Why did Jesus not write for us?

[marco]

We know Muhammad was illiterate which makes his production of the Koran close to miraculous. Jesus scribbled in the dust but does not seem to have occupied himself with writing things down. Why?

Here we debate what this or that means; we debate the Trinity; we wonder about the truth of Christ's nativity and resurrection; we question his message, as delivered by hearsay. An important group of people, those of the Jewish faith, has been alienated. Did Christ intend this? Did he want Rome to rise and propagate his message?


All these questions are answered in a book called The Annals of Christ, by Jesus Christ. Unfortunately we don't have it. Can there be good reasons why Christ left no written records?

[SallyF]

Can there be good reasons why Christ left no written records?

We've been taken WAY off topic again.


One good reason Christ left no written records is that perhaps there never was a Christ.


Or perhaps he did, and they were rubbish, and his followers burned them and had a shot at jumbling the implausible, contradictory, magic and mystery propaganda together themselves.


Or perhaps he did, and he and his cronies massaged the propaganda under different names to appeal to different sects.

[Mithrae]

Certainly that's what endless sermonizing would have us believe, mostly from preachers and churches whose primary interest is pulling in as many rubes as possible.

M, I am genuinely surprised by this level of cynicism. Do you actually think that most Christian preachers do not believe their own message and are only trying to pull as many people in as possible? Do you honestly believe that those who listen are rubes, as opposed to people searching for truth? Even if you ultimately disagree with them, I did not expect this level of cynicism from you.

Those preaching that nothing but 'belief' is required for salvation? Or maybe copying the words of a little prayer the guy up front is telling you to say? Yes, I'm pretty cynical towards anyone who manages to extract that kind of message from the gospels, or even from Paul's letters for that matter. It's an obviously false portrayal of the NT message, but seemingly tailor-made for popularity.

But try to imagine that you're new to this 'Jesus' guy and just reading the gospels for the first time, in the order they were written (Mark, Matthew, Luke and John) or in the order they're found in the bible. First you're reading Mark's...

If we are taking things in chronological order then shouldnt we imagine reading Pauls letters first, and then getting to the Gospels? First century Christians would have started with First Thessalonians, and then Galatians, and then First Corinthians and Philippians.

Even the Thessalonians didn't start with First Thessalonians; they started (we would hope, and giving Paul the benefit of the doubt) hearing about Jesus, what he did and taught, the gospel message as recorded IN the gospels. Each of Paul's letters to established churches build further, on ethics for Christian living, ecclesial structure, abstract theology and so on. Granted, it is possible that Paul's preaching (like his letters) largely skimmed over Jesus' life and teachings, but in either case turning to Paul's letters to learn anything but the barest outline of Jesus' existence and death seems misguided.

IF YOU IGNORE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS POST, READ THIS PART:
The long and the short of it is this:
If we read only part of the New Testament then we will get an uneven picture. These books were not written in a vacuum. They were written with an understanding of what people already knew and what had already been written. Paul wrote knowing that people had heard about Jesus. Matthew, Mark and Luke wrote knowing that people had read/heard Pauls letters. John wrote knowing that people had read/heard the other Gospels. No one book can give us a complete picture of Jesus. It all fits together, or it all falls apart

It would be nice to believe there's something real and solid there, but I suspect you're right and push come to shove it does all fall apart.

There are several plausible secular explanations of course, but from a Christian perspective as far as I can see the only reasonable explanation for why the Son of God didn't leave a record of whatever he considered necessary to impart is that he believed whatever followers later passed on their experience with him would do a good enough job of it. By contrast, you seem to be arguing that the biographies of Jesus aren't good enough to understand what he did and taught - that somehow the abstract theology of a guy who didn't know Jesus and butted heads with those who did is necessary to understand Jesus 'properly.' If you read Mark you'll come away with the impression that followers of Jesus should sell everything and give to the poor, among other things, but that's a mistaken impression and you need to read something more; and if you read Matthew that impression will be even further reinforced, but it's still mistaken and you need to read something more; and Luke reinforces that impression perhaps even more than the first two, but again it's just a mistaken impression and you need to read more to get the correct perspective....

Out of interest, if that's the approach that you're taking how do you know that even the 27 'books' of the New Testament is enough, the right number of early Christian writings to get the correct understanding of Jesus? What about the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Gospel of Thomas...? Seems to me that if Mark alone is not good enough to understand all the important stuff about Jesus, we're just adding more stuff arbitrarily until we get a 'complete picture' that we like and hopefully lets us keep our car and TV

[William]

[Replying to post 1 ]

marco: Can there be good reasons why Christ left no written records?

William: He was too busy living The Story to be writing the book?

As well as that, we are informed from the book that all the things he did speak about in private with his followers, are not even contained in the book itself, so given his focus was on the human being connecting with The Metaphysical - specifically an Entity he referred to as "The Father" and that those important things will be "written in peoples hearts", Jesus seems not to have had much interest in either writing things or reading things which were written, probably because he understood the nature of human language to be a limitation, just as - it is written - he understood human logic acted as a barrier to The Metaphysical Universe...which - it is also written - he referred to as "The Kingdom of Heaven".

[marco]

Certainly that's what endless sermonizing would have us believe, mostly from preachers and churches whose primary interest is pulling in as many rubes as possible.

M, I am genuinely surprised by this level of cynicism. Do you actually think that most Christian preachers do not believe their own message and are only trying to pull as many people in as possible? Do you honestly believe that those who listen are rubes, as opposed to people searching for truth? Even if you ultimately disagree with them, I did not expect this level of cynicism from you.

Nothing in the quote from Mithrae suggests he is talking about "most Christian preachers". Perhaps you have mistaken the use of the adverb mostly which ascribes the practice to certain disreputables. He may indeed be cynical, but you have raised the level artificially or speculatively.

If we are taking things in chronological order then shouldnt we imagine reading Pauls letters first

That would draw us away from hearing about Christ's life, work and purpose and involve us with Paul's purpose, Paul's morality and Paul's improvements on what Christ tried to say.


A dozen words from Christ would be worth more than a dozen letters from Paul.