Lord,Liar or Lunatic

[sin_is_fun]

This is one question often asked by believers. "Either Jesus is lord,or liar or lunatic.Which view do you support?"

This question appears downright straight forward.It gives only 3 options.But the question is actually not straight forward and innocent as it appears.

The common man will hesitate a lot to say Jesus was a liar or lunatic..So then only the third alternative remains.

But I consider this question to be wrong.Why?

1.It doesnt include the other options.That is "Jesus never said those words"/"jesus never existed"/"He was misquoted"

Now these option changes the question to "Were the gospel writers liars,lunatics or true historians"?

There is no justification in asking the lord liar or lunatic question about jesus.Had he written a book we can ask that question.But he never wrote any book.What we have is "Reports on his words".So we have to question the genuineess of that report first before questioning the truthfulness of the speaker's words.

So the question should be "Were Matthew,mark,luke and john liars,true historians or lunatics?"

On further inspection we should still refine this question.Because this question implies that

1.Matthew,mark,luke and John existed
2.They wrote the supposed portions of Bible.
3.we have them exactly as they reported.

Bible passed on as oral traditions for some time.45- 95 A.D. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Pauline Epistles, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, and the book of Acts are all dated from 45-63 A.D. The Gospel of John and the Revelation may have been written as late as 95 A.D.

So now the question becomes

1.The people who heard bible,memorized it and passed it to others did so without any change in its text for many years.Yes or no?

The theory of chinese whispers comes to my mind.When 20 people are in a room and we say a sentence to one person and if he passes it to others secretly, the statement that emerges from the last person will be totally different from the initial statement.They will be totally different.

when one sentence changes like this what about a whole book?

So the "Liar,lord or lunatic" is a wrong question according to me.

What do you all think?

[Lotan]

Then I began to think otherwise, because in a way, it kind of proved to me that there had been no collaboration between the four writers and that they had got their information from four separate sources..

This argument, that the gospels disagree slightly because they are the testimonies of four separate witnesses and are therefore somehow more likely to be genuine, is about as intellectually dishonest as the "lord, liar, lunatic" argument. The pattern of agreement/disagreement that we see in the synoptic gospels ranges from exact word for word duplication to the inclusion of wholly unique passages.
" By definition the " Synoptics" are those gospels that report the same general outline for the story of Jesus. There is enough sustained agreement between the sequence of sayings & deeds that Matthew, Mark & Luke ascribe to Jesus to convince most scholars that the story-line of these gospels comes from the same text."- Mahlon H. Smith
From A Synoptic Gospels Primer - Parallel Texts in Matthew, Mark & Luke. Click on Gospel Outlines

[perplexed101]

are you guys n gals going to include the gospel of thomas as well? in the defense of authenticity we might as well include thomas as well too.
ol' doubting thomas heheh

those are unfamiliar here is some info:

http://www.gospels.net/other/patterson.html

(here we go piling up another debate full of links and criticizm lol)

[Curious]

are you guys n gals going to include the gospel of thomas as well? in the defense of authenticity we might as well include thomas as well too.
ol' doubting thomas heheh

If you are referring to the Gnostic script this does not tie in with the Paulian view of salvation or the necessity of the church. Are you trying to start a fight between these good folk? Mainstream Christians already slaughtered most of the Gnostics, don't get them started again!

[perplexed101]

are you guys n gals going to include the gospel of thomas as well? in the defense of authenticity we might as well include thomas as well too.
ol' doubting thomas heheh

If you are referring to the Gnostic script this does not tie in with the Paulian view of salvation or the necessity of the church. Are you trying to start a fight between these good folk? Mainstream Christians already slaughtered most of the Gnostics, don't get them started again!

you dont see what im trying to do, if we include all of the gospels we gain an understanding towards an unbiased nature and from there we can sift through which ones that are or are not canonical.

[Curious]

you dont see what im trying to do, if we include all of the gospels we gain an understanding towards an unbiased nature and from there we can sift through which ones that are or are not canonical.

Those that are in the bible are canonical and those that aren't tend not to be. Of course, relatively recent finds may appear canonical in some respects but as a rule of thumb, the scripture that was omitted tends to have been omitted because it didn't correspond with the message that the church was seeking to promote. Lots of omitted scripture, I am sure, would fill many mainstream Christian's with horror.

[perplexed101]

if this was a case study to find bias or unbias then we would have to include the uncanonical. whether that agrees with the message is irrelavant to this particular case study. Personally, i would rather agree with what is already written in the canonical gospels but the opposition does not want to look at it that way as they are ever continually searching for bias or disagreement.

[Curious]

if this was a case study to find bias or unbias then we would have to include the uncanonical. whether that agrees with the message is irrelavant to this particular case study.

I am not saying that the study is irrelevant only that the findings will be no great surprise. You make a good point which is relevant to the thread and would certainly cast light on the nature of Jesus and Christianity in general if it is looked at objectively, but I am sure , as you may have found, objectivity is a rare commodity. Since half the time people can't agree on the interpretation of the same scripture I believe we may, if we begin to introduce more scripture, be heading towards a theological quagmire.

[trencacloscas]

The most exquisite answer to this I found in poet Omar Khayam: "Are you drunk, Allah?"

[Tilia]

[

quote="Lotan"]

There is enough sustained agreement between the sequence of sayings & deeds that Matthew, Mark & Luke ascribe to Jesus to convince most scholars that the story-line of these gospels comes from the same text."[/i]- Mahlon H. Smith

How much of the synoptics is verbatim?

[Tilia]

We know from non-Biblical sources that Christianity was persecuted from an early stage, and the question arises of whether people would willingly suffer martyrdom for a belief they had made up, with no obvious advantage to be gained in this world.

What about the people who died with David Koresh or many other cults.

Did those people intend to die? Were they required to make an oath of allegiance to the American President as God?

How many Christians or muslims have become martyrs?

Many Christians have become martyrs, at the hands of Catholics, Muslims and even alleged Protestants.

Both views cannot be totally correct, but both have people willing to die believing that their view is the correct one.

Very many have died for freedom, the right to own property, etc., including millions in two world wars. What have Christians died for?