brunumb wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 9:00 pm
TRANSPONDER wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 5:58 pm
My particular take is that comparing the differences in the gospels can tell what has been altered or added and often, why.
Whatever was written down first and circulated must have generated responses from the audience at the time. Surely people would have asked questions concerning the details of the events being related to them. I'm wondering if later writers tried to ward off such questions by adding details to cover up deficiencies in the original stories. When these made the rounds new questions may have been generated prompting further interpolations. We seem to regard these stories as being written somewhat in a vacuum with no input apart from the authors working in isolation. Just a thought.
Putting myself in their position, what would people know other than what was preached to them? Especially after the Jewish war and a few associate Jewish Gentiles who followed Jewish teaching, Roman citizens who looked down on Christians and those who had bought into this very compelling mix of Jewish Eschatology and Gentilized messianism. And I suspect it appealed to those not usually welcomed into the more snobby cults like Mithraism. I can see why the Christian cult spread like wildfire.
Now I don't know what was taught about the religion at any particular time, though I might guess.
c 50 AD effectively Jewish messianism, seen as subversive.
c 90 AD Gentilised messianism still with a Jesus that had gone to heaven and would be coming any day now, but with Judaism shown as the bad guys.
c 150 circulating stories of various kinds and a messiah looking more like a demigod
the 200's AD collated gospels with Paulinist ideas spoken by Jesus and an empty tomb as proof that Jesus had resurrected.
c 300 AD completing the gospels with a magical birth fulfilling prophecy and a solid body resurrection
mid 300's Josephus and Paul's letters leading 'Luke' to revise the gospels to remake the Apostolic mission a Pauline mission.
I may have extended the timelime to much
but I see the stages of Christianity and the gospels as evolutionary, from the textural morphology. Like the pretty obvious later addition fo the gospels of the nativities and resurrection appearances because of a need to deal with these problems.
I might finally observe (not for the first time) that glaring errors and discrepancies have been effectively glossed over by Gospel - apologists for the last couple of hundred years. During my time, the nativity was still seen as broadly credible. The vigorous apologetics to try to make it work have only been shown spirited but invalid over the past few decades and I have to say only by myself with story comparison and a colleague on my former forum on dating.
Why could nobody else, these Experts, do this? Why was it left to a couple of amateuts?
p.s I sometimes got the impression of John when he wasn't penning theiological sermons to stuff into Jesus' mouth, might have travelled around with a tourists' guide to Jerusalem with some tourist guide stuff like the healing properties of the pool of Siloam, or the Gabattha pavement in the Praetorum, which could be handily brought into the gospel to add the impression of being eyewitness. Just an impression, i have.