The Question of the Greek New Testament

[nihilistcat]

When I was a student at Biola, a 4 year Christian university, the Bible  professors and theologians spoke of reading the NT in the original Greek.  For many years, this sounded cool. I couldn't do it, but it was cool, nonetheless.

In the past few years, though, something occurred to me.  Jesus wasn't Greek. Neither did he speak Greek. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John weren't Greek. Neither did they speak Greek.  Peter, Paul, James and Jude weren't Greek. Neither did they speak Greek. So how could an authentic NT have been originally written in Greek?

Minimalist already mentioned Bart Ehrman (probably the best textual critic and NT scholar out there), and it was watching Erhman's lectures that I learned none of the names of the Gospels, save John, were actually disciples. In fact, the names are possibly fictitious (in their entirety). Moreover, the original authors of those Gospels were most likely well educated native Greek speakers (this comes from examining the manuscripts and a linguistic analysis), not illiterate or barely literate, Aramaic speaking fishermen from Galilee. There's a school of thought that postulates Mark was a possible companion of Peter (it's notable that there's no resurrection narrative in the Book of Mark), but that's speculative (and Ehrman's work may rule that out, I'm not entirely sure). Also, most of the ancient manuscripts floating around are pseudepigraphs or outright forgeries. Then of course there's the many inconsistencies e.g. the dates and times of paramount events such as the execution and death of Jesus differ, depending on which Gospel you read (and hundreds of other major inconsistencies), and then of course there's basic evidentiary arguments like lack of independent corroboration and so on. In other words, it's bullshit.

I see a Catholic has joined the fun here. Well, Catholics will always argue from the standpoint of their internal dogma, they rarely interact with more generalized arguments or even textual criticism (because they will always confine themselves to church approved versions of scripture, their theologians don't interact with arguments from scholars like Erhman, because any true scholar doesn't confine him or herself to only material approved by something like a church, indeed that would be the antithesis of any scholarly investigation for obvious reasons). So expect our Catholic posters to drivel on about bullshit like Jerome or whatever (some so called church father), and then of course try and steer the conversation in a deluded attempt to plug their church and win converts (as if). I would say Catholicism is cultish. Not a cult exactly, but they have some cult like features (like adherence to internal dogma, strict guidelines on interpretation of scripture, keeping their adherents focused internally, and so on).  So if I were to point out something like the archaeological evidence debunking the Exodus narrative (and the fact that Moses didn't even exist), they will be able to dig up sophistic drivel that some poor smuck wasted his life writing that amounts to exactly nothing (but it will be some of the most elaborate worthless bullshit you ever read)