Who Wrote The Gospels?

[headinhands]

"Matthew contains 606 of Markâ??s 661 verses. Luke contains 320 of Markâ??s 661 verses. Of the 55 verses of Mark which Matthew does not reproduce, Luke reproduces 31; therefore there are only 24 verses in all of Mark not reproduced somewhere in Matthew or Luke."

A good diagram here

I think. Typo. (2nd paragraph)

I am aware that you are not a Flat Earther. It is an example to show you that there are beliefs that are not believable, and it is objectively possible to prove them wrong.

I am still banging on about this because you still don't get that:
(1) Anything at least one person believes is not necessarily 'believable".
(2) Humans are perfectly capable of being "absolutely objective" (as when they are testing fossils or taking the picture of our round Earth from space)
(3) Reality is not subjective and "Everyone is right in their own way tra la la" does not work in the real world we observe around us.

"However this does not mean I regard certain views concerning these subjects as unbelievable. From that other perspective, if you put yourselves entirely in their shoes...."

Put yourself in the shoes of these nutjobs. What do you see? I see people whose brain have turned into mush and can't function as analytical wonders they have evolved to be, possibly because they have been pickled in too much religion for too long.

"... , their views are believable because they believe them"

Once again, That Is Not What The Word 'Believable' Means. And its definition will not change because you want it to, no matter how much you insist that language is fluid etc.

Cote

Note the dictionary definition I linked to up-thread uses the word 'especially'.

": capable of being believed especially as within the range of known possibility or probability"

That is that an assertion can still be considered believable, even if it is not within the range of known possibility or probability but it can be considered especially believable if it is. Hence I talked of scale in terms of believability.

I have stated a number of times that I think reality does exist, objectively, regardless of people's perceptions. However people's perceptions alter they way they can in interpret reality.

PS regarding human objectivity and perceptions did you read the psychology article posted on the previous page?

Think about it, how could knowledge increase if we never allowed ourselves to be surprised?

If all that was discovered was only considered believable if it fell into the range of known possibility or probability, bracket. Human kind (as a whole) might actually be genuinely still believing the earth is flat...

I think there is a need for people to be visionaries in this world, often going against, challenging and testing popularly held beliefs, in order to progress....

Added to which I do not mind my Christian beliefs being tested and challenged, I end up with more clarity long term, as a result.

However ridicule is never easy to take.

You are clutching at straws

Your dictionary link provides the synonyms of 'believable' as credible, creditable, likely, plausible, presumptive, probable. That must be because the authors of that dictionary actually know the definition of the word 'believable', unlike you.

And you are not answering most of what I write, which, along with your refusal to acknowledge the validity of the simplest concepts like believability and objectiveness, is making me think I'm losing my time here.

Cote I am concerned with accuracy and not closing my mind to possible interpretations in meaning, rather than clutching at straws. I have found this pursuit helpful when analysing anything.

Losing your time? Well you might get to know more of world views other than your own....which I would have thought could only help increase awareness.

Cote do you see everything in terms of absolutes?

See? You don't answer anything. What about the synonyms from your link that I posted for the second time?

"their views are believable because they believe them" is total nonsense. That is not what 'believable' means. If you really don't see that, I'm sorry for whatever the reason is that you are not capable of understanding this very simple concept.

And if you are so err... different than the rest of us that you can't even understand what everyday words mean, I have indeed been losing my time here because no understanding is possible and this is not a dialogue.

This is me beating my head for days against the impenetrable shield of your 'faith', which has possibly so clouded your critical thinking faculties with its fantastical mythology that everything looks equally believable to you because someone somewhere believes in it.

Wasting your time Cote. I don't think this 'discussion' is entirely on the level.

Synonyms can be, often are, words of similar meaning rather than identical meaning...as anyone who has ever attempted to use Roget's Thesaurus as an attempt to liven up their writing no doubt has discovered! .

As for not understanding what everyday words mean, I am an English Graduate....maybe this is the explanation.

What level are you talking about Denzel?

Cote , remember I talked of scale, in terms of believability. So although I think we all have our own individual sense of scale in this respect, not everything is equally believable to me, as an individual. I just acknowledge others will have their own perspective concerning what is believable.

I'm with you, Denzel. I've had more productive conversations with people on E and LSD.

capsium - I don't mean this as an insult - just that you sound like you are broadcasting from another planet, where reality is fuzzy stuff & words have 'fluid'/malleable meanings. Seems like you are happy there, though, so I will stop bothering you with the realities of Planet Earth

Apologies for the butting in, but I've been following bits of this with interest.

Re 'believable', actually I think I'd come down on the side of saying that it can be used in a non-objective way, ie if even one person believes something to be true, then it is by definition believable (rather than objectively true etc).

You could turn it round and say 'I find it quite unbelievable that you don't like tomatoes, they are so luscious'. It's a valid use of the word 'unbelievable' even though the person is clearly 'wrong' - because the person they are talking to really doesn't like tomatoes.

(I don't think the Bible is believable in any supernatural god-driven sense though, although there are obviously plenty that do.)

So where were we?

What I'd like to know is more about the process used to cobble together the NT. How the early church decided to veto so many gospels. If god inspire the supposed four writers of the NT gospels why didn't he uninspire the ones who wrote the rogue gospels? Why allow the confusion?

I'm sure we've talked about this before head [busmile]

The process used to collect NT books together was rigorous, consistent and agreed by the great majority of believers. Basically, the conditions books had to fulfil to get in the canon were;

-the books were widely used by the early church, in agreement with each other and with the other books used
-the books were all recognised as having some kind of apostolic origin or at least connection

There were many early Christian writings/letters which were in line with beliefs and widely used, but they were left out as canon and left as 'helpful writings', obviously they were not viewed in the same light as the 27 books which were included - probably for the second reason above.

As for the 'rogue gospels', eg Thomas, Mary etc, they were left out simply because they were a/not widely used and b/not in any kind of agreement with the vast majority of writings - canonical and non - that were used. Some of the premises in these 'gospels' were ridiculously out of step with the rest of the information available. Don't forget the rigorous oral tradion as well - there would be a lot of very detailed information handed down from generation to generation, and the 'lost gospels' were out of step with all this.

It's quite simple - these writings were not included because they were not widely used and agreed. It would be like including some obscure self published badly written kindle book with a great literature anthology - simply not comparable.

A couple more interesting points about the compilation of the canon:

The term 'canon' comes from the Greek word kanon meaning 'reed'. A reed was a measuring tool, and the word is associated with a standard/fixed point. So the word 'canon' in this context means a defined group of books seen as authoritative in the Christian community.

The books in wide usage from early on were used across a wide variety of peoples and places - there was a huge circulation for something so recent, a large amount of material, huge in comparison to other historical documents. This meant that it would be very difficult to interlope or interpolate any part of the documents - as they would all necessarily need to agree with one another, across nations. Therefore the compilation of the canon wasn't merely a stab in the dark or a few blokes saying 'pick this one, pick this one' - it was to the background of years and centuries of agreement between not only a few diverse groups but large groups across borders and nations. They couldn't pick the bits they wanted and leave out the rest - it wouldn't have been seen as authoritative by worshippers. The NT books were used weekly and more by Christians.

Also it's evident that from early on Christians were treating certain books - ie what we now know as NT books - as authoritative - by the end of the 1st c, Clement was quoting Corinthians as with the same level of authority as the OT. Justin Martyr did similarly with the Gospels.

I find it fascinating actually, the sheer amount of manuscripts in existence from early on - we may not have any extant ones but we have third generation and above, and there are literally thousands, with very little major error margin - the errors are all what you'd expect from early writings spanning so many languages and cultures - grammatical, mainly. Fascinating that we can know exactly what early Christians were believing, amazing that we can know that history couldn't change the message of what was handed down. Love this subject :)

Can't quite read that BigDorrit - can I have a linky please?

Thanks

Fairly amusing. Shame it's all so....well.... innacurate

Did like the picture of the King and the Pope with their placards

Right at the end of this documentary it shows how the Torah is written. A lot of care goes into it.