The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[Mudhammam]

Of course, you are also familiar with the "You have heard it said...but I say..." passages, so you know Jesus offered new material, also.

Maybe, though having read most of the OT, Plato, a great deal of Aristotle, and now going through Philo's complete works, after of which I plan to read some Stoics, and eventually a behemoth, two volume set of Jewish and Christian pseudographa (some predating Jesus) that I plan to crack open next year, I'd be surprised if there was anything original in the NT with the exception of a few kernels here and there, as much as I'm already finding it shocking that anyone could truly believe the that NT contains *divine* wisdom, much less innovative thought. You know as well as I do that, at least for the most part, when an author using Jesus as their mouthpiece writes, "You have heard it said... but I say," he's not saying stuff that hadn't been taught by others, Jewish or Gentile, before.