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

People go on about 'cherry picking', in the most derogatory terms.

I have a cherry tree in my garden and eat the fruit that is ripe first. Once that is all eaten the rest has ripened. I wouldn't try and pick and eat all the fruit at once, because even I couldn't eat that much. Equally I would wait to eat the sour fruit, in time I would expect it to ripen. Although I 'cherry pick' the ripe fruit I know there is more fruit there, which will ripen in time.

This, I think, is like the message of the Bible. Cannot be taken in all at once. What appears 'sour' , I believe, will ripen in time, with more knowledge/revelation.

Equally I don't pick and throw away fruit off the tree, that is not ripe and ready to be eaten.

rabbitrisen If by 'believe' you mean, take absolutely literally as an account of the formation of the world, and interpret in line with the creationist web site you linked to, then no, I don't.

If by 'believe' you mean take seriously as foundational theology, taking due account of the process of its composition, its genre, its place in Western and Eastern Christian thought, its role as a central story in our culture and the massive debates within theology about its meanings, yes I do.

If by 'believe' you mean respond to its rich meanings as a human response to God, yes I do.

I don't think it is right to cherry-pick bits of the Bible: it's there in its entirety, difficult parts and all. But I am committed to using the best tools there are to understand it, and those include critical textual scholarship, the tradition of interpretation and my own reason.

Do you believe that the bible is all God inspired?

In the sense that it is a human response to God, yes.

Re. 'cherry picking' just means I know I don't know it all yet niminy . I have not fully understood it, mentally processed it. .

Funny video here neatly desrcibes the way a christian explains faith,

www.mediaite.com/online/god-did-it-funny-or-die-unveils-the-creationist-answer-to-cosmos/

It was quite funny actually.

And so bad, it was almost good!

re dinosaurs.
Genesis 1 v 21. God created great sea monsters. Elsewhere in the bible it mentions them too. Psalm 148.
I have no problem with believing that dinosaurs existed. No problem at all.

In answer to a question upthread. Yes we are supposed to question.

But the answers, all that we need, are in the bible.

I realise that most people on this thread have read it, but to others, please read it for yourselves.
And if you are a beginner, the Good News is good enough. For others, or those that want a more robust version, the NRSV [New Revised Standard Version] is my personal choice.

Most beginners or maybe lapsed, start with the Gospels. Mark for a short read, the gospel of John for more indepth [struggle with that particular gospel myself!].

Or why not start at the beginning- as with all books. I have read the bible from start to end. Most of the gripping stuff is in the Old testament anyway.

Niminy, given that you say most ministers know the gospels were not written on the spot by the disciples do you not find it shocking how many Christians believe they were.

When it comes up on MN you usually get hordes of posters proclaiming that it's an atheist conspiracy or ignorance.

If it is true that most Christians don't know much about the composition of the Gospels I would find that sad more than shocking. But do we really know this? The people who post on MN (and indeed the internet more generally) are not, as far as I know, a representative sample. For one thing, only those who are confident enough in their views to express them in writing, only those with enough time, and who are interested enough in debating these questions will ever contribute to these threads. And it is likely that those posters will hold more polarised views than the majority of ordinary Christians. Of the people I come into contact with, I think most would not be surprised to learn that the Gospels were probably not written by the disciples whose names they bear, if they do not know this already.

At the church I attend the probable dates of Mark and John were mentioned in a sermon a couple of weeks ago, together with a brief allusion to the debates around the authorship of those Gospels. But this wasn't the burden of the talk. Most sermons concentrate on the text as we have it now and its meaning for us today, and indeed that is the most pressing concern for most Christians. A sermon isn't a historical lecture but addresses the spiritual needs of the congregation through an exposition of the Biblical text. And many churchgoers don't attend Bible study or discipleship courses -- which, of course, may also be dealing with other matters beside the the composition of the Bible.

deepinthewoods, true, but most of the how to try to live a christian life is in the New Testament.

rabbit- but doesn't that need to be read in context. A novel often has the climax at the end, does that mean we shoud skip he beginning and go straight to the last chaper because it is more fun?

But the Bible isn't a novel, it's a collection of books written at different times and places, for different purposes. The word 'Bible' comes from the latin for 'library'. One rarely reads a library from the beginning of the classification system to the end; and this isn't really the best way to approach the Bible either.

I have read the Bible from beginning to end, because that is one way of reading it. But it's just one of many ways of reading this immensely rich book.

But like a novel it is mostly a work of fiction.

No, it isn't. It contains history, biography, poetry, prayers and prophetic writings. Either you have not read it all, or you are unable to distinguish these different forms of writing.

Just popping in to say hi Niminy!

I'm not around mn much at the moment - RL is pretty busy! But I pop my head round the door every now and then, and it's nice to see you!

Our church is probably quite similar to yours - we talk about things like the dating, authorship, genre etc of biblical texts but that's not the be-all and end-all of what the text means - it's also about what God is saying to us through the text. I think we need to ask both of those types of questions to be true to the Bible.

AS I say nimin- mostly fiction- unless you think that the Garden of Eden or the great flood actually happened.

deep The stuff that people would label fiction can have more truth in it than you might first think.....Life is reflected through art.

In the Bible analogy is used to describe spiritual truth. It is akin to giving illustrations to concepts, in order to aid understanding, highlighting how things work.

Not that I think the Bible only consists of analogy, just that analogy, imagery and symbolism cannot be discounted. Language itself is symbolic, right down the the etymology of words, we use sounds to describe physical objects, sounds, events and our thoughts.

^not only spiritual truth but psychological truth too.

AS I say nimin- mostly fiction- unless you think that the Garden of Eden or the great flood actually happened.

I suspect you have only read Genesis 1-11.

I don't disagree capsium, but as I say- mostly fiction, regardless of the purpose.

If you just read the bits about being a christian in the NT though it makes even less sense.

Without the bits about god creating the world, original sin etc all you have is a workshy carpenter's son saying "hey I think I might be the ruler of the universe, be nice to each other or my dad, who is also me, will torture you forever".

If the guy who works down the chipshop said that you would not fall to your knees and worship him.

The argument (a poor one, but still an argument) is that he fulfilled prophecy (ha!) and was therefore part of the ongoing story that the bible told. That prophecy proved the bible to be not the work of man, but that of god.

If you ignore the rest of the bible or admit that it's just a collection of stories and scraps of unrelated history then you have nothing substantial left. Just some guy who thought that telling stories for the shekels people would throw was better than sawing wood with his dad all day.

But then of course if you claim that god had it written (as most do) and that he ensured it would survive in its current form (as most do) and if you claim it's all one story that supports itself (as most do) then you have to face the inconsistencies. It's a problem isn't it.

Wow, back, you really do get a hard-on from being provocative, don't you?

You are dealing in a false dichotomy here: either we accept only the NT and see the OT as worthless (as Marcion did, that position was decisively defeated in the 2nd century), or we see the entirety of the Bible as inerrant, inconsistencies and all.

But those are not the only two possibilities. A third is that we can take the Bible as a whole, and see it as 'what God wants to tell us'. I am going to quote here from a recent book by Rowan Williams, who puts this better than I can:

'How can [the whole Bible] be addressed to us? The simplest way in which we can understand this is the one I have already hinted at: this is what God wants you to hear. He wants you to hear law and poetry and history. He wants you to hear the polemic and the visions. He wants you to listen to the letters and to think about the chronicles. And from the earliest days, Christians, like Jews before them and Jews now, wrestle with how you can actually say 'This is the word of the Lord,' the communication of God. You cannot just go by surface meanings because surface meanings do not immediately help with understanding why God wants you to hear it. This may be the word of God, but why is it important to God that you know it?' (Rowan Williams, Being Christian, pp. 25-26)

So it is not that God approves of everything that happens in the Bible the floods and the genocides and the details of the law but that we need to see these as the stories of how people responded to God at that time. Williams asks: 'Are you capable in the light of the Bible as a whole of responding more lovingly or faithfully than ancient Israel?' (p. 28)