The question that shatters faith, forever.

[FallentoReason]

[quote='FallentoReason' pid='258229' dateline='1332226494']
Question. Can you show me how we can conclude that e.g. Matthew did infact write his own gospel? Here's food for thought as well. Scholars say Matthew was written after Mark

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Would you be too upset if you found out the book of Mathew wasn't written by anyone named Mathew at all??
In the Hebrew account of the book Authorship is accredited to one Mathias. (Funny how champions of the faith got western/anglo names and the rest like Judas got to keep their given names)

Ok. Is this meant to be the guy that was a disciple of Jesus? He could at least be original in his writings. I've explained below.

My point is that if you are so involved in the division of scripture as to take on the responsibility for it's content then you have missed the Whole point in which the bible was written, And all of the Gospel contained in those pages.

The God of the bible is responsible for it's content. not us. For if we set out to worship Him following the only book He has provided and make a mistake then it is Up to Him to have made a change (Like with the finding of the dead sea scrolls) or to simply forgive our earnest efforts built on passages that only He can consider to be in error.

Matthew, like Luke, incorporates nearly the whole of Mark, keeping the outline intact and adding genealogy-birth-infancy stories to the beginning and post-resurrection appearances to the end.[44] Many scholars have argued that Matthew is simply an expanded version of Mark, but it is also a creative reinterpretation of the source,[45] stressing Jesus' teachings as much as his acts,[46] and making subtle changes in order to stress Jesus' divine nature – Mark's "young man" who appears at Jesus' tomb, for example, becomes a radiant angel in Matthew.[47] The miracle stories in Mark do not demonstrate the divinity of Jesus, as this is an idea not found in that gospel, but rather confirm his status as an emissary of God (which was Mark's understanding of the Messiah).[48]

What I used to think was that there's this God out there that was perfect. I knew He was because His way of communicating with us was done perfectly. He sent Himself to earth and did things that changed the course of history. These things could be read about in the New Testament and since it's historically flawless it means the idea of God flows perfectly from the supernatural to reality. I didn't have a problem with this.

The problem that arose eventually was this: there's two sides to this. The first is the idea of this God and his son Jesus. Then you have all the humans involved with this God that had the responsibility of handing down the information. What I observe is that the two ends do not meet. There's a gap between the content of the gospels and reality.

For example, take the wikipedia extract that I've quoted. Firstly, this shows the author wasn't a witness because he just based his writings on what was already available. Secondly, the author of Matthew decided to beef up Mark with supernatural content. The fact that Matthew came second gives no credibility to the supernatural. These are the sorts of wrinkles that start to form a gap between the Bible and true human history.