Why should we believe the gospels?

[AndyDT]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

The evidence for the existence of Jesus all comes from after his lifetime.[37][38][39] As a result, some critics argue that Biblical scholars have created the historical Jesus in their own image.[40][41] A small number of scholars believe the gospel accounts are so mythical in nature that nothing, including the very existence of Jesus, can be determined from them.[42]

Ehrman emphasizes that "[t]he sources of the Gospels are riddled with just the same problems that we found in the Gospels themselves: they, too, represent traditions that were passed down by word of mouth, year after year, among Christians who sometimes changed the stories—indeed, sometimes invented the stories—as they retold them."

[Philawallafox]

Because they were written so close to jesus lifetime they still had to be accountable. It's not hard to check a tomb, nor is it hard to ask an eyewitness.

[rumborak]

Because they were written so close to jesus lifetime they still had to be accountable.

Que?

The time passed between Jesus' death and the first gospels is one of the biggest criticisms about the veracity of the claims made in them. The oldest gospel is Mark, and that was written 70AD, 40 years after Jesus' death. That's 40 years of oral tradition.

The only Abrahamic religion that can make any claim on historicity is Islam, since the Quran was written during Muhammad's lifetime.

rumborak

[ack44]

I was watching a video of Josh McDowell giving his testimony yesterday, and he said that when he was a non-Christian he had a sudden revelation that the Bible was indeed a "true" account of Jesus' life. He didn't give an explanation of why he embraced that conclusion, but he did mention before that he had "wanted what the Christians had." I think its more of that wanting that makes the "reason" for belief, rather than the appeal of reasons that can be described as "evidence."

[bosk1]

The oldest gospel is Mark, and that was written 70AD, 40 years after Jesus' death. That's 40 years of oral tradition.

I know that's the hip, popular view at the seminaries, but it's highly doubtful that that's the case.  Acts was likely written in the 60s (given that it does not mention Paul's final imprisonment and death and does not mention the destruction of Jerusalem), and given that Luke wrote it after the gospel of Luke, Luke was clearly earlier.  If you believe Mark was the earliest, the only thing you can really say for certain about when it was written is that it was likely sometime between about 30 A.D. and 60 A.D., and there really isn't any concrete evidence indicating an earlier or later date.

[rumborak]

I know that's the hip, popular view at the seminaries, but it's highly doubtful that that's the case.

You know, given that I don't bank my personal salvation on a certain version, I go with what the majority of people think who make this kind of investigation their living. The majority of scholars believe Mark is the oldest. If you want to make yourself feel better by belittling their work as "hip and popular", your call.

Scholars are in general agreement that the Jewish Christians up to the destruction of the Temple had no written Gospels being circulated among them.[21][22][23][24][25]

rumborak

[William Wallace]

Continuing with Bosk's description of "hip" biblical scholarship, I'd like to point out that many other experts have taken issue with Ehrman's panic button analysis of the gospels, which has probably become so popular among skeptics because they like his conclusion, and have read little else on the subject. The impact of oral tradition on the reliability of Gospels has been oversold by folks who don't want them to be reliable. The same is true of modifications that were made to the stories as they were passed down.

 

[AndyDT]

And Paul never met Jesus in person which gives me some scepticism for a start about the extrapolations he makes about Jesus.

[Philawallafox]

Jesus only made extrapolations himself.

They both get their material from the OT.

[TheOutlawXanadu]

Because they were written so close to jesus lifetime they still had to be accountable. It's not hard to check a tomb, nor is it hard to ask an eyewitness.

If I totally missed your point here, then I apologize. But this makes me curious:

Pretty much every study ever done on eyewitness accounts says that they are totally unreliable.

So how much weight do people here actually give to such accounts, such as what you, Philawallafox, are talking about here?

(I'm guessing you're talking about Jesus' resurrection? I'm kind of clueless when it comes to this stuff, so please steer me right if I'm confused)

[rumborak]

Continuing with Bosk's description of "hip" biblical scholarship, I'd like to point out that many other experts have taken issue with Ehrman's panic button analysis of the gospels, which has probably become so popular among skeptics because they like his conclusion, and have read little else on the subject. The impact of oral tradition on the reliability of Gospels has been oversold by folks who don't want them to be reliable. The same is true of modifications that were made to the stories as they were passed down.

I personally don't think so, partly because it's Christianity we're talking about, meaning Ehrman and the like are surrounded by Christians who look very discerningly at their conclusions. In fact, when reading Ehrman's book I thought it was quite remarkable that he complelely stayed away from bashing the gospels. He pointed out the issues there were with the gospels, but whether or not this meant they can be trusted (religiously) he left up to the reader.

I mean, when you look at the evidence, the account of Jesus' ministry has a lot of issues. It was passed down orally for decades before anything was written down, it was later "directed" by someone who had never met Jesus and who in many cases "re-interpreted" Jesus. The gospel version one happens to read were not chosen based on historical veracity, they were chosen as an outcome of power play.
I was an altar boy for many years and listened to a lot of sermons in that time. At least from my experience, the community was intentionally kept completely ignorant of any issues regarding the gospels. Everything was sold as 100% accurate, 100% by the authors who they claimed to be. I think it's only now where people are rationally looking at the gospels, armed with modern tools of text analysis and archeology, that we get a more accurate picture of authorships and influences on the accounts of the ministry.

rumborak

[contest_sanity]

Pretty much every study ever done on eyewitness accounts says that they are totally unreliable.

But isn't a lot of history (at least until fairly recently) based pretty heavily on eyewitness accounts or testimony?  Concerning ancient persons or events, we "know" about them for the most part because someone wrote down an account.  Perhaps the author in question was an eyewitness himself, or perhaps he was relaying the testimony of an eyewitness.  Either way, it seems to me to come down to someone somewhere trusting someone else's word on something.  Without that, we would have very little written history at all before the advent of things like photographs and video which do not require a person's testimony.  Of course, there are things like coins and other artifacts from the ancient world, but these often require a historical context to make sense of them.  Again, particularly for the ancient world, any written document is going to ultimately be based on someone's telling of something.  Are all accounts therefore equal?  Certainly not; we have to critically evaluate them.  But to say that all eyewitness accounts are unreliable for history would, in my view, severely limit us in saying much of anything about a significant span of history.

[j]

I was an altar boy for many years and listened to a lot of sermons in that time. At least from my experience, the community was intentionally kept completely ignorant of any issues regarding the gospels. Everything was sold as 100% accurate, 100% by the authors who they claimed to be. I think it's only now where people are rationally looking at the gospels, armed with modern tools of text analysis and archeology, that we get a more accurate picture of authorships and influences on the accounts of the ministry.

I don't think there's any type of concerted effort to keep people in the dark with regard to points of contention about biblical authenticity, the historicity of Christianity, etc.  It's just that most of the people you'll find in a church's congregation are largely past those issues, or don't care about them, or are willfully oblivious to them, or whatever.  Sermons are generally geared toward believers with the goal of fostering growth in their faith or understanding, rather than toward skeptics who are questioning the foundations of the religion.  I think it would be very strange for a priest or minister to address the possibility of biblical texts being inaccurate or false, given the audience.

-J

[hefdaddy42]

Because they were written so close to jesus lifetime they still had to be accountable. It's not hard to check a tomb, nor is it hard to ask an eyewitness.

It's hard to ask an eyewitness if they're all dead.  Which they would have been by the time that Mark was written.  And it isn't really "hip" to say that Mark was the first gospel written; it just fits the evidence.

There was nothing or no one to hold accountable.  Jerusalem was destroyed by the time of the writing of Mark (or at least by the spread of Mark), and anyone that would or could have disputed it probably wouldn't have known about the book, or still been alive to dispute it.

Having said that, I think the Synoptic Gospels are still relatively dependable in depicting things that Jesus said.

[contest_sanity]

On the question of oral tradition as it relates to the Gospels, it is a far more complex matter than simply saying, "Well, 40 years of 'telephone' are not likely to give us much that is authentic."  That is a Western anachronism that doesn't do justice to the ancient Middle East.  There is compelling scholarship that argues for something called informal controlled oral tradition that can account for authentic transmission of Jesus' words and deeds between the years of C.E. 30 and 70.  Check out the following article: Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels by Kenneth Bailey.

https://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_tradition_bailey.html

[rumborak]

On the question of oral tradition as it relates to the Gospels, it is a far more complex matter than simply saying, "Well, 40 years of 'telephone' are not likely to give us much that is authentic."  That is a Western anachronism that doesn't do justice to the ancient Middle East.  There is compelling scholarship that argues for something called informal controlled oral tradition that can account for authentic transmission of Jesus' words and deeds between the years of C.E. 30 and 70.  Check out the following article: Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels by Kenneth Bailey.

https://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_tradition_bailey.html

There's several key issues with his hypothesis, in my humble opinion:
1. Jesus never intended his words to matter after the Kingdom would come. There is never any mention that his words would have to be remembered verbatim. The message counted, never the wording. Otherwise the gospels would never have different wording or order of sequence as they do. No gospel writer would have dared move around stuff like they did if rote memorization was a key element in scriptural transmission.
2. He uses Islam as a comparison. Islam from the beginning had a detailed written account. Meaning, any student of Islam trying to remember the Quran had something he could look up in. Christianity had no such written account for 40 years. It is ridiculous to assume that people would transmit solely verbally something as lengthy as the gospels. Take the Quran as a point of comparison, and look at how long students have to pore over the written Quran before they remember the exact wording of it. How do you do that when everything is verbally? Ask the teacher 2,000 times about the exact wording of everything?
3. There is no mention of his hypothesized practice.

So no, it didn't happen. Honestly, I think it's pretty obvious that in early Christianity, the wording didn't really matter. Why would it? They were waiting for the Second Coming, what use would it have to recite Jesus' exact wording? Following the lifestyle as laid by Jesus was important. It also makes obvious why there was no scripture up until much after Jesus' death. When you're waiting for the Kingdom, who would you be writing for? Only when they realized they were in for the long haul did they decide the need for scripture was there, and that's when the gospels came into being.

rumborak

[Voyage 34]

There's no reason to believe the gospels. Regardless of which one was written first, the were all written decades after Jesus lived. Also they can't seem to agree on several things. There is no Roman historical record of a census that required people to return to their place of birth either.

[jsem]

The only Abrahamic religion that can make any claim on historicity is Islam, since the Quran was written during Muhammad's lifetime.

Wasn't it written from the beginning, but just never given to mankind until muhammad showed up?

I have to ask the muslims in class...

[Adami]

The only Abrahamic religion that can make any claim on historicity is Islam, since the Quran was written during Muhammad's lifetime.

Wasn't it written from the beginning, but just never given to mankind until muhammad showed up?

I have to ask the muslims in class...

Written from the begining?

[jsem]

The only Abrahamic religion that can make any claim on historicity is Islam, since the Quran was written during Muhammad's lifetime.

Wasn't it written from the beginning, but just never given to mankind until muhammad showed up?

I have to ask the muslims in class...

Written from the begining?

It was at least not written by a man, because that would leave possibility for imperfections.

That is, in the view of the muslim that I talk to the most in class - he's extremely faithful to islam.

[Adami]

I'm pretty sure muslims believe it was written by man, but directly told to by a prophet.

[sonatafanica]

Why should we believe the gospels?

Anything that takes such a massive amount of suspension of disbelief such as the gospels (in both content and process of recording) probably can't be defended all that much.

[Perpetual Change]

Why should we believe the gospels?

Anything that takes such a massive amount of suspension of disbelief such as the gospels (in both content and process of recording) probably can't be defended all that much.

People who only believe in things they can objectively prove are frankly not getting the whole point of believing in things.

[Jamesman42]

Why should we believe the gospels?

Anything that takes such a massive amount of suspension of disbelief such as the gospels (in both content and process of recording) probably can't be defended all that much.

Those are good reasons, the ones that are nonexistent.

[Voyage 34]

Why should we believe the gospels?

Anything that takes such a massive amount of suspension of disbelief such as the gospels (in both content and process of recording) probably can't be defended all that much.

People who only believe in things they can objectively prove are frankly not getting the whole point of believing in things.

True. I really don't see the point in believing in things.

[sonatafanica]

Why should we believe the gospels?

Anything that takes such a massive amount of suspension of disbelief such as the gospels (in both content and process of recording) probably can't be defended all that much.

People who only believe in things they can objectively prove are frankly not getting the whole point of believing in things.

Prove it.

[Perpetual Change]

Well then I can only 'defend' this by pointing to the the people who practice Christianity and feel their life is better for it regardless of the presence of absolute proof.

[Ħ]

What I wanna know is why scholars would commit their lives to debunking the Bible.  I mean, OK, you don't have to believe the Bible.  So, now you can either 1) move on and do something else, or 2) stick around and make a big stink.

For those scholars that believe in an eternal existence, they really don't do a good job of "seizing the day."  Surely there are more mentally healthy ways to be happy than to prance around stepping on everyone's toes.

[Perpetual Change]

I don't mind it, Brother. The churches should have never been concerned with taunting the supposed scientific proof and objective fact of the gospels. That that was their focus in the past and still is in many places today is what I believe has led to disappointing misunderstandings of the faith like the ones sonata just framed his answer on. There's much more to having faith and being part of religion than proving they're historically accurate or scientifically possible.

[Adami]

What I wanna know is why scholars would commit their lives to debunking the Bible.  I mean, OK, you don't have to believe the Bible.  So, now you can either 1) move on and do something else, or 2) stick around and make a big stink.

For those scholars that believe in an eternal existence, they really don't do a good job of "seizing the day."  Surely there are more mentally healthy ways to be happy than to prance around stepping on everyone's toes.

Because your religion is better off with those people.

[rumborak]

First of all, the Bible is an interesting historical document. I for one don't believe a single word of it, but I like reading about it as it shows a fascinating insight into history, humanity and linguistics.
Second of all, if the Bible is being used for arguing equal time of Creationism in school rooms, one has to do something about it, simple as that.
And frankly, what kind of a strange argument is it to say "we shouldn't know more about the Bible"? I mean, you stake your soul on the veracity of the claims made in the Bible; don't you find it weird to say that you'd rather not know whether the claims are true or not?

rumborak

[Adami]

Good points rumby.

If someone is true, it won't be able to be proven false, try as they might.

[Ħ]

It's just the attitude of the whole thing.  There is no humble approach about it.  It's very...smug and elitist.  

Like, we scholars have the proper education and training, but you don't, so you'd better listen to us, pedestrian.

Maybe you are right in that they are simply madly in love with history and are having the time of their lives picking the Bible apart, but I get a strong sense of bitterness, cynicism, and even arrogance.

[Adami]

The only sense of bitterness is right here in this thread.

[Jamesman42]

Why should we believe the gospels?

Anything that takes such a massive amount of suspension of disbelief such as the gospels (in both content and process of recording) probably can't be defended all that much.

People who only believe in things they can objectively prove are frankly not getting the whole point of believing in things.

Prove it.

Belief isn't such a provable thing, and I'm not quite sure why you're posting like this in here, making posts that seem rather provoking (for lack of a better term at the moment).

Like, we have The Bible. You and I can pick it up, analyze it, and come to different conclusions. Will those conclusions be based on our experiences before we read its content? Yes, they could be similar or dissimilar. We can prove/disprove things about the Bible through various methods (archeology, cross examinations of secular accounts of an event or person, etc.), and our beliefs may stem from those things.

To continue from that point but to lead into something much deeper, it's what that content says. The Bible is believed by many to contain (well, to give hef his due) some truth about the soul. This is the reality of it. Do we have a soul? That is another belief that, with experience, we cannot fully say...but believe from what we know about what a soul is, or what it could be, what it could be for. The thing is, however, is that it is objective. We do, or we do not hae a soul. There is no in between that I am aware of, or that would make sense. If the Bible is speaking about being saved (read: our souls being saved), that's deep enough to warrant an examination at one's beliefs. Saying "Prove it" is really off base, because what is there to prove. Like PC said, it's missing the point. You take what we know in this world (for example, The Bible), and make your value judgments. And if the soul is there, The Bible may "awaken" you to see something more, something true about God, and that you may have a soul.

In short, asking for proof in dealing with belief is sort of a weird thing. We can prove things surrounding the belief, but we can't prove the belief is true. That's why it is belief.