Evangelicals, Trump and a Quick Bible Study

[Pat Mustard]

Jesus never said anything about either abortion or gay rights. He did, however, spend a lot of time talking about the things that liberals like. He denounced greed. He instructed us to care for the poor and unfortunate. He healed the sick. He preached a message of peace.

Do an experiment for me, would you?  Get an old (or, even new, they are still sold) red-letter Bible, the type that have the words of Jesus in the Gospels colored in red, and read the Gospel of Mark.  If and when you do this, you will not find many words of Jesus in Mark.  As for Matthew and Luke, most of the so-called words of Jesus come from a hypothetical source which scholars call 'Q'.  As for John, the Jesus Seminar, in its Five Gospels, coded John as being entirely in black, indicating, in the Fellows opinion, that not a single phrase found in the Gospel of John can be traced back to the historical Jesus.

As so, the words of Jesus have, largely, been lost to time.  In any case, the earliest words of Jesus are, clearly, apocalyptic.  He was not an ethical teacher, even if he, on occasion, taught ethics.  The Romans, respecting the rule of law and tradition, both Roman and non, did not execute individuals for teaching ethics, only for sedition against the empire and other crimes, and almost certainly, that's what landed Jesus in trouble.

Most of Mark is deriverd from the apocryphal Q, biblical "scholars" also believe.