(13 votes, average: 4.85 out of 5)
Loading...I have been discussing the question of whether we can know that we have reconstructed the original text of the New Testament at every point – or even every important point. To me the answer is self-evidently, No, of course not. Many of my conservative evangelical critics think that I’m being overly skeptical, that since we have thousands of manuscripts of the NT, we can surely know better what the authors of the NT said than any other authors from the ancient world. My view is that this might be true, but that simply shows that we can’t know what *most* authors of the ancient world actually said, word for word.
Why does that matter? I’ll explain in a second, for the bulk of this post. But first let me put the matter in very simple form (I keep trying to explain this in a way that’s satisfying to myself.). Suppose Matthew’s Gospel was circulated for the very first time in Antioch of Syria around the year 85 CE. We’ll call that first circulated copy the “original.” Someone copied the original in his church. The original got lost in a fire.
But the copy was copied ten times over the years. And all of our subsequent copies were descended from those ten copies. That would mean that our entire manuscript tradition goes back to the first copy, made from the original. But what if that first copy contained lots of mistakes? What if its copyist added a few stories that he too had heard about Jesus? What if he added sentences here and there to make sure the “true” meaning of the gospel was understood? What if he omitted some sentences he didn’t like or approve of? Remember: he didn’t think he was copying “the Bible.” He thought he was copying a book about Jesus that he wanted people to read to get to a right understanding of who Jesus was.
Then the next copyists (ten of them in this scenario), would have reproduced these additions, omissions and alterations. How would we know what the original said, then, if all our copies go back to something other than the original? There is precisely no way to know. Let me emphasize, there is PRECISELY no way to know.
And why does that matter? Well,
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I agree with you, of course. But I might also point out that if some undoubtedly very early manuscript was found, you might have an “original” without knowing it! You’d never be able to prove it was the original, only that it was the earliest known.
I agree!
What do we know about the process of circulation of the Gospels? For example, Luke seems to kind of take the form of a letter (or a private investigator’s report) at first, then turns into a long, long narrative, mentioning neither the author nor Theophilus again (unless you count Acts, but for our purposes those are two different works.) Matthew starts with a genealogy and then moves into a narrative. So were these guys just writing one copy, taking it to their congregation and going “Whad’dya think?” (Analogous to our modern band with a virally spread MP3.) Were they actually targeting their audiences but in different cities or different congregations? It occurs to me that in this last scenario, “Matthew” himself could have been one of the copyists generating and transmitting textual errors of his own work.
Luke’s opening may seem like a letter, but in fact it is a standard way of beginning a “history,” with the dedication to a patron; and it makes sense for a genealogy to come in a biography. My hunch is that they were writing for their own tightly knit Christian communities.
So then in this scenario “Matthew” set down a single manuscript, and maybe a rare literate visitor from out of town decides his community could use one of those and copies it down, rather than “Matthew” taking it on the road? I guess the important question for me here is would the manuscript authors themselves ever have been responsible for early copying errors? If so, how much more complicated the whole idea of “originality” becomes in this context!
I wish we knew the answer!
What’s important about a document is its connection to God. If it’s inspired by Him, it’s got to be believed. If it’s not, it’s human and has no special binding force upon us.
God can inspire as and when He wills.
He can inspire the writing of the original. He can inspire the copying of the original. As the inspiration game is played, inspiration can make the original trumps (got to be believed) or any of its descendants trumps. God can guide the hand of the author of the original, or He can guide the hand of any of the copyists, or both.
My problem as a skeptic is that I can see no way we humans today, or even those in the first century, standing at the shoulder of the author of the original, can discern whether what appears on paper is His word or a merely human word. In both cases, there’s a guy at a desk with pen and parchment, and how is anybody to tell whether he and what he writes is Inspired or not.
Inspiration is from and of God. He can inspire a copyist as easily as He can the author of the original. The doctrine of omnipotence implies that it’s arbitrary to conclude that the hand of the author is any more or less subject to guidance than is the hand of the copyist.
P.S. An omnipotent God could also have arranged that while Mark sat at his desk composing the gospel, he was visited every couple of days by acquaintances who asked him how things were going and who then mentioned what Mark said to them in letters they wrote at the time that have (by God’s arrangement) come down to us is such a way they could be well authenticated. He could also have, say, have had one of the letter writers note that Mark was placing a peculiar symbol at the bottom of each page, and had Mark’s original parchments with that symbol be placed in a dry secure place to be discovered say in 1707 when Doubt crept in as John Mill published his 30,000 variants.
It seems to me that Bart Ehrman, having himself once been a fundamentalist, and a very good one, and very intelligent one, has a better idea what a fundamentalist needs than does today’s modal evangelical scholar.
Ooh! I like *this* formulation, Bart. 🙂
Lke you, I don’t believe that we can know that we have reconstructed the original text of the New Testament at every point – or even every important point. And for me, like for you, we don’t have to know that we have reconstructed the original text. It would be nice, sure. But, hey, we live in a fallen world.
I do think, though that your hypothetical “smart evangelical” might also tend, in the scenario you suggest, to “think that it was the copy that stands at the foundation of all our surviving manuscripts that ultimately God inspired.”
Now, true, you are in a better position than I am to know what your hypothetical “smart evangelical” would think. He’s *your* hypothesis, after all, not mine, lol. But why should we leave this at this stage of conjecture? Why not ask one of your “smart evangelical” acquaintances to tell us, in a guest column, whether or not, in the scenario you suggest, he would think that it was the copy that stands at the foundation of all our surviving manuscripts that ultimately God inspired?
Many, many thanks, Bart! 🙂
Interesting idea: the first copiests did not view their work as copying scripture. It was more like missionary literature. If he or she thought that it could be improved, even if just for one particular audience, he or she might go ahead and change the text.
As always, mind expanding! 🙂
This is a very good elucidation of my scribes would make changes. “he didn’t think he was copying “the Bible.” He thought he was copying a book about Jesus that he wanted people to read to get to a right understanding of who Jesus was.”
In that context it seems is not just plausable but probable that scribes would take creative license to make the story better, more compelling, and stronger. This is important context. We’re scribes vested in getting people to “believe” or “getting it right”?
some of them no doubt were.
Very well said. My question however is, “How can intelligent scholars still view the Bible as some inspired Word of God after having been exposed to all this evidence?” I cannot reconcile this in my mind, what am I missing?
Sophisticated scholars do not think that the truths of theology are connected with the literal meaning of the words of the Bible (let alone with knowing the original words); only very conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists do.
And those guys will usually drag out a contrivance called the ” Holy Spirit” to try and explain how divine inspiration through the Word of God could be maintained considering the precarious circumstances of the early textual tradition. The Holy Spirit is essentially their MacGyver, he can fix anything….
As usual, you have far more patience than I and I admire that. In one of the last church classes I attended, I discovered that I was the only one out of 50 or so people in the class who was not convinced that Noah and the Ark was an actual historical event. All of the possible scientific arguments against this interpretation were quickly dismissed because “God can do anything.” Then, assuming that “God can do anything,” the question of why God would create creatures and then kill almost all of them was dismissed by the argument that “God works in mysterious ways.” My conclusion: When it comes to religious discussions, evidence just does not matter. I could give other examples of similar discussions, but ….
There comes a time when one’s understanding of it historically clashes with those who think theologically. Their answers are not rational, but theological. It is faith in action!
Is it a plausible consideration several authors contributed to Mark without knowledge of one another (similar to the oral lines of transmission leading to Mark), each revising as they remember hearing it, as opposed to scribes attempting to faithfully preserving it, since they didn’t consider it a “gospel” as we do today? Then all the variants are lost over time except for one which is copied leading to what we have today. How important would a unique writing style and the other criteria you use in attempting to establish the earliest known copy be if it only goes back to that one surviving copy, which would have a different writing style and stories from the others which were lost?
There’s no evidence that Mark was written by committee — with different people contributing different sections. It is too stylistically consistent for that. But the stories themselves obviously originated in a range of sources, oral and possibly written.
Great post! I get into circular arguments with fundamentalists/literalists all the time. Why should I trust the Bible? “It’s God’s inspired word proven to be true!” Oh, but I’ve found this or that problem, or can’t prove that we have the original to even know what was originally written. Then its “God made sure we have the correct wording” or “It’s God’s word and can’t have an error, so obviously (your problem) has an explanation you just don’t understand.” They just declare it error free and back fill excuses with anything they can. For many you can prove with them on other issues (especially money!) that they don’t use the same logic but it doesn’t seem to matter. The irony is that it is just the same arguments that they reject when Muslims or others use them to defend THEIR books.
Makes perfect sense,
I have seen the approaches “THESE PEOPLE” take to your work. They try to debunk everything you say with their theological arguments. I have had the same discussions with fundamentalists who just call the work of yours nonsense. It is too difficult to point anything out to them, so I don’t bother anymore. I have one listener to my learnings. She is fascinated by it as well, and loves learning what I teach her through you. It seems that nothing can be resolved without earlier manuscripts, or additional textural criticism that can more clearly reveal what the “originals” said. Isn’t what we know about the Gospels, etc. already clear enough? Can we not already see what they were intending, and therefore we will probably not learn a great deal more if we went back further with additional manuscripts? Can they have changed that much from their originals to what we “know” now?
I’d say we *probably* know pretty much what they originally said. But it’s only a probability, not the kind of certainty that some kinds of theology require.
How is it that we probably know what they originally said, if our first manuscript is 300 years after the original? If we don’t know what textual traditions there were before 300 years, the probability should be inscrutable or maybe 50/50, not so?
It’s a probability judgement yes. I don’t know of any grounds for saying that it is a 50/50 chance that the words were always changed in the first 300 years (when they weren’t changed nearly that often in later years, at least in ways that we cannot recognize. All history is probability, and we *probably* know what hte authors wrote in *most* cases.
I haven’t wrapped my head around this entirely. Since the earlier scribes were more prone to change things for their own theological purposes than the later medieval scribes, the tenacity of tradition argument is invalid ( for this reason and others you expounded). So how can we make conclusions about earliest manuscripts of which we don’t have copies, based on how faithful the later manuscripts were to each other? Is it that, even though they probably changed some things, we can be relatively sure that the original just of it stayed the same? Or is there some other reason why we probably know what the original said?
It’s complicated, but it more or less comes down to this. Even though early scribes were more likely to change their manuscripts, they did not do so in a unified way. Different scribes changed the text in different ways in different places. These changes were replicated only by those other scribes who copied the texts earlier changed; scribes who copied texts that had not been changed in theose places did not replicate the changes. So most manuscripts would not have contained the changed texts but only the original texts. If you have 500 manuscripts that all have the same text in a given place, then the changes made at that place simply haven’t survived. It’s harder to explain how all 500 could have a change that was made so extensively that it affected all of them. It happens in some places, but not in most.
This post pretty much makes my comment to your last post irrelevant. Your hypothetical scenario of only one copy having been made (with many errors and changes) only to have the original destroyed in a fire before any further copies could be made is much like what I had in mind as how some passages of the autograph could end up not being represented in any later extant manuscript.
Great post to tie it all together.
I’m still mildly amused with the tendency for conservative textual critics to lean toward the most orthodox variant whenever a difficult/controversial passage is under consideration. I do not believe this is a conscious choice — that they deliberately choose on the basis of the passage being most amenable to orthodox theology. Of course, the notes usually suggest an assortment of other factors taken into consideration, and the orthodox passage just happens to be indicated by those factors. Rather, I think that the subconscious is again playing havoc, with that underlying preference for orthodoxy subtly coloring the consideration of evidence and which bits of evidence carry more or less weight and how this or that incidental fact is to be interpreted. Selection bias or confirmation bias, perhaps.
I just re-watched your debate with James White on YouTube. He says it is completely unreasonable to have expected God to compel scribes to copy the texts accurately, while apparently preaching that it is completely reasonable to have expected God to compel an “author” to write the texts accurately from God’s mouth or spirit or with God steering the “author”‘s hand or something through inspiration? Pt. 1 starting at 1:16:13 and 1:27:09. I know longer understand how conservatives can switch arguments when it suits them. Frustrating. And he is obviously a smart and well-informed guy, although he comes off as, well, you know! By the way, I just read the book Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy. I never realized how many ways evangelicals defined or re-defined “inerrancy,” even in the Chicago Statement. Apparently, to at least some of them, it doesn’t mean plenary verbal or historically and scientifically inerrant.
Yes, understandably, many want to have a different view but still claim its name…
I think the case of Howard Hughes’ Last Will and Testament beautifully illustrates how an ‘original’ document, within just a few years of its writing, might become the center of a dispute to determine the fate of an empire.
When Billionaire eccentric Howard Hughes died in 1976, the search was on for who might inherit his vast fortune and business holdings..A gas station attendant named Melvin Dummar stepped forward and told an amazing tale. Dummar claimed that while driving through rural Nevada one night in December of 1968, he pulled onto a dirt road to answer the call of nature.
He says he found a scraggly, bearded man lying injured in the desert. Dummar drove the stranger to Las Vegas and did not believe it when the man claimed to be Howard Hughes.
In 1976, when the real Howard Hughes died, he was the most famous billionaire in the world. The question of who would get his money became an international guessing game. When a handwritten will was discovered in Salt Lake City, it created a worldwide sensation.
The document became known as the “Mormon Will” because someone had mysteriously dropped it on a desk in the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The purported will divided the Hughes estate into 16 equal shares, with one share designated for the LDS Church itself and another sixteenth for “Melvin DuMar.”
When the world press corps beat a path to Dummar’s gas station in Willard, Box Elder County, he professed surprise at the existence of the will. He told reporters his story of the old man in the desert, but Dummar said he never knew if the stranger really was Howard Hughes.
“I thought he was a bum,” Dummar told reporters in 1976. “I lent him some money.”
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I’ll pause in this account of Dummar’s precarious situation and draw an awkward parallel.
The apostles and disciples who encountered a scraggly prophet in the desert (John the Baptist) and subsequently his successor, (Jesus) were made heirs to a vast Kingdom on the words of (perhaps a madman) a disputable account, which some believed and others scoffed at.
In the court of public opinion in that day, we know the outcome. Words crafted and written in the years to come are the sole evidence (if it be accepted as such) of this promise and heirship. How can the truth of it all be determined?
__________________
Dummar acknowledged he was the one who delivered the Will to LDS Church headquarters. But he claimed he got the document from a mysterious stranger who brought it to his gas station. Dummar said he read the will and didn’t know if it was real or a hoax. Not knowing what to do, he drove to the Church Office Building and dropped it on a desk.
After a Las Vegas trial that lasted several months, a jury declared the will a hoax and branded Dummar a liar.
“I wouldn’t have had a chance even if God himself had delivered the will,” Dummar said last week. “So many people thought I was a con artist or a scammer. And they treated me like a criminal.”
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I thought the parallel demonstrates how little it takes to create a dispute about people’s claims to heirship and greatness when dealing with opposing opinions and the reputation of men who are “nobody” special in their community.
(Source:http://www.deseretnews.com/article/600114069/Dummar-may-have-told-truth-after-all.html?pg=all)
How did we(fundamentalist inerrent believers) get to the position that the bible(as we know it) is inerrent and inspired. I know that there are statements in the bible that say so, however that is using the documents to prove themselves. Other than faith(which anybody can use to believe anything) where is the logic and prove
It all started at the end of the 19th century, wiht hard-core reactions to liberal understandings of the Bible. Look up “Niagra Conference” and you’ll see.
Do you believe that any of the four gospel writers were eyewitnesses of Jesus?
Do you believe that Paul had a hallucination of Jesus?
Do you believe that Muhammad had either an auditory and/or visual hallucination of the angel Gabriel mentioned in the New Testament?
What would it take you to believe that God exists?
No. Yes. Don’t know. Something incredible!
Yeah. Unless Jesus, God the Father, or an angel appears in front of me, I will never by theism.
Do you believe the doubting Thomas account in John was invented in an attempt to put an end to gnostic heresies?
When Jesus first mentioned the Holy Spirit to the Jews did they know what he was talking about or did they have to ask him?
No, I don’t think there were Gnostics floating around yet in John’s day. And I don’t think Jesus taught *anything* that was incomprehensible to other Jews of his day.
But the Jews did not believe in a Trinitarian God. How would they know about the Holy Spirit?
I don’t think Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit. (Many of his sayings in the NT are things he almost certainly never actually said) He may well have referred on occasion to the Spirit of God, but lots of Jews and Jewish sources talk about God’s Spirit (see Genesis 1:1-2!)
What benefit would you say the legend of Jesus appearing in front of Thomas had for the writer of John? Any significance you can think of, or was it just a passage invented as evidence for the faith?
I think it is meant to show that people who can believe without seeing are especially blessed
Why are you always so certain that Paul actually had the visions that he claims? I think there are many reasons to believe that he fabricated the visions.
Ultimately we’ll never know. My view is that Paul may have been mistaken or deceived, but nothing leads me to think he was a flat-out liar.
Do you agree that Paul’s religious change probably occurred over a length of time – not in an instant after a vision? I am assuming that his three years in Arabia was spent in a lot of discussion and study with the people who lead him to the Christ beliefs.
I’m not really sure? He seems to speak of it as a sudden realization, but surely there was a build up to it.
I put Paul’s claims in the same category that I would put claims made today. Even if a person has a vision, I know they are not really seeing something that exists. So if Paul was some how put into a religious experience that caused him to lose touch with reality and he had a vision, he did not really see Jesus or his Christ figure. That’s my point, Paul writes that he actually saw and talked to the Christ. Maybe it happened in his head but not in reality. Paul did not journey to the third heaven in reality but maybe in his head. Is that the way you see it?
Well, I don’t believe Christ was still living at the time or that there is literally a third heaven to ascend to, if that’s what you’re asking.
Yes. That’s my point. Paul may not be lying but he is mistaken. He wrote to people that he saw and spoke to Jesus (or Christ) and he wrote that he visited a third heaven. I think that many people did not believe he actually did these things in his day. This probably brought about some of his conflicts with other people. Oddly, most all Christians today believe that Paul actually saw and talked to Jesus (Christ) and that Paul actually went to the third heaven. So you believe that Paul thought these things actually happened even though we know that the events were just in his mind?
Yes, like most mystics throughout history, Paul almost certainly believed his own experiences.
Bart, do you believe that Martin Luther was the first Christian to come up with the doctrine of salvation by faith alone (apart from good works and following any of the sacraments imposed by the Churches)? Didn’t the Ana-Baptists that came before him believe in the same concept before him? How do you think the gospel writers thought of salvation (Grace+10 commandments, Grace alone, Grace+Baptism+10 commandments)?
And do you believe that he was the first to state that the Bible was it, implying that the Orthodox Church and its traditions and authority had nothing to do with salvation?
It depends on how you read the letters of Paul, especially Romans and Galatians. I don’t believe there were any ana-baptists before Luther.
So would you say Luther was the first to come up with (that you know of) of salvation by grace alone (no tradition)?
No. Ephesians says “grace” alone.
Do you believe that the offering of Barabbas by Pilate is unhistorical? What about Herod saying that he found no fault in Jesus according to the Bible? I think the historical Pilate and Herod would have found Jesus as a great offence unto their belief system. I doubt Pilate would allow someone claiming to be a King as someone he would be sympathetic with and I also doubt Herod, who sided with the Pharisees, would not find offence in a poor shepherd claiming to be the Messiah that was prophesied in the Old Testament. What are your thoughts?
Yes, I think the Barabbas incident is unhistorical. Again, maybe you should read my book where I discuss these things.
What odds would you assign to grave robbers or thieves stealing the body of Jesus? Even if it is very low, would you say (historically speaking) that beyond any doubt there would be no reason for the body to be stolen? I have heard that necromancers would not steal the body because they did rituals on site. What do you think of this?
Very indeed. You’d have to imagine a motive.
Perhaps they could think that the body of a holy man was like a trophy? Or they knew a sorcerer who would be interested?
What do you think of Joseph of A (if he is historical) putting Jesus body in his tomb temporarily, then moving him to the criminals graveyard later?
Like dozens of other options, it’s possible.
What would you say has the highest probability out of those options?
I have no way of knowing.
Is the pre-markian narrative thought to be an oral tradition or a written source (like Q)?
There were probably both oral and written sources.
Say the apostles stole the body of Jesus to fake the resurrection? If they were to recant, they would have still been executed/persecuted by the romans/jews correct?
There’s nothing to suggest that most of them *were* executed.
So you do think there is a small chance the apostles could have stolen the body of Jesus to fake the resurrection (if Joseph of A story is historical)?
Not really.
Josephus records that James was persecuted because of his faith. Would that make it certain that he at least believed he had seen the risen Christ?
No, that’s not at all what Josephus says.
Do most critical scholars agree that there was a Pre-Markian Narrative? Is it debatable (if there was one) like the Q source since both are just a hypothesis?
What is the general consensus on when it was composed, or does it vary a lot?
If there was one would Hostile Jews have heard about it from the narrative, or would it take to the writing of Mark (58-62 A.D) when Joseph of A would have been preached so that hostile Jews would hear it?
I want to know since I imagine it would take at least 15 years or more for the Christians to get away with a made up member of the Sanhedrin.
There probalby wasn’t a full narrative like Mark’s; possibly a passion narrative.
What would be the earliest date in your opinion that the Christians could have talked about Joseph of A (a made up member of the Sanhedrin) and have gotten away with it? 40 A.D? 50 A.D?
A week later. People make stuff up all the time, about famous people, among those who could check if they wanted to.
Is your rationale based off of the fact that there were 70 members of the Sanhedrin and spotting a false one would have been nearly impossible? What about the fact that he was called a respectable member?
In my opinion, most would have had about 15 (give or take) names of famous Sanhedrin members. Going off of that, it was anyone’s guess who the other 55 were (weither it be Joseph of A, or Joe Shmoe). Wada think?
I’d say it would take at least 10 years. Say one critic inquired about Joseph of A to a Sanhedrinist, and he said “never heard of ’em”, the Christians would need at least 10 years to say something like “He died in 34 a.d” or “Do you expect that guy to have kept up with the other 69?”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I would say it would take some time.
Yes I think you’re wrong. Stories get made up all the time. It takes seconds, not years.
Suppose someone noticed that JofA was made up (assuming he was), what could they do about it? Run around telling everyone to stop mentioning him? Who would pay attention? Who would care?
Tell someone in charge? What could the authorities do? Execute anyone accused of talking about JofA? That seems a bit extreme, even for the Romans.
Round up and fix or destroy every manuscript mentioning JofA? Obviously impossible.
I say this “tongue-in-cheek”, but wouldn’t all of this be settled if all the originals were just downloaded from God’s icloud account? Although, that was tongue-in-cheek, this is precisely where the theology breaks down. If there were any salt to the supernatural claims that your fundamentalist evangelical friends try to challenge you with in the debates, God would simply “refresh” his original divinely inspired words at any moment with no need for such divine intervention over the “copyists” fingers. In fact, God would be browsing your own books Prof. E, and then hitting you up with some challenging blog requests. The simple fact that this topic is such a challenging and controversial argument, in and of itself defeats the fundamentalists position.
A Christian apologist said that Joseph of A could not keep Jesus’s body in his personal tomb for the night as a temporary holding place (before moving it to the criminals grave yard) since he would be breaking Jewish Law. Does this argument have any merit?
Secondly, it has been argued that he could have walked to the criminals grave yard earlier during the day. Would all the events of that day possibly only allow him to do it at night?
Thirdly, do you think that the story of Joseph of A from Mark (the legendary account) would have reached Josephs ear if he were alive in 58 a.d?
I don’t think there *was* a Joseph of Arimathea.
I mean if he did exist. Both you and Robert M. Price stated that that’s was a possibility.
A Christian apologist said that Joseph of A could not keep Jesus’s body in his personal tomb for the night as a temporary holding place (before moving it to the criminals grave yard) since he would be breaking Jewish Law. Does this argument have any merit?
Secondly, it has been argued that he could have walked to the criminals grave yard earlier during the day. Would all the events of that day possibly only allow him to do it at night?
Josephus wrote about the signs in the sky in his Jewish Wars which was composed around 75 a.d correct?
Yup.
Unless you believe that Mark was inspired to write his gospel directly by God similar to Joseph Smith’s claim, then I don’t see any value in finding the actual writing of Mark. Mark had not followed Jesus and from all indications would not have understood what Jesus was saying in Aramaic, since his language was Greek. However, Mark was familiar with Greek Christians who had been taught by Paul. Thus at best we can suppose that some of Mark’s gospel reflects Paul’s teaching and most likely we should be able to find some of Paul’s letters embedded in it. One of the most telling for me is the story that Mark relates of the last Supper and especially the symbolism of the bread and wine. This is almost an exact extraction from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and in it Paul expressly notes that he got the information directly from a spiritual Christ. In light of the prayers over the bread and wine recored in the Didache Jesus certainly did not institute the symbolism of blood and body to the emblems.
Do you believe Jesus considered himself the Messiah of the Old Testament? If so, why did he die on a cross for the sins of the world if he did not believe his sacrifice was the only way people could go to heaven?
I think he thought he would be appointed to be the king when God brought the kingdom to earth.
What are the distinct differences between the genres of myth, hagiography, and ancient biography? Is it pretty much myth 100% non-historical, hagi 50 50, ancient bio 30 70 history legend?
Is there a difference between legend and myth or are they interchangeable?
Yes, myth is usually seen as a kind of fiction; hagiography with a mixture of fiction, and history as *less* of a mixture of fiction
Here as in other places I must preface with the excuse of being intellectually peripatetic and therefore in constant danger of missing a point or something obvious. However, seems to me that an amended “Jeffersonian”-type scripture representing a reasonably historically consensus-agreed more likely “accurate” version of the gospels or NT would be interesting.
I know about “Jesus Seminar” and that, but seems like there’s a lot of controversy on all sides vis a vis.
Yes, that’s the problem — there couldn’t be *one* Bible like that since there are such massive disagreements.
Certainly logical that consensus of history or historians, would reverse correlate with the passing eons* and specificity of details.
I wonder whether this has tended to be exacerbated in the area of religion INCLUDING “SECULAR” HISTORY. One can get that impression sometimes.
*And yet consider the more modern Mormonism (telegraph, newspapers, railroads, even some professional historians around! Or things like Lourdes, etc.