One last attempt to pull this thread back to what was, in the OP a fairly good or at least reasonable question. Where are these original anonymous gospels?
Hector Avalos writes:
Now, as an aside before any of the jesus freaks start shrieking that Avalos is not a "serious" scholar or a "real" scholar, or whatever character assassination you fall back on when someone dares to upset your little holy apple cart in lieu of arguing the issue,
So let's let his degrees speak for themselves, shall we.
Ehrman, among others, insists that the earliest copies are the closest to the originals. Superficially that makes sense. Fewer scribes copying means fewer errors. That still does not answer the OP's question. Where is any evidence at all of the anonymous "originals?" What if Ehrman is wrong? Suppose the second and third century fragments we have are the originals? The original written form anyway. The vast bulk of the population was illiterate. To most of them a written page was useful to wipe their asses. It is actually far more likely that this stuff began as tales told around the fireplace and only later did someone start writing this stuff down. After Marcion invented the idea of a canon. Once the creative threshold is broken humans are very adept at imitation.
So the fact that there are no indications of the anonymous originals existing in writing until the 2d-3d centuries and that xtian sources themselves tell us that Marcion was the first suggests that we are dealing with oral traditions - which would have been very common at the time - leads to a couple of possibilities.
a) The originals were lost in spite of the fact that it was xtians themselves who were responsible for preserving and protecting them, or
b) that the original stories were tall tales told and retold and subject to the vicissitude of human memory - and worse than memory - the need to embellish and exaggerate, or
c) the whole story emerged only after the proto-orthodox ( to steal Ehrman's term ) were granted legal status as a reward for backing Constantine in his war with Maxentius, or,
d) the stories are true ( the least likely explanation but one which must be added in the spirit of completeness) including the silly miracle stories because we have no specimen of a gospel without them.... excepting the epistles of the so-called "paul" who doesn't know anything about "miracles."
Hector Avalos writes:
Quote:A main problem continues to be the lack of documentation from the time of Jesus to establish his existence definitively. Jesus is supposed to have lived around the year 30. But there is no mention of him anywhere in any actual document from his own time or from the entire first century.
The best known stories about Jesus are the biblical gospels. Despite recent claims to the contrary, most biblical scholars recognize that none of the actual manuscripts of these gospels originated earlier than the second century.
The best efforts of textual scholars have failed to recover the so-called “originals” of any biblical text. Thus, it is difficult to know what has been added or subtracted from any original accounts.
- See more at: http://amestrib.com/sections/opinion/col...E5vAO.dpuf
Now, as an aside before any of the jesus freaks start shrieking that Avalos is not a "serious" scholar or a "real" scholar, or whatever character assassination you fall back on when someone dares to upset your little holy apple cart in lieu of arguing the issue,
Quote:Hector Avalos (born October 8, 1958) is a professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University and the author of several books about religion.[1] He is a former Pentecostal preacher and child evangelist.[2]
He has a Doctor of Philosophy in Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Studies from Harvard University (1991), a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School (1985), and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1982.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Avalos
So let's let his degrees speak for themselves, shall we.
Ehrman, among others, insists that the earliest copies are the closest to the originals. Superficially that makes sense. Fewer scribes copying means fewer errors. That still does not answer the OP's question. Where is any evidence at all of the anonymous "originals?" What if Ehrman is wrong? Suppose the second and third century fragments we have are the originals? The original written form anyway. The vast bulk of the population was illiterate. To most of them a written page was useful to wipe their asses. It is actually far more likely that this stuff began as tales told around the fireplace and only later did someone start writing this stuff down. After Marcion invented the idea of a canon. Once the creative threshold is broken humans are very adept at imitation.
So the fact that there are no indications of the anonymous originals existing in writing until the 2d-3d centuries and that xtian sources themselves tell us that Marcion was the first suggests that we are dealing with oral traditions - which would have been very common at the time - leads to a couple of possibilities.
a) The originals were lost in spite of the fact that it was xtians themselves who were responsible for preserving and protecting them, or
b) that the original stories were tall tales told and retold and subject to the vicissitude of human memory - and worse than memory - the need to embellish and exaggerate, or
c) the whole story emerged only after the proto-orthodox ( to steal Ehrman's term ) were granted legal status as a reward for backing Constantine in his war with Maxentius, or,
d) the stories are true ( the least likely explanation but one which must be added in the spirit of completeness) including the silly miracle stories because we have no specimen of a gospel without them.... excepting the epistles of the so-called "paul" who doesn't know anything about "miracles."
