The Gospel Writers

[Realworldjack]

What can we know (demonstrate) about the authors of what we call "The Gospels"? Notice carefully that I am not talking about opinions here, but rather what we can know to be a fact, and how we would go about demonstrating it to be a fact we can know?

[William]

What can we know (demonstrate) about the authors of what we call "The Gospels"? Notice carefully that I am not talking about opinions here, but rather what we can know to be a fact, and how we would go about demonstrating it to be a fact we can know?

Off the top of my head, we can establish to an acceptable degree that they all responded differently in relation to their position regarding Jesus.

We can thus opt to factor that in when regarding the Gospels.

As to then establishing facts, we can say that the gospels were attributed as being written by men with names and a story to tell, from the perspective of their own experience. These men are characters in the story presented. We know nothing more about them, other than what is written in the gospels.

We cannot know that these characters themselves were not penned by those who were storytellers - created characters who were not actually real, but may have been based upon real men.

The storytellers remain anonymous, except that there is reference to The Father - who we can regard as The Main Storyteller.

The characters within the story claim to speak on behalf of The Father, through The Son, and are enabled to do this through The Holy Invisible Entity.

The Holy Invisible Entity is said to be able to be 'seen' in the works of creation.

[elphidium55]

Regarding Papias's claim that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew; Faithless writes:

The legend of a Hebrew gospel by Matthew is just that, legend.

I totally agree. The same could be said for Aramaic, which early Christian Greek speakers often mistook for Hebrew.

So, at least in the case of Matthew, Papas is unreliable. Doesn't this then increase the likelihood that he was also unreliable about Mark?

[Realworldjack]

I did a fair amount of research many years ago into this very question. Going from memory the initial problem with the gospels is that they were written in Greek. There is no evidence of translations from earlier writings.

According to the stories themselves, Jesus and his disciples were uneducated Jews during a period where all but the wealthy were uneducated. Mark may be a bit more crude than other writings but they still show an educated Greek writer. The story includes chiasms and stories wrapped within stories, all of which show a Greek education. So, out of the gate, none of the gospels seem to be written by apostles or those associated with them if we also want to claim the simple followers of Jesus were peasants.

In those days, no one that wrote a piece of literature would identify it as “according to Mark�. This is how one would identify someone else writing a story they heard from Mark at a minimum. Until Iraneus identified the gospel writings, there were papers circulating known only as memoirs of the apostles. It is suspected that Iraneus is the one that named them.

Matthew and Luke copied extensively from Mark, often word for word, other times seeming to “correct� what Mark wrote. The legend of a Hebrew gospel by Matthew is just that, legend. The Matthew we have was an original Greek composition, mostly a rewrite of Mark with a suspected Q source for the remaining. Luke seems to have used this Q source as well but in completely different settings...as though they had some sayings but no context to fill it in and Matthew and Luke each created their own context.

I’ll stop here for now. Most secular scholarship claims we have no idea who the original authors are and it’s lost to time.

While I do see some flaws in your logic here, and would love to address them, I really would like to focus on, what we can know to be a fact concerning the Gospel authors.

So, out of the gate, none of the gospels seem to be written by apostles or those associated with them if we also want to claim the simple followers of Jesus were peasants.

So then, is this to say we can demonstrate it to be a fact that, "none of the gospels were written by apostles or those associated with them", because we demonstrate it to be a fact that, "the followers of Jesus were peasants"? Or, is this something we would have to assume?

Matthew and Luke copied extensively from Mark, often word for word, other times seeming to “correct� what Mark wrote.

Can this be demonstrated to be a fact? Or, is this simply an opinion of the facts, and evidence, which cannot be demonstrated to be a fact? If it is a fact we can know, then how would one go about demonstrating this to be a fact?

Next, is it a fact which can be demonstrated that the authors of Matthew, and Luke copied from the content of Mark, and would have also both had a copy of "Q"? Or, would this simply be an opinion which cannot be demonstrated?

You see, I am attempting to determine if there is anything we can know about these authors for a fact? Or, are you suggesting that what you say above can be demonstrated to be fact?

[William]

[Replying to post 23 by Realworldjack]

You see, I am attempting to determine if there is anything we can know about these authors for a fact?

I can see nothing we can know about 'these authors' which is fact. Can you see something?

[Realworldjack]

What can we know (demonstrate) about the authors of what we call "The Gospels"? Notice carefully that I am not talking about opinions here, but rather what we can know to be a fact, and how we would go about demonstrating it to be a fact we can know?

Off the top of my head, we can establish to an acceptable degree that they all responded differently in relation to their position regarding Jesus.

We can thus opt to factor that in when regarding the Gospels.

As to then establishing facts, we can say that the gospels were attributed as being written by men with names and a story to tell, from the perspective of their own experience. These men are characters in the story presented. We know nothing more about them, other than what is written in the gospels.

We cannot know that these characters themselves were not penned by those who were storytellers - created characters who were not actually real, but may have been based upon real men.

The storytellers remain anonymous, except that there is reference to The Father - who we can regard as The Main Storyteller.

The characters within the story claim to speak on behalf of The Father, through The Son, and are enabled to do this through The Holy Invisible Entity.

The Holy Invisible Entity is said to be able to be 'seen' in the works of creation.

I see what I believe to be flaws in logic here as well, but the main question here is, what can we demonstrate to be a fact about the authors of the Gospels?

[William]

What can we know (demonstrate) about the authors of what we call "The Gospels"? Notice carefully that I am not talking about opinions here, but rather what we can know to be a fact, and how we would go about demonstrating it to be a fact we can know?

Off the top of my head, we can establish to an acceptable degree that they all responded differently in relation to their position regarding Jesus.

We can thus opt to factor that in when regarding the Gospels.

As to then establishing facts, we can say that the gospels were attributed as being written by men with names and a story to tell, from the perspective of their own experience. These men are characters in the story presented. We know nothing more about them, other than what is written in the gospels.

We cannot know that these characters themselves were not penned by those who were storytellers - created characters who were not actually real, but may have been based upon real men.

The storytellers remain anonymous, except that there is reference to The Father - who we can regard as The Main Storyteller.

The characters within the story claim to speak on behalf of The Father, through The Son, and are enabled to do this through The Holy Invisible Entity.

The Holy Invisible Entity is said to be able to be 'seen' in the works of creation.

I see what I believe to be flaws in logic here as well, but the main question here is, what can we demonstrate to be a fact about the authors of the Gospels?

I can see nothing we can know about 'these authors' which is fact. Can you see something?

[Realworldjack]

What can we know (demonstrate) about the authors of what we call "The Gospels"? Notice carefully that I am not talking about opinions here, but rather what we can know to be a fact, and how we would go about demonstrating it to be a fact we can know?

Off the top of my head, we can establish to an acceptable degree that they all responded differently in relation to their position regarding Jesus.

We can thus opt to factor that in when regarding the Gospels.

As to then establishing facts, we can say that the gospels were attributed as being written by men with names and a story to tell, from the perspective of their own experience. These men are characters in the story presented. We know nothing more about them, other than what is written in the gospels.

We cannot know that these characters themselves were not penned by those who were storytellers - created characters who were not actually real, but may have been based upon real men.

The storytellers remain anonymous, except that there is reference to The Father - who we can regard as The Main Storyteller.

The characters within the story claim to speak on behalf of The Father, through The Son, and are enabled to do this through The Holy Invisible Entity.

The Holy Invisible Entity is said to be able to be 'seen' in the works of creation.

I see what I believe to be flaws in logic here as well, but the main question here is, what can we demonstrate to be a fact about the authors of the Gospels?

I can see nothing we can know about 'these authors' which is fact. Can you see something?

Well, I guess I will make my reply here.

[Zzyzx]

.

I can see nothing we can know about 'these authors' which is fact. Can you see something?

We can 'know' that long ago various people wrote their thoughts / opinions / conjectures / stories about 'gods'. Their writing was repeatedly selected, translated, interpreted, and edited by multiple unidentified people.

We know that there are fifty-five (55) versions of the Bible in English alone, some of which are considerably different from others.

What we don't know is if any of the writings are truthful and accurate reports of events and conversations that actually occurred in the real world.

Some modern people have been convinced to base life decisions on the gamble that the tales are true.

[Mithrae]

We can 'know' that.... Their writing was repeatedly selected, translated, interpreted, and edited by multiple unidentified people.

How do you know that? Modern biblical translations are done by identified scholars, and tend to be based on the earliest available Greek manuscripts (the original language). So in the steps between original composition and what we read today - and some known exceptions such as the adulteress pericope aside - what makes you think that there was any translation, interpretation or editing by multiple unidentified people?

Why can it not be the case that 99% of the content on which identified modern professional translators depend was simply transmitted from copy to copy by the ancient scribes, in its original language and as faithfully as possible? On what basis do you know otherwise?


And if it comes to it, how do you know that the original authors wrote nothing more than thoughts, opinions, conjectures and stories?

[elphidium55]

Modern biblical translations .. tend to be based on the earliest available Greek manuscripts (the original language).

So it seems that, at least for the case of Matthew, it was an original Greek composition which could not have been written by Matthew. And given that Matthew did not write "Matthew," shouldn't that fact lessen our confidence that Matthew was involved with it at all? After all, Papias was flat-out wrong about it being written in Hebrew or Aramaic. So the most parsimonious hypothesis is that the association of Matthew with "his" gospel was folkloric and/or theological, not historical.

So in the steps between original composition and what we read today - and some known exceptions such as the adulteress pericope aside

But the adulteress pericope in John is proven problematic because the earlier manuscripts lack it and the latter ones don't. Given that this proves that John was fiddled with, shouldn't this fact make it more probable that others parts of John were similarly "edited." What wouldn't we find in earlier manuscripts of John?

Why can it not be the case that 99% of the content on which identified modern professional translators depend was simply transmitted from copy to copy by the ancient scribes, in its original language and as faithfully as possible?

In the case of John, it wasn't transmitted faithfully. The adulteress pericope proves that. Saying that it is 99% faithfully transmitted is like a husband saying he is 99% faithfull to his wife, or Mark Twain boasting that his stories were "mostly true."