Historical Forces Can Create Doctrinal Conflicts. Liturgical Press. ISBN 9780814659991. Page 115
Reddish, Mitchell G. (2011). An Introduction to The Gospels. Abingdon Press. ISBN 9781426750083. Page 41
Lincoln, Andrew T. (2005). Gospel According to St John: Black’s New Testament Commentaries. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4411-8822-9. Page 18

Oral Gospel Tradition Theory

I am struggling to consider these Four Gospels as a strong base for Christianity. None of these accounts are from people who actually saw these miracles. They did not see Jesus rise from the dead.

Why were these stories written down? Honestly, the theory that makes the most sense is the Oral Gospel Tradition Theory

A review of Richard Bauckham’s book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony states “The common wisdom in the academy is that stories and sayings of Jesus circulated for decades, undergoing countless retellings and embellishments before being finally set down in writing.”

You are probably familiar with the old birthday party game “telephone.” A group of kids sits in a circle, the first tells a brief story to the one sitting next to her, who tells it to the next, and to the next, and so on, until it comes back full circle to the one who started it. Invariably, the story has changed so much in the process of retelling that everyone gets a good laugh. Imagine this same activity taking place, not in a solitary living room with ten kids on one afternoon, but over the expanse of the Roman Empire (some 2,500 miles across), with thousands of participants—from different backgrounds, with different concerns, and in different contexts—some of whom have to translate the stories into different languages.

— Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament. A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Page 44

The writers of the Gospels heard these stories told like Telephone. Only they did so in an ancient time without the truth serum we have today like cell phone cameras. They were stories told before Newtons Laws of physics were known as well as most other science marvels. Mysticism was more accepted back then because they did not know what we know about the laws of nature.

It just makes more sense. And that makes me struggle to devote my life to a savior that has zero eye witness accounts