(July 1, 2016 at 1:49 am)Aractus Wrote:(June 30, 2016 at 11:32 pm)Jehanne Wrote: And, then, these very early manuscripts were written at least a generation (40 years) after the death of Jesus
No they weren't. I find it near inconceivable that Matthew could have been written to Jewish Christians after the fall of Jerusalem. But let's ignore the gospels for a moment, we have at least two letters of paul that reliably date to 51-54 AD, and the Epistle of James which almost certainly was written before 50AD.
(June 30, 2016 at 11:32 pm)Jehanne Wrote: I would agree with you that the Gospels contain some of the words of the historical Jesus, but even scholars themselves cannot agree on which ones Jesus actually spoke!
Incorrect. The Sermon on the Mount is pretty much universally accepted as being genuinely delivered by Jesus, especially given the number of times James makes direct reference to it before any of the Christian gospels were written (he directly cites it something like 14-19 times, in addition to citing other things Jesus said as well). If he didn't give the Parables of the Rich Ruler and the Good Samaritan then it's up to you to prove where they came from, not up to me or others or Christians to prove it. I think that most sceptics would agree that the Parable of the Good Samaritan was one of Jesus's best teachings - if not the best. It was not at all aligned with the conventional wisdom of Judaism in the first century, which is what really makes it interesting.
That said, I don't think he ever claimed to be the Messiah. I'd agree with other sceptics that when Jesus talks about the "Son of Man" he is not referring to himself in the third-person, but rather looking towards the celestial being prophesied by Daniel. Those are great points of difference between us and Christians, but ultimately I'm forward looking, so of course it could one day be shown I'm wrong and that Jesus was referring to himself as the Son of Man - and if that was the case, as a sceptic, I have absolutely no explanation for it.
Certainly Q has been advanced as an historical source but the Gospel of Thomas is also a "sayings Gospel", like Q. I will grant that the Sermon on the Mount contains some authentic sayings of Jesus, but it is not a true historical account; no one was there taking notes, as virtually everyone there was illiterate, and there is no evidence that the Gospels were first written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, his followers and early 1st-century Palestine. As far as the Gospel of Matthew, yours is truly a minority position, as most scholars date Matthew as being written between 75 and 100 AD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_...g_and_date
